Introduction to Management closing comments

The Introduction to management course was really too short and compressed (in 7 lectures during the second half of the term). To do justice to this important subject and have time to properly digest the material I would have prefered this be spread over the whole term.

I found the course to be the most interesting this term regardless of whether I was able to recall all the material under exam conditions. In my view, these management issues and concepts are really central to running a business and one of the core reasons why I was interested in doing an MBA was to be exposed to these ideas.

Some of the topics we touched on I'm sure will be explored more in the OB course.
I am looking forward to that.

Day after the exam

The day after -

I went through all the theory in chapters 1,2,3,6,8 - I also went through all the practice questions on the course home folder and memorized definitions for the end of each section.

That was bad technique because I misunderstood how much emphasis was going to be placed on the practical case studies (50%). I understood that the case studies were not going to be addressed. What was actually assessed in the second half of the exam was recall of the case studies. I was expecting to have to assess a situation in a new case study, or answer short definition questions like the sample exams.
The format of the exam took me by surprise and OK I blew most of the answers and didn't use the words strategic planning.

Lecture 7 Lego Bridge - Planning exercise

Actually was not expecting to be called upon to give my report in the second session and so was not mentally prepared to give the report.

For me as an observer (a manager is also an observer) - I need to better my skills on summarizing and reporting

What did we learn from the actual planning game?

There is often a subconscious trade off between calculation and intuition where there is a complex situation that requires a reduction in the number of factors in order to make a decision.

Can you plan for every eventuality?
There are cultural issues - There are the two extremes , the difference between Israeli "wing it" culture and the Anglo-Saxon exhaustive planning approach.
Again every plan must include the option for change and need to keep options open and an iterative approach. There are advantages of flexible planning but there are disadvantages of not having even a skeleton plan

What is required is an optimization method a quantitative approach could be the best method to conserve resources

What are the possible failures:
Human fallibility "its good enough" or "we'll wing it" approach
80/20 rule known as Pareto's Principle (this is the most overused ratio ever). 80% of the time spent on the least important issues - yes that sounds about right in my experience.

Where to start with Prioritization
- This reminded me of the 4 quadrants for urgency v importance I recently came across in project management regarding time management

Where there is a gap moving from implementation to rollout
Plan==>Do
I have seen many a project roll out fail because of these gaps in the process. Better thought out design would have saved a lot of headaches later on. I am currently involved with a project at a major Israeli bank which has overrun and where there are gaps in the solution because of a poor design.

Companies came up with the idea of integrated design e.g. Apple and
Boeing - Mismatches solved by concentric engineering.

The more complex the project the more chance of the project being shelved. So more advanced tools are required to keep there being a gap between design and implementation.

Implementation plan - This is the rational of : Who, why, when, how, what.

Evaluation
Last of the 7 stages of the strategic plan
The last steps of Monitor-Control-Mediate

Software companies are fond of providing business tools to assist in all these steps of the Planning process particularly the steps of design onwards . The company I used to work for concentrating on software tools for Monitor and Control

Lecture 6 Planning

Three Levels : Corporate Level , Business Unit Level , Functional Level
Strategic plan, Tactical plan operational plan

External Issues: employee productivity , local autonomy , local/geographical strategy , Local marketing , employee skills , competitors


Internal issues:

Internal analysis tools : SWOT , TOWS , BCG Matrix

Threshold Competencies and Core Competencies to achieve competitive advantage

CSF and KSS critical and key success factors

Outsourcing services eg DELL

Transparent ceiling - Wallmart v Kmart
All the information about organisation is available to the top level management all the time . This leads to more efficient decision making but can leave the middle level manager with not much to do.

Lego obsessed with designing more complex products
That story made me laugh - It is so true that companies go and develop products without regard to what the customers want. Again I have seen many development teams and product owners go off and add functionality that customers do not want while leaving out critical functionality. One wonders if they ever left their "Ivory Tower" to see what is happening on the outside and how their products are being used.

