Using Administrative Skills

• Identify the three to five critical success factors that you and your group must accomplish to achieve your goals. Then develop plans to achieve them.
• Set aside “quiet time” each day for reviewing plans and updating planning activities.
• To balance attention to detail with broader planning, ask for feedback to ensure that you are not stressing on area over the other.
• Build your annual department goals and objectives around the strategic plan. Then develop monthly, weekly, and daily plans to accomplish your strategic goals and objectives.
• Have employees submit an annual work plan for your review. Ask them to include specific objectives, priorities, and time tables. Seek opportunities for assignments, requiring strategic planning.
• Study the long-range plan for your company or division and  consider its implications for your department.
• Break large projects into several smaller steps, with deadlines for each step. Ask for feedback regarding the adequacy of your project plan.
• Set definite deadlines with your manager when taking on tasks.
• Add more details to your plans.
• Ask your manager to let you know of instances when your planning could be more effective.
• Request assignments that require careful planning and attention to detail.
• After your plan is developed, ask others to identify potential problems. Then determine your contingency plans.
• Make it a habit to do an environmental scan when doing strategic planning.
• If your specialty is strategy, use your team and peers to help develop tactics.

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.

Collaboration

Collaboration is the ability to work in a group, eliciting and offering support to each other member, creating a synergistic environment for everyone. This quality comes up over as we listen to stories of experiences. The behavior of the story-tellers is inclusive. They reach out to other people; they ask for help when they need it; they gather people in, collaborating to get the job done. A significant by-product that often results from this approach is the development of new leadership and great self-esteem for these empowered through shared ownership.

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.

Public Relations Advertising

The past few decades have witnessed a substantial increase in the attention given by producers to their relations with various publics. There are many facets to public relations, which makes it difficult to develop a concise all-encompassing definition.

Public relations practice is the art and social science of analyzing trends, predicting their consequences, counseling organization leaders, and implementing planned programs of action which will serve the organization’s and the public interest.

Given the potential, advertising may provide an efficient instrument of communication in furthering the public relations of various firms.

Producers may have many “publics” to consider, including stockholders, employees, customers, prospective customers, professional educators, legislators, and citizen voters. All these and others have some interest in, and association with, specific firms. The attitudes that individuals and groups of people have toward the policies and practices of specific business institutions can have an important bearing on strikes, work slowdowns, consumer patronage, education of youth, and business legislation.

The means and ends of “public relations” advertising by producers are diverse. Generally, however, there is a common purpose—to favorably influence one or many of the firm’s public, in an inceasingly independent society.

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.

Failure in International Business

Failure overseas rarely results from technical or professional incompetence. Multinationals take their international business seriously and typically send abroad high achievers who have proven skills and expertise. But their success is usually in their home countries, where their skills, style and attitude may be exactly the opposite of what will work overseas. Employees’ ignorance of or inability to adjust to foreign ways are usually what cause problems.

In one country people know in vivid details the colors, designs and sounds that appeal to various customer groups. Careerists climbing the corporate ladder study intently the values and norms that characterize their company’s “culture” so that they can maneuver successfully toward the top. Negotiators approach their bargaining table with a rich understanding of what motivates their adversaries. When it comes to foreigners, however, people see only silhouettes. Overseas many foreign companies approach their customers, colleagues, and employees with an ignorance that would be unthinkable on home ground. They are willing to transact business with foreigners without understanding who they are, what makes them tick, how they view the world and how their corporations. Because they do not look behind the foreign mask, their approach to international business is often like shadow-boxing. They deal with imaginary targets.

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.

Social Influences on Consumer Behavior

Behavioral scientists have become increasingly aware of the powerful effects of the social environment and personal interactions on human behavior. In terms of consumer behavior, culture, social class, and reference group influences have been related to purchase and consumption decisions. It should be noted that these influences can have both direct and indirect effects on the buying process. By direct effects means direct communication between the individual and other members of society concerning a particular decision. By indirect effects means the influence of society on an individual’s basic values and attitudes as well as the important role that groups play in structuring an individual’s personality.

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.

Organization’s Specific Capabilities

Successful projects are associated with quality performance (proficiency) by one or more key players in the new products operation. A firm’s key players will vary some, depending on strategy, but we usually see the same bunch. First on most lists is technology. But technology does not mean just in research labs. A technology is a system or set of people and things that permit work. A soft drink bottling system is a technology.

In a virtual tie with technology is a bundle of skills in marketing. The needs and desires of the marketplace are an essential input to product innovation. And the end product must be presented to the end user in a way that stimulates trial and adoption. Just as some marketing firms have lacked technical skills, some technical firms have lacked marketing skills.

