Rewarding Time “in Office” December 13, 2006
Posted by Eric Brown in Human Resources (HR), Management, Organization.2 comments
Don Blohowiak has a new post on his “Leadership. Now.” blog titled “Endurance Reward” where he discusses the ‘old-timer, high salary’ issue within organizations. The main question of the article is:
If you exclude assessments of merit and value from determining the worth of longevity, why pay a premium for tenure?
I used to see this issue quite often within organizations, but haven’t run across a lot of the old-timers who are getting paid high salaries mainly because of their tenure….most of the highly paid, long-tenured employees have been sent into early retirement (or fired or let go in a lay off) in cost cutting measures.
I wonder, though, how organizations did (and still do?) justify paying someone a much higher salary just because they have more ‘time in the saddle’ than other similar employees. Anyone know the reasons behind this?
Technorati Tags: Human Resources, Compensation, Management
Growth at all cost? December 12, 2006
Posted by Eric Brown in Human Resources (HR), Leadership, Management, Organization.add a comment
David Maister posted another great article today relating to the almost relentless quest for corporate growth in todays marketplace. David writes:
In most companies and firms, it is taken as a matter of
unexamined faith that the organization must grow. A related article of faith is hat size matters – in marketing, in recruiting, in profitability.
And
I worry that all these good reasons for seeking growth get urned into a mania for *ANY* growth, where the measure of success becomes growth at all costs, not **wise** growth. I don’t believe all growth is good.
For example, if two average quality firms of average size merge, is the bigger entity really more competitive? Do customers and clients REALLY re-allocate their business based on who’s the biggest firm?
At the end of the post, he asks 3 great questions…my answers are provided for your enjoyment.
(a)Do most companies place size and growth ahead of quality and getting better?
I think that there is an interest at quite a few companies to get ‘big’ and have multi-billion dollar revenue. It is very rare that I run cross a mid-sized company that is happy being mid-sized.
Chris Anderson’s “Long Tail” idea seems to be the thing that is being discussed all the time these days…I wonder if this idea of stepping away from the mass market and focusing on the ‘niche’ will have any effect on the way organizations perceive the idea of ‘growing’?
(b) Is his, ultimately, bad for them?
Growth without constraint (including ensuring quality) is not a good thing. One way that it can be good for a company is to ensure that all growth is performed in a manner that creates a sustainable and profitable organization while at the same time building a unique and enjoyable corporate culture for employees.
(c) What,if anything, can be done about that (or is it inevitable and irresistible)?
I aven’t had enough coffee to tackle this question fully 
. However, upon first thought, the only real tangible thing that can be done is to educate boards and senior leadership that quantity is not always better than quality. I think this may actually be taking place in some areas of business with the rise of the Customer Evangelist movement.
Technorati Tags: organizational development, leadership, management, corporate growth
Case Study Assitance December 12, 2006
Posted by Eric Brown in Consulting, Misc, Writing.add a comment
The recent IEEE Engineering Management newsletter had a link to an excellent Case Study…thought I’d post it here for everyone else:
http://college.hmco.com/business/resources/casestudies/students/
There is an interesting PDF file that describes the process of writing case studies that looks very interesting.
Technorati Tags: Case Study, Case Study development, Writing
In Memoriam: Dr. Frank M. Bass December 11, 2006
Posted by Eric Brown in Misc.add a comment
Dr. Bass passed away on December 1, 2006. From the University of Texas at Dallas’ webpage:
(1926-2006)
Dr. Frank M. Bass, often called the “Father of Marketing Science,” died on December 1, 2006 at his home. At age 79, he was in his 25th year as a professor of marketing science in the School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas. Professor Bass’s research and that of his students was pivotal in establishing marketing as a quantitative science.
Information Pioneer
After his MBA degree from University of Texas at Austin, Dr. Bass
spent a year with the wholesale pharmaceutical distributor, McKesson & Robbins, where he asked myriad questions about marketing that could not be answered. When he realized that no one, either in industry or academia, knew the answers he
sought, he decided to become a professor with the goal of doing research to find the answers himself.
