Welcome to Senior Spotlight

In this blog, David Thomas, principal of The Fundamentals Group and a Certified Senior Advisor, writes about issues important to seniors — factors about retirement activities, finances, health, and aging. He also asks some questions that may test senior memories, reminisces about food and drink, and offers comments about current events and changes in the cultural scene. Please visit the Management Fundamentals and Retirement Fundamentals pages for more information on those topics and the services The Fundamentals Group provides in those areas.

CSM 3 – More management lessons

This is installment 3 of “The Common Sense Manager,” a book I wrote 10 years ago.  It covers the second half of Chapter One, “A Little Help Here.” Since this is not a revised edition, some of the references may be a bit out of date.  The fundamentals haven’t changed.

Reading about management

Take a look at business best-seller lists or bookstore databases under the headings “management,” “leadership,” “entrepreneur,” and you’ll find that recent books (1999) seem to fit four categories:  money, power, technology, ethics.  Here are some topics:  Your investments /retirement; global economic stress; the internet and other technology subjects; work, life and mortality; Machiavelli revisited; interpersonal relations, negotiating; new products; IPOs and other financing techniques; A cluster around Deming and quality; branding.

Over the past few years we’ve seen books about habits, time management, negotiating, teams, sensitivity training, “the ropes course,” telecommuting, globalization, matrix management, strategic alliances and others.  Each of these books (or groups; they tend to come in groups) contains good advice, but most of them have a very specific focus.

Some management books are collections of case histories, but they seldom include a comprehensive set of definitions. The many excellent examples in Tom Peters’ books, beginning with “In Search of Excellence,” are easy to understand and worthy of emulation. They can have even greater benefit if you can place them in a management framework of your own.

With the notable exception of Peter Drucker, most authors attempting broad treatments of management have tended to use the academic definitions of “planning, organizing, staffing, direction and control,” with additional detail in finance, production, and, more recently, information management.  The results are often as academic as the definitions.

As we said before, many people starting new businesses have scientific backgrounds. On occasion scientists engage in the study of management.  This produces PhDs with MBAs.   In many cases the technical training combines with the quantifiable elements of business, producing statements like this:

“Structures = business plans, QA systems, etc. Forces = employee efforts and ideas, and investor requirements. Resultant movement = reformulation or change of product, capabilities, capital, plans, QA systems, etc.”

Our solution:  The Management Fundamentals

The Management Fundamentals were developed to help people survive without overly sophisticated advice; to provide readers with an understandable set of definitions;  and to construct a broad framework that can include specific examples of good management practices in a variety of functional areas.  They are presented in a format designed to make them usable by anyone, regardless of management training or experience.  They are intended to improve the reader’s understanding and use of the key principles of organization, management and leadership.  And they are written in “shirt-sleeve” English.

These are the Management Fundamentals:

1. Know where you want to go

2. Ask good people to help you get there

3. Make sure everyone knows what you’re up to

4. Understand your customers’ needs, and fill them

5. Anticipate technology

6. Plan, act, review, correct

7. Improve continuously

Know where you want to go deals with deciding what business you’re in, definitions of your market, your product and your competition, your business objectives and how you plan to achieve them.

Ask good people to help you get there is about making sure your employees know their jobs, are getting feedback on performance, receiving equitable compensation and gaining new knowledge and experience.

Make sure everyone knows what you’re up to demonstrates that people will usually support you if you tell them about your plans and activities; it concerns two-way communication with employees, suppliers, customers and the community.

Understand your customers’ needs, and fill them involves gathering information about the way your customers operate, how your product or service fits in, how they make decisions, what their customers are looking for.

Anticipate technology calls for predictions about the effect of technological improvements in the future, and how they might effect you and your customers and competitors.  This is not necessarily about your own R&D or inventive ability; it applies to companies that don’t have a science base as well as those that do.

Plan, act, review, correct entails keeping track of “who will do what by when,” whether the planned action produced the desired results, and what corrections are needed if it didn’t.

Improve continuously tracks the Japanese approach to quality:  the one they learned from Professor Deming.  It involves  finding the root causes of defects and changing the system to avoid them in the future.

Once in a while someone will ask why there’s no Management Fundamental that deals with business finances?  That’s okay.  There isn’t one that says “obey the law” or one that says “keep your tax records straight.”  That’s because these are not Business fundamentals.  Most entrepreneurs have accountants, bankers and lawyers to help them with those.  These are Management  fundamentals, and management has to do with achieving results through people.

Actually no company can survive without decent financial management, and the need is acknowledged and covered in Management Fundamentals #1 and #6.

