Communities of Practice

One of the most successful uses of the Internet has been the emergence of informal knowledge communities or a community of interest. It is an environment usually outside of conventional organizational structures, where people can converse with each other about the common problems they face in their workplace or in their professional life, a common passion for some subject or a common mission. Most communities of practice are contained within a single organization but sometimes they cross institutional boundaries.

A community of practice does not necessarily have to be transacted solely on the Internet and in fact the most successful ones almost always have a face-to-face meeting component to them. As good a tool as the Internet is, it can never replace the intimacy and fullness of communication of face-to-face meetings of individuals. The importance of the internet to a community of practice js that it provides a link beyond the times when people can physically meet and hence sustains the group. It also permits a community of practice to develop among people who are not co-located.

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.

Planning Outcomes

The agenda is a product of two intermediate outcomes. The first is the list of the strategic issues faced by the organization. These issues may have their origins in many different places; the list, however, is likely to be a product of the strategic planning team’s deliberations. The second is an arrangement of the issues on the list in some sort of order: priority, logical, or temporal. The listing and arrangement of issues should help people consider the nature, importance, and implications of each issue.

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.

Market Orientation

The market orientation of the company towards the functioning of the channel members would determine the extent to which the company would get support from the channel members. In a highly competitive situation, the companies should, therefore, plan whether to be more ‘pull oriented’ or more ‘push oriented.’ This will determine the relative importance that the company will assign to advertising and channel promotion.

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.

An Organizational Challenge

An organizational challenge that has taken on renewed importance relates to ethics and social responsibility. An individual’s ethics are his or her beliefs about what is right and wrong or good and bad. Social responsibility is the organization’s obligation to protect and/or contribute to the social environment in which it functions. Thus, while the two concepts are related, they are also distinct from each other.

Both ethics and social responsibility have taken on new significance in recent years. Scandals in organizations have made the headlines around the world. From the social responsibility, increasing attention has been focused on pollution and business’s obligation to help clean up our environment, business contributions to social causes, and so forth.

Leadership, organization culture, and group norms—all important organizational behavior concepts—are relevant in managing these processes. And because employees know the organizational culture so well that they know they would be expected to respond.

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.

Outdoor Training

A trend in employee development has been the use of outdoor training. The primary focus of such training is to teach trainees the importance of working together, of gelling as a team. Outdoor training typically involves some major emotional and physical challenge. This could be mountain climbing, paint ball games, or surviving a week in the jungle. The purpose of such training is to see how employees react to the difficulties that nature presents to them. Do they face these dangers alone? Do they freak? Or are they controlled and successful in achieving their goal? The reality is that today’s business environment does not permit employees to stand alone. This has reinforced the importance of working closely with one another, building trusting relationships, and succeeding as a member of a group.

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.

The Importance of HRM

This is important because some of the personnel mistakes you don’t want to make while managing. They include:

• Hire the wrong person for the job;
• Experience high turnover;
• Find your people not doing their best;
• Waste time with useless interviews;
• Have your company taken to court because of discriminatory actions;
• Have your company cited under occupational safety laws for unsafe practices;
• Have some employees think their salaries are unfair and inequitable relative to others in the organization;
• Allow a lack of training to undermine your department’s effectiveness;
• Commit any unfair labor practices.

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.

This is important because some of the personnel mistakes you don’t want to make while managing. They include:

• Hire the wrong person for the job;
• Experience high turnover;
• Find your people not doing their best;
• Waste time with useless interviews;
• Have your company taken to court because of discriminatory actions;
• Have your company cited under occupational safety laws for unsafe practices;
• Have some employees think their salaries are unfair and inequitable relative to others in the organization;
• Allow a lack of training to undermine your department’s effectiveness;
• Commit any unfair labor practices.

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.

Managerial Know-how

People who bring capital, labor, and resources together to fashion them into a productive organization that must face the risks of an uncertain world, occupy strategic positions. Thus, given the same inputs, presumably a country with superior management will do better than one with weak management. The importance of managerial know-how can be illustrated by the airlines industry.

Obviously an explanation of world business involves many elements. But with a basic understanding of the few elements, comparative advantage and specialization.

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.

Context for Reinventing the Corporation

1. The shift in strategic resource from an individual to an information society;
2. The coming seller’s market and the new competition for the best employees;
3. The whittling away of middle management;
4. The continuing entrepreneurial revolution;
5. The emergence of the new variegated work force;
6. The demographic revolution of working women;
7. The growing use of intuition and vision;
8. The mismatch between our education system and the needs of the new information society;
9. The rising importance of corporate health issues.

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.

A Sign of Bad Management

In the business world, there are many people who think that holding or attending a continuous string of meetings is a sign of their power and importance. The exact opposite is true. If meetings are merely routine or unnecessary, they are a sure sign of bad management.

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.