Mar 1, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
Writing position descriptions for employees takes up a lot of management time, just another job that has to be done by a date.
If this is the case in your business, you have missed the point, as it is people that make a business, not the other way around.
To me it is pretty clear that in culture of success, a place where people want to work, there is robust leadership in place that achieves a few key outcomes in relation to their most important asset, their employees:
- Roles are very clear. Each person understands what they need to do, how what they do contributes to the overall outcomes as well as their own, and the rules and behaviors that are in place.
- Trust and autonomy. People want to work on things that make a difference, and they want the autonomy to go about it, within the rules, but in their own way being measured by the outcomes, and trusted to do the right thing.
- Accountability and due process. With clarity of role definition comes accountability for outcomes whilst what I call “Due Process” is in place. Due process is simply the process of encouraging and enabling debate on an issue, so that irrespective of the final position, all parties who will have to live with the decision have had a chance to have their views heard and considered.
- Praise. Everyone looks for praise when they do something right that is out of the ordinary. In an environment that delivers praise when appropriate, it is also easier to deliver advice, admonishment, and change tactics on areas that are not so good.
Feb 28, 2011 | Leadership, Management, Personal Rant
When I gave up smoking some 25 years ago, I did it “cold turkey” albeit after a lot of practice.
It was not easy, but probably not as hard as the industry supplying stop smoking aids would now have you believe.
The single strategy, which I applied with considerable focus was not that I had “given up” smoking, implying some sort of deprivation, but that I had “taken up” non smoking, a far more positive mind set.
The wider implication of this personal experience, is simply that focusing on what you will do, by when, and measuring the outcome, rather than on what you won’t do, is a far more effective way of getting results.
This is equally valid weather it is a personal task of losing a bit of weight (I will go to the gym Monday, Wednesday, Friday before work) or managing the strategic implementation of a major corporation.
Willpower is a bit like a muscle, the more exercise it gets, the better it works.
Feb 27, 2011 | Leadership, Personal Rant, Strategy
It seems to me that the government is on the horns of a dilemma.
On one hand, they need to appease the Greens, securing their votes, by introducing a carbon tax, a course of action that seems very sensible in the long run when you consider the weight of scientific evidence.
However, in so doing, Gillard will break what honest John Howard would call a “core promise” not to introduce one, hamstringing her ability to sell such a substantial change, at least without an election where the intention is on the table.
We have a two pace economy, digging stuff up and flogging it is the foundation of current prosperity, but we are no longer making anything, and the current “skills shortage” has little to do with employment levels, but everything to do with the gutting of education, particularly trade skills, over the last 25 years.
Now we are going to gut manufacturing, or what is left of it, with a tax that will do nothing to abate worldwide carbon levels, although it may make those who do not have to produce anything to make a living feel good.
There is some merit in the argument that a tax will stimulate innovation in the development of alternatives, and Australia should be in a good position to leverage the innovation, particularly as regards solar, but that is long term, the pain to manufacturing will be immediate, and I wonder if it is worth the pain, even if a miracle happens, and Gillard et al can sell it, and get re-elected at the same time.
This is what strategy is all about, choices, weighing the relative merits of a range of seemingly mutually exclusive options, determining where the best long term use of limited resources lies, whilst maintaining the current P&L. Posturing will not stand up to scrutiny, it takes intellectual honesty and transparency to make tough decisions and have the stakeholders prepared to support a course of action. Pity there is little of either evident in Canberra, or in the states.
Now we have sorted the carbon management issue, consideration needs to be given to a whole range of other strategic choices in health, education, taxation, Australia’s relationships, immigration, defense, and so on.
We seem to be a bit short on the vision thing!.
Jan 25, 2011 | Leadership, Personal Rant, Strategy
Amidst all the public utterances on Australia Day by elected representatives keen to be seen for a moment on the tele, in print, or lauded in the blogosphere, calling for a wiser, more compassionate, considerate, and outward thinking Australia, ….. (add your own platitude) it may be impertinent to list a few questions that will get no space, but from the perspective of this blogger require some consideration. This is where I show my colors as an unrepentant optimist, as I really think we can do more than just consider these things, we can do something useful, take action.
- Do we get value for the (roughly) 30% of GDP chewed up by the public sector? Do we really need three levels of Government to have the sort of communities we aspire to?
