Main | May 2006 »

April 30, 2006

Winning – book by Jack Welch – blog by Karl Janowski

This book covers a wide variety of general management topics.
 
Your mission statement should balance the possible and impossible.
 
What are the values you work by? List them and live them.
 
Reward both performance and behavior.
 
Candor – candor works because candor unclutters, but is against human nature
 
Jack uses differentiation in ranking employees 20% top, 70% middle, 10% falling. Protecting underperformers always backfires.  Rev up the 70% middle, don’t let them get lost or down
 
 
What Leaders Do
 
Constantly upgrade the team- evaluate, coach, build self confidence
Make people live and breath the vision
Give off energy and optimism
Trust with transparency and candor
Have courage to make unpopular calls
Probe and push with curiosity
Set the example
Celebrate
 
Hiring- How do you spot a winner?
 
3 Tests- integrity, intelligence, and maturity
 
Look for: positive energy, ability to energize others, ability to make tough decisions, to execute, and have passion for your job
 
 
For hiring high level managers: authenticity, anticipate future needs, surround themselves with good people, and resilience
 
People Management
Elevate HR to a position of power.
Use a rigorous non bureaucratic evaluation
Face straight into tough relationships
Have an effective mechanism (process and money) to motivate and train,
Treat the middle 70% as heart and soul of organization
Have a flatter organization with a clearly defined structure
 
3 Types of Firings
Integrity Violations – these are no brainers
Layoffs due to economics – every employee should know how the company is doing
Non-performance – Do it this way: no surprises, minimize humiliation,
 
3 Big Mistakes of Firing
Moving too fast
Not using enough candor
Taking too long
 
Change
Attach every change to a clear purpose
Hire and promote only true believers
Get rid of resisters
Seize every opportunity, even those from someone else’s misfortune
 
Crisis Management
Assume the problem is worse than it appears
There are no secrets in the world – be honest
You and your organizations handling will be portrayed in the worst light
There will be changes in process and people at the conclusion
You will get stronger from the crisis
 
 
Strategy
Come up with the big aha for your business – a sustainable competitive advantage
Put the right people in the right jobs
Seek out best practices to achieve your aha
 
Look at: current playing field, what you competition has been up to, what you’ve been up to
 
Budgeting
Do not use “Negotiated settlement or phony smile methods”
Need an operating plan first,
Bonuses should be about beating last years performance and competition
 
Start Up
Spend plenty upfront and put the most passionate people in the lead
Make a grand promotion of the importance of the startup
Err on the side of freedom, get of the venture’s back
 
Acquiring a Company Pitfalls
Thinking it will be a merger of equals
Not worrying about culture fit
A “reverse hostage situation” where you gave up too much power in negotiations
Integrating too timidly
The conqueror syndrome
Paying too much
Resistance in their employees
 
A part of making your customers sticky is meeting or exceeding their expectations, which is what Six Sigma helps you do.
 
Getting Promoted: Do deliver great performance far beyond expectations, don’t make your boss use political capital to champion you.
 
Your Boss
Top priority is competitiveness
Most are willing to accommodate work-life changes if you earned it
Bosses know that work-life issues are negotiated one on one over policy
Don’t turn for help too much, your life is your problem to solve

Posted by janowski at 04:31 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The World is Flat – book by Thomas Friedman – blog by Karl Janowski


A great book on outsoucing, and offshoring that explains how the world came to be at the current level of globalization. 
 

Globalization 1.0 - 1492 to 1800 - key agents of change relied on muscle, how mych economic power the country had and how well it deployed its power, companies went global but only collaborated with other companies in their country

Globalization 2.0 - 1800 to 2000 - multinational companies arise, steam engine, railroad, telegraph and phone, early web

Globalization 3.0 - 2000 to present - using the web for global collaboration


 
Ten forces that flattened the world
 
11/9/89/ Berlin Wall Falling – spread of capitalism, world as a seamless whole, democracy
8/9/95 – Netscape went public – rise of the internet, spread of fiber
Work flow software – applications talking to applications
Open Sourcing – community development
Offshoring  - search the world for human resources
Supply-Chaining – Walmart style supply symphony
Insourcing – UPS and companies that are expanding their roles to add services
In-forming – Yahoo and Goggle style search engineers
Digital Steroids- Cell phones and PDA style widgets
 
 
Triple Convergence – new playing field from flattening, new ways of doing business, and new tools that allowed collaboration
 
Ambition gap- youth in other countries (zippies in India) more ambitious than Americans
   
 
Rules
 
When world goes flat don’t build a defensive wall.
 
