21st Century Organizational Transformation

Small Business

Asif J. Mir — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:17:42 +0000

A small business is a business that must have at least two of the following characteristics: 1) independent management with the managers often owning the firm, 2) the capital contribution coming from a limited number of individuals—perhaps only one, 3) the firm operating in a local area, and 4) the firm representing a small part of the overall industry.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir - Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Role of Government

Asif J. Mir — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 01:11:59 +0000

In general, government has three basic economic functions. First, government provides a legal foundation and an appropriate social environment for the conduct of economic activity. Second, government both encourages competition in the marketplace and controls it. This is accomplished through legislation and government agency rules and regulations. Finally, government redistributes income from some segments o the economy to others. Government acquires revenues through taxation—taxes on income, property, sales, and payroll. These revenues are channeled back into the economy through spending and transfer payments to veterans, the aged, welfare recipients, and others in society. In short, government is a consumer of goods and services and not producer of them.

Incremental Change Analysis

Asif J. Mir — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:33:31 +0000

Most business focuses on the current situation, with changes defined on an iterative, cumulative basis. In this context, issues represent problems or opportunities for change from the current situation. The gaps represent ways that a company may achieve or enhance a competitive edge.

The most common way to define issues is to assess the changes that are expected t occur. These are derived from either internal or external changes, intended by management or occurring as a result of uncontrolled forces (as in workforce changes). Issues are identified in the way that people normally think—incrementally from the present toward future.

In this process, managers identify and evaluate human resource issues by sorting through available strategic planning, competitive, and environmental information for evidence of changes having human resource implications and then define human resource issues that may be addressed. Such analysis may examine employee productivity issues, service quality, staffing surpluses or shortfalls, succession needs, skill requirements, utilization, costs, turnover/retention patterns, or employee attitudes.

Managers also obtain and consider perspectives of relevant constituents, such as other managers and employees, vendors, suppliers, and customers. Companies solicit inputs from managers at various levels through their participation in the planning process or through interviews, focus groups, or surveys with key managers. Many companies survey employees, either specifically for planning inputs or more broadly as an assessment of organizational climate and human resource practices. Companies may involve employees through interviews or focus groups to help define issues and alternative strategies. Some also interview or survey customers, contractors, and other business partners regarding human resource issues to be addressed.

Environmental scanning is used to identify prospective human resource issues deriving from changing external conditions. Scanning the many changes occurring in social, political, legislative, demographic, economic, technological and other areas yields a wide array of issues that may be considered.

Spoken Words

Asif J. Mir — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 00:23:17 +0000

Spoken words are like smoke in the wind. They disappear quickly from the mind and memory. You must make people see your spoken words as well as hear them. Word pictures stay in the minds of your listeners. They may forget the words themselves, but they’ll remember visual imagery and identify with you and your objectives. The sentence, ‘Spoken words are like smoke in the wind’ is a perfect example. It creates a picture in your mind. Telling stories almost always include word pictures.

Truth and Reconciliation in Business

Asif J. Mir — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:27:22 +0000

Access to the truth is a fundamental human right and as such it must form the foundation of any truly amazing organization capable of maintaining long-term, mutually respectful and beneficial relationships. This is as true of organizations as it is of nation states or families.

Truth and Reconciliation in business aims to achieve exactly what it says. It aims to get to the truth about the way relationships are being conducted and it aims to use the acceptance of that truth as the basis for reconciling the organization and building fresh new relationships.

If we want our organization to be amazingly successful we must confront and overcome the practice of having completely separate management, employee and stakeholder perspectives, dividing the way we see our organization’s current and future priorities.

We need to develop one working culture capable of uniting our un-reconciled and incompatible aspirations and goals. This requires us to focus not only on our systems and processes but to build strong, dynamic relationships based on dialogue, interaction, genuinely shared values, mutual respect, inclusiveness, openness and trust.

Truth and reconciliation, as practiced by nation states, such as, South Africa, is a detailed process used under the most extreme situations – far removed from anything or indeed any of us has probably seen in any organization.