Last three phases of the Planning process

Design - Or develop action plan - Goals,tasks,objectives,outcomes
Implementation - How do we go about doing the task
Evaluation - Monitor , control , remediate(fix), check

I found a good wiki on strategic management

Lecture 5b Strategic Management Process

Criteria for setting - Goals and Objectives

SMART - specific measurable achievable/attainable relevant/realistic time bound
Actually doesn't the HITT book have "acceptable" for A .. not sure ?
These must support strategic goals and show that we are adding value

Mergers and acquisition - I have seen in the software industry that it usually takes a few years to properly integrate newly acquired technology into new versions of existing products.. Sometimes there can be overlaps in product sets or tools . I have seen this over and over at my former company. With the added restriction of having to provide backward compatibility for earlier users of older technology.

Competative strategy

Corporate , Competative , Functions


Concentration, Vertical Integration ,Diversification

Market Driven (ouside-in) or resource driven (inside-out)

FIT v STRETCH
Fit : alligned with ongoing demands/constraints (tastes and constraints of environment)
Stretch: Propriortry technology, patents , inovation , repositioning


Competative Advantages - need to be sustainable over time

Edward-De-Bono lateral thinking - surpetition - not running the same race
Advice to Ford UK - buy parking lots

Joint ventures / Strategic alliances

Amazon - virtual company - all outsourced

Competative Strategy - stratagy to complete with others in the same area

product - poisitioning and differentiation

Cost leader - low end v quality

Company needs to create a value proposition - graph of car reliability v price

focused v generic - Focus on Niche

Lecture 5a Post On Leadership

(1)Leadership

Power base -- Dynasty , relationships , personal example , charisma

Inspire - refocus organization on goals e.g. Churchill "We'll fight them on the beaches"

(2) Contingency - right style for right situation

(3) Power
incumbent -- successful plan , resolution of honour , promotion to "highest level of incompetency" - (don't we just know it!!)

George Bernard Shaw - progress built on the unreasonable guy

Issues: Management v Leadership

My own perception is that managers usually use their preferred style rather than a conscious thought process as to how best to govern.
This is OK when things are going well. When things get tough however they become more Authoritarian.

I was looking for that John P Kotter (from Harvard) slide regarding the difference between Management v Leadership but didn't find that in the power points.

Outdoor leadership training

Nov 4 - Workshop Team Tech
Leadership styles - Democratic v Authoritarian v Free Reign

Democratic seemed most successful today but there seemed to be agreement that this was only within the confines of this exercise day but in real life Authoritarian style might give better results.

I got no credit for trying to make a coup d'état and take over on the weak leadership exercise. Actually David the "weak leader" got the credit.
Generally the case that the manager takes the credit where it is the subordinate that may have done the hard donkey work... that's maybe part of the game.

Would have liked to explore the issues more on who gets promoted to leader and why .
It seems to me in my experience that the assertive or charismatic personality will get promoted regardless of ability. I have been told on a number of occasions that I am not assertive enough.. I have been on number of these games and never emerge as the leader.

leadership styles

Lecture 4b Strategic Management

Double Loop:

Strategic intent = vision statement : personality dreams tradition ego id
Organizational mission - statement of organization of how to acheive the dream

- Sometimes companies need to reinvent themselves completely in order to survive this means they might need to review their Strategic intent and mission. We had the example of Xerox .. The company I used to work for CA had a major shake up with top management ending up behind bars a few years ago. The company undertook a complete review and redefined its mission. The new CEO defined new organizational mission outlined as 6 principles and the company changed its name and logo to reflect a new start under new management.

