|
|
|
Louise Manning - EzineArticles.com Expert Author
Louise Manning, PhD, is a risk management consultant and business coach.
Louise Manning, PhD, has worked in the area of Corporate Social Responsibility for over twenty years in areas including food safety, quality assurance, animal welfare, ethical issues and environmental and conservation management.
Louise works with organisations to build their social and human capital assets. Her research has been published in both the World Poultry Science Journal and the Britsh Food Journal and she continues ... [More]
[View Louise Manning's Extended Author Bio]
[Display Categories] Sort By [Title] [Newest] [Oldest]
Louise Manning Email Alerts
- How Did You Choose Your Quality Objectives?
[Business:Management] Have you chosen your quality objectives because they are easy to achieve or because they drive the organisation's strategic performance? Quality objectives are defined either during the QMS development stage or as part of the ongoing management review process.
- Why Have a Documented Quality Management System?
[Business:Management] Why do you need a documented management system? How will it benefit the organisation?
- What Does Your Quality Policy Say About You?
[Business:Management] Firstly, what is a quality policy? Does your quality policy define and drive the strategic aims and objectives of your organisation, or is it just another piece of paper in a file?
- What Do You Find Wonderful
[Self-Improvement:Inspirational] We learn something new every day. In fact some days I feel like I am learning all day long!
- What Being a Mother Has Taught Me
[Home-and-Family:Motherhood] Is being a mother a barrier to success? What skills do you learn as a mother that many organisations should be falling over themselves to gain?
- Time Management - Is Time Really Wasted?
[Self-Improvement:Time-Management] We have such busy, full lives, but is time ever really wasted? Do you make the best of every experience? Can you get everything into perspective and reduce stress levels?
- Do We Want Genetically Modified Food?
[News-and-Society] There is increasing interest in how we feed the population of the world at a price they can afford. With the concern over food security and availability as world population grows will this change consumer views on GM?
- Everything Connects
[Business:Management] We often talk about making connections or networking as a critical part of management. What do we actually mean?
- Strength Or Weakness?
[Self-Improvement] We are all encouraged to "big ourselves up" as my children would say or to create our personal brand. Do we sometimes get mesmerized by our own self-publicity?
- Meetings About Meetings
[Business:Management] How often do you chill out? Does your headlong work schedule affect your performance until you are all movement and no effective action?
- Managing Change
[Business:Change-Management] Effective management of change is key to a successful organization. How good are you at managing change?
- Food Safety And Quality Manual
[Business:Management] A food safety and quality manual should outline the structure of the food safety and quality management system. It will also provide a focus point to identify all the associated procedures, policies and forms.
- Setting Objectives
[Business:Management] Do you feel that you are adrift, lacking direction? Are you left wondering what you should do, in which order? Well you need to smarten up your objectives.
- Complaint Handling
[Business:Customer-Service] How good are you at handling complaints? Do you have the ability to turn complainants into ambassadors for your business?
- Customer Care
[Business:Customer-Service] Do you keep your customers or do they purchase once and never come back? Why do your customers stay with you? How committed are you to customer care?
- Authentic Leadership
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] How did you get to be the person in the front? Who gave you the mandate to be a leader?
- Communication Skills
[Business:Workplace-Communication] How do you rate your communication skills? Do you need to take a refresher?
- How Can You Turn A Negative Into A Positive?
[Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] Are you surrounded by negativity and criticism at work or home? How can you turn things into a positive?
- Effective Leadership Revisited
[Self-Improvement:Leadership] What do we expect of our leaders in business, politics or in our communities? We want them to be able to exhibit effective organisation skills and communicate their vision and ideas, but are these enough to gain our support and trust?
- Corporate Social Responsibility
[Business:Management] How well do you manage your capital assets? Financial capital - organisations that want to remain solvent need to pay attention to the monetary funds they have available and how that underpins the operations and the services they supply. Lack of working capital and cash flow is often the killer blow to a business despite often having brilliant ideas and bags of innovation.
- Are You Enthusiastic?
[Self-Improvement:Positive-Attitude] Does your enthusiasm show? Do you motivate people with your enthusiasm? Do you show people your zest for life? How enthusiastic you are to complete your work tasks and commitments?
- Do You Have Stamina?
[Business:Team-Building] When I am working with teams I am often aware of the different levels of stamina exhibited by individuals. Do you take this into account when managing your team?
- 10 Ways Of Saving Water In The Garden
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Top tips for managing water use in your garden especially where is doesn't rain very often (or indeed hardly ever): 1. Use a broom instead of a hose to clean the paved areas in your garden. If you are doing this with the children you can make a game of it and see who sweeps up the biggest pile of dirt or leaves.
