Risking New Ideas

If we want people in the organization to start taking some risks, we need to replace no with yes and replace limits with encouragement. The key to the development of a risk-taking organizational climate lies in the ability of management to convey the attitude that new ideas are always a hot commodity. New ideas do not have to be perfect at birth. As the saying goes: “It doesn’t have to be right the first time. It just needs to be real.”

The best risk-takers are those who act without concentrating on all the jeopardies and instead work around the fears that hang up other people. That doesn’t mean that they don’t think before they act; it does mean that in this environment, they take some well-planned chances. I’ve watched associates get better month by month at learning how to make the right risks pay off for them, personally and professionally.

When we communicate that we expect mistakes to occur when people are putting out and working hard, we create an atmosphere of encouragement.  A lot of people in corporate life have made careers out of surviving rather than succeeding; they’ve had to cope with atmospheres laced with fear, suspicion, and blame. Get rid of the blame and start celebrating the efforts and new ideas. Plan to make mistakes and still make it through.

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.

Talking about Bookkeeping

Everyone knows intuitively, if not experientially, that good bookkeeping is good business. If you don’t keep track of your business’s money matters—what comes in and what goes out—you will be in the dark as to how well or poorly your business is doing, and hence how well or poorly you’re handling certain aspects of the business. After all numbers do not lie. If they indicate that all is well, you’ll be able to capitalize on your success by, if nothing else, continuing to do with confidence whatever you’re doing right. If the numbers reveal that all is not well, you will be able to take appropriate measures to solve problems which if left unchecked could land you in failure zone. Just as with certain physical diseases, early detection means early cure and increased chance of survival. Lastly, it goes without saying that slipshod recordkeeping can cost you time, anxiety and even money when tax time rolls around. In sum, while its understandable that people are inclined to avoid and neglect bookkeeping matters, its fundamentally inexcusable.

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 Aging Crisis

Not a company exists whose management doesn’t say, at least for public consumption, that it wants an organization flexible enough to adjust quickly to changing market conditions, lean enough to beat any competitor’s price, innovative enough to keep its products and services technologically fresh, and dedicated enough to deliver maximum quality and consumer service.

So, if managements want companies that are lean, nimble, flexible, responsive, competitive, innovative, efficient, customer-focused, and profitable, why are so many. Companies are bloated, clumsy, rigid, sluggish, non-competitive, uncreative, inefficient, disdainful of customer needs, and losing money. The answers lie in how these companies do their work and why they do it that way.

Corporations do not perform badly because workers are lazy and managements are inept. Just the same, the record of industrial and technological accomplishment over the past century is proof enough that managements are not inept and workers do work.

Inflexibility, unresponsiveness, the absence of customer focus, an obsession with activity rather than result, bureaucratic paralysis, lack of innovation, high overhead—these are the legacies of industrial leadership. These characteristics are not new; they have not suddenly appeared. They have been present all along. If costs are high they can be passed on to customers. If customers are dissatisfied, they have nowhere else to turn. If new products are slow in coming, customers will wait. The important managerial job is to manage growth, and the rest doesn’t matter. Now that growth has flattened out, the rest matters a great deal.

The business problem is that in 21^st century with companies designed during the nineteenth century to work well in the twentieth—we need something different.

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.

Toyota’s Supply Chain

The first-tier firms play a key role in Toyota’s Supply Chain. There are six areas in which these firms act  as the pivotal part of the system.

1. Quality Buffer
2. Gaining
3. System Developer
4. Purchaser
5. Designer
6. Problem Solvers

Within the Toyota supplier network there is only a small reliance on the micro firms. However, the key to Toyota’s success cannot lie within such very small firms at the 3^rd and 4^th tiers as they are only responsible for 3 percent of the value=adding processes, although due to their high productivity  this yields a 10 percent total productivity advantage  to the total Toyota supplier network.

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.

Futures Analysis

Futures analysis allows companies to project future conditions and set future objectives to be achieved. It represents a leap to the future rather than step-by-step progression from  today’s situation forward to the future. It allows managers to assess the future relevance of issues that appear important today and thereby identify important human resource issues.

Futures analysis is an inherent requirements for strategic thinking. It requires defining the forces shaping the future, evaluating alternative future states, setting objectives, and selecting courses of action that will yield needed changes in direction for the enterprise. While incremental change analysis looks at continuities, futures analysis looks at discontinuities.

Futures analysis provides at least a conceptual vision of the future that can help identify and define organizational or competitive requirements. In its simplest forms, futures analysis involves open thinking about future issues and options. Companies use brainstorming, visioning, or modified Delphi analysis (iterative survey of experts) to help define the future human resource issues that need to be addressed. It is an exercise that may involve many participants within the company as well as outside consultants or others.