Analysis of environment - external and internal -----> feedback loop 1

Set objectives
Determine requirements and Assess resources
Develop action plans
Implement plans ----> feedback loop 2

Loopback cycle : Plan , Do , Check , Improve

Xerox example of operating in single loop not aware of competing technology
had to "refocus" and changed strategic intent vision/mission from "copier company" to "document company"

First loop : Vision/Intent, Mission/Focus, Goals, Objectives
Second Loop : Plan , Do , Check, Improve

Slogan/vision - external and internal componants , issues of transparancy and customer service

- I believe that customers now demand better service and that companies do better if they are perceived to be more transparent in their operations. They somehow need to do this without compromising their own propriatory knowledge.

Issues: Phaelentropic activities
Is there any return, after all this is at the expense of profit.
stakeholders and community ecological social index
perceived social responsibility

External mission ---> implications for internal practice

- In my opinion social awareness is a must now and Company needs to be on the social bandwagon, if not their corporate reputation may be at stake.

Lecture 4a External Analysis: Response - Lateral Thinking

Application of the External Analysis to real situation

After STEPG and 5 forces - how do we respond:

Define , Recognise , Analyze , Respond

Response:
- political lobbying : direct influence
- strategic fit : what we might be able to do
- technology response
- organizational flexibility: relocation , processes revamping, effectiveness efficiency.
- information management

Now we need to pull together the external and internal analysis
create customer need : marketing advertising ..

Can we change peoples ideas , tastes , processes?
Listen to customers - statistics and market research

internal/ external - A good manager should balance both the external analysis with good competitive intelligence .

Lecture 3c Business Environment

1) Factors and forces
2) Links between factors
3) Opportunity based on those factors

3 concentric circles:
External Environment , Task (Industry), Internal

StepG
Social/cultural
Technological
Economic
Political/Legal
Global

- Comment was made that in Israel regulations can change in a much smaller time frame than say Europe or USA and that regulations do change. I agree that is part of the culture that in Israel people are not willing to accept the status quo. This has its advantages in terms of flexibility and innovation but disadvantages in terms of stability. In terms of the political peace process (without taking sides) one needs to just look at the changes in political opinion and how this might affect the external analyses.

5 Forces Driving industry
Michal Porter - Harvard Uni - Competition

Industry competitors , potential entrants , buyers , suppliers , substitutes

Dell - JIT Just in time manufacturing , ousource to Fed-Ex

Substitutes - IP phone

Industry competition - ties in with the marketing Product Price Promotion Place

Patents - "You better have money to protect/defend it"

Building company exercise - We showed how you use the STEPG process and then go through the steps Define-Recognise-Analyse-Respond
This is building up to full strategy analysis

Good sources for research might be official sites like LMAS
or the CIA year book

Conclusion from this lecture was that companies usually consider looking at external
factors as a luxury but they should be balancing external scan and Competative inteligence

On SAP and the Enterprise Resource Planning

- My understanding is that ERP is good in theory but that most SAP projects fail (According to Gartner there is a 70% failure rate)

Lecture 3b What managers do - skills and roles

3 Roles: Interpersonal - figurehead,leader, liaison
Decision maker - entrepreneurial , handle disturbance, resource allocate , negotiate
Informational - Monitor, Disseminate, spokesman

CI - Competitive intelligence - gain valuable info in practices believes and key factors of significant competitors

Tacit v explicit knowledge
tacit knowledge is knowledge that people carry in their minds and is, therefore, difficult to access

Cultural compatibility and Teva and not acquiring a company in Australia

- I worked for 18 yrs for CA a software company that had (and still has) a reputation for growth through acquisition of new technology rather than innovating in house and being ruthless in regard to dissecting the organization acquired. Never was there any talk of synergies or cultural compatibilities of the companies acquired. I believe that was done on purely technological criteria.