For readers who still aren’t satisfied, you can add a Fundamental that says “obey the law and all the rules of the SEC, IRS, FASB, OSHA, EEOC, FTC, FCC, FDA, EPA, the FAA and the (your favorite regulatory agency goes here.)”

How can the Management Fundamentals be used?  The experience behind the Fundamentals leads to conclusions that standards exist for each of the seven elements.  These standards have been derived
by observing the practices of successful organizations with a variety of missions, structures and customers, over a period of years.

Evaluating a company’s status in each element can be done by reviewing company policies and procedures, interviewing employees and conducting several types of survey.  This results in an inventory, which leads to a proposed plan for improvement.   In other words,

What can be observed in a company that is successful in this particular area?

How does the organization stack up against those criteria?

What plans and programs do we need to meet the standard?

As we explore each of the Management Fundamentals in succeeding chapters, we will define the benchmarks first, then propose a set of prescriptions – steps a CEO can take to bring the company up to scale for each benchmark.

But before we define the benchmarks, one final step to set the stage.  We’ll examine an underlying philosophy about the reasons for organizations to exist, and about the relationships among the people involved.  These are “first principles,” and they’re next.

To be continued

Fall back – and back – and back

Have you ever counted the number of clocks you have to set to switch back and forth between standard and daylight savings time? There are a lot of changes to make.  To be specific, in our household, 26.  And that doesn’t count changing the batteries in the smoke detectors, now an automatic part of the semi-annual ritual.

These are not all “clocks.”  And not all of them require manual attention.  Computers, for example, change the time automatically, unless the software isn’t working.  One year the government fooled the computer makers by a week, so some people discovered their computers had fallen back a week early.  Some of the other devices to be changed are obvious, others not quite so.  Here’s an inventory.

Kitchen

Stovetop clock. This is a big nuisance.  You have to turn that little stub you use to set the timer, and it only goes about eight minutes per turn.  Plus, you tend to stop at the wrong place and the buzzer goes off.

Radio 1. An under-the-cabinet radio.  Also a nuisance.  This one is actually “Spring forward 23 hours.”  You have to find three buttons on the bottom of the front edge, press and hold the first one to activate the time-setting mechanism, press and hold the second one to change the hour, and then use the third button to set the minute.  When the numbers start moving rapidly the tendency is to go past the time, and then start over again.  (There’s no reverse).  And these buttons are hard to push!  My fingers always feel the way they did after my first guitar lesson.

Radio 2. Another under-the cabinet radio.  Why are there two radios, you ask.  How big is this kitchen, anyway?  Okay, this one plays CDs and the other one plays tapes.  Mainly they play a radio station; no tapes I can remember last year, and only two or three CDs.  CDs tend to be played when WCPE is running its semi-annual fund drive (after we’ve sent a check, of course).  There are no painful buttons on this radio, just the more modern touch-sensitive spots.  However, the advance and reverse arrows are the same ones you use to change the station, so unless you remember to press and hold the “time” spot, you need to go back and discover 89.7 again after you’ve set the time.

Microwave. This one is a gem.  You press “clock,” then the hour and minute.  Done.

Telephone. The time on the caller-ID display resets itself the next time a call comes in. If you’re finicky, you call yourself to make sure it’s done right away.  This also sets the time on three other phones in the house.  The time setting on the answering machine needs personal attention.  Hold down a button until you hear a beep, then press some illogical, double-purpose arrows to set the hour, day and AM/PM.    You can avoid this, of course, the result being that your answering machine will give you useless information.  Maybe this information isn’t much use anyway.  How often has the time of message receipt affected your life?  Unless it’s a fight with the cable repair people:  “Mr. Thomas, I called you at 10:00 a.m. to tell you we’d be there by 12:00.”  Indignant reply: “You did not!  The answering machine says you called at 3:00 in the morning.”

Living Room

Telephone. Subject to the incoming call rule, otherwise effortless.

TV. Time-Warner Cable sends the signal to the set-top box.  No action.

Battery-operated clock. This one has a knob that turns both ways.  Simple.  Plus, one of the few devices that doesn’t need resetting after a power outage.

Sun Porch

Computer. Time is automatically changed.  I never thought of this before, but is it done by Microsoft, Dell or Mindspring?

Electric clock. Hold down “time,” press “hour” or “minute.”  This one doesn’t speed through the numbers, so it’s hard to go past your time.  This is another “Spring forward 23 hours” device.

Hall

Thermostat. Battery-operated, so makes it through a power outage.  As for “fall back,” there’s only one simple operation that involves one button and takes care of the whole week.

