A recent study done by the London School of Economics and Stanford University shows that a standard of management practice is linked to the favorable financial performance of the business. The way an organization is managed has a strong effect on its performance. It also states that “Management excellence is a matter of internal policy and not just the business environment”
The study cites practices such as:
Setting Goals
Managing Performance
Promoting people based on merit
Managing people
Operations management
The study shows that practical management techniques actually do deliver financial results for the company, yet many organizations do not even attempt to implement such practices. “For companies, the research is good news, suggesting that they access to dramatic improvements simply by adopting good practices used elsewhere.”, says the authors.
The study of 4,600 factories in 12 countries, referenced in the September 8 issue of The Wall Street Journal, found that, “a one-point increase in a factory’s management rating (on a one-to-five scale) translated to a 25% increase in labor productivity and a 65% increase in return on invested capital.”
These results, which HarvardBusinessSchool said are, “pioneering work,” and, “a real innovation in the study of management,” led experts to conclude that, “common management techniques such as setting targets, monitoring performance and ‘lean’ manufacturing actually help companies become more productive and profitable.”
Another convicting - and humbling - finding in this research relates to the apparent inability of factory managers to accurately assess the strengths or weaknesses of their own leadership skills.
“Good management appears to be so strongly linked with good performance that it might be reasonable to expect all firms to make better practices a priority,” shares a Stanford University report about this research. “The techniques of good practice are, after all, available in the public domain in a wide range of easily accessible forms. Yet many firms are still poorly managed…The majority of firms are making no attempt to compare their own management behaviour with accepted practices or even with that of other firms in their sector. As a consequence, many organizations are probably missing out on an opportunity for significant improvement because they simply do not recognize that their own management practices are so poor.”
The authors also note a disparity between family run organizations and those that are not: “Family-run and government-run businesses are less well managed and less productive than similar plants with professional managers. Promoting successive generations of family management “significantly damages company performance,”
As you may already know, one of the best, most easily accessible ways to learn good managerial practices and compare your business practices and experiences with others is in Bullet Proof Manager training.
As proof, consider a manufacturing facility in Florida that applied just one management idea about delegation learned in Bullet Proof Manager training to eliminate a $250,000 production variance.
“This was one of the best management courses I’ve ever experienced,” said one of the training participants from that company.
Remember the London School of Economics research finding above that, “a one-point increase in a factory’s management rating can translate to a 25% increase in labor productivity and a 65% increase in return on invested capital,” and then call for more information about Bullet Proof Manager training for your team.
Diane Berenbaum, Senior VP at Communico, Ltd. and co-author of the book How to Talk to Customers, was recently interviewed and discussed the importance of listeng skills for customer service people.
“Some of the most important skills (of customer service) are what I would call relationship skills. Most of the reps are good at the task stuff – they process orders, fulfill requests, and they learn that quickly. To really stand out and make a difference, they need to focus on relationship skills like listening. That is not just listening to hear the first thing the customer says, it is really listening to understand what the customer wants, what their issues are, and why it is significant to them. We call that the What and the Why. To really listen at that kind of level, you give customers security and confidence, and that will be memorable.”
Diane goes on to say that the biggest mistake made is the neglect of first line and middle managers. These are the people that lead the people that talk to your customers. “…most of the time, the team leader or supervisor is someone that was a really good rep and was promoted. they know their stuff on how to handle the call and how to work the system. They don’t necessarily know how to coach others. Yet, that is what their new role is.
The care and feeding of customers is the responsibility of all managers. To instill the relationship skills into your customer facing people, the mentors and coach must posses these skills themselves. More than that, they must have the ability to articulate the needed behaviors and have the ability to pass them on to others.
When Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak showed the first computer they invented to Atari and Hewlett-Packard for potential investment support, they were soundly rejected. Today, Apple’s sales are $24 billion, and the firm was recently named as Fortune magazine’s 2008 “Most Admired Company.”