Lecture 3a Doing the right thing : Effectiveness

How to analyze the business environment
Henry Mintzberg - what an effective manager does versus where does a manager devote time:

Process factors: time, activities, attention, rewards, says=>does

Outcomes: Efficiency "Doing things the right way"
Effectiveness "Doing the right thing
Manager needs to think out of the box and be both effective and efficient

- I had vague recollections of this before - I think that's why I asked myself the question after the last lecture - I know this is leading to discussion of strategy

outputs/inputs = efficiency

Management fashion: zeitgeist
- Different theories and approaches are going to be more in vogue at different times
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Recent Management Theories and emphasis:
1970s Efficiency - lean and mean, cut costs
1980s TQM - total quality management
Demming having fun in Japan revolutionizing manufacturing process
ISO 900 ISO2000
1990s Quality

- I remember countless audits my company (CA) went through in the 90s to be IS9000 compliant.. It did help us to think about and formalize our procedures . of course mostly this was in preparation for the biannual audits by external consultants after that it was almost back to the old way of doing things .. One plus side was that at least we knew how things were "supposed to be done".

3M - innovation ( Interesting company!!) open creative culture
new management introduce SIX SIGMA define measure analyze improve control
Define measure Analyze Improve Control - what was the 6th one?

Old culture prior to Jack Walsh
large R&D discoveries by serendipity
■ noun the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way.

Eli Goldratt - The goal - TQM product and process - Bottlenecks - Theory of constraints -- We didn't go into much detail

1990s to NOW Take the Middle road : Controls but sometimes need to open things up


Where the good management ideas come from - Management Consulting companies "Get paid for dreaming"
But on the other side note the Boston Globe: "Beware of consulting companies"

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Lecture 2 Management as a school of thought

We looked at Douglas McGregor's X v Y approach to management .. I guess I fell into the politically correct trap of grading my management style a high Y somewhere >60.
Most of my managers over the years I think have been high X with value of about 45 .. I believe most managers have moved somewhere in the mid range between X and Y over the last 10-15 years moving more toward Y but I don't think anyone comes close to true Y management in practice .

Time and motion studies by Fredrick Taylor and the Gilbreiths reminded me of the Charlie Chaplin film "Modern Times" which is a satire on this approach

Planning and Gantt charts - I am familiar with this from my project management role and study.
This is a science in itself with critical path analysis Earned value etc .. Most project managers use these tools to present the current status rather than using the full capabilities to make their organization and planning of the project more efficient.

Max Weber and "Bureaucracy" - There has been a shift away from too much of this in UK and USA .. with demands in politics for more open government, less red tape and less "gobbledygook" . I assume this has filtered into organizations as well.

Israel does seem to be back in the 80's well behind on these fronts both in Bureaucracy and with labor relations with Labor Unions still trying to preserve the old hierarchies and fighting the old battles. In US and UK the unions were long ago broken by Thacherism and Reaganomics

On Hawthorn Studies and the move towards Soft management styles - My experience dealing with HR has been pretty negative.
Though companies seem to offer more and more rewards and perks and give the illusion of caring .. when it comes to the crunch they are of course there to forward the interests of the company.

Systems approach with inputs and outputs reminded me of work I have done on improving business processes within companies using models such as ITIL

Contingency approach - Take the best of all worlds and use where appropriate .. Makes sense ...

Lecture 1 - What is management

I think I had most of the points: This is what I had writen before Dr J went into this
Q1) What is your personal definition of a manager? (Is this different from the question "what is management"?) Handles resources - both human and financial - for some gain or goal
Q2 What does a manager do? Leadership, Decides, Responsibility, Motivates , delegation,
These are pretty descriptive - I think that more normatively managers tend to deal with Crisises and interpersonal problems.
Q3 Link to company success? I guess there is a link . If managers were to use the resources they control effectively/efficiently and make the right decisions.

Observation: The only problem I see it is that managers tend to be promoted not on their ability to manage but on other criterea.. such as good technically.

On the Balloon incident .. The manager should have had the engineer in the balloon with him and delegated the navigation.. The engineer has no idea where the balloon has to go .. he just makes it fly . The manager tells him where to fly (and how much to charge for the ride?)
That fits in with the CSA -> DSA current to desired state

for my ref:

Business week