• Posts Tagged ‘Management’

    How will the company of the future look like?

    Thursday, November 12th, 2009

    Is it possible to convert your yob to become your calling? Would you go to your job if you would receive a SMS early in the morning that you have a 10 million euro’s on your bank account? Would you carry your company’s mission statement in written in your wallet ten years after you retired and read it several times a week? Probably not many of us would answer yes on those questions. And maybe that it because we still don’t see our yob as our calling.

    The next question I would like to have the answer, how the author of the article “A Different Kind of Company” knows how the ideal job will look like? Because he read thousands of the reports where participants of his course Creativity and Personal Mastery where explaining the ideal job in detail. With the same authority Mr. Rao is writing about what these participants find distasteful about their organizations – and these are supposed to be some of the largest and best-known firm in the world.

    Mission statement of the future
    Would have to provide something greater then the company itself. Purely for the use outside of the company I was thought to provide not a mission statement but a positioning statement and a reassurance statement.
    Positioning statement should have
    + the name of the firm;
    + should have the statement that this firm has the leading expertise in their core business;
    + and should be positioning either geographically either in parts of the market.
    Reassurance statement should say who do you help and how. You should describe to whom are you helping. And what are the benefits of your help, at lest two. Last, you should name three of your references.
    This is very appropriate way if you want to explain to someone outside of your company what do you do.

    For you internal use, which is even more important you should have set up the vision of the company. Usually it is said that vision should be set up both, in quantitative and qualitative manner. And the stakeholder  of your company should recognise themselves in that vision.

    We should also have in mind that it is very important if we walk the talk. Is our company really living the mission statement or is that just another public relations statement. Namely we should have in mind that the classical capitalistic idea – where each person acts solely in his or her self interest and market forces somehow magically this selfish activity into social good – is dying. And that claim was made in February 2008, way before the outburst of the economic crises.

    Employees in the organization of the future
    Should be treated with following attributes:
    + Trust   + Justice   + Transparency   + Learning   + Competence   + Fun   + Flexibility
    The organization of the future is not going to try to “motivate “ workers. Instead, it should go to great lengths to find out what is demotivating them and try to ged rid of whatever that is. The main goal or better to say the way is to try to accomplish those members of the organizations to resonate with earlier described mission statement. Good example could be case of the early success of the Starbucks owns much to the decisions of the Howard Schultz to offer health insurance also to part-time workers.

    Customers in the organization of the future
    To be continued…

    Source: Srikumar S. Rao: A Differnet Kind of Company. Leader to Leader Institute.

    Explanation is the key

    Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

    We don’t think much about speaking until we have to connect with the audience to explain benefits, challenges and to set some expectations. Communication expert John Baldoni states that explanation is the key attribute to leadership communications. What does it mean and why are we doing it are crucial questions that each leader must answer with straightforward explanation that should not lack persuasion or excitement.

    To become an effective explainer, Baldoni suggests that we define 3 aspects:
    1.    Define what it is.
    2.    Define what it is not.
    3.    Define what you want people to do.

    Nevertheless, great explaining is much more than listing benefits. Find a middle way between too much detail where audience will lose interest and too little, where audience just won’t be convinced. The explanation should be a reasonable, easy to apprehend rationale. And never forget to ask yourself the three basic questions.

    Source: http://blogs.bnet.com/harvard/?p=2790

    Lea Lipovšek, business design assistant at Vizuarna, strategic design consultancy