Completing performance reviews on a regular basis is essential for maintaining motivation, assessing department capabilities, and managing your staff effectively. Managers who do not complete performance reviews or deal with performance issues reduce employee morale, decrease credibility of management, diminish organizational effectiveness, and contribute to increased costs for resources.

Selecting the right consultant for your organization can be a very daunting task. Choose right, and you have a very successful project and everyone is satisfied; choose wrong, and you have a recipe for disaster. Use Demand Metric's downloadable Consultant Evaluation Matrix to compare your potential consultants across 5 key dimensions.

Moving into a new office can be a very stressful task. Not only is it imperative to select the right location for your business, but it is equally important to ensure a smooth transition into the new space.

When properly planned and executed, meetings can efficiently communicate ideas, solve problems, and generate action items. Unfortunately, many managers waste time by holding unnecessary or ineffective meetings.

There are many statistics and complex methodologies to support the notion that employee turnover costs are seriously affecting mid-sized enterprises. On the low end, the Hay Group reports that the cost to replace an employee is 50% of their total compensation, including benefits. On the high-end, Hewitt & Associates puts the cost between 100-150% of annual compensation. While executive management and sales staff are more costly to replace, churn in any function affects the bottom-line.

There is no question that effective goal setting can improve the performance of your department. Top performing leaders in all fields use goals to increase confidence, extend vision, and stay motivated. Use Demand Metric's downloadable Department Goals & Individual Goals templates to break your high-level strategic plan into smaller, manageable chunks.

I read an article today, “Three Types of Bosses That Should Be Fired”, that I encourage all marketing managers to read. Having held various marketing leadership positions during my career, I read this article from two perspectives: have I been one of the bosses, or have I had a boss like one described in the article? If I’m honest, the answer is “yes” and “yes”.

Recently I presented at an American Marketing Association conference. At the end of my session, one of the attendees came up to me and began chatting about his situation. He has a CEO who micromanages his marketing department. It’s so bad, that when his CEO is on vacation, he can’t get anything done because the CEO has to see everything. I’ve been where this guy is, and it is not a happy place.

When a company plans any corporate event, it typically contracts the work to a 3rd party. These individare people who have plenty of experience with planning appropriate events for the company's specific wishes and making sure everything goes smoothly during the event. In order to do this, however, the company has to find the right event planning vendor. One way to go about this is to send out RFP event planning documents to different vendors in your city.

Many employee reviews take place in the final two months of the year, or at the very beginning of January. While that may still seem like distant tasks, employee evaluations should be on the mind of managers year round. Understanding what your employees do on a daily basis, and do well, is the foundation of effective management. A business management software program can help you do this effectively.