Better Manager 7th prelims:Better Manager 7th edition

TEN STEPS FOR EFFECTIVE PROBLEM SOLVING Define the situation– establish what has gone wrong or is about to go wrong. Specify ob ...

How to be an effective team leader One of your most important tasks as a manager is to make the best use of the capacity of your ...

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TEAMS As defined by Katzenbach and Smith (1993): A team is a small number of people with complementary skill ...

working towards the same objectives’. The Nissan concept of teamwork, as quoted by Wickens, is expressed in its General Principl ...

as being responsible for ‘boundary management’ for their groups, ie relating to more senior management and support staff and ext ...

The task or objective of the team is well understood and accepted by the members. There will have been free discus- sion of the ...

targets to be achieved or projects to be completed by joint action. Assess people’s performance not only on the results they ac ...

■ Overall help and hindrance to the effective operation of the team. Work reviews ■ How well the team has functioned (a checkl ...

How to think clearly Clear thinking is logical thinking. It is a process of reasoning by which one judgement is derived from ano ...

To think clearly and to argue well, you need to understand: first, how to develop a proposition or a case from basic principles; ...

When we form a proposition or belief we generalize from what is observed – our own analysis or experience – and thence infer to ...

■ reaching false conclusions; ■ begging the question; ■ false analogy; ■ using words ambiguously; ■ chop logic. These are discus ...

Special pleading If anyone says to you: ‘everyone knows that’, ‘it’s obvious that’ or ‘it’s indisputably true that’, you can be ...

The most common form of this fallacy is what logicians call the ‘undistributed middle’, which refers to the traditional syllogis ...

Allowing the conclusion to go beyond the evidence can also take the form of assuming that because we are aware of the effect (th ...

A further danger in drawing conclusions from evidence is to forget that circumstances may alter cases. What has happened in the ...

Use argument by analogy to help support a case but do not rely upon it. Don’t allow anyone else to get away with far- fetched an ...

How things go wrong and how to put them right Things can go wrong through events beyond your control or through incompetence. It ...

at least minimize mistakes. The first of these is The Peter Principle by Dr Lawrence J Peter (1972); the second is On the Psycho ...

Beating the Peter Principle – for others If you are in a position of offering promotion or a new job, you have to be aware of th ...