#1: Pay attention to details “I realized that I’d been sending e-mail updates to the client and spelling the name of his company incorrectly for a month.” It seems comparatively unimportant, but to that client, the error is a sign that you don’t recognize his corporate brand. Oversights like this will cause significant, unnecessary friction. #2: Don’t mess up the simple stuff “At my last company, I accidentally overwrote the data files for an online project plan, leaving me to re-create large parts of the plan from scratch. I couldn’t believe it when, later that year, I lost two...

Some management mistakes are so common that you can actually compile them into a list. If you’re a manager struggling to find out why your team is dysfunctional, take a look at the behaviors in this list and see if any look familiar. Not communicating with the team. I know, I know, you’ve seen the advice for communicating so often you want to smack someone. I want to smack myself for saying it so often. But you know what? Unless you’re on the front line heading into a military battle, you have to take time to communicate with your team members. You don’t have to pass on every shred of...

I have been getting good response for my post Integrating blog engine into existing site. One of the guy asked me this question on how can we do the opposite? He had a BlogEngine as parent site and needed some other site to be child of BlogEngine. So He posted on that and this is the answer he got for his question. You need to make this change in your web.config file. If you want to have a website as child of BlogEngine <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false"> <system.web> ..... existing content ..... </system.web> </location> <location path="." inheritInChildApplications="false"> ...

One of the nasty things about political maneuvering in the workplace is that you may not realize you’re the victim of someone else’s plot until it’s too late. Here’s one story that came to my attention: While moving up the ranks from being 1 of many engineers to vice president of the company’s entire IT group, I’ve enjoyed a solid and satisfying career with the same employer for 12 years.  Until now, I’ve never thought much at all about the “politics” that take place elsewhere.  Until now. About 8 months ago, a new VP was hired to oversee a new venture at my company.  He’s...

1. Power is not the same as force - There’s a real difference between power and force but it’s widely misunderstood. Consequently, when times get tough, in an effort to get more productivity with fewer players, most managers simply try to push their teams ever harder. It’s kind of like trying to break your dog of a bad habit by using a whip – it’ll work for a while but at some stage the law of diminishing returns kicks in. And you may end up getting bitten in the butt. People appreciate being asked for their advice. Especially if the manager is sincere about using it. Team members will...