Jun 30, 2011 | Management, Strategy
Every strategy book and article I have ever read talks about “alignment” as the holy grail of effective strategy implementation, but rarely have I seen it articulated in simple terms that are easily communicated.
So here goes:
- Ensure there is an open, widely discussed, open to feedback process to articulate “where we are going”
- Ensure the individual performance evaluation process is linked to the “where are we going” question so that the individual, when answering the question “where am I going” sees his/her personal best interest is served by the organisation.
- Ensure there is some sort of recognition process in place, so that individuals outstanding performance in delivering towards the strategic priorities can be widely recognised. It is these stories that make up the fabric of the organisational culture.
- Ensure that continuous improvement is a natural part of everyone’s everyday activity.
- Ensure that leadership at every level is evident in the willingness to help others do better
- As above, except that every individual should be open to ways in which they can do better.
If all the above is happening, I’ll bet there is a great degree of alignment.
Jun 22, 2011 | Change, Management, Social Media
It seems that technical changes are facilitating behavior changes that were previously constrained by the practical and cost barriers that existed.
However, the really important changes occurring are not the technical ones, but the manner in which consumers use them, and enterprises deploy them to do things differently, and improve their collective lot.
As attitudes follow behaviour, we are in for massive further changes in attitude towards the net, and all its tools both current and coming, and as the behavoural changes of the last decade cement into place, further enormous opportunities for innovation will emerge.
Jun 21, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Communication, Customers, Personal Rant
Negotiation is a process of finding a solution to a question that is acceptable to all parties. It should go without saying that the first step is to actually communicate, setting out to find areas of compromise, and places of potential value not immediately obvious that occur in many disputes.
The alternative is standing back and throwing rocks, which can only be a winning strategy when you hold all the cards, but then it is not a negotiation, but a statement. However, when the power in a dispute is spread around, declining a seat at the table almost inevitably means you end up on the menu.
The unilateral banning of the live cattle trade to Indonesia was such a rock throwing exercise. Thank heavens the dills in Canberra appear to have woken up in time, and are at least communicating with stakeholders, hopefully with the intention of finding a solution, rather than just doing a post cock-up arse cover.
Jun 6, 2011 | Leadership, Management
How do you find the right people to contribute to the growth and prosperity of an organisation? This task is generally recognised as a core management function, but so often a new hire makes little real difference beyond delivering more of the same, if you are lucky.
How come it is so hard??
My view, it is usually easier to find someone with seemingly relevant experience along with the right set of qualifications and contacts than it is to find someone with the right attitude, someone who does not need to unlearn lessons learnt in a similar environment, someone with a contrarian view, who will fit into and contribute to a differentiated culture.
If you want more of the same, then continue as before, but if you want to create excitement, break the mould, change stuff, you need someone with the right attitude, skills can be learned.
Jun 2, 2011 | Collaboration, Management
Setting an agenda for a meeting is a crucial but easily dismissed management tool, although the capacity of the chairman to stick to it plays a role in how effective the meeting becomes.
When setting an agenda, it is useful to consider the interaction of the thee basic reasons for having a meeting:
To impart information
To collaborate and build knowledge
To gain permission for a course of action.
Often meetings have these things mixed up, creating confusion, so being clear about the role of an agenda item, and grouping them together by their function can be extremely useful. Better still, have three meetings, but often this is not practical, as in a board meeting, or complex negotiation, so create breaks in the proceedings as you proceed from one form to another.
May 23, 2011 | Alliance management, Collaboration, Management
It is a bit ironic to think that in the midst of the information revolution that is surrounding us, that we are in some ways reverting to the ways of pre-agricultural humans.
Bit of a stretch? Just think, pre-agricultural humans lived by what they knew, where the water was, how to track an animal, then kill, dress, and cook it, which plants were edible, and so on. There were no personal possessions, everything was shared, and the group succeeded or failed by group effort and their relative position in their environment.
We moved away from this collaborative model as we started to grow things and gain possessions, but in the information revolution we are going through now, perhaps we are going back to some of the foundations of what made hunter-gathers sufficiently successful to evolve into us.
If this is the case, maybe we should be looking at the social and organisational behaviours that made hunter gatherers so successful. Forget the strategists, bring in the anthropologists.