Bedroom One

Clock radio/phone. Clock setting is manual, with the now-familiar press and hold, set hour, set day.  After a power outage the radio stations need to be reprogrammed.

TV. Time-Warner Cable does it.

Bedroom Two

Clock radio. Manual.  After a power failure, the alarm setting also needs to be re-established.

Telephone. Caller ID time, automatic.

Study

Expensive FM radio. Simple manual adjustment, goes backwards as well as forward.  Backup battery keeps clock going during power outages.

Computer. Automatic.  Does Apple do it?  It’s no more or less efficient than the Dell/MS downstairs.

Fax machine. A major manual setting hassle, involving the choice of several protocols.  I never change it.  But then, the people who want me to take cruises, buy stock, or insure my employees don’t care what time I ignore their messages, and the cable guy never argues about a faxed appointment time because there aren’t any.

Telephone. Manual, and a bit more elegant.  Slide a little door to the right, exposing a button, which can be pressed to set the time, change the language, pick the ring tone, add a timer key, make the dial-pad live, clear the message waiting list, enter your area code, and change the callers list.  I just set the time.

Battery-operated clock. Press a knurled circle on the back and turn clock- or counterclock-wise. It just occurred to me that the battery-operated clocks came home with us from Japan, as parting gifts from some friends. Each one carries a story, and it’s nice to be reminded twice a year.

Atomic clock. This has an antenna that receives signals from the top of some mountain out west.  It usually takes a couple of days for the time to change; you can see a little symbol identified in the manual as, “For at least 96 hours, signal reception was not strong enough to set the clock.  Reposition or rotate the antenna bar for the next signal reception.”  For a couple of years I fiddled with the antenna and checked after each scheduled signal reception.  In recent years I’ve just ignored it for a few days and eventually the time changed without my help.  E

Garage

Car dashboard clocks. One of these Volvos is six years older than the other. The older car has two recessed buttons which are easily depressed by a ball-point pen.  The newer one has a knob just like the one on the kitchen stove, and it’s almost impossible.  The usual engineering improvements were a step backward this time.

Ambulatory

Wristwatches. We set our watches the old-fashioned way.

Mobile phone. AT&T sends the time signal.

 

May you remember all of your time-keeping devices, and may your hours pass pleasantly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who owns social media?

This is the third set of comments I’ve made about social media, all viewed from a 45-year-old platform where we were coming up with new definitions for “industrial marketing” (included sales and new product development along with advertising and PR) and working to show top management that we really could measure the results of our communication efforts.

I’ve been reading the questions asked and answered by people attending such events as the Social Media Business Forum and the Digital Marketing Mixer, courtesy of my son’s regular reports.

“Who owns social media?” keeps coming up.  This is understandable, because it’s used by People Who Sell Things as well as Relationship People.  And it seems to present major opportunities to both groups, even they don’t report through the same organization channels.

Looking back at my own experience with media, I have two observations.  One has to do with showing potential users what they’ll accomplish; the other with in-house coordination of their use.

The latter always has and always will vary all over the lot.  It’s usually decided by the knowledge and persuasiveness of one manager or another.  If you’re marketing, and HR campus recruiting and Finance shareholder relations use the same media you do, be nice, show the others how you can make them look good, and ask if they’d like your help.  Otherwise the VP closest to the CEO will win.

General Electric is the one company I know of that solved this problem; they appointed a Vice-President, Relations, who was responsible for all of this.

As for demonstrating what media will accomplish, that’s the major job of the social media manager.  Why else would the job have been created in the first place?  Of course, once you’ve done this, your job should cease to exist.  What company like your own has a position called, “Magazine Manager?”

To repeat myself from an earlier piece, media are media.  If I put myself; back in the media environment I knew, there’s a mindset you can adopt to help you show what social media can do.  This is it:  Consider yourself the publisher of a brand-new magazine.

* This new magazine reaches almost all of the audience you’re interested in.  They buy and use your product, or they make recommendations in its particular category.

* The editorial content includes product reviews, user case histories, general industry news and opinions about industry issues.

* There are photos of products and customers, including product specs and user applications.

* The letters to the editor department publishes all submissions and responds to every one of them.

* There’s a section for technical questions, manned by experts who answer questions quickly.

*A customer forum allows for complaints and compliments and responses by other users.  Reader suggestions are considered quickly, and editors respond with reasoned decisions about their potential implementation.

* The publisher’s staff can provide detailed information about reader demographics, content and category of complaints, compliments and suggestions.  They have studied your company thoroughly.  If you tell them what your objectives are, they can make detailed recommendations about your use of this magazine and the results you can achieve.

