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1-5 of 50 related articles Research and Markets: Project Human Resource Management (PMBOK Guide - Fourth Editionaligned) Features Three Courses for your Personnel Training. DUBLIN -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/b73c66/project_human_reso) has announced the addition of the "Project Human Resource Management (PMBOK Guide... PRESS RELEASE Technician training: a rewarding necessity: most successful fleet managers consider ongoing technician training programs to be an investment in future shop productivity, not an expense to be avoided. (Management Techniques). The best technician training program is an on-going one. That's really the only way to keep up with... JOURNAL ARTICLE Middle-Management training. (Training). LOOSELY, WE COULD PROBABLY ALL agree that management positions can be generally categorized as supervisory (or entry-level) management,... JOURNAL ARTICLE Middle-management training LOOSELY, WE COULD PROBABLY ALL agree that management positions can be generally categorized as supervisory (or entry-level) management,... JOURNAL ARTICLE Self-management training for joint venture general managers. Joint ventures (JVs) have become an increasingly important element of many companies' competitive strategies. These ventures involve two... JOURNAL ARTICLE 1-5 of 50 related articles 12345678910Next

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One of the difficulties with learning and indeed teaching management theory is the lack of definitive rules we can apply to managing people. This is a particular challenge for new manager. A lot of my work is in the digital sector, so usually these people have spent their formative years in business doing technical work, where there is a clear logic to tasks. I program a computer with a line of code, and then it acts in a certain way. Of course nothing is so clear in management. We could try exactly the same management technique on two different people and get two different results. Indeed you could try the same technique on the same person and get different results on different days! New managers are understandably looking for some ideas that will work. When they look at the plethora of management courses and books with a whole range of often conflicting advice it can be very confusing. I was running a course a few weeks ago where we were discussing a theory showing how to effectively build a good team. One attendee came and apologised to me after the session but said he just didn't agree with the model. He had read another book that said you just needed a focused goal to produce a team. My theory had said you'd needed good relationships, communication and cohesive management of tasks. When I said I agreed with him that a focused goal could be important, but maybe the factors in my theory might be important too I could

tell that he felt I had fudged the issue. Indeed he wrote in his evaluation report that he felt I wasn't definitive enough about how to manage. I am reading a fascinating book at the moment, that's attempting to explain quantum theory to ordinary people. How tiny things like atoms behave turns out to be very different than the every day world. We can't say definitively that an electron or photon will always do something in a certain set of circumstance, but we can predict the probability that it will do that thing. This was a dreadful shock to physicists in the early 20th century. They were used to being able to definitely say that the moon would be in a certain place or that a pebble would drop with a certain acceleration. It was pretty much universally rejected, until after more and more experimental evidence proved it to be correct. It's the same in management. My friend on the course, may be struggling for a definitive set of logic, that will always lead to a great team, but after he's run a few teams with perfect goals and seen some work and some not he'll realise that he's left the world of certainties behind when he moved into management. There are many factors that lead to a great team. We can draw on theories to give us some initial ideas but its really through trial and error that shows what will work for you. Of course, just when you think you've got it, along will come a new project and a new team and turn all those ideas on their head! David Hinde is a recognised expert in management development and executive coaching in the UK He founded Orgtopia in 2003 & since has helped many organisations such as the BBC, Citigroup and the British Army to develop and unlock their leadership and management potential. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Hinde

Business theory & Imitation: Imitation is no substitute for imagination in business

Submitted by Robert Heller on Sat, 2006-07-08 21:18.

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The trouble with writing about what works in business management and what doesn't is that the evidence is basically anecdotal. All management writers (and that includes me) are impressed from time to time with particular companies that have succeeded (usually on financial measures) and with the theories drawn from their success. Under Jack Welch, for example, General Electric spawned a number of apparently powerful precepts - most famously, that your businesses should be first or second in market share: otherwise, you make for the exit. Writing in Finance Today, though, Richard Miniter takes a closer look at this celebrated case: 'GE has exited businesses where it held the dominant No.1