Futurists, functioning on company planning staffs and as independent consultants, have helped assess the prospective futures in which companies would operate. Their value added appears to lie in their work on demographic technological and environmental futures. In other areas, such as, socio-political changes worldwide, energy availability, economic conditions, or legislation.

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.

Highly Effective People and Organizations

Why don’t highly effective people always run successful organizations? And why aren’t all successful organizations run by highly effective people?

We have all seen successful organizations being run by people who don’t come close to being highly effective, whilst people we know to be highly effective sometimes work in unremarkable, underperforming companies.

What is going on then?

The answer lies not in re-examining the laws that govern personal effectiveness but in reviewing the similarities and intrinsic differences between highly effective people and organizations. So where do we start?

We know that highly effective people:

o     Control all decision-making from one place – their brain;

o     Coordinate thought and action centrally in their brain and can make their mouth, hands, feet and everything in between do what they want when they want;

o     Have a single mouthpiece; and

o     Are driven by a single social paradigm – the character ethic.

Organizations, on the other hand:

o     Have multiple decision-making points and use multiple decision-making criteria:

o     Cannot centrally control every aspect of their operation;

o     Struggle to send uncorrupted messages from the center outwards and are often unable to receive incoming messages from distant parts of the organization at all;

o     Are driven by a variety of conflicting influences;

o     May try and influence behavior through corporate values without defining and weighting underlying motivations, failing to make them either relevant or meaningful to anyone apart from the team that created them;

o     Are unlikely to be able to manage relationships in a consistent manner without making a determined effort to do so; and

o     May have a leadership team covertly hostile to each other’s motivations, beliefs, individual social paradigms and ideas about corporate culture.

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.

 

Power

Power is what everyone wants and no one seems to have enough of. The desire for power is inherent in our very nature and fundamental to our survival.

Nowhere is the pursuit of power more evident than in today’s workplace. Managers are constantly striving to increase their arsenal of power, which is how it should be. Some may use power for selfish gain; others may use it to benefit the company. Regardless of how managers use power, the fact remains that without it they are incapable of achieving anything of significance for themselves, other people, the company, or society at large.

Power operates under the same principle as love: the more one gives to others, the more one receives in return. Unfortunately, many managers assume that there is a limited supply of power.

Most people contribute only a small fraction of their full capabilities, simply because they don’t feel a sense of personal power. They are bound by a bureaucratic management system that does little to encourage initiative and high performance. Almost all the power within the organization rests with those at the very top. Powerless in their ability to achieve results, most people eventually lose interest and settle for mediocrity.

The secret of achieving success as a manager and as a company lies in learning how to release the hidden potential of people. It lies in helping workers on all levels, from floor sweeper to executive, experience a sense of their own power. There are no success limits for the managers who master this art. Likewise, the company that rewards managers for successfully employing this art dramatically increases its ability to achieve its objectives.

If you want to achieve ultimate power for yourself you must get out of your own way. Instead of focusing your energies on the acquisition of power for yourself, focus them on how you can empower the people who work for you. If you are successful in giving your people power, they will surely lift you on their shoulders to heights of power and success you never dreamed possible.

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.

Nontalent vs. Weakness

As you might expect, great managers take a welcomingly pragmatic view of our innate imperfection. They begin with an important distinction between weaknesses and nontalents. A nontalent is a mental wasteland. It is a behavior that always seems to be a struggle. It is a thrill that is never felt. It is an insight recurrently missed. In isolation, nontalents are harmless. You might have a nontalent for remembering names, being empathetic, or thinking strategically. Who cares? You have many more nontalents than you do talents, but most of them are irrelevant. You should ignore them.

 However, a nontalent can mutate into a weakness. A nontalent becomes a weakness when you find yourself in a role where success depends on your excelling in an area that is a nontalent. If you are a  server in a restaurant, your nontalent for remembering names becomes a weakness because regulars want you to recognize them. If you are a salesperson, your nontalent for empathey becomes a weakness because your prospects need to feel understood. If you are an executive, your nontalent for strategic thinking becomes a weakness because your company needs to know what traps or opportunities lie hidden over the horizon. You would be wise not to ignore your weaknesses.

 Great managers don’t. as soon as they realize that a weakness is causing the poor performance, they switch their approach. They know that there are only three possible routes to helping the person succeed. Devise a support system. Find a complementary partner. Or find an alternative role.  Great managers quickly bear down, weigh these options, and choose the best route.

 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