Greed

Technically, greed is not one of the seven cardinal (deadly) sins, avarice is. Greed is an excessive desire to get or have, as wealth or power, beyond what one needs or deserves. There is no mechanism , or even rationale, for deciding what  one needs  or deserves  or what is excessive.

Pride is the first of the seven cardinal sins, but we are encouraged to be proud of country, school, family, employer, and other institutions. The issue is not pride but the form that pride takes. This applies to wanting more than one has, what some people call greed. It depends on how the greed affects behavior. Greed is not bad. Immoral and unethical behavior is bad.

Greed means the desire to have more than one has. This trait leads, through the invisible hand, to competition. Greed causes us to want more in a free, competitive society we have to work harder and smarter. This increases human welfare by providing more and better marketing mixes (product, price, distribution, and promotion). It is the marketing mix that satisfies the buyer’s wants and needs. Competition keeps greed in check except when we act immorally. In business competition, unlike sports, there can be more than one winner.

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.

Group Cohesiveness

Group cohesiveness results from all forces acting on the members to remain in the group. The forces that create cohesiveness are attraction to the group, resistance to leaving the group, and the motivations to remain a member of the group. Group cohesiveness is related to many aspects of group dynamics—maturity, homogeneity, and manageable size.

Group cohesiveness can be increased by competition or by the presence of an external threat. Ether factor can serve as a clearly defined goal that focuses members’ attention on their task and increases their willingness to work together.

Successfully reaching goals often increases the cohesiveness of a group because people are proud to be identified with a winner and to be thought of as competent and successful. They may be one reason for the popular phrase, “Success breeds success.” A group that is successful may become more cohesive and possibly even more successful.

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.

 

Learn from Operations of other Organizations

There is nothing wrong with learning from other organizations. You should search each reasonable source for ideas that you can adapt—don’t be afraid or too proud to borrow ideas from anyone. Remember that to copy from one person is plagiarism, to copy from lots of people is research. If you offer a service, you might start by looking at the operations of a highly successful service provider. You can learn a lot by walking around companies and thus see how they have tackled their decisions about location, layout, capacity, product design, process design, performance measures, logistics, stock control, technology used, staffing, pricing, amount of vertical integration, maintenance and replacement, and financing.  When you look for improvements, see how other organizations have solved similar problems, and don’t be afraid to borrow good ideas.

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

Managers are not just Leaders in Waiting

Managers do things right. Leaders do the right things.” Conventional wisdom is proud of maxims like this. It uses them to encourage managers to label themselves “leaders.” It casts the manager as the dependable plodder, while the leader is the sophisticated executive, scanning the horizon, strategizing. Since most people would rather be a sophisticated exective than a dependable plodder, this advice seems positive and developmental. It isn’t: it demeans the manager role but doesn’t succeed in doing much else. The difference between a manager and a leader is much more profound than most people think. The company that overlooks this difference will suffer for it.

 The most important difference between a great manager and a great leader is one of focus. Great managers look inward. They look inside the company, into each individual, into the differences in style, goals, needs, and motivation of each person. These differences are small, subtle, but great managers need to pay attention to them. These subtle differences guide them toward the right way to release each person’s unique talents into performance.

 Great leaders, by contrast, look outward. They look out at the competition, out at the future, out at alternative routes forward. They focus on broad patterns, finding connections, cracks, and then press home their advantage where the resistance is weakest. They must be visionaries, strategic thinkers, and activators. When played well, this is, without doubt, a critical role. But it doesn’t have much to do with the challenge of turning one individual’s talents into performance.

 Great managers are not mini-executives waiting for leadership to be thurst upon them. Great leaders are not simply managers who have developed sophistication. The core activities of a manager and a leader are simply different. It is entirely possible for a person to be a brilliant manager and a terrible leader. But it is just as possible for a person to excel as a leader and fail as manager. And, of course, a few exceptionally ralented individuals excel at both.

 If companies confuse the two roles by expecting every manager to be a leader, or if they define “leader” as simply a more advanced form of “manager,” then the all-important “catalyst” role will soon be undervalued, poorly understood, and poorly played. Gradually the company will fall apart.

 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

Enthusiasm in Action

Make no mistake: The more closely a person can identify with the end result of his work, the more enthusiastic and productive the individual will be.

 A person who owns a large furniture factory takes enormous pride in his people. And they are mighty proud of him, too. He is a master in helping his personnel identify with what his company does. It is a powerful enthusiasm builder.

 “Take my truck drivers,” he explained. “They work very hard, never complain, and take more than their share of risks. Our drivers identify with their work. When they deliver a load – maybe two thousand miles away – they sign all documents, ‘delivered with pride by ________________.’ Signing their names makes them think, ‘I did it. I delivered this load with my skill, cauition, and hard work.’ When they phone the office to let us know they’ve made it, they always begin with, ‘This is ______________. Mission accomplished!’

 But employee identification doesn’t stop there, a team of three to five employees finish off and inspect each piece of furniture. And their names appear on a neat label. This gives them pride and it sure helps sell the furniture when customers know human beings – not machines – put it together.

 Even secretaries in his plant are identified with the letters, reports, price quotations (everything that is typed) not by initial (no one knows people’s initials) but by name.

 Identification with work done is focusing on the big, the important, and it is enthusiasm in action.

 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

Distinctive Competence

Distinctiveness is a relative concept – an organization is distinctive with respect to a benchmark established with reference to aspirations. For example, an organization may aspire to become the largest organization of its type in a region. Thus, one aspect of distinctiveness will be related to other organizations within that region, as this is their benchmark – not elsewhere in the world. However the benchmark for distinctiveness may change as the business model or livelihood scheme is explored – aspirations may become more ambitious as the group discovers that its distinctive competences are more distinctive than they had thought. Alternatively, sometimes a group realizes that they are not exploiting their distinctiveness as fully as they might, because they have not appreciated fully the nature of their distinctiveness.

The opposite may also occur. Here, a group discovers that much of what is distinctive is also useless in relation to their current aspirations. Many distinctive competences of an organization grow over time and the organization becomes so proud of them that they forget why they needed them. Distinctiveness is therefore relative to a benchmark, usually with respect to other organizations, existing or potential, as defined by the aspirations, rather than to any absolute criterion. This means that aspirations can subsequently be changed to become less demanding if increasing distinctiveness is difficult to come by. Exploring distinctive competences and aspirations must therefore be done together.

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 contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight