Peer Appraisals

With more firms using self-managing teams, peer or team appraisals—the appraisal of an employee by his or her peers—are becoming popular. For example, an employee chooses an appraisal chairperson each year. That person then selects one supervisor and three other peers to evaluate the employee’s work.

Peer appraisals can predict future management success. Peer ratings have other benefits. Peer appraisals have an immediate positive impact on improving perception of open communication, task motivation, social loafing, group viability, cohesion, and 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, and my Lectures.

Muddled Communication

It is only when an organization fails to communicate effectively with its market place that problems are sometimes noticed.

The first response to a drop in sales can be an immediate call for a new identity of a new advertising campaign. Rebranding may be expensive but it can be an easier pill to swallow than brutally honest self-examination of core relationships.

Less than scrupulously honest communication companies will queue up to offload and organization’s cash if they think there is money to be made; but putting a new face on a sick organization is purely papering over the cracks.

Muddled communication has often been the first point of contact with new companies. Many companies prefer easy, con-confrontational action that they can take immediately to challenging questions and the need to may be think and behave in new ways.

Only when presented with unequivocal evidence are some companies prepared to take hard decisions, especially if it involves the agreement and support of peers—worse still—bosses.

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.

 

Goodbye Industrial Economy, Hello Global Knowledge Economy

Goodbye the state running things, hello Global Joe Citizen empowered by the technology-driven changes in the first decade of the 21^st Century and with a mobility beyond the wildest dreams of those who brought us into this world. Yes, I do mean us, fellow global citizens.

The 20^th Century was all about us having to rely on governments to deal with those issues beyond our personal capacity to influence, regardless of how much concern and anxiety were personally invested. Simply put, this has all changed.

Just as the world landscape is now determined by a new order of collaborative arrangements, so the time has come for us all to seize control of our choices and pursue new personal value-led collaborations.

Together you and I must make it work for all our fellow global citizens, not least the 800 million who will go to bed hungry tonight. If the values, beliefs, ideals, and ethics that we take with us to work each day do not result in our business environment adding rather than detracting from the sum of global cooperation, our long-term personal and corporate business goals are doomed to failure.

But what we do have is a business environment pregnant with possibility and unfettered by past constraints of geography and technology. It is up to us as individuals to nurture an atmosphere where value-led decision making thrives.

Corporate culture looking beyond traditional business horizons is the agenda item of the moment. The public scrutiny and disapprobation flowing from corporate scandals on a global scale request and require a re-evaluation of compliance with ethical, environmental and social imperatives. A new collective, caring culture is no longer just an attitude of mind rather than depth of pocket; it makes good business sense.

Therein is your desirable future: you are the engine that drives new connection between global business and your community. Integrity is the fuel that drives both the engine and the process. Take control of your choices and root them in the eternal triangle of truth, trust and peace. Without truth there can be no trust and without trust there can be no peace. Adopt this landscape for mapping your relationships. Until people trust you, they will not change with you. So many of today’s leaders now fail to fulfill their ambitions for this very reason. Never underestimate the power of good intent. When you change, the world changes with you.

The more your ambitions are aligned to the benefit of humanity as well as your business, the more relevant the product of your labor will be. In turn, the more valuable you become in the market place, the greater your capacity to take control of your choices and your future. A values-led approach and entrepreneurial spirit advancing an enterprise culture are not mutually exclusive.

On the distant future day you finally retire from your business world, your peers, looking back, will judge you on your actions and achievements not just on your beliefs.

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.

 

Innovators

The small group of innovators is the first people to accept a new idea or product. Innovators exhibit a high level of venture. They also are more willing to take risks, because innovation requires risk taking.

Another characteristic of innovators is that they are willing to seek social relationships outside of their local peer group; that is, they are cosmopolites. Innovators also tend to be younger, higher in social status, and better educated than later adopter groups.

Innovators interact mostly with other innovators and rely heavily on impersonal informational sources, rather than on other people, to satisfy their information needs.

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.

 

What Employees Need to Learn

What employees need to learn, beyond their immediate assignments, depends on what the employer wants them to contribute. Leading companies want employees to consider themselves members of the organization, to recommend and implement ways of making the company more successful. Consequently, they tell them a great deal about corporate goals and plans, the operation of the job site, the jobs of peers and managers, the functions of adjacent work units, the technology in use, effective problem-solving methods, and actual costs.

A handful of companies encourage employees to learn the act of technological adaptation, an art whose importance is destined to grow. Potential new uses of flexible automation, robots, or end-user office automation are limited only by the ingenuity of the users. Continuous learning centers are a good example of how to stimulate adaptation.

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.

Let People Fail

Throughout history people who have achieved the greatest success in life have been those who were not afraid to fail. In fact, most of them failed time and again and often in a very big way.

Thomas Edison tried 2,500 times to invent the light bulb before he finally succeeded. Abraham Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for public office 6 times before he was elected president. History is replete with stories of famous people who were well acquainted with failure; people who set goals higher than what they at first could achieve and who then preserved until they became conquerors.

If a certain amount of failure is intrinsic to great success, why is it such an evil word? Why do most of us place severe limitations on ourselves in order to avoid failure, even to the point of sacrificing our dreams?

A person trained in the behavioral sciences could have a field day with this question. For our purposes here, in very simple terms, we can say that people are afraid of failure because they never learned to see it as friend. Instead of seeing it as a stepping-stone to success, they view it as a blockade.

In order for people to realize their full potentials they must be given permission to fail. When this permission is granted the element of fear is removed. Fear is the great enemy of power. As long as people are consumed by the fear of being rejected, the fear of losing face with their peers, or the fear of losing their job, they can never reach their full potentials.

When people are denied permission to fail, they play it safe. Their reach never exceeds their grasp. They set goals lower than what they are capable of achieving. The result is that the company loses valuable productivity. Mediocrity instead of excellence is the norm. business opportunities are missed. And the people are deprived of the exhilarating experience that comes from taking risks, beating the odds, and accomplishing the near impossible.

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.

Codes of Ethics for Financial Executives

Financial Executives International (FEI) recommends that all senior financial professionals adhere to a strong ethical code of conduct, sign it annually, and deliver it to their company’s board of directors. Fr many years, members of FEI have signed such a code, in an effort to commit to its principles. Senior financial officers hold an important and elevated role in corporate governance. As members of the various management teams, they are uniquely capable and empowered to ensure that all stakeholders’ interests are appropriately balanced, protected, and preserved.

FEI’s code provides principles to which members are expected to adhere to and to advocate. It embodies rules regarding individual and peer responsibilities, as well as, responsibilities to employers, the public, and other stakeholders. Violations of EFI’s Code of Ethics may subject the member to ensure, suspension or expulsion under procedural rules adopted by FEI’s Board of Directors. The code states that all members of FEI will:

1. Act with honesty and integrity, avoiding actual or apparent conflicts of interest in personal and professional relationships.
2. Provide constituents with information that is accurate, complete, objective, relevant, timely, and understandable.
3. Comply with applicable rules and regulations of federal, state, provincial, and local governments, and other appropriate private and public regulatory agencies.
4. Act in good faith, responsibly, with due care, competence and diligence, without misrepresenting material facts or allowing one’s independent judgment to be substantiated.
5. Respect the confidentiality of information acquired in the course of one’s work except when authorized or otherwise legally obligated to disclose. Confidential information acquired in the course of one’s work will not be used for personal advantage.
6. Share knowledge and maintain skills important and relevant to constituents’ needs.
7. Proactively promote ethical behavior as a responsible partner among peers, in the work environment and the community.
8. Achieve responsible use of and control over all assets and resources employed or entrusted.
9. Report known or suspected violations of this Code in accordance with the FE Rules of Procedure.
10. Be accountable for adhering to the Code.

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.

Memos and Reports

Memos and Reports are perhaps the most commonly used medium for communicating business information and probably the most abused. The benefits of using memos and reports are that they allow the manager to communicate a lot of detailed information at one time. They also provide documentation of what was communicated that can be helpful in the future. The same message can be communicated to a number of people within a relatively short period of time.

The problem with memos is that they often go unread for one or more of the following reasons:

• They have no clear objective or purpose.
• They are too long.
• They are written in a way that is difficult for the reader to understand.
• Irrelevant data is included.

Reports are also a problem in many companies. Stacks and stacks of reports are generated and circulated on a regular basis and much of the time no one reads them because:

• The reports are sent to the wrong people.
• The reports are prepared in such a way that it is difficult to extrapolate the information needed.
• Too much information is communicated.
• The reports have not changed over time to meet the changing need of the managers.

If you are generating memos and reports within your area, you’ll want to make sure that you are not guilty of any of these shortcomings. If your people are using memos and reports generated by other areas that are not meeting their information needs, you should work with your peers and/or higher-ups to make the necessary changes.

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.

Factual Support

If you can find facts to support your position or set a direction which makes your goal more obtainable, use them. Facts are most effective if they are from a disinterested third party, or your competition.

One great way or pre-sell is to find magazine and other articles which espouse your point in some way and distribute them to your counterparts. People will read published reports before they listen to an argument from a peer or superior. Reading the information somehow makes it theirs.

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.

Stumbling on Leadership

Using today’s methods of managing the technical development process, the most important decision top management makes on a new product is the selection of the group leader. The second most important decision is to stay out of the way and let the leader lead.

But who is a leader? Or, better, who will develop into a leader? The person has a non-authoritative position; that is, a leader has no line authority over such co-workers as peers, peers’ subordinates, temporary employees, vendors (subcontractors, suppliers), customers, and bosses. The leader leads in a milieu that can change from supportive to hostile overnight, with parameters that are almost completely unknown (e.g., competitive reactions), and with a new and even more inexperienced team of people.

Yet that person can overcome virtually every obstacle. That person alone can enthuse and motivate a group of people to do what seems impossible. Fortunately there is lots of this leadership around, managers with successful track records in this work and many managers who are as yet undiscovered. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to pick out the undiscovered.

Compounding all of this is the conviction of some firms that a new products project actually needs two leaders, a creative, inspiring type for early on, and a tough disciplinarian for the later stages. Very rarely do we find people who can do both.

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.