Small companies act big.
 
Best companies are the best collaborators.
 
Best companies get checkups and share results with their clients.
 
Outsource to win not to shrink.
 

Outsourcing is for everyone. Not just big corporations do it.


 

 

Posted by janowski at 01:46 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Prisoners Dilemma – book by William Poundstone – blog by Karl Janowski

“Cooperate or defect?” that is the question. In The Prisoners Dilemma, William Poundstone takes us though the game and history explaining the origins of game theory. History of Von Neumann and the atomic bomb are used to show instances of the prisoner’s dilemma, a zero sum game.
 
act to maximize the minimun that will be left for you (cake cutters example)

minimax theorm - there is always a rational solution to a precisely defined conflict betwwen two people who interests are opposite. There is a rational solution that both parties can covince themselves that they can't do any better. Von Neumann published.   

maximin - the maximum row minimum

In the prisoners dilemma there is every temptation to defect. 
If the end is known, always tempting to cheat at the end.

 
 
Player 2
 
 
Defect
Cooperate
Player 1
Defect
DD
DC
Cooperate
CD
CC

There are twenty four (4*3*2*1) different combinations of payoffs.
 
Four that have temptation to defect (read DC as “you defect he cooperates”): 

DC>DD>CC>CD - Deadlock – both prefer to defect both try to get the other to cooperate 

DC>CC>DD>CD – Prisoners Dilemma – highest payoff is if you defect and the other coops  

DC>CC>CD>DD – Chicken – two drive at each other – defect is stay the course, coop is flee  

CC>DC>DD>CD – Stag Hunt – all hunt deer, or you defect and hunt rabbits but that hurts the group
 
Volunteer's dilemma is multiplayer chicken - lights go out who call the electric company?

Does an irrational player in chicken have an advantage?

Tit for Tat Strategy
Tit for tat - Cooperate on the first round and on the second mimic what they did on the first
 
Versions like 90% Tit for Tat – stops random pinging because you don’t always return a defect . An example is in the movie Godfather the Godfather “forgoes the vengeance of his son” to stop the violence
 
Tit for tat with random defection – can it sometimes beat tit for tat
 
Shubik’s Dollar Auction
Addiction in a game – has two rules
1.)    A dollar goes up for auction for the highest bid. Each bid must be higher than the last one and the game ends when there are no more bids in a time period.
2.)    The second highest bidder must pay the amount of his last bid and get nothing in return.  You don’t want to be the second highest bidder.
 
Winner-take all auction

Posted by janowski at 10:19 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 29, 2006

Offshore Software Development: Managing the New Attitude – article by Starsoft Labs – blog by Karl Janowski

Article can be found here:
http://www.the-chiefexecutive.com/whitepapers/30693/paper1.pdf 


10 Reasons why offshore software fails
 
People
            Wrong build / buy / partner decision
            Poor project and / or team selection
            Culture alignment failure
 
Process
            Underestimating startup effort
            Misaligned SDLC (software development lifecycle) documents or processes
            Failure to integrate Offshore Development Center with internal staff
            Failure to manage expectations
 
Technology
            Ad hoc collaboration / communication
            Little or no effective SDLC acceleration or support tools
            Little or effective services automation platform 
 
More concepts
Increased communication leads to lower unnecessary communication
Don’t let the core relationship be the contract.
Create a  true win-win partnership
Russia is now becoming a software offshore destination.
 

