Chaos Busters for Senior Managers
MANAGEMENT GUIDE Tips For Senior Managers
Senior Executives Use Chaos Busters
to build business and personal success!
Ask
Yourself These 3 Questions
If you answer
"Yes" to any or all of those 3 questions - Chaos
Busters is for you!
Are you willing
to take action to be more effective in your work?
Do you want to
stop missing opportunities to reduce the stress in your life?
Do you want to
spend more time with your loved ones?
Based
on Research
Chaos Busters is based on research
conducted on organizations that reported achieving extraordinary
results using success strategies such as
Change Management
Total Quality Management
Business Process Reengineering
How
Do I Use Chaos Busters?
- Ask them straight up as questions
- focus discussions and to provide a framework
for priorities and action plans
- explain - functions, strategies
- facilitate - recruiting, effecting change, new
employee orientation
- identify critical issues
- for personal effectiveness - find out the
answer then pose the problem
- as motivators - to challenge and stimulate
teams
- Chaos Busters will be the key to personal growth and success for
your business
- There are literally dozens of effective uses you will
find for Chaos Busters...
Dear Friend,
Thank you for taking time to learn
more about our management guide. It does not contain new theories about management but is a "meat and potatoes" version of proven, common sense tips - a compilation of simple management tips to help you end chaos in your business.
We had fun coming up with the name Chaos Busters as an "action" way to
describe each of the 160 management tips and to underscore the notion that fixing problems in a way that they stay fixed can make your workplace less hectic and frustrating - maybe even making work "fun" again!
We welcome your comments and
feedback. Our users report excellent results. We trust you will too.
Sincerely,
Don Schwerzler
|
Senior Executives
Green and
growing vs. ripe and rotting
- select discussion topics when coaching or mentoring
junior executives – especially those who might be on a fast track
- encourage employee feed-back from different levels
and departments in your company;
- as a foundation to explore new initiatives – “What do
you think of the idea of conducting a ‘customer satisfaction’ survey
and how would we go about setting it up?"
- develop a framework for developing priorities and
action plans
- as a diagnostic tool in developing change management
strategies
- when interviewing candidates for key management
positions
- a guide based on the old
saying that “results follow effort and answers follow questions"
“...our managers were fixing the same problems every
week – it was like being in a deep rut."
We have a distribution business
that was started by my dad and grandfather.
We have about 50
employees and like most family businesses, "planning" was not a high
priority until I talked with Don Schwerzler from the Family Business
Institute in Atlanta.
I had called Don to
some tips on how we might sign up for some family business succession
training. Don laughed when I talked about how hard we were working yet
we never seemed to get any better.
Each week we fix
problems only to find our managers fixing the same problems the next
week - it was like being in a deep rut.
Schwerzler said that
we were like many family businesses - a lot of commotion but very
little locomotion. He suggested that the best way to "beat the tyranny
of routine" was to become more planful and that a smart first step
would be to check out something called Chaos
Busters that would help us to start working smarter.
Chaos Busters is not a lot of "consultant
talk" but 160 key business questions. It did not take long for my
management team to read one of the questions and then to ask me "why
don't we do that?"
Many of the changes
were very significant and I could not be more pleased. As Schwerzler
suggested, I have gone from "working IN my business to working ON my
business"! Chaos Busters doesn't
cost - it pays!
- Third
generation family business owner in Jackson MS
|
"... we have seen an increase in our consulting
assignments..."
I am a CPA and our firm has many
family businesses as clients.
I first heard about
the Atlanta-based Family Business Institute in the Journal of
Accountancy a magazine published by our trade organization, the
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). www.family-business-experts.com
was featured as one of the ten best sites on the Internet - it is the
web site for the Family Business Institute.
I went to the site to
see what the "family business experts" had to say and I was impressed
with the amount of information that was there for the reading - some
really great tips and strategies. They mentioned something called Chaos Busters - The Management Guide and it
caught my attention so I ordered it - one of the best impulse items I
ever purchased.
Chaos Busters represents 160 tips for
removing chaos from a business. We have started using it as an
assessment tool when we are called in do to do consulting work with our
clients. Not every question relates to every business - but many do.