- Effective Teamwork
[Business:Team-Building] Do you aspire to be an effective team builder? What makes teams successful?
- Remembering the Fallen
[Self-Improvement:Grief-Loss] Every year we should all give some time to remember the fallen, especially on Veterans/Armistice Day. What did you do on the 11th November?
- First Impressions
[Business:Workplace-Communication] What do we make of first impressions? Are we close or wide of the mark?
- You're Listening To Me, But Why Don't You Hear?
[Business:Workplace-Communication] Why don't people hear what we say and then modify their behaviour? How can we be more effective?
- How Do You React When Things Don't Go According To Plan?
[Business:Workplace-Communication] How quickly do you get angry when things don't go according to plan? Does it help the situation or make it worse?
- CSR Stakeholders
[Business:Ethics] What are your stakeholders looking for your organisation to address in its corporate social responsibility strategy? Is your CSR strategy integrated with your commercial strategy?
- Does Your Organisation Have a Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy?
[Business:Ethics] What is your organisation's direct and indirect impact on its stakeholders? How can you measure it effectively?
- Effective Training
[Business:Productivity] How effective is your training programme? The documentation may tell a good story, but what knowledge has your work force gained and are they putting it into practice?
- Could You Use Your Time More Effectively?
[Business:Productivity] Can you say that you have you used your time effectively today? How would you feel if you had lost a day or even ten?
- Quality Assurance Or Quality Control
[Business:Management] Are you a company that believes in quality assurance or quality control? We are not talking about the label that people wear on their overalls and work clothing, but the ethos of the company. So are you an organisation that believes in failure prevention or failure detection?
- The Number Seven
[Business:Team-Building] How do you break the ice at the start of a training course or team building session? Why not ask people to define what makes the number seven special?
- How Can I Make My Training More Effective?
[Business:Management] Are your delegates visual, or a verbal, language based thinkers? If you are designing a training course do you take the the way attendees process information into account?
- What is Benchmarking
[Business:Management] Are you asking the right questions about your business? What steps do you need to take to move your business forward?
- Reducing Stress
[Self-Improvement:Stress-Management] Do you find the tension rising during meetings or discussions? Do you feel like everyone else is putting pressure on you?
- What Drives Your Stakeholders?
[Business:Ethics] What are your key organisational drivers? Have you determined your organisation's key stakeholders and their individual and collective requirements?
- Organisations With Vision
[Business:Ethics] How do you recognise organisations with corporate vision? Is the organisation's corporate social responsibility policy produced as a result of commercial one-upmanship or as a result of deep ethical foundations within the organisation?
- Effective Mentoring
[Business:Management] Do we find our mentors or do our mentors find us? What do you look for in someone who can help you improve your skills and talents?
- Presentation Skills
[Business:Presentation] So you were asked to give a presentation and on the spur of the moment agreed. Is time running out and are you beginning to wonder if you have made a monumental mistake?
- Walk a Mile in My Shoes
[Business:Management] How easy do you find it to see things from another person's point of view? How often do you try to look at the world with their eyes?
- Effective Leadership
[Business:Management] Are you a manager or a leader? What is the difference?
- Quality Plans
[Business:Management] Quality must be planned because an organisational management system must be able to stand above any one individual. Quality cannot rely on informal actions because non-conformance will eventually occur.
- Does The Work Environment You Provide Affect Employee Performance?
[Business:Productivity] Are you sure that the environment that you provide for your staff to work in doesn't affect their performance? The environment that people are required to work in can have a significant impact on their ability to undertake the tasks that they have been asked to do.
- What Is Quality?
[Business:Management] One of the most important issues for any organization is to know what their customers mean by "quality", but first they need to be sure they know who their customers are!
- Will You Just Stop Bickering!
[Business:Management] Bickering is a method of communication frequently used by siblings, but it can have both positive and negative influences on a management team.
- Effective Delegation
[Business:Management] The problem is there is no one competent enough to delegate to! Why not? I often hear managers say that they work such long hours because they don't have anyone to delegate to.
- What is Business Ethics?
[Business:Ethics] We hear the word "ethics" in business more and more but what does it actually mean?
- Are You A Good Facilitator?
[Business:Management] You may be able to chair meetings or manage team projects, but do you have the skills and ability to be a good facilitator?
- Are You Good At Giving Constructive Feedback?
[Business:Management] Are you good at giving constructive feedback? If not, what stops you from assisting those who work for you to improve their performance or formally recognizing their successes?
- Do You Have Leadership Qualities?
[Business:Management] The leadership qualities required to make you a good leader can vary in different scenarios, work teams or organizations. Do you have the skills required to be a good leader?
- Why Do You Have Such an Attitude Problem?
