Long-time readers know I recommend creating an alignment-focused organization as the fundamental way to improve performance. As I’ve said in many publications (BPM Magazine, Information Management, CxO magazine), To do so, organizations must motivate their employees with integrated and cascaded objectives, manage priorities based on impacts rather than perceived urgency, monitor progress towards outcomes, and…
Archive | Leadership
Speedlinking, May 2009
One part writer’s block and two parts schedule overload means I don’t have time to write an original post. Speedlinking to the rescue: Over at ‘I Help You Blog’, Philip suggests 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle. My personal favorite is #101: Create a post with a 101 ideas. In a relatively…
Manage by Flying Around
Since the title of this blog is manage by walking around, kudos to Haruka Nishimatsu, the president and CEO of Japan Air. According to a CBS News article, he practices management by walking flying around: “If management is distant, up in the clouds, people just wait for orders,” Nishimatsu told CBS News through a translator….
Transparency in Leadership
The word transparency is everywhere. The demands for increased accountability from statutory compliance and shareholder activists have forced organizations to become more transparent. Political ideology aside, Barack Obama ran a successful campaign championing the need for transparency in response to the government secrecy of the previous two terms. Unfortunately, transparency is fast becoming a buzzword:…
The Return of Decision Support
According to D.J. Power‘s “A Brief History of Decision Support Systems“, the first use of the term Decision Support System (DSS) was in a 1971 Sloan Management Review article. Gorry and Scott-Morton argued that existing management information systems focused on structured decisions and recommended that systems for semi-structured and unstructured decisions should be called decision…
My Management Guidelines
Since the title of this blog is “manage by walking around,” I thought I’d share a few examples of how I use that philosophy myself. While there is plenty of debate as to whether there is a difference between managing and leading, I describe myself as a leader rather than a manager. By that, I…
Eliminate Management By Objectives
I’m deep into the annual review cycle and struggling with not-so-SMART objectives for employees that I inherited during the year. The frustration is acute enough that it makes me want to channel Deming and eliminate management by objectives. For those who may not remember, Deming is best known for his work in the 1950’s during which he…
Are You Reading My Blog?
“It’s clear that Wilson’s the only person here who reads my blog.” This Paul Wood comic, which appeared in Harvard Business Online, got me thinking again about the nature of manager blogs. As I posted before, if a manager is going to write a blog, the manager should write it themselves. But should the manager’s employees read it?…
Leading By Example
Tomorrow I will see a close friend and former boss who taught me a lot about business. One of the things he taught me was that actions speak louder that words. Rule #1: Do something. People like to use the phrases ‘walk the walk’ and ‘leading by the example‘ but don’t provide any details on what it…
CFO turnover subsides
Financial Week must be a little bit schizophrenic. A Sept 1, 2008 article titled “CFO turnover hits a record high” stated that, according to Crist Kolder Associates: CFO volatility—a measure of how often an executive leaves his or her finance post—reached its highest level in 13 years in 2007, with 128 CFOs departing their jobs,…