A new member of the triad is operations/manufacturing—maybe a factory, a laboratory, a set of carpet cleaning franchisees, an actuarial department in an insurance company, or even the legislature in a government. It is where the good or service is prepared or offered. It could be the classroom where this subject is discussed tomorrow. No matter how well designed or marketed, if the organization cannot deliver on the promised product, success cannot be assured. In the best firms today, manufacturing capability begins its development at the very start of the project, and may even be decided in the strategy if that is where the technology strength is located.

There are some other capabilities needed today, though the list is industry dependent. Two skills are moving up the list—human resource management (HRM) and technology (IT). They both relate to how new product projects are being managed today. HRM people are apparently critical in building the inventory of potential team leaders, and in training those selected for this most difficult task. IT people hold the answer to collocation, the physical grouping of teams that contribute so much to a new product project. Their answer: digital collocation, or the virtual collocated team. On a slightly broader plain, IT also permits effective networking, something we will see actually makes the “company within a company: that new products projects become.

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.

Virtual Corporation

As more and more companies are outsourcing various organizational functions and are paring together down to their core competencies, they might not be able to perform all the tasks required to complete a project. However, they certainly can perform their own highly specialized part of it very well. Now, if you put together several organizations whose competencies compliment each other and have them work together on a special project, you’d have a very strong group of collaborators. This is the idea behind an organizational arrangement that is growing in popularity—the virtual corporation. A virtual corporation is highly flexible, temporary organization formed by a group of companies that join forces to exploit a specific opportunity.

Technologies are changing so rapidly and skills are becoming so specialized these days that no one company can do everything by itself. And so, they join forces temporarily to form virtual corporations—not permanent organizations but temporary ones without their own offices or organizational charts. Although virtual corporations are not yet common, experts expect them to grow in popularity in the years ahead.

My Coultancy–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, Lectures, Line of Sight

Decision-making in Crisis Situations

Corporate transformation often occur in situations of crisis. Classic studies of crisis decision making have highlighted the tendency to focus on the short term, and to concentrate upon fewer options, when the ‘going gets tough.’ There is a danger that a sense of balance and perspective might be lost just when it is most needed.

Members of board can experience a tension between the requirement to become more deeply involved in order to demonstrate commitment, and the desirability of maintaining a distance in order to preserve a degree of independence and objectivity. A corporate change program can increase this schizophrenic pressure upon the individual director.

In situations of crisis there is a tendency to cut out information and individuals who do not fit, and to concentrate power in the hands of a smaller group of people. This prospect can pose problems for directors who have genuinely reservations which they feel duly bound to express.

A chairman should think twice before ‘wielding the knife’. It is important to probe the reasons for hesitency. Enthusiasm could be the product of sycophancy, and caution the result of thought. Team players are not those who just go along without thinking. Some colleagues are cautious. They are not obstructive. They are realistic.

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, Lectures, Line of Sight

Writing Business Summaries

Businesspeople are bombardedwith masses of information, and at one time or another, everyone in business relies on someone else’s summary of a situation, publication, or document. To write a summary, gather the information (whether by reading, talking with others, or observing circumstances), organize that information, and then present it in your own words. Although many pople assume that summarizing is a simple skill, it’s actually more complex than it appears. A well written summary has at least three characteristics..

First, as in writing any business document, be sure the content is accurate. If you’re summarizing a report or a group of reports, make sure you present the information without error. Check your references, and then check for typos.

Second, make your summary comprehensive and balanced. The purpose of writing your summary is usually to help colleagues or supervisors make a decision, so include all the information necessary for your readers to understand the situation, problem, or proposal. If the issue you’re summarizing has more than one side, present all sides fairly and equitably. Make sure you include all the information necessary. Even though summaries are intended to be as brief as possible, your readers need a minimum amount of information to grasp the issue being presented.

Third, make your sentence structure clear, and include good transitions. The only way your summary will save anyone’s time is if your sentences are uncluttered, use well-chosen words, and proceed logically. Then, to help your readers move from one point to the next, your transitions must be just as clear and logical. Basically, when writing your summary be sure to cut through the clutter. Identify those ideas that belong together, and organize them in a way that’s easy to understand.

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, Lectures, Line of Sight

Crisis Communication

One of the most visible functions of the PR department is to help management plan for and respond to crisis. A good PR professional looks for potentil problems, constantly scans the business environment, then alerts management to the implications of such problems, and suggests the best course of action.

Disasters of earthquake proportions fall into the category of public relations nightmares created by sudden , violent accidents. Plane crashes, oil spills, chemical leaks, and product defects all belong to this group. The other type of crisis is the sort that builds slowly and occurs because of a company’s conscious, but ill-founded, decisions.

Whn disaster strikes , a defensive posture is generally counterproductive. The best course is to be proactive, admit your mistakes and apologize.

When disaster hits most companies respond, to some degree, through their public relations department, but they often ignore the audience that is likely to be hit hardest—employees. To minimize the impact of any crisis on employees, be sure to communicate honestly, openly, and often, actively encourage employees to share their concerns, and use caution when sharing personal opinions.

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, Lectures, Line of Sight