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

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

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

(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

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.

• Reflective Mind-set: allows managers to be thoughtful and see familiar experiences in a new light.

• Analytical Mind-set: ensures that managers make decisions based on quantitative and qualitative data.

• Worldly Mind-set: provides managers with cultural and social insights to assist with operating in multi-cultural environments.

• Collaborative Mind-set: enables managers to build relationships among teams and individuals

• 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

1. PPM brings realism to an organization’s planning processes.
2. PPM brings rationality in the allocation of resources, both human and financial.
3. PPM brings visibility to project work and project people.

Jeanette’s article is one of the best arguments for PPM I’ve read in quite some time…I’d suggest everyone spend a few minutes to read the article.

For those of you don’t know what PPM is, here’s a basic primer on the topic:

In recent years, PPM has become a methodology for selecting projects that are well-aligned and prioritized. Callahan & Brooks (2004) have defined PPM as “the use of the appropriate management knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to maximize the alignment of the company’s project portfolio” (Callahan & Brooks, 2004, p. 178).Winters (2005) described PPM slightly different when he wrote “PPM is an approach to the management of groups of projects that treats them as investments” (Winters, 2005, p. 1).As can be seen from these definitions, PPM consists of selecting, balancing and prioritizing projects to ensure optimal value for an organization.PPM is a valuable tool for any organization and can provide many benefits, such as:

• Allows for the selection the proper projects according to company strategy.
• Balances all projects being undertaken by the company to ensure optimal resource usage.
• Optimizes projects to ensure maximum value to the company.
• Quantifies the project benefits in financial terms (Winters, p. 1).
• Identifies and manages risks (Winters, p. 1).

The benefits of PPM outlined above can provide tremendous value to an organization by allowing the proper selection of strategically aligned projects, optimal resource allocation, project utilization and maximized value to the organization.

While using PPM principles to select projects provides a lot of very good benefits, one of the most important aspects of implementing PPM principles is that Return on Investment (ROI) and other financial measurements can be used to track project status and determine if the project(s) is/are creating value for the organization. Using financial measures such as ROI can provide immediate insight into the status of a project, which allows better executive decisions related to the optimal usage of resources within the company.

References:

• Callahan, K., & Brooks, L. (2004). Essentials of strategic project management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
• Winters, F. (2005, February 16). Project portfolio management: A primer (part 1). Retrieved October 20, 2006, from http://www.gantthead.com/article.cfm?ID=222787

Technorati Tags: Project Management, Leadership, PPM, Project Portfolio Management, Strategic Project Management

• More than 70 percent of HR managers surveyed said they preferred to see relevant work experience on a candidate’s CV over formal qualifications.
• 38 percent of HR managers said that candidates required basic technology training once taken on, as all too often candidates were missing these basic skills.
• IT departments are rarely directly involved in the recruitment of personnel. Just over half of HR departments left the final decision over which IT candidates to employ to their IT department, while 30 percent of IT departments have no involvement in the recruitment process.

The survey results are interesting…I’d like to see results of this same type of survey in the US. Personally, I’m all for reviewing a candidates work experience and have usually preferred to hire more experienced people over fresh-faced college grads, but I don’t see that being the norm in the United States in the recent years (see my post titled “The Hiring Process” for my thoughts on that). The last point makes me wonder if similar circumstances exist here in the US.

Technorati Tags: Recruiting, Human Resources (HR), Hiring

1. Lack of clear link between the project and the organization’s key strategic priorities, including agreed measures of success.
2. Lack of clear senior management and Ministerial ownership and leadership.
3. Lack of effective engagement with stakeholders.
4. Lack of skills and proven approach to project management and risk management.
5. Too little attention to breaking development and implementation into manageable steps.
6. Evaluation of proposals driven by initial price rather than long-term value for money (especially securing delivery of business benefits).
7. Lack of understanding of and contact with the supply industry at senior levels in the organisation.
8. Lack of effective project team integration between clients, the supplier team and the supply chain

In a recently published White Paper, I addressed this same topic (See the post on Strategic Project Management here or here) and methodologies to help to ensure project success. An excerpt from the White Paper is provided below:

Strategic Project Management is really nothing more than picking the right projects for the organization to ensure optimal returns. This sounds very simple and straightforward, but research shows that there are many organizations that have overlooked the important fact of aligning projects with corporate strategy. The fact that SPM is often overlooked can be seen in research performed by Stanleigh (2006) and report in the article titled “From Crisis to Control: New Standards for Project Management”. Stanleigh reports that a fraction of projects undertaken by organizations (roughly 2.5 percent) are 100% successful (Stanleigh, 2006, p. 1). Stanleigh discusses the need for organizations to ensure that only those projects that are aligned with the corporate strategic vision be undertaken and he describes four key strategies that assist organizations in regaining control over their projects and ensuring strategic fit.

