Blog

As a manager, writing a paper for your board that is effective is a critical skill for successfully achieving your objectives. By Mark Rosenberg

Whether you've been invited or ordered to do it, the task is at hand: to write a paper for your board. How do you go about producing a good one?

An effective paper will enable you to get clear feedback and direction from the board so you can get on with doing your work. It will help take the board where you want them to go, while also leaving them thinking what a great job you are doing.

Networking, tactics, mental discipline, teamwork, consultation and collaboration: Julia Gillard must work the gamut of leadership skills to realise her passion for making positive change. By Georgina Jerums.

In the eternal search for the perfect recruit, some organisations are branching out beyond social media into the virtual world of Second Life to secure talent. Chris Sheedy takes a tour.

Almost all leaders and managers have bosses and subordinates. It's important to manage productively in both directions. Harold Resnick has earned international recognition as a leading authority and innovator in organisational transformation and leadership development. Dr Resnick founded Work Systems Associates (WSA), a management and organisational development consulting firm that developed proprietary systems used by client organisations to develop their leadership talent, address team issues, build quality systems, and achieve transformational change.

A fundamental factor in any manager's success is their personal image. Ray Grose outlines the essentials.

A manager's image is the picture that other people hold of them, made up from the quality of thousands of interpersonal interactions. In a sense, it is simply the organisation's collective evaluation.

Banker, businesswoman and academic powerhouse, Helen Nugent talks about career planning, change management and being on boards. By Georgina Jerums. She is Bond University Chancellor, a non-executive director of Macquarie Bank, Origin Energy and Freehills, chair of Funds SA and Swiss Re Australia and director of the National Portrait Gallery. And in the late 1990s, as strategy chief, she helped bring about a $2.8 billion revival for Westpac. Yes, Helen Nugent is your chronic overachiever.

Finding the best person for a job today often involves psychometric testing, but is that all that's required? Sarah Marinos reports. Do you prefer to focus on the outer world or on your own inner world? Do you prefer to focus on the basic information you take in or do you prefer to interpret and add meaning?

Problem-solving is a critical skill for a manager. Michael Carman looks at how to find solutions to problems. An oil executive wanted to make better use of the expensive, and wasted, real estate of petrol stations. His solution: add convenience stores.

As the business world scrambles out of the crater left by the global financial crisis, the war for talent will be more brutal than ever. But leading companies began mobilising their forces long ago. Chris Sheedy reports. The global financial crisis hasn't been all bad news. Around 18 months ago, after making a decision to better understand staff-turnover issues, management of Diageo Australia changed various policies and added new ones. As a result, staff turnover fell and commitment levels rose dramatically, even as other businesses fell to pieces.

Reg Bryson says that organisations must look to brand themselves by what they stand for and do, not just by what they say or sell. By Jason Day Oh for the silver bullet. Want your workforce's tenure to go up by a 12-month average? Silver bullet. Want a brand makeover that will lead to a 15 per cent jump in sales? Silver bullet. Under pressure to sort out your electorate's unsightly tagging graffiti epidemic? Find that silver bullet. Of course, there is rarely such a thing.