Similar to Jobs and Wozniak, the Beatles were rejected by Decca records saying, “We don’t like their sound.”Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor because he “lacked imagination”.
“What makes some people rebound from defeats and go on to greatness while others throw in the towel?” asks an article titled, “If at First You Don’t Succeed, You’re in Excellent Company,” which appeared recently in The Wall Street Journal. “Psychologists call it ‘self-efficacy,’ the unshakable belief some people have that they have what it takes to succeed.”
“It’s easy to have high self-esteem — just aim low,” says Professor and psychologist, Albert. Bandura, who is still teaching at Stanford University at age 82. On the other hand, he notes, there are people with high self-efficacy who “drive themselves hard but have low self-esteem because their performance always falls short of their high standards.”
“People need to learn how to manage failure so it’s informational and not demoralizing,” cites psychologist Albert Bandura, in the article. “We all have mental habits, and once they are set, they are as hard to break as stopping smoking or biting your fingernails.”
Could negative comments you make in the workplace be forming mental habits among employees and yourself that are as destructive and hard to break as smoking?
What are the four words that Amanda Gore shares to help rephrase and reprogram negative thoughts and for “Motivating Through Positive Communication” in such a harshly negative world? Attend Bullet Proof Manager training in August to find out.
You can read the Wall Street Journal article at the following link: here
Has an employee ever called in and said she couldn’t come to work because her pet chicken’s feet were frozen to the driveway?
Ever have a worker ask if he could stay home because his dog wasn’t feeling well, so he tasted the dog’s food and got sick himself?
And who hasn’t thought of calling in sick in order to grieve our favorite contestant being voted off of the hit TV show “American Idol”?
These are all actual excuses that employees have given to their bosses for not coming to work, according to an annual survey conducted by CareerBuilder.com.
“Almost one-third of employees admitted to calling in sick to work last year even though they weren’t ill,” according to CareerBuilder.com’s annual survey. “Fortunately for them, 75 percent of employers believe their employees are sick when they say they are. But some bosses aren’t falling for it. Thirty-five percent of employers checked up on their supposedly sick employees. The majority (67 percent) of those suspicious bosses demanded a note from the doctor. A determined 14 percent actually drove by the employee’s home.”
In October with Nido Qubein and April with George Walther, we’ll learn more about building a more honest workplace through our communication and the example we set as leaders.
You can read all of the top “10 Best Excuses For Calling In Sick” at the following link.
When Apple Computer founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak showed the first computer they invented to Atari and Hewlett-Packard for potential investment support, they were soundly rejected. Today, Apple’s sales are $24 billion, and the firm was recently named as Fortune magazine’s 2008 “Most Admired Company.”
“What makes some people rebound from defeats and go on to greatness while others throw in the towel?” asks an article titled, “If at First You Don’t Succeed, You’re in Excellent Company,” which appeared this week in The Wall Street Journal. “Psychologists call it ‘self-efficacy,’ the unshakable belief some people have that they have what it takes to succeed.”
Similar to Jobs and Wozniak, a teacher once said of a young aspiring writer that if his head were opened, “we would not find any brain but only a lump of white fat.” The young writer’s name was G.K. Chesterton, who believed in himself and went on to become a brilliant British author.
Nobody remembers the name of Chesterton’s teacher.
This Wall Street Journal article also includes an interesting slideshow of famous people who were undeterred by negative talk early in their lives or careers, including The Beatles, Katie Couric, JK Rowling, Winston Churchill, Michael Jordan and Julie Andrews.
“People need to learn how to manage failure so it’s informational and not demoralizing,” claims this Wall Street Journal article. “We all have mental habits, and once they are set, they are as hard to break as stopping smoking or biting your fingernails.”
Could negative comments you make in the workplace be forming mental habits among employees and yourself that are as destructive and hard to break as smoking?
We help our clients rephrase and reprogram negative thoughts and Motivate Through Positive Communication. Call us today and plan to attend a Bullet Proof Manager training session.