In my marketing days I would have been delighted to have this opportunity.

Stop messing with my Scotch

I recently bought a bottle of Glen Morangie, after missing it for a few years.  The whisky is fine, as usual, but I was really annoyed at the new bottle they put it in.  You may have seen it: it’s curvy, and “young-looking,” no doubt to appeal to a new generation of drinkers.  (Lord help the 79-year-olds.)  The label has no engraving of the aerial view of the distillery, and you’ve got to squint to find the small-font reference to the Sixteen Men of Tain.

My advice to the trade:  spend your creative time trying to convince the new drinkers that one batch of vodka deserves multiple names, labels, bottles and price points. Leave the 10-year-old Scotch alone.

You might be a senior if…

…you remember the high school that Jack Armstrong attended.

…you remember the hotel with the phone number Pennsylvania 6-5000.

…you remember the significance of A, B, and C stickers on a car windshield.

Before you look at the answers below, reflect on this.

With the new federal Pay Czar cutting salaries and pushing hard for “say on pay” for corporate shareholders, one might wish we could vote on compensation for members of congress and put a cap on staff expenses for all those committees.

Here are the answers from this senior memory:

* The radio program “Jack Armstrong, the All- American Boy” started off with a chorus singing “Wave the flag for Hudson High, boys/ show them how we stand/ ever shall our team be champions/ known throughout the land.”  You might be a senior if you remember that the program was sponsored by Wheaties, the breakfast of champions.

* The hotel with the number Pennsylvania 6-5000 was the Statler, just across the street from New York’s Penn Station.  It has some newer name today, and Statler isn’t even recognized by my spell-check.  You might be a senior with an excellent memory if you remember that the phone number was the title of a song played by Glenn Miller.

* World War II gasoline rationing created three categories of drivers and gave them windshield stickers indicating how many gallons they could buy per week or month.  The A stickers were for “pleasure” and the C stickers were for “essential,” with Bs somewhere in between (let us know if you remember the title of B and which sticker was red, which black and which green).  You might be a senior if you remember the intense local politicking that went on to get a C sticker.

 

 

CSM 2 – How people learn to manage

This is the second installment of the book, “The Common Sense Manager.”  It covers most of the first chapter, “A Little Help Here.”

Surprise!  You’re managing a business!

How did this happen?  Probably one of two ways: (1)  you started the business yourself,  people are coming to you with problems that need to be solved or decisions that need to be made, and  you realize that you’re in charge of everything, not just the product. (2) you’ve been unexpectedly promoted to replace someone who has “left to pursue other business opportunities.”

Each situation has its pitfalls – different, but equally deep.

Entrepreneurs are likely to spend so much time on product development and cash generation that they don’t get around to providing guidelines for they people they’ve brought together in the new venture.
Replacement managers may adopt the practices of their predecessors, however good or bad. Or they create major changes in the company without creating a new framework for organization and operations.

Owners and operators of small companies face a host of conditions over which they have little or no control:

– Product development timetables don’t always work out.

– Competition arises from unexpected quarters.

– Goals of scientists and the enterprise are not always compatible.

– Market demand may suddenly change.

– Potential customers may not see the benefits of the product as readily as its inventor or developer.

– Lenders become impatient when they don’t see predicted results.

Newspaper business sections are full of stories about entrepreneurs who have been replaced by “professional” managers, usually at the direction of their venture capital investors.  The forward-looking CEO will stay ahead of that curve, and will begin an early search for serious answers to the question: “what do we need to do to be successful?”

Prescriptions for management success range all the way from Taylor’s Scientific Management to Sergiovanni’s “moral community,” or from absolute control of employee activities to none at all.

In scientific management, an industrial engineering approach to production uncovers the “one best way” to perform a task,  With workers always making the same part, the task is easy for a “functional foreman” to teach and monitor.

In the “moral community,” all colleagues choose the right means, because they all agree on the ends.

With hundreds of illustrations and gimmicks provided by management gurus of every stripe, some variations of these themes have been proposed and dissected by academics and consultants for the last century.  In the last two decades experts have provided examples of what other companies do, but usually omitted any suggestions as to how your small company could make use of these ideas.  Or experts without hands-on management experience have developed new academic theories, and have preached them from ivory towers.

Entrepreneurs who are determined to get a handle on this thing called management – without going back to school – are inclined to use one or more of three basic approaches:  (1) take a short course at night, (2) remember what one of their old bosses did, and try that approach, (3) read some of the hundreds of management books that come out every year.