 

Posted by janowski at 08:38 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Fifth Discipline - book by Peter Senge - blog by Karl Janowski

Disciplines
System Thinking – common system patterns and how to use them
Personal Mastery – personal continuous learning
Mental Models – our views of how things work, internal representation of external reality
Shared Vision – team has same vision of the result
Team Learning – group learning, increasing team IQ

This is a great book. There is a lot of material for both self and team development. Peter Senge uses examples that make you think, like the MIT beer game where simple delays in communcation cause a game that models beer distrobution to be tougher than it seems.  Can you see the forest through the trees? Peter Senge has taught me the opposite of analytical thinking, instead of zoomming in and break things up into smaller chucks, zoom out to see the whole picture and understand.

Systems - elements interacting, and through their interaction achieve something they cannot achieve without interacting 

Here is a link for the system archetypes: http://www.systems-thinking.org/theWay/theWay.htm

Building Blocks
Balancing Loop – two opposing forces that reach an equilibrium
Reinforcing loop – results in growth or decline
 
Archetypes
Limits to Growth – one reinforcing loop and one balancing, the balancing limits the growth of the reinforcing, you keep putting bigger engines in cars to gain speed at the race track but weight of those engines limits the speed
 
Shifting the Burden- two balancing loops and a reinforcing loop, this happens when you solve the symptom and not the real problem and solving the symptom actually makes the fundamental problem worse
 
Fixes that Fail – a balancing loop foiled by a reinforcing,  you fix a problem but unintended consequences happen and defeat the fix
 
Drifting Goals – two balancing loops, one undermines the balance and intention of the other as the desired state keep moving because, hence the name “drifting goal”, for example you being training for a sport, you set your goal, as you get closer to the goal you start to settle for less and you never reach your goal.
 
Indecision – two balancing loops with delays, the delay causes and endless ping pong effect (in economics many time we assume perfect information, but does supply and demand really influence price? How do you know current supply and demand if it changes instantaneously?)
 
Escalation – two balancing loops oppose each other creating a reinforcing loop, the arms race between US and USSR is an example
 
Attractiveness Principle – limits to growth with multiple limits
 
Growth and Underinvestment – limits to growth with an additional reinforcing loop that has a external standard and some delay, marketing increases demand that leads to the need for more capacity after some delay
 
Accidental Adversaries – four reinforcing loops and two balancing, best explained that there are two things trying to work together for a common cause but each is also working on self development, this self development hinder the other person, example two politicians both running for a party’s presidential nomination (they are both from the same party) while working together to win the presidency for the party, they are also working for their individual nomination, and they both hurt each other through their campaign by exposing each other’s weaknesses thus hindering their party’s chances at the overall nomination. 
 
These two are similar; there are differences in their structure though. Success to the successful archetype allows one to grow. Tragedy of the commons limits both.
 
Tragedy of the Commons – two growing structures share a limited resource
 
Success to the Successful – growth of one limits the other

Other Peter Senge Sites
http://www.solonline.org/
 
http://www.thinking.net/Systems_Thinking/systems_thinking.html
 
http://www.systems-thinking.de/


As a final throught I have seem simularities between game theory and system thinking. The Prisoners Dilemma models the game theory of an arms race. Escalation models it in system thinking. Does balancing loop equlibrium relate to Nash equlibrium?

 

Posted by janowski at 07:26 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Monday Morning Leadership – book by David Cottrell - blog by Karl Janowski

Here are some of the main ideas I picked up from the book:

People quit people before they quit companies.
 
Accept full responsibility for the team
Leadership requires different decisions than management
 
Keep the main thing, the main thing…. What is the main purpose of the team?
A leader's main purpose is to eliminate confusion.
 
Never depend on someone’s perception to match your expectation.
 
Employees
Employees fall into 3 categories: superstar, middle star, and falling star.
 
The minimal level of acceptable performance should be at the bottom of the falling stars because you still have to accept their work. Reward superstars, coach middle, and work with falling stars.
 
Don’t lump them all together.
 
Do right rule – Do right even when no one is watching.
“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice” Confucius
 
Greatest asset to a team – having the right people
Greatest liability – having the wrong people
 
Hire easy and manage tough, or hire tough and manage easy
 
Time Management
Pareto Principle – 80% of your results come from 20% of your activities
 
Touch a paper only once.  Do something with it.
 
