by meglesnick | Oct 23, 2025 | Innovation, Strategy, Uncategorized
Have you worked somewhere where the powers that be say that they are looking for new ideas? Or there is an “Innovation Committee”? Or even giving employees cash for something new?
Innovation is an important part of the workplace. New products and services often keep an organization viable into the future. It isn’t always the leadership team who comes up with the latest thoughts and in fact, it’s normally the engineers, the product managers, the customer service team, those who work in the field or with the customers who think of items that will satisfy customers and solve issues.
It isn’t always the new product though or the new service that should be prized. A closely related topic is when people figure out a new way to solve a problem or enhance a process. These ideas don’t usually get the bonus or the recognition, but they should.
Ways to Encourage Innovation in the Workplace
Wouldn’t our companies be better served if we encouraged our employees to look for new ways to solve old issues? There are lots of ways that we could do this:
- Look through the complaints that the company gets. This is an easy way to use customer feedback to try to fix items. I’d encourage you to affinitize these complaints and look at any patterns that seem larger. You could also categorize them by ease of improvement to get a few wins under your belt before you go after something bigger.
- If you don’t keep complaints or they’re not easy to find, you can survey your customers and find out what they would like to have fixed. It can be where you focus on the lowest performing quantitative items or you can look at the qualitative comments and again, try to affininitze them so you aren’t reacting on each individual idea.
- You can also survey your internal team to see what they are hearing. At times, this can be more problematic because there is bias from employees as they may remember the last thing they heard or they may be interested in giving more difficult to work with problems lower marks, but it is a way to query. You could combine the internal team output with the customer survey as well.
- If you work somewhere where you have staff that fixes or catalogues problems, this is another area to investigate, such as service, quality, customer service, etc. You may notice for example, that there is volume in a certain product being returned and there could be a flaw there that hasn’t been fixed.
- There are also other types of improvement opportunities, such as in a process. You could check and see if there are SOPs for what is done within the organization. If there aren’t any or most processes aren’t documented, that is a great place to begin as you can often see what doesn’t make sense once documentation occurs and others are reviewing it. If your processes are documented, then having others quality check them to see if they are easy to follow or if there are other ways perhaps to do something. There may be ways to automate for example or another group to handle something or a more efficient method.
- You could determine the biggest bottlenecks in your department (or time killers or things that no one likes to do, etc.) and have a facilitated brainstorming sessions on other ways to handle these items.
- There are a lot of quality tools an organization can use in order to become more productive and it’s a great opportunity for others to expand their knowledge and lead a team. These quality tools could be used in a department or division meeting which is a great use of the group’s knowledge, an opportunity for a member of the department to shine within a group setting, a way to improve and innovate and a way to bring multiple perspectives together in a positive manner. You could have people think of a way to do something better within the group and rank them in order of which would make the biggest impact.
The idea here is that innovation and improvement can come in many shapes and sizes and all should be celebrated. Bringing a new product or service to launch is a giant achievement and is worthy of a lot of time and energy. Process improvements also are another form of innovation that help us meet and exceed business goals.
by meglesnick | Sep 28, 2025 | Leadership, Management, Strategy, Uncategorized
Mastering Delegation in Management: Why It’s So Hard to Let Go
One of the more difficult challenges in management is learning to delegate appropriately, especially when you have a similar skillset to the people you supervise. How many times have we all said that sometimes it is way easier to do something, rather than having to explain that “thing” to someone else. It can be faster, more productive and you can have a better outcome if you take care of the tasks and don’t bother explaining to others how to do it well. It happens with various types of items, ranging from communication to project management to technical tasks.
But we all know that a manager shouldn’t/couldn’t do the work of an entire department. Plus, if you don’t help others understand the way to get things done, you’ll never have a well-rounded staff. Lastly, who says you are the authority of “everything”? Often your way is good, but it isn’t the only way to go. It’s one of the reasons why we often try to hire people with some diverse skills and experience as different sources can equal better outcomes.
Why Managers Struggle to Delegate Tasks
There’s lots of reasons why we don’t delegate – it can be easier, or we don’t think that those on our team have the expertise. Maybe we truly are the expert and can see the best path to completion. Or we don’t have the time – there is a deadline to meet that can’t be moved.
Isn’t it the job of a manager to guide and mentor others without actually doing all of the work of the department? How will you ever have a high-functioning team if you don’t let go a bit? But how/when/why?
