Articles Tagged Management

I have been a customer of a large global bank for a couple of decades. Recently, however, I closed all my accounts in despair. Why? Because after years of halfway decent service, this bank fell victim to the modern business malaise of automating all its customer interfaces. I began fearing the worst some years ago […]

PowerPoint presentations inevitably end up as monologues. They focus on answers, and everyone faces the screen. But meetings should be conversations. They should focus on questions, not answers, and people should face each other. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve found that even the hum of the projector discourages dialogue. Meetings are exorbitantly expensive […]

“Arkadi Kuhlmann, founder and CEO of ING Direct USA, has invented a whole new approach to retail banking. Over the past decade, as he has recruited thousands of employees to his organization, he has made it a point not to look to his competitors as a source of talent. “If you want to renew and re-energize […]

If you spend time with businesspeople, you soon pick up that they value something called “shrewdness” over most other things – if you aren’t sharp and quick-witted, with an instinctively predatory commercial instinct, you shouldn’t really be in business. By this they mean that the ability to sniff out and design a great deal is […]

“I’m asking them about their families, and how they grew up, and who’s important in their life and how did they decide to do this and that. I’m looking for fit, personality, values. Is this the kind of person we want around here? Will they work well? And I don’t really care how many places […]

“Do you find your mind wandering at times when people address you? Do you frequently switch from one activity to another? Do you have difficulty sustaining attention on a task and are you easily distracted by what’s going on around you? Do you struggle to prioritize and organize activities? Do you dislike having to do […]

“…companies with high levels of engagement (65 percent or greater) outperformed the total stock market index and posted shareholder returns 19 percent higher than average in 2009. Still not convinced? Companies with disinterested employees (40 percent or less engagement) had a total shareholder return that was 44 percent lower than average.” COURTNEY RUBIN, www.inc.com (20 […]

“Is too much of your time spent in unnecessary or ineffective meetings? If so, you’re not alone. Most managers consider meeting fatigue and meeting failures as two of the most significant drains on their productivity. As a result, an entire industry has sprung up over the past twenty years focusing on “meeting management.” Every company […]

“If you pull out your smartphone and click the button that says “locate me” on your mapping application, you will see a small dot appear in the middle of your screen. That’s you. If you start walking down the street in any direction, the whole screen will move right along with you, no matter where […]

“What could be more valuable than having a goal? From our earliest days, teachers, coaches, and parents advise us to set goals and to work mightily to achieve them – and with good reason. Goals work. The academic literature shows that by helping us tune out distractions, goals can get us to try harder, work […]

“The signature of my first book, In Search of Excellence (written with Bob Waterman), was a six-word phrase: “Hard is soft. Soft is hard.” As Bob and I examined the problems besetting US corporations circa 1980, we believed they and their advisers had got things backwards. We said that in the end it was the […]

The 2009 Fortune Global 500: 1. Wal-Mart Stores (US) 2. Royal Dutch Shell (Netherlands/UK) 3. Exxon Mobil (US) 4. BP (UK) 5. Toyota Motor (Japan) 6. Japan Post Holdings 7. Sinopec (China) 8. State Grid (China) 9. Axa (France) 10. China National Petroleum Fortune (August 2010) Fortune’s Global 500 List is usually worth a look […]

“The owners of the Boston Red Sox have completed a £300 million ($480.1 million) deal to buy Liverpool Football Club, bringing an end to a fractious fight for control of the storied English soccer franchise. New England Sports Ventures LLC, which owns the Red Sox, announced Friday it had completed its purchase of the Premier […]

“Do you get into the office without a plan of action for the day? Are you not being rewarded for your efforts? Does your boss often pull you down and embarrass you in front of colleagues? If any or all of these ring true, it might be time to shake things up.” PRERNA SODHI, India […]

“Does your organization have an overly complex presentation culture? If you’re not sure, ask yourself the following questions: How often are meetings dominated by long presentations with dozens of slides? How much time do people spend preparing, revising, and emailing different versions of slide decks? To what extent are managers assessed by the depth and […]

“I remember an illuminating conversation with a senior executive of a recently privatised water company. I was puzzled that so many companies seemed to be able to issue peremptory edicts to their managers to reduce costs, or headcount, and see these edicts fulfilled. Could it really be that there was so much inefficiency and, to […]

“How would you feel about a physician who killed more patients than he helped? What about a police detective who committed more murders than he solved? Or a teacher whose students were more likely to get dumber than smarter as the school year progressed? And what if you discovered that these perverse outcomes were more […]

It is almost an article of faith in Kenyan management that all the latest leading-edge techniques are practiced in the private sector by large corporates, whereas non-profit organisations are sleepy places wallowing in outmoded styles of leadership. So large corporations deploy the best technology and the latest management tools, generate the highest motivation levels, and […]

“How do owner-managers know when and by how much to loosen the apron strings? And how do they choose who should take over responsibility for their precious offspring? Mayank Patel, founder of Currencies Direct, a UK-based foreign exchange and international payments business with turnover of £1.2bn ($1.8bn, €1.4bn), says he knew from the start in […]

“One night last month, a Virgin Atlantic flight left Heathrow Airport bound for Newark, New Jersey. As the plane neared the Eastern Seaboard, bad weather forced the flight to divert to Hartford, Connecticut, some 106 miles north of its destination. The plane sat on the runway there for four hours – without air-conditioning, food or […]

“Somebody once said that in looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don’t have the first, the other two will kill you. You think about it; it’s true. If you hire somebody without the first, you really want them to be dumb and lazy. ” […]

“The topography of most large organizations – where finance occupies one floor, for example, and marketing another – reinforces the functional fiefdoms that arise naturally among colleagues who read the same professional journals, speak the same jargon, and crunch the same numbers. Geographic dispersion of operations often frustrates executives attempts to foster a shared world-view. An […]

“There are many theories on how to correctly “onboard” someone to an organization or a team. Most focus on how to provide the new hire with the information and skills she needs to succeed. But that can only take her so far. She will need connections and an understanding of the inner workings and culture […]

“You may think that hate is too strong of a word for feelings toward a corporate department. I don’t. Yesterday, I was interviewing an executive on his perceptions of IT and he couldn’t spit his frustration out fast enough. He said, “In the quest of getting things organized, they are introducing a bunch of bureaucracy […]

I walked into an Italian restaurant in Mombasa recently, and first impressions were favourable. The ambience was pleasantly rustic, and we were greeted with smiles by a waiter, which makes a change. The Italian proprietor was hovering around benignly. But there was an immediate warning sign. During the middle of lunch hour, a worker was […]

“One day I would love to conduct an experiment by replacing the entire board of directors of a major corporation with shop dummies and see how well things go. I’m confident most organisations would carry on regardless – and quite a few would unquestionably perform better. Out would go mad strategic initiatives, doomed takeovers, suicidal […]

“Ten years ago this month, for the Spring 2000 edition of Directors & Boards, I ran a photo on the cover of Dennis Kozlowski, then the high-flying chief of high-flyer Tyco International. It is not something I am ashamed of, nor is it something that I am particularly happy to be reminded of.  Those were certainly […]

The other day I reached for a box of tissues. As I pulled a tissue out, another five came out of the box. I had not encountered this recently, and wondered what the problem was. It turned out my household has been using imported tissues for a while, which are soft and detach easily. Those […]