Plan time to plan.
 
Leadership
The scorecard of leadership is the results of the team, not what you do.
 
You need your team more than your team needs you. 
 
Everyone has a bucket of motivation and dipper to remove motivation from other buckets.  As a leader you need to keep the buckets full. The more you fill the more your bucket is filled.
 
Your comfort zone is a forceful enemy. Defeat it. 
3 Ways to learn: read, listen, teach

Posted by janowski at 05:25 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 28, 2006

Characteristics of Socio-technical Systems - article by Fred Emery - blog by Karl Janowski

The article can be found online here: http://moderntimesworkplace.com/archives/ericbio/ericbio.html

Here are some ideas discussed in this article:

Systems Topics

A system is a group of elements, that through their mutual interaction, achieve something unique. von Bertalanffy’s definition of a system
 
Emergence – the unique characteristic created through mutual interaction in a system
 
Closed System – a system that does not interact with its environment
 
Open System – a system that does interact with its environment
 
Any open system can become a closed system by defining the environment as part of the system.
 
Many people define a system as a physical group of elements, but many times that definition is wrong because there is more than one unique emergence. So it help to find the emergence first then defined the system as just the elements that through their interaction create that emergence.  Otherwise you’ll have defined a group of systems as one whole system.

Socio-technical Systems

“Systems where man interacts with man, man interacts with machines, and machines interact with machines" What demands does the technical system place on the social system?
 
Eric Trist and Fred Emery (Tavistock Institute) developed the concept of socio-technical systems from their work as social scientists right after World War II. Their main body of work dealt with being open system theory to organizational development.
 
Their famous paper “Participative Design for Participative Democracy”.
 
In ”Characteristics of Socio-technical Systems”, Fred Emery talked about an enterprise being a STS with three main analysis points: analysis of component parts to revel contribution and interaction (work relationship structure), analysis of these parts with reference to problems of internal coordination and control thus created, and analysis of relevant external environment and the way the enterprise manages it.
 
Aspects of technical systems that place demand on the social system
  • Nature of material being worked on
  • Level of mechanization (or automation)
  • Units of operation and grouping of these units into production phases
  • Degree of centrality of different operations
  • Maintenance operations
  • Supply operations
  • Spatial layout of process over time
  • Physical work setting


Task breakdown (simplest terms)

  • Dependent tasks
  • Independent tasks


Two types of dependent tasks

  • Simultaneous interdependence (two tasks must happen at same time for outcome to be valid)
  • Successional dependence (two tasks must be performed either serial or parallel to achieve outcome) 
Formal symbiotic ties between people– sanctioned by management
Informal symbiotic ties between people – “friendships” and other non-sanctioned ties
 
This makes it hard for management to map roles and tasks to a formal structure. Many jobs success is based on informal relationships (“social networking”).
 
Suggestions

“Large groups of people inhibit stable interactive patterns” With groups over 12 people the multiple relationships become too great for every individual to maintain so sub groups are formed.
 
Increase likelihood of friendship via sociometric self-selection.
 
Do not assume “job satisfaction and output are positively related”
 
Manager's job is not to manage the role/task relationship of the worker but the external boundary conditions that relate the worker to the larger organization. 

Individual Psychology of the Worker 

Explore these ideas:
  • “satisfaction” with work/role and alienation
  • “recalcitrance”, control through coercion and manipulation
  • non-sanctioned purposes inside the enterprise
To perform a task one of these conditions must exist:
  • Performance satisfies some psychological need
  • Performance is not satisfying but a prerequisite to achieving other psychological satisfaction
  • Performance is induced by demands perceived to arise from the task itself (“task orientation” the task itself induces strong forces that lead to completion, or task gives individual control that is satisfying)
“dull contentment” sort of satisfaction gained from habitual work

Consider, “The child’s relationship to the learning material is given little opportunity to develop into an interest relationship because it is overshadowed by the teacher-child relationship”

Discretionary content of a task – parts of tasks where worker has choice and authority Time span of responsibility – time free from managers looking over the workers shoulders
 
Alienation – the individual may be alienated from his or her workers, or from the product itself

 

 

 

Posted by janowski at 04:20 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

April 27, 2006

Execution - book by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan- blog by Karl Janowski

Book Overview

The “Execution book” discusses how to get things done as a leader and as a manager. You can set goals and plan all you want but a great strategy and great plan can easily be undone by poor execution. What does it mean to execute? How do you create a culture of execution at the work place?  