When a client calls for help with a particular problem we select some
of the questions from Chaos Busters
that would help resolve the problem. We use those questions to enable
the client to gain some insights as to actions they can take.
Clients where we have
used Chaos Busters have reported
some very interesting results and we have seen an increase in our
consulting assignments since we have started asking better questions.
That is a win-win situation for everyone! Chaos
Busters - It is amazing how something so simple can be so
effective.
- Managing
Partner in a CPA firm located in Dallas TX
|
"...we would have saved so much money - it boggles my
mind."
We started our business in 1996
and this year we will exceed 50 million in sales.
We grew fast, not
necessarily well! The money was going out as fast as it was coming in.
We called in some high priced consultants who in turn recommended some
very expensive computer systems to create a fix. Over time we were able
to work ourselves out of the mess and finally we were able to wean
ourselves from the expensive consultants.
By chance, I stumbled
across Chaos Busters while surfing
the Internet I ordered Chaos Busters
and when I reviewed the 160 key business questions, I wondered if
someone from our business wrote a book about our growth problems! Chaos Busters was like reading a roadmap of
so many of the problems we had in our business because we never took
time to build the infrastructure needed to support our rapid growth.
If I had found Chaos Busters when we were first getting
started in our business, we would have saved so much time and money -
it boggles my mind.
- Founder
regional fast food restaurants Orlando FL
|
"...basic business practices that we know about but
tend to forget about."
As a senior vice president with a
large manufacturing company I am always looking for ways to better
motivate our management team.
One of my managers
sent me an e-mail asking if I knew anything called Chaos Busters and I had not. When I took a
few minutes to research this management guide I downloaded a copy and
was pleasantly surprised.
Chaos Busters had some really good tips -
nothing really new per se, but basic business practices that we know
about but tend to forget about. I started using a new question each
week in our weekly management meetings to encourage the management team
to be reviewing core business practices.
One plant in Oregon
used Chaos Busters to develop a
matrix for doing a comprehensive SWOT ANALYSIS. That proved so
successful that we asked each plant manager to do the same.
The exercise has
yielded some significant opportunities for improving the bottom line in
every plant - it helped improve the year end bonus for everyone!
Senior VP
Manufacturing company Chicago IL
|
"My son said it was... like a "Cliff Notes" version of
his executive training program..."
Our son graduated from a top
notch college about three years ago and he went to work for a fortune
500 company. While he had several job offers, he made his decision
based on the executive training program that the company offered.
The excitement he had
when he first joined the company started to diminish as the training
program failed to provide the stimulation needed to keep the junior
executives challenged and motivated. I meet once a month with a group
of business owners - sort of a sounding board for each other. I
mentioned my son's disappointment in the training program - how it did
not seem to allow the higher motivated people to move through the
training process faster.
One of the members of
the group suggested telling my son about Chaos
Busters. I told my son about it and he ordered it. He said
it was like a "CLIFF NOTES' version of his executive training program.
He started using some
of the questions during the training session and within two months a
senior member of the management team called and asked if he would like
to have her as his mentor.
What a break that
turned out to be! Two months later he was offered an opportunity that
has put him on a fast track for increased responsibility.
Proud Dad
Boston MA
|
Knowledge
Is Power!
"Successful leaders understand this simple truth.
Creative genius is driven and
inspired by a very simple secret.
Success is not determined by people
who know all the answers.
Success results from people who Know
The Right Questions To Ask!"
Don Schwerzler
Founder
Family Business Institute
|
Additional
Tips for Using Chaos Busters
Have a
management meeting coming up and need a lively and thought provoking
discussion topic to "light a fire"?
Annual review
coming up with a promising junior manager?
New employee
starting and you want to get them off to a rousing start?
Meetings seem to
lack focus and fire - not sure that everyone even has a song sheet -
let along singing from the same one?
Chaos
Busters will give you that topic, that reminder, that exciting point to
focus on...
in just a few minutes!
Chaos Busters Management Guide
$24.95
Buy now
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