Market-Driven Management

Market-driven management is a cross functional effort involving all levels of the organization. Properly followed, it ensures all activities are coordinated to meet the specific needs of target customer groups. All R&D projects are focused on developing solutions to identified customer problems, manufacturing is committed to meeting cost targets, quality standards, and delivery cycles, and sales focused on identifying and interpreting customer problems and then selling them solutions. If someone ask the individual managers within any of these functional areas how they operate, they would most likely say, “just as you described.” It is unlikely, however, that their counterparts in other functional areas would agree, and even more unlikely that there would be a consensus among all managers at all levels. Achieving this market driven focus with fully agreed upon objectives and priorities in each functional area requires the complete support of everyone in the organization. Market-driven management is much easier said than done because it flies in the face of the attitudes and actions of most managers.

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.

High Performance Standards

It is important that you clearly define performance standards for employees. Employees need to know what performance level is expected, what performance is below standards, and what it takes to achieve high standards of performance.

The most convenient time to set performance expectations is during the employee’s annual performance review at the beginning of a new business planning cycle. Prepare for this discussion by doing the following:

1. Identify what you would consider objectives for the employee, i.e., the goals for performance that exceed the job requirements and are challenging, yet attainable. Things to consider: giving the employee more decision-making authority, adding responsibilities, taking on supervisory roles, and increasing productivity goals.
2. Consider also the requirements for satisfactory performance relative to the employee’s tenure, experience, and expertise.
3. Discuss your expectations with your employee, taking into account his or her perspective and any information you may have overlooked that would affect standards of performance. The more input employees have in setting performance expectations, the more likely they will be to buy into the standards upon which you agree.
4. With your employee, come to consensus on performance standards that meet and exceed expectations. Document your decisions.
5. Clarify the rewards for performance with the employee.
6. Meet periodically to discuss progress. If appropriate, revise expectations while keeping goals challenging.

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.

Leadership and Transformation

There is some consensus concerning what is important, and what needs to be done to bridge the gap between transformation expectations and transformation achievement that is found in many companies.

• A clear and compelling vision and strategy is essential for both differentiation and transformation. The vision should embrace both the transformation ‘end state’ and the transformation process.
• Top management commitment is of crucial importance in the management of change. It needs to be communicated and sustained. A practical and necessary demonstration of commitment is to ensure that all the pieces of the transformation jigsaw puzzle and the critical factors for competitive success are in place.
• People need to be empowered and equipped to manage change, and to handle the extra responsibilities that are being placed upon them. This requires a holistic perspective, new attitudes, fresh approaches and additional techniques. In particular, there is a need for the qualities associated with the ‘organic manager.’
• Within corporations there are hidden businesses. Management and business processes should focus energies and resources upon those people and activities that activities that make the greatest contribution to business development the greatest contribution to business development and competitive success.

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.

 

Company Self-Concept

A major determinant of a firm’s success is the extent to which the firm can relate functionally to its external environment. To achieve its proper place in a competitive situation, the firm realistically must evaluate its competitive strengths and weaknesses. This idea—that the firm must know itself—is the essence of the company self-concept. The idea is not commonly integrated into theories of strategic management; its importance for individuals has been recognized since ancient times.

Both individuals and firms have a crucial need to know themselves. The ability of either to survive in a dynamic and highly competitive environment would be severely limited if they did not understand their impact on others on them.

In some senses, then, firms take on personalities of their own. Much behavior in firms is organizationally based; that is, a firm acts on its members in other ways than their individual interactions. Thus, firms are entities whose personality transcends the personalities of their members. As such, they can set decision making parameters based on aims different and distinct from the aims of their members. These organizational considerations have pervasive effects.

Ordinarily, descriptions of the company self-concept per se do not appear in mission statements. Yet such statements often provide strong impressions of the company self-concept. The following excerpts from the Intel Corporation mission statement describe the corporate persona that its top management seeks to foster:

The management is self-critical. The leaders must be capable of recognizing and accepting their mistakes and learning from them.

Open (constructive) confrontation is encouraged at all levels of the corporation and is viewed as a method of problem solving and conflict resolution.

Decision by consensus is the rule. Decisions once made are supported. Position in the organization is not the basis for quality of ideas.

A highly communicative, open management is part of the style.

Management must be ethical. Managing by telling the truth and treating all employees equitably has established credibility that is ethical.

We strive to provide an opportunity for rapid development.

Intel is a results-oriented company. The focus is on substance versus form, quality versus quantity.

We believe in the principle that hard work, high productivity is something to be proud of.

The concept of assumed responsibility is accepted. (if a task needs to be done, assume you have the responsibility to get it done).

Commitments are long term. If career problems occur at some point, reassignment is a better alternative than termination.

We desire to have all employees involved and participative in their relationship with Intel.