[Relationships:Communication] Do you find that other people always have a problem communicating with you? Do you find yourself wondering what's wrong with them and why can't they just get their act together?
- 9 Facts About Hedgehogs
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Hedgehogs are one of our most common garden mammals in the UK, they also benefit gardeners because they eat garden pests, so what can you do to encourage and conserve them?
- 10 Facts About Bumblebees
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] They are frequent visitors to the garden, but what do you know about Bumblebees? What can you do in your garden to help conserve them?
- 10 Ways to Help the Environment in Your Garden
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] How can you help the environment with what you do in your garden? Rate yourself out of ten, are you doing everything you can?
- Self-Branding
[Business:Careers-Employment] Self-branding is a frequently used word, but how good are you at promoting yourself? What does your personal profile or cv say about you?
- Problem Solving
[Business:Management] Sometimes you dig your own hole and promptly fall in it, on other occasions someone digs the hole for you and you merely oblige. So what do you do if you are in this situation?
- Gaining the Initiative
[Business:Management] How often do you find that others in the team take over and you can't seem to get your point of view across? What steps to you take to regain the initiative?
- Proactive Organisations
[Business:Management] Is your business proactive or reactive? A business that starts off as being proactive, focused and market aware can very often, especially if it grows very fast, suddenly slip into a reactive mindset, why?
- What Does Your Garden Say About You?
[Home-and-Family:Gardening] Does you garden reflect your personality, your interaction with nature, even your aspirations?
- 10 Facts About Water Footprint
[News-and-Society:Environmental] What do you know about water footprint? Here are ten facts about how much water it takes to support our lifestyle.
- How Do We Ensure Food Security?
[Business:Ethics] What should nutritional food security policy address and does nutritional food security really matter?
- Just Tell Me How Much It Costs!
[Business:Ethics] Increasingly we live in a world where we know the price of an item or service, but do we know its true value?
- He Who Fails To Plan, Plans To Fail
[Business:Management] How good are you at planning? Are you a thorough planner or the kind of person who thinks on their feet, maybe you are someone that falls somewhere in between?
- Are You A Good Advocate?
[Business:Team-Building] As a team leader you often have to be an advocate and speak on behalf of another person or group of people, so how good are you at communicating the needs and expectations of yourself or others?
- The Art Of Persuasion
[Business:Presentation] Are you good at persuading others to see your point of view? What methods do you use to influence people?
- Stress Management
[Business:Management] How often do you retreat? We all need to recharge our personal batteries, but do we do it enough?
- You Don't Get it Do You
[Business:Presentation] How do you get your point across in a discussion or meeting? If people don't appear to be getting the message do you just shout louder?
- What Does My Jacket Say About Me?
[Business:Presentation] Do you always act based on first impressions? In other words, do you judge a book by its cover?
- Is Egotism Good for Business?
[Business:Management] Is humility a trait that should be developed in business? What skills does it afford the effective manager?
- Do You Volunteer?
[Business:Careers-Employment] Have you developed your personal skills through undertaking voluntary work? Could you develop your career through a portfolio of voluntary activities?
- Conflict Resolution
[Business:Management] Turning swords into plough-shears is not an easy task, but the ability to facilitate conflict resolution is a key skill for any manager or team leader. Some organisations seem to promote conflict as a means to driving their workforce, using a divide and rule mentality. Competitive behaviour can in some situations improve team performance, by initiating creativity and increasing the productivity of management teams. However, if this progresses into conflict is the negativity really good for the business?
- Are You Talking The Talk?
[Business:Management] When you communicate with your colleagues at work do you consider whether you talk "at" them, "to" them or "with" them? The question may sound pedantic, but if you want to create accord within an organisation or team it is important to consider how YOU communicate.
- Negotiation Management
[Business:Management] Are you a good negotiator? Do you recognise the danger signs when you are starting to lose control of your meetings or your team? Do you need to further develop negotiation as a life skill?
- I Know It But Am I Implementing It?
[Business:Management] If you know what you should be doing then why aren't you doing it?
- Educating the Consumer
[Business:Customer-Service] Who needs the educating the farmer, manufacturer or the consumer?
- Being Effective
[Business:Management] Movement and action are not the same thing - how could you be more effective?
- Are You Assertive?
[Business:Negotiation] How good are you at getting your point across? Does emotion sometimes get in the way when you would love to be calm and collected? How can you be more assertive?
- Change Management
[Business:Management] How do we effectively manage change in our organizations, as individuals or as teams?
- Mediation Leadership
[Business:Management] I have had a busy few days and they have left me thinking about leadership and more specifically effective leadership qualities. What makes a great business or community leader?
|
|
|