From that moment, until his death, he searched for mathematical theories that could be proven by testing with measurements (data) in order to provide answers to fundamental marketing questions. The mathematical and statistical models he developed of generalized marketing phenomena are among the most widely used in the world.
Landmark Acheivements
One of Dr. Bass’s many landmark achievements came when he developed a marketing model that tracks the sales of durable goods. His model, although built on limited data, was amazingly accurate. The overall model led to numerous applications and scores of academic careers and literally hundreds of research papers extending the model subsequently known as the “Bass Model.” The model continues to be widely used in industry today. His original paper on the “Bass Model” was named by The Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences as one of the Top Ten Most Influential Papers published in the 50 year history of management science.
In 1972-75 Professor Bass served as the Editor of the preeminent journal in marketing — The Journal of Marketing Research. His international stature grew as a pioneer in management sciences when in 1978-79 he served as president of the Institute of Management Sciences. He later co-founded Marketing Science, arguably the most prestigious quantitative marketing journal in the field today.
Legacy Of Leaders
In spite of all his research contributions, Dr. Bass is perhaps best known for his development of research scholars. He has chaired the dissertations of 58 PhD students, most of whom are today leading scholars in marketing science and at top universities throughout the world.
Each of these scholars has followed in the footsteps of Dr. Bass and dedicated themselves to the future development of other scholars. These disciples of Bass have had a significant and continuing impact on the marketing field. Dr. Bass’s intellectual descendants number more than 215 scientists, a remarkable percentage of all marketing scientists.
Technorati Tags: Frank Bass, Memorial, Marketing
Manager Mindsets December 10, 2006
Posted by Eric Brown in Leadership, Management.add a comment
In a 2003 article in Harvard Business Review, the article titled “The Five Minds of a Manager” written by Jonathan Gosling and Henry Mintzberg, the authors address the question of the mindset of managers. The authors believe that there is too much emphasis on Leadership and not enough on Management within most organizations today when they write:
Nobody aspires to being a good manager anymore; everybody wants to be a great leader. But the separation of management from leadership is dangerous. Just as management without leadership encourages an uninspired style, which deadens activities, leadership without management encourages a disconnected style, which promotes hubris (Gosling & Mintzberg, 2003).
The article continues on to discuss the need for better management via ‘managerial mind-sets’. These mind-sets, five in all, are described in detail in the article and are briefly described below.
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Reflective Mind-set: allows managers to be thoughtful and see familiar experiences in a new light.
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Analytical Mind-set: ensures that managers make decisions based on quantitative and qualitative data.
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Worldly Mind-set: provides managers with cultural and social insights to assist with operating in multi-cultural environments.
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Collaborative Mind-set: enables managers to build relationships among teams and individuals
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Action Mind-set: energizes managers to create and expedite the best plans for achieving objectives.
I think the authors do a very good job outlining these five ‘mind-sets’ and it does appear that they actually understand that any manager trying to implement them must keep in mind that overdoing any of them would be doing a disservice to themselves and their team. The article overlooks the fact that most of the ideas presented are really nothing more than common sense approaches to management.All managers should understand that they need to approach every situation with a mixture of all parts of the five mind-sets.
Part of the problem with management in the modern world is that a lot of the training that has been developed (think MBA programs) have produced graduates with little knowledge of how to manage and lead people in the real world. MBA graduates, for example, have been well trained in the systems and processes of doing business but the softer skills of dealing with people are normally overlooked in most MBA programs. Perhaps more thought needs to be put into how to create manager/leaders who can function in the real world and still have the overall business background that an MBA provides.
In closing, I’d like to offer up one of the more succinct definitions of management and leadership from Lisa Haneberg’s excellent blog in her post titled “Leadership is not a job“:
Management is a set of methods and practices – a regimen – that allows us to run a business or a piece of the business. Management is a job. Leadership is not a job; it’s the way we do our jobs. Imagine four peer managers sitting in a meeting together discussing the progress of a major project.
Technorati Tags: leadership, management