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 Development

Organization development is a planned, managed, and systematic process. Its objective is to change the system, the culture, and the behavior of an organization in order to improve the organization’s effectiveness.

Organization development deals with organizational aspects of the behavioral sciences and links with human resource development and organizational renewal. Many definitions of organization development mention such objectives as helping members of an organization to interact more effectively. It must always be organization-wide, directed towards more participatory management, must provide for integrating the individual’s goals with the organization’s and must be considered an ongoing process.

Much organizational inefficiency can be traced to individuals who are not interested in the organization they belong to. Conversely, a lot of personal unhappiness can be traced to feeling inadequately integrated into the organization one belongs to. The benefit of organization development lies in reconciling the interests of individuals and of the organization and successfully realizing both.

While organization development will not overcome such deficiencies as outdated technology, inadequate financing or hostile external forces, it will enable organizations to cope more effectively with these negative influences.

Organization development is based on the behavior of organizations, but that both can be modified with proper diagnosis and skilful intervention.

Most organization development agents or consultants tend to view their mission as helping client organizations become more participatory and consensus seeking.

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.

 

Industrial Competitiveness

The European Management Forum defines industrial competitiveness as “the immediate and future ability of, and opportunities for, entrepreneurs to design, produce and market goods within their respective environments whose price and non-price qualities form a more attractive package than those of competitors.”

The major factors affect competitiveness:

• The dynamism of the economy measured by criteria such as growth rates, monetary strength, industrial production and per capita performance.
• Industrial efficacy, which involves direct and indirect employee costs, per capita output, employee motivation, turnover and absenteeism.
• The dynamics of the market, when efforts to improve competitiveness are increased and better directed to more intensive market forces.
• Financial dynamism that is the strength and importance of the commercial banking sector, stock and bond markets and their ability to provide capital.
• Human resources that is the dynamism of the population and the labor force, employment, unemployment, executive quality and motivation.
• The role of the state in fiscal policies and other regulations.
• Resources and infrastructure (transport and communications facilities), domestic energy and raw material sources.
• Outward orientation, the will to promote trade actively, buying and selling goods, service-related investments or any other form of international exchange.
• Innovative forward orientation which emphasis national research and development efforts, corporate and government attitudes to exploiting new ideas, products and production processes.
• Socio-political consensus and stability, the degree to which strategies and policies reflect a society’s aspirations.

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.

Collaborative Organization

A collaborative organization is one that has the following characteristics:

• The values and objectives of employees and management are aligned.
• A climate of mutual trust and respect exists.
• The knowledge of all the staff, customers and suppliers is shared and pooled to optimize the organization’s operations and opportunities.
• Decision making is more decentralized than it is in most current organizations and more stakeholders in the organization play a role in defining the direction in which the organization moves, and
• Hierarchical structures are kept to a minimum. The company is managed democratically by consensus rather than by command and control. (By consensus does not mean that every member of the organization is in agreement with every decision, but it does mean that all members of the community are heard and their views are taken into account by those responsible in the organization for making decisions.)

Collaboration has far-reaching implications for the enterprise-wide culture of an organization. Collaboration, as contrasted to the more circumscribed concept of teamwork, cuts across organizations, divisions, departments and working groups. It also involves more than just cooperation; it requires the ability and willingness to creatively share ideas and knowledge and to create new knowledge with others. And this is the crux of the problem, because it is hard for individuals to do this when they still believe that “knowledge is power” and they hoard their knowledge.

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.

Message Content in Marketing Communications

Message content deals with what is said in a message and how it is said. There are five common content topics that have great relevance for marketing practitioners: 1) fear appeals; 2) the use of humor; 3) the role of music; 4) sex appeals; and 5) subliminal messages. Advertisers, salespersons, public relations spokespersons, and other marketing communicators use all of these message styles to varying degrees in hopes of gaining attention, achieving impact, and ultimately producing sales.

Fear Appeals: Companies sometimes use fear appeals in attempting to motivate customers to action. The underlying logic when using fear appeals is that fear will stimulate audience involvement with a message and thereby promote acceptance of message arguments. The appeals may take the form of social disapproval or physical danger aside from the basic ethical issue of whether fear should be used at all, the fundamental issue for marketing communicators is determining how intense the fear presentation should be. Numerous fear-appeal studies have been performed by psychologists and marketing researchers, but the fact remains that there still is no consensus on the “optimum” level of fear. Some Neither extremely strong nor very weak fear appeals are maximally effective. It seems that appeals at a somewhat moderate level of fear are best.

Humor: Politicians, actors and actresses, after-dinner speakers, professors, and indeed all of us at one time or another use humor to create a desired reaction. Salespeople and advertisers also turn to humor in the hopes of achieving various communication objectives. Whether humor is effective and what kinds of humor are most successful are matters of some debate among marketing communications practitioners and scholars.

