UNWIND

Team Solver

How often than not, UNICEF would put a team together to solve or find a solution to a pressing problem. A team leader appoints for the job and he or she stays as the boss of the project. The team leader may not be a specialist in the area of the subject agenda (that is better I think) but may have other expertise that the followers do not have.

The interesting question posed of team leadership is whether it is better to have one leader posted as team leader throughout the project or to rotate team members in the leadership positions as the project runs its course.

DIVERSITY - SIDEKICKS TO SN ESSAYS

I was glad to see UNICEF staff news (SN) of February 2008 wholly devoted to diversity. Editor Gretchen Luchsinger Sidhu has done a fantastic job on essaying this complex subject.

EMPLOYEE BEWARE

A Half-Million Dollar Vacation at UN Expense is once again one of those missteps by UN management to lay-off staff.  While the title sounds like the staff member was sent on a cruise, literally it means paying the struck-down soul to stay home and away from work. Little do those who have not experienced know it, the staff member at home is having nothing short of living in hell. Paid vacations sound like great incentives, if it is literally so.

CARING BEYOND EXPECTATION

Have you really got to care for your boss?

FLYING HIGH - BE PREPARED TO BE A STUDENT

I have never come across an individual who did not want to be promoted other than the late Sunil Davidson.

THE OFFICE CULTURE

One might think there is an office culture for UNICEF only. Could that be a right assumption? Well, I do not think so.

ORGANIZATION DEADWOOD

Oh dear, we have heard that before. One of our destiny boys wants to get rid of deadwood in the organization, another form of discrimination practiced when new workers think that older workers cannot adapt to a new system.

POWER LOSS

We had loss of power twice this summer in New York (consequence of harsh weather) and all hell broke loose in the developed country setting. Without power, you can do nothing. You just have to go back to the old ways of doing things or purchase a generator for running essential equipment. Anyway, the purpose of this essay is to talk of the change in human behavior without power and relate that to power play at work.

POWER IN ORGANIZATIONS

No man is an island said that renowned 17th-century English poet John Donne. So much has been written about that no man (human being) is an island to itself and thus each of us are a piece of some continent of the world structures that are driven by power.  Sometimes, one can say that a lot of learning is wasted because the forces (or the power that be) disallow its implementation. We can still cry for years for some good ideas that never carried forward.  So much so, that those in power must use it to advantage of the organizatons and business they serve to benefit society for the better than benefit of themselves. Chieftains of power, use it to good advantage of other people and not unto yourself. The article that follows - ' A Clout With a Silver Lining' was first published in CIMA Insider, London, England, November 2003.  Reproduced with kind permission of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, United Kingdom (CIMA).  CIMA is the power of financial management in business.

A clout with a silver lining by Merrill Cassell

How does your organization empower its managers?

The most important and unyielding necessity of organizational life is not better communications, human relations or employee participation, but power. Power can be defined as the capacity to modify the conduct of other employees in a desired manner, together with the capacity to avoid having one’s own behaviour modified in undesired ways by other people.

No man is an island said that renowned 17th-century English poet John Donne. So much has been written about that no man (human being) is an island to itself and thus each of us are a piece of some continent of the world structures that are driven by power.  Sometimes, one can say that a lot of learning is wasted because the forces (or the power that be) disallow its implementation. We can still cry for years for some good ideas that never carried forward.  So much so, that those in power must use it to advantage of the organizatons and business they serve to benefit society for the better than benefit of themselves. Chieftains of power, use it to good advantage of other people and not unto yourself. The article that follows - ' A Clout With a Silver Lining' was first published in CIMA Insider, London, England, November 2003.  Reproduced with kind permission of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, United Kingdom (CIMA).  CIMA is the power of financial management in business.

A clout with a silver lining by Merrill Cassell

How does your organization empower its managers?

The most important and unyielding necessity of organizational life is not better communications, human relations or employee participation, but power. Power can be defined as the capacity to modify the conduct of other employees in a desired manner, together with the capacity to avoid having one’s own behaviour modified in undesired ways by other people.

TO UNLEASH HIDDEN IDEAS WHAT MUST WE DO?

STORM THE BRAIN!

Research confirms that people do better if they brainstorm alone rather than in groups. Individuals in the group may sometimes hijack the topic to impress the boss or bosses present with a failed session. On the other hand, a brainstorming session may get a bad name if the boss organized it to gain support for his or her idea while discouraging truth-telling. These findings report in the Wall Street Journal of June 13, 2006 (Brainstorming Works Best If People Scramble for Ideas on their Own).