Classes in management

Entrepreneurs are not likely to be students of management.  As one fledgling company president put it, “I’m too busy keeping the equipment going to learn how to run a business.”

Management professors have focused for years on “planning, organizing, staffing, direction and control,” with additional detail in finance, information management, production, and global strategy.   But entrepreneurs just want to see their ideas put to use, and they typically focus on perfecting the product or finding the right customers.
The varied backgrounds and motivations of these busy people means they probably won’t all choose the same kind of management training.  The owner of one new startup may be an auto mechanic who wants to be his own boss, another a computer programmer with an exciting new software application.  It might be a potter whose vases have provoked local interest, or a scientist who has discovered a new way to prevent wood from decaying.

There are many local workshops in business planning, which teach how to forecast revenue and expense and measure return on investment.  There are also government organizations that provide inexpensive legal and accounting support for the new business owner.  Depending on geography, entrepreneurs can take advantage of these opportunities.

Programs designed specifically for entrpreneurs often concentrate on the up-front questions about starting a business.  Is there a market for your product?  How much will you sell, and at what price?  What will your costs be – total costs, not just production costs.  Do you understand the laws of supply and demand?  Do you know how an economic enterprise works?  Can you understand accounting principles and reports, and can you discuss them intelligently with a lender or investor?  But that’s not really enough.

Because the budding entrepreneur needs  to absorb all of this information and to develop a credible business plan, such “Entrepreneurship 101” courses can’t devote much time to the other forces that help shape a company and build its relationships with customers, employees, suppliers and the community.  Other management tools and ideas that have maintained large corporations like IBM, or successful startups like Nucor or Southwest Airlines, remain the province of detailed academic study or expensive traveling seminar programs.  Or they remain to be learned through  trial and error, or via fortuitous apprenticeship in successful enterprises.

On-the-job training in management

Some entrepreneurs may have benefited from working for a successful manager in the past. In any event they will have observed the techniques of colleagues and superiors.  At best, these entrepreneurs will have learned, and will use, tried and true management methods.  At worst, they use the three envelopes approach.

A new CEO was looking over his new office when his ousted predecessor came in to pick up a few things.  Embarrassed, the new CEO started to leave the office.  “Oh, please stay,” said the ex-chief.  “I wanted to wish you good luck, and to give you something.”  The replacement stopped and listened to what the former CEO had to say.

“Some time during your first year or so as CEO,” said the veteran, “you’ll encounter three crisis situations.  I’ve prepared three envelopes with advice for you in each of these situations.  I’ve put them in the safe.”

The new executive didn’t believe that his tenure would be plagued by crisis, but he thanked his predecessor gracefully and continued to settle into his new office, and, over the next few months, into his new role.

Six months into the year a crisis actually hit.  Sales were off significantly, and the CEO was summoned to an emergency board meeting to give his explanation and his recommendations.  As he sat at his desk and pondered the situation, the CEO remembered his predecessor and the three envelopes.  Figuring he had nothing to lose, he opened the safe and pulled out the envelope marked “Crisis #1.”  He opened it and pulled out a single sheet of paper.  His predecessor’s advice stood starkly in the middle of the page:  “Blame your predecessor.”

The CEO went to the board meeting, blamed his predecessor, and asked for time to institute his own programs.  The board agreed.

Four months went by before the next crisis.  A new product, the key to the new CEO’s recovery and growth strategy, failed completely when introduced to the market.  The board summoned the CEO again.

The envelope marked “Crisis #2” was retrieved from the safe.  This time the advice was “Replace all your subordinates.”  The CEO went to the meeting and told the board he would do just that, and was once again let off the hook.

By the end of the year the organization changes had been made, a revised new product had been introduced, and a new team had taken over.  But costs had escalated, revenues had not yet grown, and the earnings for the fourth quarter were projected to come in not only lower than the year-ago period, but significantly below the numbers his investors and bankers were calling for.

As the losses piled up, the board once again convened a special meeting and asked the CEO to deliver his solution to the problem.  Opening the safe, the CEO reached in for the third and last envelope.  His predecessor’s advice had been right on the mark on the occasion of the first two crises;  he was counting on it to bail him out once again.

He opened the envelope marked “Crisis #3,” extracted the single sheet of paper, and unfolded it.  There, in the middle of the page, was the final piece of advice:  “Prepare three envelopes.”

To be continued.

May I have your name, please?

There’s a new TV commercial for a company called CA.  It features the CEO asking, “Who is CA, and what do we do?” He makes many fine statements, but never once says, “we originated as Computer Associates,” which they did. So many companies have resorted to using initials these days that it’s hard to figure out what they do (unless the CEO takes out an ad and tells you).