We are blessed to have engaged and involved clients enrolled in our leadership and management development program. Each month, we ask our participants to comment on the session and the impact the program is having in their organization and life. I thought I would share what they are saying. These are comments from the last couple of months.
• Easy to follow, relevant analogies and practical steps.
• Outstanding reminders with simple action plans.
• I liked the suggested list of 100.
• Engaging and interesting with great information.
• I appreciated the concrete tools given to help me accomplish new thinking
• I am really excited about starting a “recognize five” plan.
• These were great ideas that I can begin NOW!
• Great interaction that spawned several creative ideas.
• The information was very helpful, especially how to handle interruptions.
• These were great ideas to help cope with stress.
• I love the way the speaker brought valuable ideas with humor.
• Interesting perspective on a topic (negotiating)
• This session was a fresh reminder of the creative process.
• My stress level has improved.
• Pro-active in handling more complex tasks led to reduced stress and increased productivity.
• Six steps to recovery helped ease the customer’s frustration level.
• Acting immediately to resolve the (debit cards not working) issue was the big key to keeping our customers satisfied.
• We have implemented the practice of beginning department meetings with a recognition. This increases morale, thus increasing productivity for our department.
• Using employee recognition has hugely boosted morale!
• Great Speaker – Learned good time management skills
• I will not only be able to utilize these things at work, but in my personal life as well.
• I enjoy the live interaction, it gets you out of your comfort zone and opens you up.
• Great topic with helpful hints on time management and easy to use tactics.
• Very good material.
• Great hints for avoiding voicemail tag!
• Great info – kept your attention – provided actual application ideas.
• The sessions had a lot of good information in them.
• Facilitator was very knowledgeable and prepared. He kept us involved.
• I like having the video and live interaction.
• I like the Four Circles of Service and plan to implement this at my branch.
• This was animated, kept my interest – great information.
• I will start to implement many of these useful ideas as soon as possible.
• Great reminders to inspect how you are recognizing team members.
• The video’s example of a bank was great for us.
• I really enjoyed the group exercises.
• The information about empowering your employees was very helpful.
• I have been able to take back great ideas to implement at the branch.
• This gives more ideas and thoughts compared to other trainings I have been in.
• Speaker was engaging – information regarding recovery was very beneficial.
• Loved the concept of City Noise.
• Negotiating has always been difficult for me. I believe this will allow me to be much more successful.
• Great examples – speaker showed great ways to apply strategies!
• Enjoyed the negotiating role play.
• This session gave me a new way to look at the service I provide. There is always more I can do to improve customer service.
• The explanations of the concepts were clear and easy to understand.
• The speaker was straight to the point and entertaining.
• Sharing information with employees of other companies was very helpful.
• I liked the way Dr. Jim Henning was able to relate topics with everyday issues.
• This session was very eye opening.
• This session was fun and the information was new to me.
• This is a great tool to help me improve as a supervisor.
• I like the group discussion and interaction.
• This was an excellent session with good ideas for implementation into our company.
• I thought the role-play exercise was great.
• This gave me good ideas on how to recognize others.
• This opened my eyes to the need to always consider the value of our services.
• Eye opening comments that work well in any organization.
16 of the “20 Best Companies for Leaders” have participated in Crestcom training. How do your leadership development practices match up against these top firms?
An annual survey of more than 790 companies around the world identified the seven best practices of companies that excel at leadership development. Based on these practices, Chief Executive Magazine then named its annual list of the “Top 20 Companies for Leaders.”
16 of the 20 companies on this list – or their subsidiaries, dealers, bottlers, or local offices – are currently participating in Crestcom training, or have participated in the past.
Here are the top 20 companies.
1. General Electric
2. Procter & Gamble
3. Johnson & Johnson
4. Unilever
5. Coca-Cola
6. Siemens
7. PepsiCo
8. L’Oreal
9. Toyota
10. Hewlett-Packard
11. GlaxoSmithKline
12. Novartis
13. Pfizer
14. HSBC
15. 3M
16. Eli Lilly
17. BASF
18. McDonalds
19. Amgen
20. Vodafone
“In the study, 86.1% of respondents feel that, compared to a few years ago, the urgency to develop leaders in their organization has increased,” claim the researchers who conducted the survey.