This white paper outlines a framework that can be used by organizations to help ensure successful projects. This framework is outlined below:

• Strategic Alignment of Projects
• Cultivate a Project Management Culture
• Create Best Practices
• Track and Measure Projects and Outcomes
• Create Open Channels of Communication

All of the reasons given in the UK Audit report can be solved by implementing a Strategic Project management framework. By implementing a Strategic Project Management framework, an organization can help to guard against project failures.

References:

• Stanleigh, M. (2006, March/April). From crisis to control: New standards for project management. Ivey Business Journal, 1-4.

To read the white paper in its entirety, please visit our Corporate website at Browncg.com

Technorati Tags: Project Management, Leadership, Management, Strategy, Strategic Project Management

It seems that corporate America has decided that only college educated people (regardless of experience) are worth hiring. I imagine that this shift toward only hiring (or promoting) people with college educations is one of the reasons that the Degree Mill industry has become such as large problem in the world today (read more about Degree Mills here).

Part of me wonders if the problem isn’t that Jim doesn’t have a degree, but that the screening process within organizations is broken. A recent post by Erik Mazzone led me to Lisa Haneberg’s recent post about job descriptions and I think both of these articles definitely add more insight into the problem. In fact, Lisa might have actually found the answer to my questions about the hiring process when she states:

Think about the most amazing employee at your company. Do you think that this person’s background and experiences match the job description for his or her job? Most don’t and in fact, some would not even get an interview if the job description were used as the only screening criteria. In other words, job descriptions often do a disservice to the selection process

This makes me wonder about who is actually writing the job descriptions within organizations and what the screening process is. It seems pretty clear to me through working with my friend that the screening process within most organizations is broken (or at least misguided in their screening criteria).

I wonder if the answers to these questions could help shine some light on the solution to this problem.

• Does the modern organization have such a large pool of talent that they can afford to automatically reject those people without a degree?
• Is the experience that my friend is having commonplace or is there another issue about his experience and background that is causing this rejection?
• Are organizations doing the best job that they can to screen candidates? What are the backgrounds of the people that are screening candidates….experienced HR professionals, hiring managers or inexperienced/new recruiters (I’m leaning toward the inexperienced/new recruiters).
• As pointed out here, does the problem actually exist because of poor job descriptions and criteria for hiring a candidate?

I don’t have any answers right now, but I think there has to be a way to improve all aspects of the hiring process by working with HR and Hiring managers to create better candidate profiles, job descriptions and screening processes.

Technorati Tags: HR, Strategy, Leadership, Job Search, Change

According to the DMN:

Mr. Fryar’s résumé and application stated that he is a CPA, according Mr. Martinez. When the district sent out a news release announcing his hiring, the first sentence stated that Mr. Fryar was “a certified public accountant.”

But the state board revoked Mr. Fryar’s license in 1996 after he failed to complete mandatory professional development courses required for all CPAs in Texas. When asked Tuesday whether he was a CPA, Mr. Fryar replied after a long pause: “I passed the [CPA] exam in 1980. However, I am not in good standing. I have not kept my certification up, which is not uncommon.”

When asked whether he disclosed his revoked license to the district, he replied: “I told that to them when they hired me.”

Said Mr. Martinez, the DISD spokesman: “We were not aware” of the revoked license.

Not sure who is at fault here or if any one person is at fault, but it appears blame lies at the feet of Mr. Fryar. Mr. Fryar was fully aware that his CPA license was not valid and that he couldn’t legally call himself a CPA (according to Texas law).  If he told the DISD about his lack of licensure and the DISD still hired him and marketed him as having a CPA, then shame on the DISD too.

Mr. Fryar had been on the job less than 2 weeks and has now resigned.

Technorati Tags: Dallas School, Leadership