If you’ve been around long enough, you can remember the original names of some of these companies.  BB&T was Branch Banking and Trust; FMC, Food Machinery Corporation; PPG, Pittsburgh Plate Glass; 3M, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company.  Those letters all hark back to a name that tells you the company’s business. With a bit of research, you can uncover the logic of some others: DPL is a conglomerate whose main subsidiary is Dayton Power and Light, and DTE owns Detroit Edison.  On the other hand, you can zig and zag with something like EMC, which is now in high-tech products and services, but started out as a furniture reseller owned by Messrs. Egan and Molino.

We’re almost to the point of using numbers instead of letters.”Who is 12315507, and what do we do?”  At least we could have a national directory where you could look up a number and find out who they used to be.

Social media managers fire their own shots

Some time ago I wrote, “Don’t Shoot the Social Media Manager.”(8/8/09)  This was how it began:

The newly minted managers of social media are taking shots from all directions.  There are experts who have followed the SM phenomenon since its birth – and who believe nobody can define it as well as they can – and a wide range of company employees who resist any management attention to the tools they used to use without anyone noticing.

Now it appears these worthy folks are beginning to criticize themselves, according to reports from the recent Blogworld Expo filed by my son, the social media manager. “We’ve got to stop patting ourselves on the back,” was one such shot.  “We should be educating our top management, not criticizing them,” was another. Someone else said that everyone knows the top three case histories, so it’s time to stop writing about them over and over and come up with something new. Bang!

Forty-odd years ago some of us were trying to convince technical companies to use advertising and public relations to advance their business goals.  We had to be missionaries, not critics. And we had to have data to prove we were right.

Media are media.  They are channels of communication.  You have to make your medium the answer to the ultimate of four basic questions:

* Who are we trying to reach?

* What do we want them to do?

* What message must we deliver to convince them of that?

* What medium should we employ?

When you’re really at the top of your game, you’ll also ask and answer a fifth question:  How can we tell whether we’ve achieved our objective?

As a marketing guy who made it to president, here’s my question to SMM’s:  How can you help us do a better job of achieving our corporate objectives?  (Actually, I would ask the chief marketing officer, so you’d be well advised to make sure he or she knows the answers.)

Media experts never got to talk to CEOs in my early days.  Most of them worked at advertising agencies and hardly ever saw the light of day. About once a year Carl Spielvogel of the New York Times would write about circulation and readership numbers, and media buyers were sometimes mentioned.

But the top marketing people continuously demanded media data from their agency account execs so they could use them to bolster their marketing plans.  With the broad reach of today’s social media, it isn’t only the marketing people who need to understand your abilities.  You also need to educate those in charge of relations with stockholders, employees, community leaders and the universities from which you recruit.

Business organizations use media to sell something or improve relations, and they also want feedback from customers and many others.  Social media give them more tools to pursue those objectives.  Looking over history, I note a progression from the “face-to-face/travel to get there” feedback methods to today’s technology-driven environment where feedback occurs (but you have to look for much of it).

- The customer advisory panel, meeting regularly during some trade show or exhibition.

- The telephone conference call linking panel members.

- Chat rooms.

- The videoconference.

- Websites allowing questions or comments.

- Blogs.

- Facebook, YouTube and their kin.

- Twitter (?)

You can certainly put together your own historic list of marketing communications media.

What’s the point?   In the beginning we took pains to set objectives for these tools.  I don’t think we’re there yet for the newer ones.  It’s a lot more difficult, because the technology gives everyone instant access.  Everyone has an opinion, and then crowds form.  The tools allow us to respond with first drafts (the immediacy seems to demand that).  There’s not much advance quality control.  All the more reason to get serious about creating realistic, specific and measurable objectives.  And that requires a rigorous, almost skeptical, examination of what can be accomplished via these media.

The Common Sense Manager

My business career began 50 years ago this month, which means I’ve been through several economic cycles.  I’ve also seen a never-ending cycle of redefinition of “management” or “leadership.”  Not only did I study these while pursuing my MBA at night, but I also lived through them.

First there was sensitivity training, then participative management, Theory Y, tough-minded management, total quality management, and the Japanese distinction between “high-touch” and “high-tech.”  Along the way, gurus have focused on planning, execution, customer-centric, employee-centric, profit-oriented and socially responsible management styles.