Forty percent of companies in a recent study reported that turnover of front-line employees (those people who are the first point of contact with your customers) has increased during the past six months, and 31% of firms report increases in turnover of high-potential employees as well. To halt these trends, 56% of companies in the survey have revisited or revised their retention programs for high-potential personnel and 52% have changed their retention programs for front-line employees.
So what are these companies doing to keep their high-potential people? Three of their tactics relate to Bullet Proof Manager training in May, including “improved training,” cited by 61% of survey respondents and mentioned by Lisa Ford in her May video presentation; and coaching (cited by 54% of survey respondents) and mentoring (mentioned in 43% of surveys). Coaching and mentoring are topics addressed in a May training session featuring Crestcom Video Faculty member John Hersey.
Remember, in any market and in any industry, it always pays to look at new hires. And some of the high-potential people that other firms may be looking at…are your employees. What are you doing to keep them?
What do employees want most from their boss? In Germany, they want better information. In Spain, they want more support from their boss in difficult situations. In France, they want greater contributions to employee development (relates to May BPMIV training). In the U.S., employees want better organization of the way work is done. In all of these countries, employees want greater recognition for the work they do (relates to Jan. and May BPMIV training).
All of this input was collected recently during a survey of employees in the U.S., Morocco and eight European nations, including Germany, Spain, France, Romania and the U.K. Five hundred employees in each country were surveyed for this study. Here are some of the other findings:
“U.S. employees gave the highest ratings of any other country when asked if their immediate supervisor was competent (90 percent), friendly (90 percent, tied with Switzerland), talented (87 percent), honest (87 percent) and open to feedback (83 percent). This demonstrates that professional skills and personal friendliness go hand-in-hand in U.S. manager-employee relationships.”
“It’s important for leaders to understand how employees around the world view their managers and what they expect from them.”
“France is the country with the highest direct report-supervisor dissatisfaction and most ‘purely professional’ relationships. At the other end of the spectrum, the U.S. manager appears to develop a relationship based on friendliness, transparency and thoroughness, where trust is given and leadership is key.”
Italy is closer to France with an even greater level of distrust, while Germany, the U.K. and Switzerland are midway between France and the U.S.”
You can read more about this research at the following links:
“Right now, about 35% of employees are either underemployed and bored, or over their heads and incapable…Right now, about 39% of employees have a manager who cannot provide them leadership.” – Harvard Business School, March 25, 2008
“A big part of the job of leadership is not teaching new movements, but teaching employees how to eliminate unnecessary ones,” shares author Michael Stern in a recent article titled “The 10 worst leadership habits,” appearing in the March 31 edition of Canadian Business magazine.
“Some experts believe that a key element of leadership growth is learning new behaviours,” continues Stern. “I believe it’s frequently more important to eliminate behaviours that are detrimental and counterproductive.”
Stern then uses some metaphors from the world of golf to describe the top-10 practices that leaders should eliminate from their “management game.”
Some of the practices shared in the article include: “getting into the weeds” (this refers to when leaders get overly involved in the details of employees’ work, to the detriment of their own leadership responsibilities); “beware of the traps” (being promoted from a top employee to a manager requires that you modify some behaviors); and “being stingy with recognition and praise” (“If you want people to accomplish great things, you have to let them know you believe they can do it.”).
“Acknowledging bad habits isn’t easy, but in business — as in golf — it’s the key to mastery,” writes Stern.
Stern also shares an interesting quote that relates to Bob Johnson’s August module on delegation, where he says, “Maybe you can make a project or decision 5% or 10% better if you poke your nose in, but there’s also a price to pay. In my opinion, that potential 10% quality increase comes at a cost of about 50% of your subordinates’ personal commitment to the task. I don’t think that’s a good exchange.”