- Why are our kids graduating from University to no jobs, when we have been extolled to be a “clever country”? and why are we not training the builders, plumbers, electricians, and mechanics of tomorrow, rather we seem to be denigrating these skills compared to a university education.
- Why are the less fortunate than most of us not improving their lot, despite the $billions thrown at their problems? Perhaps it is because but so little gets through to where it is needed, as all the rent seekers clip the ticket on the way through to those who need it?
- Where has manufacturing in this country gone? Why? And what do we need to do to renew Australia’s position as an innovative creator of technology and then producing the products that result?
- How are we going to realistically maintain a standard of living as the baby boom generation retires, when the ratios of taxpayers to “taxconsumers” is reversed ?
- And while we are on baby boomers, why is it that many hundreds of thousands of experienced, talented, and motivated baby boomers cannot be employed fully?
- Why are we not having a fair dinkum debate about what sort of Australia we want to leave for our kids and grandchildren?
- Why can’t we see far enough ahead to recognise that the training we are giving our kids may have been good for last century, but no good for tomorrow?. We need to encourage creativity in all its forms, an understanding of personal responsibility and accountability, a willingness to have a go, not the structured, left brain dominated, narrow vision emphasis we seem to so value. Without these skills, our kids will struggle with a society profoundly altered over the course of their lifetimes. Consider, a child starting school in 2011 will retire around 2070. We cannot predict what the world will be in 5 years, let alone 55, so we must educate for creativity, action, and intellectual agility, not the rigid structures that may have served to date.
- Why have our elected representatives walked away for the “greatest moral issue of our time?”
I could go on, but you get the drift. Lets talk about things that are important, indeed vital to our long term prosperity and sustainability, but not necessarily going to bite us on the arse today, but if we do not do something now to start to address these long term challenges, the cost down the track will be huge.
Happy Australia day.
Jan 4, 2011 | Change, Customers, Personal Rant, Sales, Small business
Australian manufacturing has been decimated over the last few decades, and whilst there is no single reason for this impact, the determination of the major retailers to use the opening of global sourcing options to reduce their costs and compete on price has been a major contributor.
In my patch, the food industry, a whole layer of mid sized Australian owned food manufacturers have simply gone broke, or sold out to multinationals consolidating manufacturing internationally, as FMCG retailers increasingly sourced overseas. The very few that are left are fighting a rear guard action, and will probably lose.
Therefore, when I hear retailers bleating about the competition from international retailers selling into Australia using the same tools the retailers have used on former Australian suppliers, I think “good one” The latest bleating culminating in an advertising campaign, and lots of appearances by Gerry Harvey amongst others, does nothing but encourage me to believe that the short sighted retail sourcing policies which are just about landed price, with no acceptance of the long term benefits of having a vibrant and innovative manufacturing sector are coming back to bite them on the arse.
Retailers have been dishing it out for years, thumbing their noses at any form of regulation of retail, ignoring the potential and growth of e-tail, it is illuminating to see how they are reacting to some of their medicine coming back to them, although the sales loss is currently only very small, and the consumers they want slugged with GST for online purchases are also their customers, unlikely to thank them for the GST led cost increase.
Get over it, and figure out how to compete on other than shelf price, meanwhile, a few of us are enjoying the sight of retailers squirming.
Dec 28, 2010 | Communication, Personal Rant, Social Media
Around a BBQ over the Christmas break, a bunch of us were chatting about what we would ban as a New Years resolution, as you do. Some innovative solutions to intractable problems emerged, peace in the middle east, an end to nuclear Iran/Korea/Pakistan, a clean coal technology, and so on. Light refreshments were involved.
One that struck me was when someone suggested we ban “Spin Doctors” particularly political ones that set out to persuade us that black is white, that what happened was not as it seemed, that somebody else was to blame, people had not contributed to climate change, and any number of other “Goebbelesque” distortions.
It occurred to me that the problem here was ours, as consumers of information and the media by which it is communicated, we accept the interpretation of data by those with a point of view, and often no knowledge just an outcome in mind. We allow those in positions of influence to distort data to their own purposes, when the opportunity is available to us to consider the data ourselves, and process it into information we are comfortable with.
Data is not information, it is just data to be interpreted to become information, and when used properly, usually with further processing, knowledge.
In this age of data availability and transparency, we only have ourselves to blame when we accept as the truth some dodgy interpretation of data by a dill with an agenda.
