Supervisory Management articles from January 1992

Supervisory Management archives from January 1992

The Incredible Shrinking Organization: What Does It Mean for Middle Managers?
January 1, 1992... A very wry riddle might pose the question: What do donuts and corporations have in common? The answer: a hole in the middle. Think about it. A clever middle manager could probably solve this puzzle with little effort because, for him, the...

Effective Small Talk Makes for Big Success
January 1, 1992... Business books and periodicals are loaded with tips on how to improve one's communication with staffers and senior managers. But few, if any, discuss the very important skill of small talk--what is often called "chitchat". In today's work...

Negotiating with Peers: Consensus, Not Power
January 1, 1992... Today's supervisors are finding that negotiating skills are becoming more important than in previous years. In the past, you had to negotiate with your boss to able to hire an extra staffer or two. You also had to negotiate with your employees...

Dealing with Turf Battles in the Office
January 1, 1992... Turf battles in the workplace are nothing new--but they've become increasingly complex since so many of the rules have changed. "Team" approaches to projects often leave people confused as to what their individual responsibilities include....

Harnessing Group Dynamics for Greater Productivity
January 1, 1992... Any experienced supervisor knows that groups either work for you or against you--sometimes at the same time! The processes of group dynamics--how people behave in groups and how the group itself behaves--are closely tied to group productivity,...

The "Next Operation" Is Your Customer
January 1, 1992... In the early 1980s, I visited Japan several times as a member of various study missions. We kept bumping into a phrase--"the next operation as customer"--an idea initiated by Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, the father of the Japanese quality movement. But...

The "New Corporate Culture": Mainly Just Common Sense
January 1, 1992... There's a lot of talk nowadays about the "changing corporate culture". The autocratic style of management, with its bullying, shouting, inflexible rules, and insistence on unquestioning obedience, is supposedly out of fashion today. Whether...

Participative Management: Pros and Cons
January 1, 1992... "Our company involves everyone from the clerks in the mailroom to the president in decisions." Sounds like a dream come true, doesn't it? Everyone's opinion counts. No one's ideas are ignored just because of title (or lack thereof). A truly...

How to Use Electronic Mail Successfully
January 1, 1992... You can't discuss organizational change today without discussing the impact of new technology. And because of its growing popularity in the workplace, one technological development worthy of note is electronic or "E-mail". Electronic mail is...