Thursday, September 25, 2003
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D is for:
Decisions
Climbing the corporate ladder brings many benefits, from better pay and perks to the personal satisfaction of increased power and status.
At the same time, the successful manager, particularly in a large company, should find that he is required to do less and less actual work. Instead, he tells other people what to do, and then takes the credit for it – an extremely satisfactory state of affairs. [1]
Unfortunately, the manager also has one other duty: taking decisions.
And with decisions comes the terrifying thought that you may get it wrong, and be seen to have done so.
In response, many managers have developed an array of techniques for avoiding or deferring decisions.
Ducking responsibility is popular. Some managers try to delegate decisions, or put together some form of advisory committee to share the blame when things go wrong. The sad truth, though, is that it simply doesn’t work, unless your manager (or board of directors, or whoever you are responsible to) is unusually naïve.
Procrastination techniques are more subtle, but equally self-defeating. While it is always possible to claim you need more information, the excuse soon wears thin – and while you delay, the situation facing you is probably deteriorating.
Ultimately, the only solution is to overcome your fear of failure. It’s something only you can do, though it does help if you are lucky enough to work in one of those rare companies that foster a supportive and understanding atmosphere.
Meanwhile, a few thoughts may help you screw up your courage:
· Most of your employees are productive, most of the time. Even if you tell them to do the wrong thing, they will probably do something worthwhile, rather than totally destructive.
· Appearing decisive (but not impetuous) is good for your image. Employees will respond to you as a strong leader, colleagues will envy your strength of purpose, and superiors will see you as someone who is going places.
· It’s like going to the dentist. Most of the unpleasantness is in the agonising wait beforehand. The longer you delay, the more you suffer (and the more your teeth decay). You might as well get the pain over and done with.
· The sooner you make the right decision, the sooner you can reap the rewards. The sooner you make a wrong decision, the sooner you will realise your mistake. This will give you a much better chance of salvaging the situation.
· You can always change your mind.
[1] The John F. Kennedy Space Center is named, unsurprisingly, after the president who ordered the space program, rather than any of the designers, technicians or astronauts who sweated to make it happen. After all, crediting the rocket design team – many of whom developed their expertise working on the Nazis’ wartime V2 program – might have presented unwelcome PR problems.
D is for:
Decisions
Climbing the corporate ladder brings many benefits, from better pay and perks to the personal satisfaction of increased power and status.
At the same time, the successful manager, particularly in a large company, should find that he is required to do less and less actual work. Instead, he tells other people what to do, and then takes the credit for it – an extremely satisfactory state of affairs. [1]
Unfortunately, the manager also has one other duty: taking decisions.
And with decisions comes the terrifying thought that you may get it wrong, and be seen to have done so.
In response, many managers have developed an array of techniques for avoiding or deferring decisions.
Ducking responsibility is popular. Some managers try to delegate decisions, or put together some form of advisory committee to share the blame when things go wrong. The sad truth, though, is that it simply doesn’t work, unless your manager (or board of directors, or whoever you are responsible to) is unusually naïve.
Procrastination techniques are more subtle, but equally self-defeating. While it is always possible to claim you need more information, the excuse soon wears thin – and while you delay, the situation facing you is probably deteriorating.
Ultimately, the only solution is to overcome your fear of failure. It’s something only you can do, though it does help if you are lucky enough to work in one of those rare companies that foster a supportive and understanding atmosphere.
Meanwhile, a few thoughts may help you screw up your courage:
· Most of your employees are productive, most of the time. Even if you tell them to do the wrong thing, they will probably do something worthwhile, rather than totally destructive.
· Appearing decisive (but not impetuous) is good for your image. Employees will respond to you as a strong leader, colleagues will envy your strength of purpose, and superiors will see you as someone who is going places.
· It’s like going to the dentist. Most of the unpleasantness is in the agonising wait beforehand. The longer you delay, the more you suffer (and the more your teeth decay). You might as well get the pain over and done with.
