Jeffrey G Causey

Late December and early January have turned out to be very busy, so my plans to put together a post outlining my 2017 reading list has been languishing on my to-do list. No longer though as I have finally found a few minutes to stop and put together the list. Why did I bother to put together a list for the upcoming year especially when I almost always have a book "in progress" at any given time? It was mainly driven by the suggestions on goal-setting that I recently wrote about. One of those tips was putting your goals in writing, so I did that with regard to what I hoped to read in 2017.

I know most folks are probably in the midst of preparations for the holidays and are busy with all of the tasks that go along with that. However, as the year is drawing to a close, now is the time to start thinking about goals for 2017, especially since you may be getting some time off from work (I hope you do). Hopefully, you may even find some time for some personal reflection and can spend some of that effort thinking about what 2017 may bring. I recently attended an online webinar about goal-setting for 2017 (or any other time for that matter) that was hosted by Michael Hyatt. I also came across an article about some unconventional tips on setting goals ( 6 Tips for Goal-Setting That, Trust Me, They Don't Teach You in College ). Hopefully, some of this will help you move beyond the typical mantra of setting SMART goals (smart, measurable, attainable, realistic and time-based). Since goal setting is such a personal matter,  don't feel like you need to stick to these m...

The concept of caring being something positive should be fairly obvious, but the title of this piece is not meant to be redundant. Instead, I hope it emphasizes the importance of a positive attitude and how it can impact those around you, notably your co-workers that you likely spend a lot of time with in your life. Besides helping to relieve stress, which can in turn enhance productivity, efficiency and effectiveness, positive attitudes can help people perform better when dealing with customers. Hopefully you realize that helping improve the customer experience ultimately has a positive impact on the bottom line for a business or organization.

Last week I shared an article about some potential problems that can crop up if collaboration efforts are not managed effectively. One of the issues that may surface is the stress and burnout for top performers when they are continually sought out by others in the organization. Likewise, as managers we likely have certain employees who are considered stars and it can be tempting to turn to them on a frequent basis to get the work done in an organization. However, it is important that we proactively manage the work that is being delegated so as to avoid overloading some employees and at the same time taking steps to help raise up lower performing employees. Although management may be as much art as it is science, we can still bring some structure to this delegation process as discussed in the article Make Sure Your Team's Workload Is Divided Fairly . The article brings up several steps and actions that managers can take when delegating assignments and projects. The main th...

I was recently reading an article on collaboration ( Collaborative Overload ) and some of the problems that it can create for an organization. Wait, what? Collaboration is a problem? That may seem like an odd claim in this day and age when we seek ever increasing levels of collaboration and teamwork in our workforces. As the article points out though, there are potential problems out there if the effects of collaboration are not managed effectively. The basic problem with collaboration that is identified by the authors is that demands for collaborative activities - like attending meetings - pulls people away from being able to work on the actual tasks that they have been hired to work on. This creates a cycle requiring them to do things like take work home, which in turn increases stress, which then leads to burnout and turnover.

This was a quick read about some of the challenges with employee engagement. I know that one of the issues I seemed to always struggle to get others to understand is that there is more to motivating employees than pay. Frequently this seemed to be due to people who are motivated by pay thinking that everyone else is motivated by the same things they are - they just could not get out of the mindset that what they valued was what everyone valued. Interestingly in this article, they briefly touch on the fact that for some employees, just using financial rewards can even be a bit of a disincentive. http://blog.cayenneapps.com/2014/11/20/12-what-motivates-us-knowing-why/ cross post from my LinkedIn profile