position, including nuclear power plant construction and television set manufacturing. And it has remained in businesses where it earns fat profits in the No.3 or No.4 position, like business-to-business lending.' Miniter is the author of The Myth of Market Share, published by Nicholas Brealey - and myth is often the right word for the basis of theory. For instance, do you believe in any of the following propositions? * Venture capitalists are better at investing than the typical corporation. * No nonsense, plain-vanilla CEOs perform better than flashy headline-seekers. * Companies that stick to the knitting (i.e., their 'core business') reward shareholders more richly than those which diversify. VENTURE EXPERTISE Now, these three statements are inherently likely to be true. A company that specialises in backing ventures is oriented towards maximising returns and it will accumulate much more experience in doing so. In contrast, a company whose main business does not lie in venture finance may well have motives other than making the highest possible yield - for example, some strategic objective: and its venture capital expertise will be dangerously small. As for larger-than-life CEOs, there are hundreds of cases - including the Enron villains and WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers - to support the argument against the publicity hound who swells on publicity, takes all the decisions and feathers his own nest at the expense of the shareholders. Hubris is a dangerous condition: would Welch have made his disastrous last moves (the aborted Honeywell merger deal and negotiating his alarmingly greedy retirement package) if he had not been convinced, by years of success and great adulation, that he could walk on water? Welch was a gung-ho diversifier. But the famous financial record of GE rested on a single departure from the core businesses - the finance house, GE Capital. It's been argued, as a result, that GE is more a bank than anything else. It stands to reason, however, that a company which concentrates on its strengths, on what it does supremely well, will always have a better chance of success than one whose management must operate in widely differing marketplaces and with many different technologies. Or does it? STANDING TO REASON Those three propositions may indeed 'stand to reason'. But reason is not the final arbiter. As Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor pointed out in the Harvard Business Review this September, there's no cause and effect relationship in the above cases. Thus, it doesn't follow that, because venture capital firms concentrate on backing ventures, they will necessarily do so effectively.

Far from it. According to the Centre for Management Buyout Research, in the first half of 2003 British venture capitalists did manage to offload 52 investee companies by flotation, trade sale or management buyout. But another 49 of their investments passed miserably into the hands of the receivers. This wasn't a new phenomenon, either: in 2000 a third of deal exits were accounted for by receivers. In 2001 and 2002, the failure rate was 44. And now it's half. So much for the benefits of accumulated experience. Whistling to keep his courage up, one Rhoddy Swire, chairman of Pantheon Ventures, had this to say: the high level of receiverships, he opined, was 'a positive move, because it shows venture capitalists are switching the focus to those companies that are going to succeed'. The more failures, in other fatuous words, the better. The US figures quoted by Christensen and Raynor are equally unconvincing. Only 20% of the ventures succeed, while 30% fail and the remaining 50% lie among the 'walking wounded'. The fact that success rates for corporate investment are 'much, much lower' says nothing about the intrinsic merits of venture capitalists, but plenty about the investment incompetence of corporate man. Similarly, the same management that failed with a diversification programme might well have been equally inept at managing an undiluted core. The oneproduct company, notoriously, is a potential victim, endangered by possible threats to its markets, technology and basic competitiveness. In fact, failed diversification is often a misconceived answer to the one-product dilemma. Finally, it doesn't follow that a flamboyant one-man band will be a walking disaster, or that a quiet and undemonstrative leader will take a company to new heights. Viacom's rise and rise under the autocratic drive of Sumner Redstone proves nothing except his exceptional ability as a businessman. Procter & Gamble's recovery under the cool, calm, and reticent touch of A. G. Lafley proves only that his policies are more sensible, and sensibly applied, than those of his gung-ho predecessor. A central defect binds these cases together. As Christensen and Raynor say (looking at firms which partner 'best-of-breed' suppliers, and do so by application of 'best-of-breed' practices) the proposition is that 'if you adopt this set of best practices...your company will succeed as these companies did'. If only real life were so simple: what works for one business may well be ineffective for another, partly because some different people are involved, who are very likely operating in different circumstances. ILLUSORY SUCCESS There are other difficulties. First, the success may be illusory. Managers (witness

