The Art of Management Jack Skeels

What would happen if we send all of the managers away for a day…or more? This is one of the many counter-intuitive yet enlightening topics that are part of AgencyAgile’s leadership workshops, and also part of Jack’s new book, Unmanaged, Master the Magic of Creating Empowered and Happy Organizations, launching November 1st on Amazon. The [...]

You know less about managing than you think.  These misperceptions and fallacies include theidea that managing creates productivity, that managers can solve everything, that more managing equals better managing, and that workers cannot work without being managed. These mistaken notions find their origins in the Industrial Revolution.  Though they were the best we could do then, they are woefully inadequate, and [...]

Many meetings are like unpleasant dinner guests who have come uninvited. They intrude on your productive time, drone on with unnecessary conversation, and you can’t wait for them to leave. Does that mean useful, effective meetings are a hopeless cause? Of course not! But the techniques you can use to [...]

Do your Meetings Suck? The answer is a pretty-much unqualified “yes.”  Does it need to be that way?  Of course not, but it is not easy.  Meetings were horrible prior to 2020, and though we are in a different place now, with better tools and some new attitudes, finding your way to better [...]

Can you be a better manager by stepping back and letting teams manage themselves? As strange as this may sound, the answer is yes. Often managers stop all over the landscape like monsters in a 1950’s B-movie. Small teams actually work better when there is less management over them, and [...]

Can a manager manage better by stepping back and letting teams manage themselves? As strange as this may sound, the answer is yes. Small teams work better when there is less management over them, and this has as much to do with the way ordinary people interact as it does [...]