Survival, focus, feedback seemed to come out on top this year. I was surprised by some of these, but not by others. Here’s an obiligatory year-end top five list of the most popular Practical Managers blog posts:
5. The Definition of Business Focus
“If we did not do this already, would we go into it now? If not, what do we do now?”
One of the shortest blog posts ever, and quoted from Drucker.
4. Before Leading Others, Lead Yourself
I am more and more convinced that the biggest obstacle to leadership is the self-imposed lack of regular blocks of uninterrupted time to think. This article came out of what happened when one of my clients went to France for a week on a family vacation, without his Blackberry. Since then he’s doubled the size of his business.
3. How to Give Corrective Feedback
2. How to Give Positive Feedback
One of those simple things that outstanding managers do well – giving continuous, mostly positive feedback. Can you become an okay manager and still avoid giving feedback? Maybe. Can you become an outstanding manager? Absolutely not.
Here’s the four “F’s” of feedback, in an easy to remember mnemonic so that you have no excuses: fast, friendly, frequent, focused. Make it factual and actionable. That is all. Now go practice.
1. Deep Survival: Business Lessons From the Wild
I’d like to say that this is the most popular article because of my deep insight and wildly lucid writing style. I’d like to say that, but I can’t. More likely it’s because the work “survival” is a popular search term. Which just goes to show that sometimes you have to get lucky to make the hard work pay off, but if you don’t do the work you can’t get lucky.
