The havoc incompetent managers can wreak is immeasurable. And incompetence and failure have costs: financial, organizational, and human. When a business fails, or when it suffers a serious setback, its entire mission is compromised. It can no longer serve its customers; it can no longer perform the social function for which it was created. In an interview with The Smart Manager, Morgen Witzel offers a peep into the seven sins of management detailed in his latest book Managing for Success, and tells us how managers can shape cultures that minimize failure.
The root causes of failure are often buried deep within an organization. How does a culture of incompetence come into being?
The usual cause is a combination of inattention on the part of leadership, and the wrong people in the wrong places within the organization. One of the tasks of the leader is to ensure that the organization has a strong culture that enables it to meet its goals. Leaders therefore have to spend a lot of their time monitoring the culture of the organization and influencing it, usually by example. They set the moral tone for the organization, which the rest then follow. But if leaders take their hand off the tiller, the culture will start to drift. Without examples to follow, people care less about the work they do, or their colleagues, and start to think more about themselves.
And when that happens, the door is open for other figures of influence to emerge. People with their own agenda–be it corruption or greed, or just plain laziness and inattention–start to become the dominant influencers, and the rest of the organization takes its cue from them. It is shocking how easy it is for a culture to slide from being progressive and innovative into inertia–this is the way we do things, we are not going to change. And once this happens, it is really hard to turn things around.
How would you explain your concept of ‘wasted opportunity cost’?
Denne historien er fra March-April 2016-utgaven av The Smart Manager.
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Denne historien er fra March-April 2016-utgaven av The Smart Manager.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Building A Quality Culture
A strong company culture defined by its values, beliefs, and behaviors, has a profound impact on its products and services. More so in today’s VUCA world, where to stay relevant and maintain a competitive edge, it is critical for organizations to build a culture that focuses on quality. Suresh Lulla, author of Quality Fables, elucidates through significant examples how creating a culture of quality is imperative to driving success and productivity.
Customers For Life
The history of General Motors in India can be traced back to the 1920s, when it became the first automotive company to set up an assembly plant in the country. The relationship since then has not been as fruitful as GM would have hoped. GM’s flagship brand, Chevrolet, was introduced in India to build upon the success of the popular Opel marque. However, success has been fleeting at best—an issue that GM India is determined to rectify. It aims to do so by adopting a two-pronged approach: using customer feedback to influence product development, and delivering a superior sales-to-service experience.
The Digital Shift
… technology will radically disrupt HR in the near future. Indeed, it is already changing the way HR works and the role it plays and opening the door to a new type of “digital HR” function.1 The rise of digital and social media is changing the dynamics of HR and creating new ways of hiring, engaging, and retaining employees.
The Story Of Telling
“The best brands are built on great stories,”* this remark by Ian Rowden best captures the strategy of diligent brand building. Much more than attractive logos or the products themselves, what builds a brand is how successfully a story is woven around it. Brand marketers have to be good storytellers indeed.
Complexity Is Simpler Than You Think
Kay Kendall and Glenn Bodinson, authors of Leading the Malcolm Baldrige Way, shatter myths about excellence models such as Baldrige and EFQM.
Proponents of Isolation Never Become Victors
Multilateralism in the political and economic space has always led to frameworks that favor the mighty. WTO was no exception. With agriculture kept out of its purview, it could never become a truly fair and free trading system. China was the only large emerging economy that exploited relative openness in low-cost manufactured goods to take full advantage of the system. Other emerging economies could at best garner minor gains.
A History Lesson (From Year One) for Trump and the Brexit Crowd: Isolationism Has Never Worked!
Professor Stephane Garelli on growing isolationism.
A Win-Win Game
Business is not a sport where some stakeholder has to lose or fare badly for others to do well. Building an atmosphere of trust and transparency between all stakeholders will help companies retain them even during adverse times.
A Sustainable Model
With a total market value of $4.3 trillion and an employment base of at least 1.3 million direct employees and millions of others indirectly employed, platforms have become an important economic force.*Companies today are constantly looking for ways to build platforms—Infosys Ltd announced its plans of monetizing its platforms to make them a $2 billion business by March 2021. But are all platform businesses successful?
Custom Made
…three in four consumers said they receive too many emails from brands, and one-fifth said they could not handle the current volume…69 per cent have ‘unfollowed’ brands on social media, closed their accounts or cancelled subscriptions.*In these times, when the market is flooded with products and services, the most efficent way to engage customers is to offer them customized content. To achieve this, brands need to focus on observing the nuances of individual preferences.