Set the Goal        = Strategy
Develop the Plan  = Operations
then Execute the plan

Execution cuts the gap between what you’ve promised and what you will deliver.

Building Block 1: Leaders Behaviors

Know your people and business
Insist on Realism and Candor
Set Clear Goals
Follow Through
Reward doers
Expand People’s Capabilities
Know Yourself

Ask the tough, real, questions!!!!

Building Block 2: Creating Cultural Framework 

Values and Behaviors
Linking rewards to behaviors and values as well as performance
Social Interactions within company
Robust Dialogue
Leaders get the behavior they exhibit and tolerate

Building Block 3: Having the right people in the right place (No leader should delegate)

The “right” people:

  • Energize others
  • Are decisive
  • Get things done through others
  • Follow Through

Core Processes of Execution  

People Process – link to strategy, Develop leadership pipeline, Deal with nonperformers, transform HR

Strategy Process – need realism, great goal but how? Review the plan,

Operations Process – budget and plan., are they realistic??? debate assumptions, scenario planning (this reminds me of the work of Peter Senge), “social software”  

Posted by janowski at 07:10 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Toyota Way - book by Jeffrey Liker - blog by Karl Janowski

The Toyota Way - “To achieve the right results, you need the right process”

Not too many companies believe their competitive advantage is their process. But the title of the first chapter says it all, “Using Operational Excellence as a Strategic Weapon”. Many people think the Toyota Way is lean process development, but after reading The Toyota Way I understand that lean is just a part of their “operational excellence”. Their real excellence can be summed up as “culture and discipline”.

The Toyota Way isn’t a process, it’s the name for Toyota’s culture involving: problem solving (see for yourself, consensus decision making, and ask why? five times), people and partners (grow leaders and your business partners), process (eliminate waste, lean flow to view the problems, level the workload, stop as soon as there is a quality problem, pull systems, visibility, and standardized tasks), and philosophy (long term thinking). This culture influences every level of Toyota.

How many companies have a name for their culture?

Many people confuse the Toyota Production System (TPS) with the Toyota Way.  TPS is the manufacturing process; the Toyota Way is the culture. Most companies try to implement lean (just in time) production systems and fail because they don’t have the culture and discipline to do it. Simple example: western plants try to minimize downtime; at Toyota downtime is considered good because problems are getting fixed. Without the discipline to run so lean that problems pop up, western plants have a hard time finding and fixing the problems.  

"Minimize costs by maximizing quality at every level of the organization"

Toyota’s methods are surprisingly low-tech.  Every employee is a problem solver and taught the Toyota Way. Culture is ingrained. Reports are given on one sheet of paper. There is no Six Sigma, only simple statistics. Processes are standardized and visible systems (andons) are created to show deviation from the process. Pretend for a minute that every employee at your company had a traffic light on their head and every day you could see if they were behind schedule, on time, or running ahead.  Again this isn’t just for manufacturing but for all parts of Toyota. 

“The Toyota Way” is only 310 pages, but it took me forever to read, mostly because the material was new to me. I feel the same way about this book as I do “The Fifth Discipline” by Peter Senge. I’ve been exposed to a new subject and there’s no possible way I could absorb all of the material. I have to review it a few times before it starts to sinks in.  I recommend this to anyone interested in process or corporate culture.  

Definitions

Andon – visible error system

Genchi Genbutsu – go see for yourself

Hansei – reflection

Kaizen –continuous improvement

Heijunka – level the workload

Posted by janowski at 07:04 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)