Bizniche Media calls them bonehead mistakes. They're the kinds of goofs that can sink you as a manager, and listed on the Business Intelligence Lowdown web site. They include:

• Don't think you know everything there is to know. The learning process never ends.


• Don't hesitate to admit your faults and mistakes. Nobody's perfect. We can only try to bring the number of mistakes down and learn from them.


• Don't try to prove you're the boss.


• Don't think that just because you're a manager, you're smarter than all your employees.


• Don't be rude. Being a superior does not give you that right. Nor does it give you the right to abuse your employees. Taking them to task is one thing but shouting obscenities for a work-related offence is another.


• Don't shirk responsibility or transfer it to employees just because they can't refuse you.


• Don't be afraid to do anything. Have enough confidence in yourself to know you are capable of the work entrusted to you.


• Don't keep changing the way things are done. Some managers equate change to progress, and make changes for the sake of change alone.


• Don't take the blame when your subordinates make mistakes. It's a magnanimous gesture on your part but they need to learn to accept responsibility for their own actions.


• Don't fail to recognize work well done and tasks completed ahead of schedule.

Continuing with mistakes to avoid: Consultant Alison Davis on MarketingProfs.com highlights seven sure-fire ways to lose an audience's attention and never get your message across:

• Make it all about me: Know your audience and make your communication about them, be it in a memo or an advertisement.


• Try to cover too much: Notice on interview shows how the politicians, authors or activists focus on getting their point across (while if it's a call-in show, the callers will often ramble). Decide on one concept for your communication, and focus on getting the message across.


• Use complicated, abstract concepts: Too often, we feel we have to use the fancy terms we learned in school. Stick with tangible, specific communications.


• Lose the human element: Avoid the stiff, terse, bureaucratic language business often falls back on. Tell stories that are real and human.


• Create a dense thicket of information: With all the software tools at our disposal, it's easy to make our communications a jumble of graphics. Make your communications easy to navigate and use visuals to convey your concepts.


• Go on too long: It's human nature to want to share everything you know. Instead, say it as briefly and simply as possible.


• Give a lecture: Remember as a teenager when adults gave you a lecture and you tuned them out? Remember that the people around you today also don't like to be lectured. Provide helpful hints and recipes, not a lecture.

Accept conflict as normal rather than as a sign of dysfunction in your organization, Lynne Eisaguirre, author of The Good Fight and a human resources consultant, counsels in CIO Magazine. Heated discussions are sometimes necessary for business success.

Be proactive when conflict occurs, she adds. Unresolved conflict can quickly spiral out of control and require the support of a third party. That probably means improving your conflict-management skills.

Effectively managing conflicts takes practice because it's counterintuitive. When we are in conflict, our instinct is to go into fight-or-flight mode. But fleeing or fighting doesn't work well. So learn what you can about handling conflict -- take a course if possible -- before conflict starts to get out of hand.

Above all, don't fight by e-mail. "People say things in e-mail that they would never say face-to-face. It's important to see people, or at least hear the tone in someone's voice," she says.

You wouldn't intentionally insult a prospect or customer while selling to them. But consultant Jeff Thull, on Inc.com, argues that you may well be doing that through what he calls "dangling insults."

Here are two examples: "You've probably never thought of this, but ...," and, "We save companies like yours thousands of dollars in wasted ..."

Both statements, he concedes, may well be true, but they imply the customer doesn't think and wastes money. Instead, begin sentences with disclaimers, such as, "You may have explored this and it may not be helpful, but I've noticed other customers in your type of business ..."

Protect your customer's self-esteem by avoiding dangling insults.

• At Whole Foods, team leaders screen and recommend candidates for jobs with specific teams but every hire must be approved by a two-thirds majority of the team after a 30-day trial period.
  (Source: The Definitive Drucker)


• External cues matter. People will judge your business by cues such as how shiny your floor is and whether a product delivery is delayed. So remember that little things count. Keep up appearances, and stay courteous.
  (Source: Get To The Point newsletter)


• Average weekly earnings rose 3.1 per cent in the twelve months ending May 31, whereas consumer prices increased 2.2 per cent.
  (Source: Statistics Canada's The Daily)


• Resnooze (at www.resnooze.com) will send you daily, weekly or monthly reminders on issues of concern. It also allows you to hit a resnooze button and get the reminder again later.
  (Source: Lifehacker.com)


• Like bookmarks (or links), a strong call to buy should be placed early in your promotional piece and again near the end, says marketing expert John Williams.
  (Source: Entrepreneur.com)

They're linked. You won't be successful without doing both well.

So in some ways, the one you are weaker at may be more important to your organization, as you have to overcome that deficiency or limitation.

But it's also vital, when developing strategy, that you realize implementation must be considered at the same time. They are linked. It's counterproductive to develop a strategy your organization can't implement -- better to find a strategy you are capable of implementing.

That point was highlighted recently by consultant David Maister in a book with an offbeat title, Strategy And The Fat Smoker. Maister was overweight most of his life, and he smoked a pack a day for 37 years. He knew dieting and quitting smoking would be good for him, just as people in our organizations know the strategy we conceive may be good for them. But he ignored advice, as too often staff do with our enthusiastic calls to support the strategy.

Only a health emergency prompted him to decide to lose weight and quit smoking -- and devote the required discipline to it.

He suggests you borrow from the world of dieting and debate the following questions when planning strategy:

• Which "diet," if integrated into the normal running of the firm, would actually get us to perform at the level required to achieve the benefits we seek?


• Which option would we be prepared to adopt as a central part of our regular lifestyle?


• If we don't like any of these diets (or strategies), can we think of another that will have as much force, but that we could live with more easily?

Henry Mintzberg, the McGill University expert on strategy and management, notes a difficulty with strategic planning: developing strategy requires right-brain thinking (embracing wild thoughts, being creative) while planning requires left-brain thinking (eliminating loony ideas, being rigorous).

Good strategic planning exercises -- such as the De Bono six hats process, or the strategy canvas, which are amongst the tools 8020Info uses in the appropriate situation -- help to move participants through both right brain and left-brain thinking. Similarly, there must be time spent on implementation while developing strategy, ensuring you are developing a strategy your team can implement.

This past week we had an opportunity to work with an outstanding program manager currently responsible for a complex big-budget project. Whenever he breaks down a workplan into milestones, objectives and activities, he stresses the need for one person to be accountable for each task, even when the effort and responsibility is shared.

It seems such a simple rule, but that approach is crucial where tasks involve many busy team members all playing different roles. We're reminded of that old phrase, "everyone was responsible, so no one was responsible."

And perhaps you've seen the cartoon of a fast-sinking ship, its nose high in the air and the other end deep below water. The caption for those on the high side said: "Thank God the hole isn't in our end of the boat!" We all need to share responsibility for success, but in the end one person must be accountable for ensuring the team gets the job done.

"Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea."

   - Émile Auguste Chartier