Managing Different Strengths Across Your Team
Let’s face it, sometimes you have staff members who aren’t created equal. You may be able to trust employee #1 with all her duties but employee #2 has to be monitored regularly or he’ll cause a dust up with other employees or can make small, but critical mistakes. Sometimes we can spread work around our department and play to our staffs’ strengths and sometimes…not so much.
You could even look at your own strengths and find that your strengths are way different than others on the team. Maybe no one can put together and deliver a key presentation the way that you do. Or perhaps no one on your team has the negotiating skills that you do. Then there could be the difficult internal politics that your team hasn’t quite mastered, sometimes leaving you with more of a mess to clean up.
From Star Performer to Empowering Leader
If any of this sounds familiar, join the club! Often, once you reach the role of manager, it’s because you have an impressive skillset, usually better (in some areas) than those of your team. It is your responsibility to help your team out and build on their fledgling skills. Remember back in the day when your first presentation wasn’t rock solid, or you made mistakes in analyzing data? Maybe you still do but you’re better at recovering.
You are doing the work of a hands-on leader when you guide someone else through experiences that you could take care of with no issue. You NEED others to be solid and you may always be the rock star, but others can learn and maybe even surpass you in some areas. This is good for you, them, your team and the company in general.
I used to work with a peer who was an all-around good performer. He was able to write, design, administer a website, craft a video and in general communicate well. He was in charge of a creative team which isn’t easy, normally filled with egos and agendas. This team was no different. However, instead of mentoring and motivating his team, he cherry picked the assignments as they came in. He took the “fun” stuff, leaving the mundane and low-profile work to the rest of the group. At times he was overwhelmed as he wasn’t very organized so he often took on more than he could handle. But he didn’t ask for help from his team or ask their input. Instead, he tried to soldier on, bitterly complaining to others about his heavy workload. As you can imagine, his employee satisfaction scores were abysmal with most of his internal clients either loving or hating him, depending on whether he was able to prioritize their needs.
This may sound unusual, but it’s not. The even more difficult part of this story is that his boss, a high-ranking leader within the company, didn’t acknowledge any of these problems or seem to work with him to solve them. The team who reported to the creative director was frustrated, bitter and left with no options. Some left the company. Others stopped trying as hard. It was a bad situation.
At the time, I tried to talk with the creative director, but he didn’t see the issue. He thought that it was his team’s fault. They were all jealous, he said. They weren’t a real team he continued to argue and all out for themselves. As an outside perspective, I told him that I didn’t see this as his team’s issue alone. Yes, I said, it isn’t the best solution when everyone is fighting but I said, didn’t he think that was his responsibility as well? He acknowledged that it was but claimed he was “too busy” to work on it. He wanted a team that offered solutions instead of reiterating the problem. No matter how I phrased it to him, he wasn’t talking about his opportunity to fix the problem.
Turning It Around: How to Improve Your Delegation Style
If you see yourself in the creative director example above, don’t worry. This can get fixed. You need to step back and determine your leadership style. Have you been told you don’t delegate? How do the one-on-one meetings go with your staff?
One big part of managing others is guiding them towards improving their strengths, giving them new opportunities, being there when they make a mistake and helping them become better. You’re not the very best at everything but you have a lot to give which is important. Having a strong team who can handle the work of the department is the best way to take on new, more interesting work and enable higher employee satisfaction.
by meglesnick | Jul 14, 2025 | Culture, Management, Strategy, Talent
It’s hard to combat certain organizational culture issues. One of the hardest is the us vs. them mentality which can play out in a few different scenarios. This mindset is based on the idea that a group of any type can get when they feel as though others have it “better” in some way than they do. It starts off innocently, especially when we want a group to feel empowered together. Sometimes inadvertently we can feed into it with team building exercises. But if you see this in your team, you want to get rid of it as soon as you can because it’s toxic and it can cause lots of issues, like low morale, inconsistent performance and a lack of collaboration.
It can be found in many types of places and here are some examples to help you understand it better.
Where “Us vs. Them” Shows Up
1. Within Departments
If your department is a large enough one, there are normally staff who specialize in certain functions. For instance, in the marketing department, you could have the digital marketers, the creative team, the project managers, etc. Or you could get divided up by your vertical market or by internal product lines, whatever the case, there are divisions within the department.
There can be times that a marketing leader may try to stoke some competition between the groups so he/she could set up a contest to see which one is the most productive or gets the most recognition. If the groups are functional and work well together, this can be a way to boost teamwork within a division. But if not, it can also be a way to pit department members against each other and reinforce bad behavior. Even without a contest, oftentimes people who are more alike prefer to stick together and may have an issue with those who are different, even if they share the same boss.
