One of the new features I will be adding to my blog this year is what I’m calling the “Coffee House Book Review”, which will feature reviews on books from the fields of leadership, management, marketing, and other areas of interest to those who are running or managing a business or organization. To start off this new series, I’d like to share my review of the book “
The Drucker Lectures: Essential Lessons on Management, Society, and Economy” which I received as a review copy courtesy of the publisher.

Often referred to as the “father of modern management”, Peter Drucker was a writer and management consultant who wrote numerous books and spoke extensively on the field of management and the way organizations operated. Although this book at times offers a glimpse of the origins for the concepts he later shared in some of his more well-known works, what is more interesting is the fact that several of these lectures – most of which date to over two decades ago – could have easily been written to address some of the challenges businesses and society face today.

Of course, having coined the term “knowledge worker”, many of the lectures featured in this book touch on the realities of today’s information age. In his 1981 lecture “Managing the Increasing Complexity of Large Organizations”, Drucker makes a very strong argument against leaders who think their job is simply to tell their employees what to do. As he points out, it’s the employees who now hold an organization’s specialized knowledge and as such, leaders should work with their employees to determine how to best apply this information toward their goals.

In another lecture he gave in 1987, Drucker draws the analogy of organizations becoming more like a symphony orchestra, “in which you will have fewer layers of management and many more specialists”. In this talk, he shares the story of how Click here to continue reading »”Coffee House Book Review – “The Drucker Lectures” by Peter F. Drucker”

Today’s piece is a guest post by Dr. Bret L. Simmons.  Bret is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behaviour, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. You can read more of Bret’s writings on leadership, followership, and social media at his website “Positive Organizational Behavior” at BretLSimmons.com. You can also find Bret on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Are the work values of younger employees different than those of others in today’s workplace? Not as much as we’ve been lead to believe, according to new research published in the Journal of Management by Jean Twenge and her colleagues.

Generation Me (GenMe, GenY or Millennials; born 1982-1999) are more individualistic than Generation X (Gen X; born 1965-1981) and Baby Boomers (Boomers; born 1946-1964), but until now the evidence for generational differences in work values has been scant, despite the army of consultants selling “solutions” for how to manage younger workers. This new study compared the work values of high school seniors in 1976, 1991, and 2006 (N = 16,507). The values they examined were leisure (schedule flexibility and time off), intrinsic rewards (interesting work and growth opportunity), extrinsic rewards (pay and status), social rewards (make friends), and altruistic rewards (help others and society).

The study found that contrary to popular belief, Click here to continue reading »”Exposing Some Truths About Motivating Millennials in the Workforce”

Image courtesy of Life Magazine

Recently my wife and I took advantage of the school summer break to take our kids on vacation at one of our country’s most popular tourist destinations. As it was the first time we’d taken our kids there, it was only natural that we wanted to check out the various sites and attractions found throughout the area. Going from one tourist activity to another, it was interesting to note the subtle, as well as not so subtle, differences in how these different attractions were managed and the resulting lasting impressions each one made.

Granted, the issues facing companies in the tourism/entertainment business can differ greatly from those experienced in other industries. However, like all businesses, these companies also have to grapple with the challenge of not only encouraging repeat business, but fostering good word of mouth in order to attract new customers as well.

With this in mind, I want to share with you two stories from our family vacation and through it, the lessons businesses can apply today to better manage their companies, both in terms of their employees and their customers. Click here to continue reading »”A Tale of Two Businesses – Some Lessons on Improving How You Manage Your Company”

Last week, Dorothy Dalton shared an intriguing guest piece on my blog which questioned whether management training should take into account the inherent differences between men and women. Not surprisingly, her piece resonated greatly among women readers, who both participated in the follow-up discussion, as well as sharing this piece with others on Twitter. Although on the surface this might seem to be a “women’s issue”, the reality is that gender issues should be viewed as an important topic for those involved in managing an organization’s workforce.

While Dorothy’s piece posed the question of whether such gender-specific measures are needed today, the points she put forth got me thinking about what we should expect in the decades to come based on some issues arising from today’s education system.

A dramatic shift in gender strengths in education

There have been numerous reports over the last couple of years that have shown that girls are excelling in the fields of mathematics and science, areas of knowledge which in the past were dominated by boys both in terms of grades and interest. At first glance, these results seem to indicate that girls are finally catching up with boys in their mastery of these subjects. A closer examination of the situation though, reveals something more problematic at play here.

In order to address the obvious difficulty girls were having with math and science, many education boards took on Click here to continue reading »”Are We Ready For The Workplace Gender Shift?”