Oct 31, 2011 | Management, Marketing
The Fair Work Australia decision overnight to order the termination of industrial disputation immediately, rejecting the unions request for a 120 day moratorium on action, is a win for managements right to manage for the long term health of a business at the expense of short term and sectional interests of a group of employees.
The implications go wider than just Qantas, although the catalyst to the decision by FWA was the generation of political pressure brought about by the lockout. If you cannot generate the political pressure, the result would have been different, this is hardly fair to the vast bulk of businesses, and it has reintroduced the spectre of compulsory arbitration by a legislated body of political appointees.
It will be interesting to watch the way this plays out across the political landscape over the next couple of years before the next election. The unions will be outraged, and we will see posturing worthy of an academy nomination, but the threat of an Abbott government coming in with an agenda that includes a further winding back of union power will give them nightmares.
I guess the lesson is that if you have the power, use it, but if you don’t, get ready to duck because the industrial landscape just got ugly, and unpredictable.
Oct 28, 2011 | Communication, Leadership
The old axiom that there are two certainties in life, death and taxes, has been expanded by a third certainty: change.
Should this third certainty have an impact on the nature of leadership in the future?
My view, Absolutely!.
In uncertain environments, a core skill has to be the management of ambiguity, and so it is reasonable to expect leaders of the future to be good at receiving, processing and articulating inconclusive, ambiguous, and often contradictory information, in a way that offers a sense of certainty and security to those being led.
Oct 27, 2011 | Lean, Management, Operations
What a great phrase to start a debate around the board table, often heated, as most still see the two as a trade-off, the better the quality, the higher the cost.
How much better to beat the bean counters at their own game by quantifying it:
Quality cost = the number produced outside specification X the total cost of rework & disposal.
Simple. The cost of quality calculated, and how often will you find any added short term cost during production will be dwarfed by the costs of managing the out of spec production.
Oct 26, 2011 | Change, Social Media
A while ago, when Google+ was first launched, I questioned its value, and by extension, future. The reason for my skepticism, was that an initial look at Google+ led me to the conclusion that the inherent switching costs involved in moving the focus of on-line social activity from facebook to Google would be too high for a sufficient number of users for Google+ to build the scale necessary for social media success.
It now seems that something from the old economy is working in Google’s favour, and my assessment will probably be proved to be wrong.
Momentum and initiative.
We all understand the value of momentum and initiative, in business, sport, and our private lives. Those who have it, all other things being equal, win, simple as that. It seemed to me at the time that facebook had all the cards, but Google seems to have grabbed the initiative, and built momentum, if the “tech-chatter” of which there is plenty, some of it from very well connected people, accurately reflects the extremely rapidly evolving social media ecosystems.
Oct 25, 2011 | Change, Leadership
Is there a paradox here, or are collaboration and autonomy complementary?
On one hand we are seeking to encourage collaboration to engage everyone and maximise chances of optimum thinking to occur, whilst usually discounting the potential for “groupthink”. On the other hand we see the value of the autonomy of the individual as a means to provide the intrinsic motivation for them to do their best, to stretch themselves.
It seems to me after 30 years of being engaged, and observing this paradox at first hand that there are a couple of perspectives:
# If you can navigate the short term tensions and difficulties to build successful collaboration, it becomes a long term strength, and despite the ever present short term tensions, if they are managed as debates, no matter how heated, that are based on facts rather than emotion, you can achieve both collaboration and personal autonomy.
# People in an industry develop a way of conceptualising the industry and their place in it, both as an individual and as a collaborative group. The key to growth is being able to redefine the prevailing view, and successfully chase success in the evolving industry.
In the week after Steve Jobs’ death, with all the eulogies being written, the central core of his success was just such an ability to redefine an industry and successfully lead the changes. On the other hand, the once great Kodak invented digital photography, and did not see the value given their view of the photographic industry, Nokia the runaway mobile phone leader 10 years ago is now struggling for relevance, and it took a radical forced restructure of the “big Three” in Detroit before they recognised that their view of the auto industry was not consistent with the desires of their customers.
Kodak, Nokia, and the Detroit three all lacked a leader capable of redefining the industry view held by their businesses, and paid the price for that failure.