2. Between Departments
There are also issues with us vs. them with two departments who are often supposed to work together but because of a variety of reasons, they have trouble doing so. Groups can have disparate goals which can make our working relationships difficult. But it isn’t only the difference in goals that can be an issue. It can be the fact that you have different work styles, leaders, priorities and communication skills.
I have worked in many corporate marketing departments, and I can tell you firsthand, the huge differences between how the sales and the marketing teams work at most places. It is very easy for either group to talk trash about the other one as they seriously don’t understand what they do on a daily basis or why they think so differently.
3. Internal Staff vs. Customers
You see the us vs. them between the internal staff at an organization and their customers. If this is a dysfunctional workplace, the staff is encouraged to have more of an adversarial relationship with the client, meaning the company isn’t trying to solve customer issues or make their life easier.
Instead, you want to sell them on your product or service and if the customer isn’t happy, it’s OK because there will be others. Most companies aren’t quite that black and white about the subject, but we’ve all felt that way when we’ve tried to get help. As a customer, you know when the staff person is “on your side” rather than going through the motions and not solving any issues.
4. Internal Teams vs. Vendors
There can be an us vs. them when an organization is working with a vendor. You’ll see it when the internal team makes a lot of disparaging comments about the team at a vendor, usually to assert power. The reason this isn’t a good dynamic is that vendors will do a better job and with more effort for the organizations who are easy to work with and who give them the information that they need. If there is any sort of simmering murky issues, those problems can get in the way of working together in a positive manner. It can impact lots of areas, including deadlines and quality.
5. Leadership vs. the Broader Organization
Another common us vs. them is felt both ways in the leadership team and the rest of the organization. The leadership team may feel that they are supposed to receive different privileges as they are the ones setting the strategy for the organization. And maybe they do get more or better benefits as their skill set may allow them to find those privileges elsewhere if they don’t get it at their current place of employment.
But making others feel less important is never a good way to lead. And, from the other perspective, workers at a company may feel like they are the true stewards of a company, performing the most important work valued by the customer. They may not share with the leadership team as they don’t feel as though they either want to know the information or that they would do anything particularly responsible with it so why bother?
Why It Matters
There are other instances of us vs. them in a company but these are some good starting places to look if you want to evaluate your organization. But why does it matter? There is something to be said about people feeling a sense of camaraderie with others and everyone isn’t always going to be one big happy family. Right?
While I acknowledge that people will gravitate towards others they are like and are comfortable with, it shouldn’t be to the exclusion of another group. If that occurs, you can cause long lasting issues that have an impact on important metrics like employee and customer satisfaction, productivity measurements and even revenue or profit goals.
You also adversely impact important items like communication and collaboration. If individuals aren’t talking regularly to a group that they need to, then neither side gets the benefit of the knowledge, plus they won’t be working together on solving problems, finding root causes, determining innovative methods, etc.
The Bigger Picture
It sounds like a small problem and for some places, it probably is if you have a pocket of individuals here or there who have a bit of a martyr complex. But if it runs rampant throughout the organization, this “us vs. them” mindset can derail an organization’s goals – quickly and with little effort.
by meglesnick | Feb 4, 2025 | Leadership, Management, Strategy, Talent, Uncategorized
For those of you who don’t know, I recently ventured out on my own professionally. It got me thinking about how that transition wasn’t easy for me and wondered if it was true for others.
As my career progressed and I found myself looking for employment at various stages in life, I searched for my next employment opportunity. To be sure, often I was searching for the next promotion or title that would get me to a goal. Sometimes that promotion occurred from my current employer and often, it happened because of a new job, either as an opening or even more exciting at a new position from a growth mode employer.
Many of you can relate to the idea as it illustrates the idea of climbing the corporate ladder. At times, you need to make a lateral move to get into a new industry or get out of a difficult workplace or economic downturn. It’s what most of us graduating into the full-time workforce do, often without really mapping out our career journey or path.
In the beginning, especially during the child rearing days, I never gave a thought to the idea of going into business on my own. I valued the security of being employed, plus I didn’t have a dream to pursue. While I knew others who had their own consulting business or worked for various clients as a freelancer, it honestly didn’t even come up in my thought process (and I think about everything A LOT!)
The Four Core Entrepreneurial Traits
Why do you think that is? Are we genetically programmed to prefer to be employed vs. being an entrepreneur? Actually, there are studies to point that this is true. This one was featured in Entrepreneur magazine:
It was conducted by Scott Shane, a professor at Case Western Reserve University. Shane looked at hundreds of pairs of twins, eventually finding that the identical twins among them had much higher rates of “shared entrepreneurial tendencies” than their fraternal counterparts or subjects in the control group.