But there’s an underlying theory of management that continually repulses the new definitions, especially in times of crisis.  I learned this by asking someone to translate my Japanese title into English. In the 1980s I was President of Nortel Japan, Inc., and a member of its board.  In Japanese, that’s  Dai-hyo torishi mari hyaku, Shacho. Dai-hyo literally means, “authorized to make commitments for the company.” Shacho is president.  The rest of it means, “authorized to tell other people what to do.”  Many managers never give that up.

Some years ago I spelled out seven management fundamentals for a consulting client who had started a new analytical testing company together with some fellow scientists. After a time the fundamentals grew into a book, published 10 years ago, called “The Common Sense Manager.”

“Management” is still being redefined today, quite often stimulated by rapid changes in communications technology.  There’s some struggling going on.  But as I talk to people of all ages in all sorts of organizations, it seems obvious that the fundamentals have never changed. So I concluded it would make sense to share the book with a new audience.  This is Installment #1.  I’ll try to post new segments about once a week.

THE COMMON SENSE MANAGER, Table of contents

Introduction

Ch. One: A Little Help  Here

Ch. Two: First Principles

Ch. Three: The Management Fundamentals Inventory

Ch. Four: Know Where You Want to Go

Ch. Five: Ask Good People to Help You Get There

Ch. Six: Make Sure Everyone Knows What You’re up to

Ch. Seven: Understand Your Customers’ Needs, and Fill Them

Ch. Eight: Anticipate Technology

Ch. Nine: Plan, Act, Review, Correct

Ch. Ten: Improve Continuously

Ch. Eleven:  What Will All This Do for You?

INTRODUCTION

This book is for people who have to manage a business without benefit of training or experience in management. I wrote it because I’ve worked with a lot of professionals from the 1970s on – chemists, physicists, electronic and chemical engineers, economists, hardware and software designers, sales and marketing reps, and teachers.  I’ve seen all of them start companies and then struggle to make the shift from expert practitioners to integrators of resources, persuaders of people, and creators of productive organizations.

And I wrote it because my 1963 model “inner MBA” learned early on that common-sense fundamentals – not sophisticated models – provide the best guidelines for making that shift.

This book started to come together some years ago, when I was consulting for a 135-person laboratory business run by Ph.D. scientists.  The company had a very complex organization structure, with four subsidiaries around the country plus a headquarters organization with corporate officers in charge of finance, administration and human resources.  I was asked to help their scientists learn how to manage better.

In one fact-gathering exercise I interviewed the six key managers of the largest subsidiary, none of whom was a scientist; all of whom reported to the Ph.D. chemist subsidiary president.  I discovered that five of them did not understand their job descriptions, none of them had received any constructive performance feedback, and all of them wished the corporate office would show some evidence of coordinated planning.

The company’s issues ranged from planning to personnel to levels of authority and responsibility.  The prescriptions I came up with to solve these problems, and to help the scientists manage, turned out to be the seven management fundamentals.

The knowledge and experience that went into this book goes back to 1969, my early days at Esso (Exxon) Research and Engineering Company.  I was a liberal arts graduate studying for an MBA at night and working with scientist/engineer managers during the day, dealing with campus recruiting and employee training.

It was here I discovered how scientists approach the job of management: how they continually strive to find a set of laws that will allow them to understand organizations, people and decisions as well as they do hydraulic, mechanical, electronic or chemical reactions.

It was here that I conducted research for my MBA thesis, “The professional employee and the traditional concept of managerial control.”  I learned that scientists managed the way they had been treated by their professors: they used “colleague authority.”  This form of authority is automatically conferred on someone you agree knows more than you do.  This contrasts markedly from the authority that stems from organizational command structures, or ownership of business assets.

Scientists learn how the physical universe works, and they learn how to conduct procedures that work. They learn that if you want a specific result, you must follow a procedure that has been derived from the laws of nature. When they manage, therefore, they are not likely to ask for certain outcomes or results;  they tend to call for the use of a certain procedure.  There’s no point in thinking that employees might be able to find a different process.

The rule is “One process = one result.”  This means, for example, “C3 hydrocarbons in, (under certain heat and pressure conditions, in the presence of a certain catalyst, for a specific period of time) = polypropylene out.”  Should you not also be able to say “Job description in = desired performance out?”  “Advertising dollars in = product purchases out?”

It was under these conditions that I started a ten-year career in Exxon’s chemical business; a career that included management assignments in marketing, sales, human relations, finance and manufacturing.  At every step of the way I mounted a search for ways to quantify the actions and reactions involved in persuading customers to buy, or motivating employees to succeed; I often worked with scientist-managers to help them use this information in their own planning.  At one point I told members of the Chemical Market Research Association, in a speech at their annual meeting, that they would never play a role in major business decisions until they learned how to give marketing “engineering-type predictability.”

