Monthly Archives: January 2019

Don’t be afraid to show appreciation to your employees; while appreciation carries no cost, it is a source of many and significant benefits to your people, and to your organization as well.

Nowadays when innovation and creativity are survival attributes for many companies, free, unhampered thought is very sought after.

Encourage it by honestly appreciating the unique qualities that each of your employees brings into the game. Encourage it by simply saying thank you for something well done.

In the right environment and appreciative climate, people will shift to a higher level of thinking, more capable to achieve synergistic thought and, why not, sometimes, a kind of unique resonance!

About the author: Panikos Sardos is the Managing Director of P&E Sardos Business Solutions Int., a management consulting firm that offers advisory services, coaching and training. Those with further interest in the topic or in other management services are invited to reach him either by email: psardos@sardossolutions.com or phone: +357 99640912, +357 24400884, www.sardossolutions.com

Stop treating bureaucracy as protection. It is a disease that is softly and steadily killing your company by its tediousness and its imprisoning of the human factor.

Widespread, lengthy procedures with multiple levels of checking where the rule counts more than the substance are some of its distinguishing characteristics. As its name implies, it gives more weight to the company people behind the bureau than to the people in front of the business desks, the customers.

Of course, Bureaucracy has a purpose; to safeguard the company against wrongdoing by its employees as a result of either their deficiencies or them pursuing some hidden agendas other than that of the company. It is meant, through its mechanism, to enable a company for any wrong action to identify where the responsibility lies, though not without cost in human and other resources.

Possessed by the fear of wrongdoing and wishing to avoid at all costs any consequences, many organizations hold to bureaucracy steadfastly turning a deaf ear to voices from both their customers and their people that bureaucracy very negatively affects them. They do not see that the bureaucratic traits by themselves make their people and organizations less customer-centric, less efficient, less innovative.

When you fill the workplace with rules and procedures, it stifles to a great extent your people’s initiative and stops the natural flow, the resonance, in the human thought and action. It also harms your customers, as they experience long waits at the expense of their valuable time. It works against the easiness of doing business and shows little regard or respect for the customer’s time and money. And it makes a poor business argument to try to sanctify it even in the name of fraud prevention.

The antidote [...]