Rhoddy Swire, above) are very good at dressing up failure with weasel words). Second, is having the best suppliers and applying the very best practices the real cause of success? Again, it stands to reason. But all too many companies have mimicked the methods and policies of their superiors - and have stayed inferior. The HBR article cites the interesting case of Toyota. Nobody in the car industry could miss the significance of Toyota's vastly superior productivity. Key elements of that higher achievement were also plainly visible, like the empowering of employees to stop the line the moment defects began to appear - whereas in the West the mistake was to insist that assembly lines had to be kept going at all costs. There were other simple and sensible ideas like kanban - the insertion of coloured cards in trays of components: when the card appeared, it was time to order new supplies. Then there was statistical quality control, which monitored performance by scientifically based sampling. All this was highly effective and easy to imitate. So Toyota's rivals in the West duly imitated the methods, but not the results. As Christensen and Raynor say, 'while many reaped some improvements, none came close to replicating what Toyota had done'. Deeper study found that the Japanese had established a 'culture' (for want of a better word) which, so two researchers found, was expressed in four specific rules. These 'create automatic feedback loops which repeatedly test the effectiveness of each new activity, pointing the way toward continual improvement'. Imitating this approach, apparently, brings performance that matches Toyota's, and not only in cars. CAREFUL AND EXTENSIVE It follows that you must take great care over the analysis of a role model before selecting what you will adopt from its practices, and what you won't use. It also follows that you may misread the model. After all, one researcher, Steven Spear, actually 'went to work on several Toyota assembly lines for some time'. You can hardly match this 'careful and extensive observation' - except in one place: your own operations. In truth, that's the key to Toyota's achievements: the four-rule pattern didn't emerge out of the blue, but from the management's commitment to continuous improvement and continual exploration of ways in which it could be achieved. You want to benchmark other companies (not just in your own line of business) to check the standards that you're achieving. But the teaching of Masaaki Imai, the revered Japanese father of kaizen, or continuous improvement, brings the action back home. The first of his Five Golden Rules of Gemba, previously reported in Thinking Managers, is 'When a problem (abnormality) arises, go to gemba first'.

Gemba is the shop floor, or equivalent. To remind you, once there, you apply Golden Rule Two: check with gembutsu (relevant objects). Three: take temporary counter-measures on the spot. Four: you find the root cause. Five: you standardise to prevent recurrence. Standardisation is the managing part of getting good gemba. But note that it's the governing philosophy of Imai that generates the continuous improvements, not the specific rules in which that philosophy expresses itself. Whether you know it or not, you also have a set of thoughts that govern your management behaviour - for instance, how you react to new ideas. Clayton Christensen first came to prominence by showing how established patterns of thought prevented large firms from reacting to innovations that eventually killed off their businesses. The conventional wisdom attributes such failures to lazy and complacent incompetence. In fact, as Christensen's anecdotes showed, the failure flowed from success. The future flops sowed the seeds of disaster by being so excellent at what they did. Unfortunately, this ruled out change. If you served your existing big customers very well and profitably, it made no sense to chase after small market segments in which you couldn't make money. At each reduction in hard disk size, the previous market leaders vanished into oblivion, to be succeeded by others who in turn succumbed to the same fate. Christensen named this The Innovator's Dilemma. His solution was never to ignore a potential change in the market, but never to innovate radically within the existing business - which, given the chance, will fight its corner to the company's last breath. SKUNK WORKS But beware the trap he described in his recent article. Setting up quasiautonomous 'skunk works' or similar 'hot groups' won't accomplish anything in itself. Xerox established one of the greatest such offshoots in Palo Alto, but only to ignore its wondrous invention, the personal computer, and leave its key innovations, like the Graphical User Interface, to truly independent companies like Apple and Microsoft. The latter in turn mounted its life-or-death attack on the Internet, whose significance Bill Gates had foolishly missed, within the overall organisation - and with total success. It's how you staff, animate, monitor and develop a new business that will determine its success. Of course, the recipe is exactly the same with an existing company. Do you know where you are going? Have you thought through what you are doing to get there? Unless your purpose and vision are clear, no role model, even if its lessons are accurately understood, can serve you well. Moreover, unless you are relentless in pursuing and testing both objectives and

execution, you will never build the most valuable role model of all - your own. After all, that's how the great Toyota model was built: not by imitation, but by imagination