Despite the frequent use of humor in advertising, relatively little is known in a definitive scientific sense about its effects on customer behavior. However there are some generalizations:

• Humorous messages attract attention.
• Humor can inhibit consumers’ understanding of the intended meaning of a message.
• Because humor is a pleasant form of distraction, it can produce an increase in persuasion by effectively “disarming” receivers’ natural selective perception and reducing their tendencies toward counter arguing with persuasive selling claims.
• Humor tends to enhance source credibility, thereby improving the persuasive impact of an ad message.
• A humorous context may increase liking for the source and create a positive mood, thereby enhancing the persuasive effect of the message.
• To the extent that a humorous context functions as a positive reinforce, a persuasive communication placed in such a context may be more effective.
• The effects of humor can differ due to differences in audience characteristics. Advertisers must use humor carefully since consumers display a variety of tastes in what is humorous and what is not.

Music: celebrated musicians, as well as, non-vocal accompaniment and unknown vocalists are used extensively in promoting everything. Music performs useful communication functions such as attracting attention, putting consumers in a positive mood, and making them more respective to message arguments. Although music’s role in marketing is an increasingly understand subject, a few recent studies have begun to demonstrate the roles that music performs. Music is an unconditional stimulus in an effort to influence experimental subjects’ preference.

Sex Appeals: Sex appeals in advertising are often explicit. The use of explicit sex was unthinkable just a few years ago, it now represents part of a new trend toward more sexually explicit advertising. Sexual explicitness is prevalent and overt in some countries. Whether such advertising is effective and under what conditions it may be effective remain largely unexplored issues. Complicating the matter is the fact that sex in advertising actually takes two forms: nudity and suggestiveness. It is uncertain which form is more effective. There are several potential roles. First, sexual material in advertising acts as an initial attentional lure and also holds attention for a longer period, given that the models are attractive or the scene is pleasant. This is called the “stopping power” role of sex. A second potential role is to enhance recall. Sexual content or symbolism will enhance recall only if it is appropriate to the product category and the creative advertising execution. Sexual appeals produce significantly better recall only if the advertising execution has an appropriate relationship with the advertised product. A third role performed by sexual content in advertising is to evoke emotional response such as feelings of attraction or even lust.

Subliminal Messages: the word subliminal refers to the presentation of stimuli at a rate or level that is below the conscious threshold of awareness. Stimuli that cannot be perceived by the conscious senses may nonetheless be perceived subconsciously. This possibility has generated considerable concern from advertising critics and has fostered much speculation from researchers.

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.

Satisfaction versus Service Quality

Practitioners and writers in the popular press tend to use the terms satisfaction and quality interchangeably, but researchers have attempted to be more precise about the meanings and measurement of the two concepts, resulting in considerable debate. Consensus is growing that the two concepts are fundamentally different in terms of their underlying causes and outcomes. Although they have certain things in common, satisfaction is generally viewed as broader concept, whereas service quality assessment focuses specifically on dimensions of service. Based on this view, perceived service quality is a component of customer satisfaction.

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, Line of Sight

Using Judgmental Forecasts

Judgmental forecasts are based on subjective views – often the options of experts in the field. Suppose a company is about to market an entirely a new product, or the board is looking at plans for 25 years in the future. They won’t have any relevant historical data for a quantative forecast. Sometimes there is a complete absence of data, and at other times the data is unreliable or irrelevant to the future.

 Quantative forecasts are always more reliable, but when you don’t have the necessary data, you have to use a judgmental method. There are five widely used methods:

• Personal insight. This uses a single person who is familiar with the situation to produce a forecast based on his or her own judgment. This is the most widely used forecasting method – but is unreliable and often gives very bad results.
• Panel consensus. This collects together a group of experts to make a forecast. If there is no secrecy and the panel talk freely and openly, you can find a genuine consensus. On the other hand, there may be difficulties in combining the views of different people.
• Market surveys. Sometimes even groups of experts don’t have enough knowledge to give a reasonable forecast about, for example, the launch of a new product. Then market surveys collect data from a sample of potential customers, analyze their views and make inferences about the population at large.
• Historical analogy. If you are introducing a new product, you might have a similar product that you launched recently, and assume that demand for the new product will follow the same pattern. If a publisher is selling a new book, it can forecast the likely demand from the actual demand for a similar book it published earlier.
• Delphi method. For this you contact a number of experts by post and give each a questionnaire to complete. Then you analyze the replies from the questionnaires and send summaries back to the experts. You ask them if they would like to reconsider their original replay in the light of summarized replies from others. This is repeated several times – usually between three and six – until the range of options is narrow enough to help with decisions.

 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, Line of Sight