Management styles - renewal needed

Robert Heller — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:44:56 -0500

Management has never really been accepted as an exciting or thrilling activity. However, this is mostly due to ignorance. Only a small amount of people have direct experience of what’s involved in management, what managers are like, and the massive difference effective management styles can make in the world.

Business strategy and opportunity in dark times

Robert Heller — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 21:05:09 -0500

In these days of pessimism and gloom, anybody can be forgiven for looking back nostalgically at the days when venture capitalists, for example, would sound a far more bullish note, ringing the bell for opportunity.

For example: “We’re seeing an enormous number of business plans from people who have ideas… And we’re also looking for green ventures and using Google and other modern tools to find innovators. So it’s as good a time to invest as we’ve ever seen.”

What should managers do when things go wrong?

Robert Heller — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:29:55 -0500

Whatever the causes, there can be no doubting the result. The world is going through a period of acute economic anxiety and falling economic performance, both in large matters and small. In a sense, everybody has been here before. What goes up must come down.

The old maxim works the other way, however. But clinging to this expectation is no great comfort in the downside years.

The lessons of Total Quality Management

Robert Heller — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 20:07:41 -0500

Every manager knows that appearances should match the realities of the business or other organisation. What do users of your products and services think about these offerings and the experience of using them, and, how do these real facts compare with your own beliefs about the standing of the organisation relative to competitors, other comparators and ‘stakeholders’ generally?

Management by numbers

Robert Heller — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:35:54 -0400

Plans, projections, decisions, debates, results – all these and many more depend on the provision and calculation of outcomes (forecast or achieved) measured in monetary terms.

However, very few managers have paused to consider whether the numbers, even if scrupulously honest and perfectly presented, are guiding them and their business management in the right direction.

Consider this quote from the Harvard Business Review (January 2008):

Management by example

Robert Heller — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:34:30 -0400

Whether it’s finance, marketing, production, strategy, human relations or any other discipline, managers accept that the subject is teachable and that, once taught, the lessons will bring value to managers and the organisations that employ them.

Jack Welch, of General Electric, based some of his awesome managerial reputation on the active role he played at the in-house college at Crotonville where GE’s executives were supposed to master their craft.

Measuring management and leadership

Robert Heller — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 19:01:15 -0400

Today’s super-bosses get salaries, of course, and very large ones at that; but they also receive ‘performance-related’ bonuses of great size, plus even more magnificent stock options and other wonderful rewards, from massive pensions to mighty perks.

These sometimes obscene elements are all supposed to be linked to performance.

Even though the cost of stock options can no longer be hidden, shareholders are exceedingly unlikely to protest about the packages, unless the management manifestly fails to deliver adequate performance.

The management style of making it happen

Robert Heller — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:37:35 -0400

Sir John Harvey-Jones, who died back in January at the age of 83, was a company man, a hired hand whose promotion to chairman of ICI was the final stage in his rise through the executive ranks.

Thanks to inertia, ICI, as a top-heavy corpocracy, was heading for unprecedented losses. That was the dire prospect that led the board to appoint Harvey-Jones, a dissident who had long and loudly expressed his dissatisfaction with the work of his fellows and, perforce, himself.

Corporate culture and incentives

Robert Heller — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:05:23 -0400

How, why and by how much should people be incentivised? Are incentives and motivation identical partners? Why do gross errors occur, and how do you guard against them? And how exactly do you use error as a springboard for excellence?

The supposition is that high brainpower is a protection against low stupidity. In harsh fact, the brighter they are, the further they fall. Very clever people are all too often very arrogant – and arrogance is one of the last attributes that people of power can afford to let rip. Yet many, if not most, do precisely that.

The Role of the CEO in Business Management

Robert Heller — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 09:15:31 -0400

A familiar gibe against the over-managed company is that it has ‘too many chiefs, and not enough Indians’. Whether or not that’s generally true, management certainly has more Chiefs than it did.