Expectations are mental models that define how we and people around us want things to work out now, in the short- medium- and long-term. Whether expectations are aligned in an organization or not has an immediate impact on individual and organizational performance. In this blogpost we have a look at why expectation management is important and what you should consider in managing expectations effectively.
Knowledge has many facets. Nowadays, information on management and related skills saturates the market. However, this is neither high-quality, nor is it based on any form of proven practices. At CQ Net – Management skills at work!, our aim is to break through this agglomeration of fads and fictive promises and to make high-quality and university-level management knowledge available. Not only that, we also want to teach you how to use and implement it well. We do this by building a bridge between theories and practical implementation and by making access to our management products affordable and low-key. We love to teach and even more, we love to see good management skills in practice. In this blogpost, we will explain how our multi-level strategy works and how our products tie into our mission.
Year by year consultants and scholars around the world introduce hundreds if not thousands new management tools. One of those tools that has been already around for some years is organizational agility. In this blog post we explore the agility – performance relationship and ask whether striving for agility is worth it.
Organizations such as companies, governmental institutions, NGOs, and hospitals are an important building block of our society. Most of us spend a considerable portion of our (working) life in some sort of organization. Whether we are happy, successful, depressed, or angry depends to a great extend on what we achieve and experience in our organizational life. There is no doubt that organizations have a profound impact on all of us.
When you hear the word “management”, which pictures come to mind? It is likely the response is a middle-aged male in a corporate setting who makes decisions about what others are meant to do. However, this does not reflect how organizations run in practice. In the real world, professionals are those who practice management on a daily basis – in meetings, in projects, in sales, in production. Management does not refer to the top-down act of organizing people and processes. Management rather consists of a set of soft skills expected from professionals of any level nowadays, despite the misleading name. Acquiring these soft skills makes work more fulfilling, be in line with the organizational vision and equips workers to succeed in the rapidly changing world of work.
Every organization has its rituals and behavioral patterns. While many of those rituals and patterns indeed have a positive impact on the organization and its people, some of them do more harm than good. One of these patterns you have to worry about is casually called the "cover your ass" or CYA phenomenon. Driven by fear and a toxic work environment, it undermines performance and drives away high performers.
Evidence-based management (also known as EBM or EBMgt) is a management approach that involves using multiple sources of scientific evidence and empirical results as a means of attaining knowledge (Barends, Rousseau, & Briner, 2014). To be an evidence-based manager is to use the scientific literature as a means of answering questions, inspiring strategy decisions, and forming long-term plans. Published academic research from the fields of psychology, behavioral economics, communications, and even sociology can help to inform the decisions of a well-informed evidence-based manager. An evidence-based manager carefully considers the body of evidence, evaluating research for its quality and relevance.
The world is changing - in business and beyond. Management skills sound like they may only be useful for executives and CEOs, but in fact, they have turned out to be far more fundamental and universally useful than classical narratives promise. Beyond that, management skills are expected in the world of work. How can professionals live up to these shifting dynamics, without the time or money needed to pursue an MBA? Amidst the many online offers and bogus advice given on the Internet, there is little that can be trusted. This blogpost explains why we at CQ Net – Management skills at work! do what we do, and why it matters in the world today. We seek to make university-level management skills available and affordable to everyone. Why? Because they matter, because you matter, and because the paradigm of management and work is changing and we must change with it.
Leadership is a phenomenon that has interested people for hundreds of years. One rather outdated explanatory approach still plays a prominent role in practice and the media in particular: The so-called Great Man Theory. In this blog we present what this theory is all about and why it is time to look for alternative approaches.
The aviation industry has reached an unprecedented safety level. This is an outstanding achievement taking into consideration that global air traffic is on the rise and every new aircraft becomes technically more sophisticated. Of course, one of the reasons for this achievement is superior technology. However, without a crew that performs well technology would be useless. A considerable body of evidence indicates that one reason for this strong safety track record in aviation is due to airlines conducting Crew Resource Management trainings as means to improve team performance. Initially inspired by management as a team development intervention, Crew Resource Management has become a de-facto standard in the aviation industry. Is it time for management to re-adapt what the aviation industry has developed to the next level?