When exploring the data, he found four core entrepreneurial traits, each of which increases the likelihood of becoming an entrepreneur, while also being heritable:
1. The likelihood of starting a business. Genes can influence your probability of starting a business.
2. The ability to identify new opportunities. Your ability to identify business opportunities is similarly heritable.
3. The tendency to become self-employed. Related to but distinct from starting a business, self-employment is also a heritable probability.
4. Extroversion. Though extroversion by itself isn’t enough to motivate entrepreneurship, extroverts have an easier time making new connections, leading followers and engaging in a wider community.
The Choice: Employment or Entrepreneurship?
I agree with all of this and have an unscientific add-on judgement as well. I have noticed that many serial entrepreneurs have some sort of example to emulate. Maybe it’s because they are predisposed to running a business from a nature perspective or it’s because they have seen family-owned businesses their own life. Whatever the case, think about many of your friends or family members – is there a pattern?
In my case, it’s the opposite. I can’t recall anyone in our family owning their own business. For me, when I started thinking about it a few years ago, the prospect filled me with dread. I’d feel anxious and wonder what I could contribute to our household, pay bills and save for retirement. All my focus was towards the idea of not having the necessary financial security. I had little confidence in my abilities to earn a freelance living.
I needed to take time, actually years, to contemplate the prospect. It took me a long time to put together resources like a business plan and a financial proforma to feel more comfortable, even to think seriously about the idea.
I guess it that it isn’t one way that is better than the other. But there is the opportunity to think differently – either way. Sometimes, it is great to own our own business and other times it is wonderful to be employed by someone else.
What do you think? What do you prefer – and why?!
by meglesnick | Jan 7, 2025 | Leadership, Management, Strategy
An important organizational part of goal setting is to work well with other teams. This seems obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many companies don’t think this through. Here is the way that goals should be determined.
Start with Organizational Goals
First, you have the organizational goals for the year (or 3 or 5 years, however you look at the timeline). Normally these are higher level goals that are broad enough to cover the larger initiatives within a company. They can take the form of financial goals (revenue, profit, margin, expense management etc.), customer-related, product-or service-related, employee focused or process heavy. Our purpose here isn’t to write the goals of your company but to illustrate an all-too-common issue that occurs.
Let’s say that your company has some sort of higher-level organizational goals, and they share them with the employees. Normally then the departments/teams figure out how they can impact these organizational goals. Usually, your department has some way of getting everyone involved in interpreting the work that the company is doing and how the team will support it.
Team and Department Goals
Then the individuals within the team will look at the department goals and determine how they will help the organization achieve the goals. This way everything is linked up and we are all focusing on the same items.
Often, one of the items that I have heard is it isn’t easy to come up with the correct individual goals more than a year in advance. Business can change quickly so there are times when these items need to get adapted, which is why it is important as a manager to consistently review these with your staff so you can make sure that everyone’s on track and if something goes awry, you’re both on top of it and have another idea of how to participate in getting the goal met.
Are Department Goals in Alignment or Competition with Each Other?
But there is a more insidious issue that I have seen. Even if you are fully participating in the corporate/team/individual goals which all integrate and ladder up, you can have another problem. You can have departments in the same company with competing goals. Let’s try an example so that this is easier to understand.
Let’s say the sales team has a much larger than normal goal for this fiscal year. They have the same number of representatives, and the marketing budget hasn’t been increased. When asked how they are supposed to sell so much more, the answer from the C-suite, is “get creative.” This would be hard enough but what is also occurring is a mandate that each department needs to cut 20% of the workforce and expenses.
While the sales team is doing their best to come up with innovative ways to get in front of more customers and increase their close rate, the other departments they work with and depend on are going through all their expenses with a fine-tooth comb trying to find any fat left in the budget.
Without knowing the backstory (was the former goal artificially low? was the company overstaffed before?), at the face of it, you can see that all the teams at this organization will NOT all be on the same page. Will staff goals complement or compete?
Missed Opportunity
Many times, the reality of what occurs isn’t as simplistic as this description but if you think about it, employees don’t really understand each other’s goals, nor have they been coached to care much about it. Often, we are just racing to get our performance objectives completed in the right timeframe. This is a missed opportunity to get the most important part of the strategy right – how we can have every employee in an organization individually contribute to strategic goals.