· The sooner you make the right decision, the sooner you can reap the rewards. The sooner you make a wrong decision, the sooner you will realise your mistake. This will give you a much better chance of salvaging the situation.
· You can always change your mind.
[1] The John F. Kennedy Space Center is named, unsurprisingly, after the president who ordered the space program, rather than any of the designers, technicians or astronauts who sweated to make it happen. After all, crediting the rocket design team – many of whom developed their expertise working on the Nazis’ wartime V2 program – might have presented unwelcome PR problems.
Monday, September 22, 2003
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C is for:
Customer service
‘The customer is always right’ is definitely the second most annoying cliché in the book. [1]
It may have made some sense once, when businesses were struggling to move on from the Henry Ford ‘any color you like, as long as it’s black’ model of customer service.
But those days are long gone. Consumer activism and the increased visibility of competing products and luxury lifestyles have elevated expectations and produced ever more demanding consumers.
Most companies assume that they have to bow to the customer in order to be competitive. They are right, but only up to a point.
The customers are always right – but only en masse, not individually.
Companies need to compete for the sales they want. And, in most cases, that does not include the 20% of the customers who cause 80% of the aggravation.
The brave manager hunts out difficult customers and sacks them.
Try saying no to unreasonable demands.
Explain, truthfully, that you cannot provide the level of service the awkward customer wants at the prices you charge.
Then take our advice. Recommend he tries your closest competitor, whose efforts to satisfy the one customer you lose might force him to take his eye off the ball – just long enough for you to poach the twenty customers you really want.
[1] The outright winner is, of course, the perennial favourite: ‘Our employees are our most valuable asset.’ See Buzzwords and Cliches.
C is for:
Customer service
‘The customer is always right’ is definitely the second most annoying cliché in the book. [1]
It may have made some sense once, when businesses were struggling to move on from the Henry Ford ‘any color you like, as long as it’s black’ model of customer service.
But those days are long gone. Consumer activism and the increased visibility of competing products and luxury lifestyles have elevated expectations and produced ever more demanding consumers.
Most companies assume that they have to bow to the customer in order to be competitive. They are right, but only up to a point.
The customers are always right – but only en masse, not individually.
Companies need to compete for the sales they want. And, in most cases, that does not include the 20% of the customers who cause 80% of the aggravation.
The brave manager hunts out difficult customers and sacks them.
Try saying no to unreasonable demands.
Explain, truthfully, that you cannot provide the level of service the awkward customer wants at the prices you charge.
Then take our advice. Recommend he tries your closest competitor, whose efforts to satisfy the one customer you lose might force him to take his eye off the ball – just long enough for you to poach the twenty customers you really want.
[1] The outright winner is, of course, the perennial favourite: ‘Our employees are our most valuable asset.’ See Buzzwords and Cliches.
Monday, September 15, 2003
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C is for:
Cost cutting
Cost cutting waxes and wanes in importance in line with a company’s bank balance.
A few quarters of success (or, in the case of some of the more lamentable start-ups of recent years, anticipation of success) leaves cost control a very poor second to the excitement of spending money.
But when times turn bad, ruthless cost cutting takes over.
It is completely the wrong approach.
It is easy to control costs in the good times, because it is easier to avoid building up costs in the first place than to reduce them once they are built into the system.
Most of the costs it makes sense to cut were never justified in the first place.
A little planning – flexible contracts, for example – will make it far easier to reduce costs later in the face of falling demand.
Once you have built up unnecessary costs, cutting them in a hurry rarely works well.
· Marketing budgets are always slashed in every economic downturn, just when companies most need to boost sales – and when the cost-effectiveness of promotional activity is at is highest, with low media costs in an uncluttered market.
· Headcounts are cut, with experienced, talented employees usually the first to accept voluntary redundancy, lumbering you with the dead wood (and a sizeable bill).
· Investment in training and product development is wiped out, ensuring an inadequate workforce and outdated products for the future.