Scientists and engineers had the same concerns about non-technical management issues at the four other companies where I worked before retiring to university teaching and administration.  I enjoyed the challenge of quantifying and simplifying the work of MBA’s for owners and CEO’s in the fields of materials handling, papermaking, chemical compounding, precision metalworking, and telecommunications.  In almost all cases I found I had more success than some of my counterparts.  They either fell back on exotic, jargon-laden explanations of what they did, or used the “black box” excuse for not providing any explanations

So when I took on that consulting assignment for the laboratory, I was in home territory.  The scientist-managers, including the CEO, all believed they needed to know the details of non-technical functions in order to manage them.  When the president told me he couldn’t evaluate the performance of his chief financial officer, I recognized he was saying “I can’t give this man a final examination because I don’t know the answers to the questions myself.”

A high percentage of new businesses are started by people with expert technology backgrounds, many of them with advanced degrees in their fields.  Their training may cause them to be frustrated when the non-technical aspects of their business don’t behave according to a rigorous set of rules.   I believe that the management fundamentals, expressed as they are in simple English, and based on common-sense definitions, can help these new CEO’s understand that they can manage without knowing all the answers.

In the mid 90s I was invited to join the volunteer board of a non-profit organization that conducts entrepreneurial courses in high schools and community colleges.  The organization: REAL Enterprises (Rural Entrepreneurship through Action Learning.)  This experience led me to realize that the same management guidelines that I generated for scientists are needed by any potential business owner without specific management training or experience.

The REAL program, and others of its kind, concentrate on the up-front questions about starting a business.  Is there a market for your product?  How much will you sell, and at what price?  What will your costs be – total costs, not just production costs.  Do you understand the laws of supply and demand?  Do you know how an economic enterprise works?  Can you understand accounting principles and reports, and can you discuss them intelligently with a lender or investor?

In light of the need for the budding entrepreneur to absorb all of this information and to develop a credible business plan, such “Entrepreneurship 101” courses can’t devote much time to the other forces that help shape a company and build its relationships with customers, employees, suppliers and the community.  Other management tools and ideas that have maintained large corporations like IBM, or successful startups like Nucor or Southwest Airlines, remain the province of detailed academic study or expensive traveling seminar programs.  Or they remain to be learned through trial and error, or via fortuitous apprenticeship in successful enterprises.  This book attempts to help the reader learn something about those “other forces.”

As I organized my notes for this book, I found I had collected applications and examples from companies that were large, small, brand-new, older than the hills; from ad hoc community organizations established to raise funds or address critical problems; from non-profit organizations; and from public schools and universities.  The book contains many of these lessons, and should prove useful to leaders (and followers) in all types of organizations.

Whether you’re a scientist-entrepreneur or the chair of a community action committee, the book carries one over-arching message:  If you’re organizing people to accomplish something, the management fundamentals apply.

To be continued.

Bad translation yields oxymoron

My favorite classical radio station uses a Bach melody as the theme for its overnight program.  The music is from Bach’s cantata, “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” BWV 140.  Literally, this means, “Wake up, the voice calls to us,”  and is commonly translated as, “Sleepers, wake.”

The station’s program, however, is titled “Sleepers Awake.”  If we stop to think about that, we’ll spot the oxymoron.  How can you be a sleeper and be awake at the same time?  So it must mean something else. Various nighttime hosts vary in their interpretation of that meaning.  If  listeners are awake but trying to get to sleep, they should be listening to soothing music.  Borodin, Debussy, certain Schubert pieces, Beethoven trios.  If listeners aren’t sleeping because they’re somewhere in a different time zone, they merit some lively music.  Rossini, Verdi, Bizet.  And if the host believes that the listeners, drifting off to sleep, are really meant to wake up, crashing cymbals and blaring brass are called for.  Maybe even some cannons from Tchaikowsy’s “1812 Overture.”

One of the overnight hosts spends his weekends announcing at a local auto racetrack.  His normal delivery is designed to be heard over the roar of engines;  it’s perfect for the “Wake up!” interpretation.  But he’s apparently taking some radio announcing lessons, and his coach has persuaded him to speak more softly and slowly.  This works for me, because I’m awake and trying to go to sleep.  He can’t quite keep his musical selections compatible with that mood, however.  After all, he’s there from midnight to six in the morning, and even if his listeners are asleep, he has to stay awake.

For his own sake, he really needs to translate “Wachet auf” literally.