October 13, 2014April 18, 2018 by Patty Azzarello

Yes, you have to ask for a raise

Last week, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, gave some spectacularly bad advice to a group of women at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing conference in Phoenix. He said:

“It’s not really about asking for the raise but knowing and having faith that the system will actually give you the right raises as you go along,”

I was originally supposed to be at this event, and it’s probably a good thing that my plans changed because, I think I would have had to be physically restrained to not run up on the stage and shout,

“He’s wrong!

October 8, 2014April 18, 2018 by Patty Azzarello

The dreaded holiday party

I have thought about this for years, and I finally decided to write about this because several people have approached me already this year about dreading their work, holiday party. So I’m going to say it:

Most people hate your holiday party.

September 29, 2014February 25, 2019 by Patty Azzarello

Commitments, Deadlines & Employee Motivation

This month’s webinar was on the topic of Motivation, Commitments and Deadlines.

If you missed it, you can download the recording.

This is a very useful webinar to download if you want to:

Get your team executing better, and more consistently
Become more comfortable discussing and sticking to deadlines
Learn how to enforce consequences without de-motivating people
Choose the right measures that make success and failure very clear
Have the right (non-emotional) conversations when expections are not met

Why organizations don’t deliver on time

The simple truth is that many organizations don’t deliver on time because there are no consequences for not delivering on time. Read More

September 22, 2014April 18, 2018 by Patty Azzarello

5 kinds of help successful people get

Image: www.crowdsourcing.org

1. The Extra Team

Really successful people are successful because they get a lot of help, not because they are so good on their own that they don’t need help!

It’s important to think about how you work and learn.

September 9, 2014April 18, 2018 by Patty Azzarello

What a manager must communicate…

Operation vs. Communication Tools

Your team creates all kinds of reports, spread sheets and slides to plan, run, measure, and report on what you are doing in your operation.

Of course you need these detailed materials to run your function — but please don’t inflict them on others! Read More

September 2, 2014April 18, 2018 by Patty Azzarello

How to increase your value

I see (broadly, for the sake of this discussion) two types of people in their careers.

1. People who see their job description as a minimum requirement, and respond with the minimum effort to collect a paycheck. Read More

August 18, 2014April 18, 2018 by Patty Azzarello

Imagined power vs. Real power and respect

People often ask me if it was hard for me to go from running really large organizations to having my own (implied — “much smaller”) company.

This was never an issue for me because I always maintained a psychological distance between the power of my role, (managing a $1B+ global business, multi-hundred-milion dollar budget, and thousands of people) and my own personal power. Read More

August 11, 2014April 18, 2018 by Patty Azzarello

Is your team missing deadlines?

When nothing happens…

The reason why so many organizations have so much trouble doing what they intend to do, on time, is because when they fail to meet a deadline, nothing happens.

The dates come and go and no one talks about it. Read More

August 5, 2014February 25, 2019 by Patty Azzarello

Negotiating Priorities & Conflicts

This month’s webinar was on the topic of Negotiating Priorities & Conflicts.

If you missed it, you can download the recording below.

This is a very useful webinar to download if:

You feel like you have an impossible workload
Your team has been downsized and your workload has been upsized!