And any spare cash, of course, is paid out in bonuses to managers, as a reward for their sterling performance.
A permanent program of cost control works well. Sporadic cost-cutting is almost guaranteed to backfire.
C is for:
Cost cutting
Cost cutting waxes and wanes in importance in line with a company’s bank balance.
A few quarters of success (or, in the case of some of the more lamentable start-ups of recent years, anticipation of success) leaves cost control a very poor second to the excitement of spending money.
But when times turn bad, ruthless cost cutting takes over.
It is completely the wrong approach.
It is easy to control costs in the good times, because it is easier to avoid building up costs in the first place than to reduce them once they are built into the system.
Most of the costs it makes sense to cut were never justified in the first place.
A little planning – flexible contracts, for example – will make it far easier to reduce costs later in the face of falling demand.
Once you have built up unnecessary costs, cutting them in a hurry rarely works well.
· Marketing budgets are always slashed in every economic downturn, just when companies most need to boost sales – and when the cost-effectiveness of promotional activity is at is highest, with low media costs in an uncluttered market.
· Headcounts are cut, with experienced, talented employees usually the first to accept voluntary redundancy, lumbering you with the dead wood (and a sizeable bill).
· Investment in training and product development is wiped out, ensuring an inadequate workforce and outdated products for the future.
And any spare cash, of course, is paid out in bonuses to managers, as a reward for their sterling performance.
A permanent program of cost control works well. Sporadic cost-cutting is almost guaranteed to backfire.
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Uh oh. Long pause. Sorry about that. Cost Cutting's next and it's a fine little chunk of potted wisdom, but it's not our plan to keep you waiting in suspense.
Might even get it published tonight, if all goes well.
Uh oh. Long pause. Sorry about that. Cost Cutting's next and it's a fine little chunk of potted wisdom, but it's not our plan to keep you waiting in suspense.
Might even get it published tonight, if all goes well.
Tuesday, September 02, 2003
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C is for:
Consultants
You can’t win when it comes to consultants. Even when you choose to use them for the right reasons, you still get it wrong.
This is because of two deeply flawed assumptions: that the consultant knows what he is doing, and that he has your interests at heart.
No sane manager would make the same assumptions about his own staff. Applying the same scepticism to picking and managing consultants is one way of avoiding a lot of trouble.
Some managers prefer not to use consultants. They argue that they know what they are doing already, and a consultant cannot add anything.
This is a breathtaking piece of arrogance. Only the largest companies could possibly hope to have employees covering every area of specialist skills and knowledge in its industry, while the suggestion that your company’s management is beyond reproach is statistically shaky, to say the least.
Other companies seem positively addicted to consultancy.
Weak-minded managers love to use consultants to validate decisions they should take themselves (and may already have taken, implanting them, subtly or otherwise, in the consultant’s brief). And companies engaged in arbitrary cost cutting exercises traditionally lay off experienced employees, only to re-engage them as consultants – doing half the work at twice the price.
C is for:
Consultants
You can’t win when it comes to consultants. Even when you choose to use them for the right reasons, you still get it wrong.
This is because of two deeply flawed assumptions: that the consultant knows what he is doing, and that he has your interests at heart.
No sane manager would make the same assumptions about his own staff. Applying the same scepticism to picking and managing consultants is one way of avoiding a lot of trouble.
Some managers prefer not to use consultants. They argue that they know what they are doing already, and a consultant cannot add anything.
This is a breathtaking piece of arrogance. Only the largest companies could possibly hope to have employees covering every area of specialist skills and knowledge in its industry, while the suggestion that your company’s management is beyond reproach is statistically shaky, to say the least.
Other companies seem positively addicted to consultancy.
Weak-minded managers love to use consultants to validate decisions they should take themselves (and may already have taken, implanting them, subtly or otherwise, in the consultant’s brief). And companies engaged in arbitrary cost cutting exercises traditionally lay off experienced employees, only to re-engage them as consultants – doing half the work at twice the price.