But let’s not miss the lessons these experiences can teach us about unity and strength, and about how to create harmony in inharmonious situations. Truth and reconciliation in business is significantly scaled-down version with reduced scope based on a drastically reduced need. What it does do, however, is adhere to principles proven in the most extreme environments where demands for forgiveness take on monumental proportions.

“Is” and “Is Not”

Asif J. Mir — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:42:13 +0000

Once we have identified “could be” but “is not” data, we will also be able to identify the peculiar factors that isolate our problem: exactly what it is, where it is observed, when it is observed, and its extent or magnitude. These peculiar factors will lead us closer to the problem’s cause.

Suppose for a moment that you have two identical potted plants growing in your office. One thrives but the other does not. If you take the wilting plant out of the office and ask someone about the probable cause for its sorry appearance, you will get any number of educated guesses. But if the same person observes that two identical plants in your office have not been receiving identical treatment (the thriving plant is on a sunny window sill and the wilting one is in a dim corner), the speculations as to cause will be immediate and more accurate than they could have been without a basis of comparison. Regardless of the content of a problem, nothing is more conducive to sound analysis than some relevant basis of comparison.

The decision as to what is close and what is logical must rest with the judgment of the problem solver. In many cases it is extremely important to identify the malfunction that “could be” but “is not” in order to narrow the scope of the search for cause. Each problem analysis is unique to the content of each problem.

Once we have identified bases of comparison in all four dimensions, we are able to isolate key distinguishing features of the problem. It is as if we had been describing the outlines of a shadow. With the completion of the “is not” data in our specification, the outlines begin to suggest the components capable of having cast the shadow.

The Contemporary World

Asif J. Mir — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 03:12:43 +0000

By the end of World War 11 in 1945, the Industrial Revolution was complete. The need for war goods required the development of new forms of production and technology, which later were used to produce consumer goods. Inventiveness was at high peak. Synthetic plastics and chemicals replaced natural substances as the basis for many products. Better machinery made it possible to manufacture products to produce precise specifications. (This type of precision is what lead eventually to the Apollo moon shot, which required components that were accurate to several one-hundred thousandths of an inch.)

In the 1970s, widespread use of computers enabled the management to process large quantities of data. Factories could be automated, with computer-controlled machinery carrying out many routine activities that could previously be completed only by time-consuming human labor.

By 1980, more than 80 percent of US 500 largest businesses were multinational, operating facilities in five or more foreign countries. And even for smaller companies and individual consumers, the world has become more like a large neighborhood than a huge, unknowable planet. High-speed computers, orbiting satellites, fluctuating exchange rates, and worldwide scarcities of natural resources bind us together with common needs, concerns, and goals.

Job Analysis

Asif J. Mir — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 05:27:22 +0000

A job analysis is a systematic exploration of the activities within a job. It is a technical procedure used to define the duties, responsibilities, and accountabilities of a job. This analysis involves the identification and description of what is happening on the job, accurately and precisely identifying the required tasks, the knowledge, and the skills necessary for performing them, and the conditions under which they must be performed.

Illusory Promises

Asif J. Mir — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 04:39:53 +0000

For a promise to constitute consideration, it must actually promise something without being illusory. One party to the agreement is not bound anyway. When one party is not legally bound, neither should the other party be. There is no contract because of an absence of consideration. An agreement between the parties to agree on something in the future is regarded as too indefinite to make a contract.

Computer Programming

Asif J. Mir — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 01:22:28 +0000

The computer can do nothing toward solving a problem without a detailed set of instructions. It can follow instructions, but it cannot think. A computer program is a set of instructions that tells the computer what is to be done, how to do it, and the sequence of steps to be followed. The computer follows these directions step by step until the job is completed.

The computer programmer—the specialist who tells the computer what to do—must analyze the problem, break it down into its component parts, and outline the steps needed to arrive at the solution. An effective way to determine these steps is to make a flowchart—a pictorial description of the logical steps to be taken in solving a problem.