The Strategic View

» The power of reflection

In considering any idea it is important that there’re at least 2 parties involved, one party being a proponent, and another being an opponent. It is very important those individuals or groups to be from different backgrounds, and be subject matter experts in their fields. If one person is evaluating idea, s/he has to play roles of proponent and opponent simultaneously, and I assume that success of idea implementation in this case will be not more than 70%. If proponent and opponent are different individuals with different background as proposed above, time will be spent on making consensus decision and agree on the implementation, but in this case I would estimate success as 95%. However, if we will take more individuals in the loop, it is obvious that at some point probability of success will start decreasing. It can be proven by considering involved parties as stakeholders and by need to respond to their reflections and converge on their opinions. ...

» Motivation in the Environment of Teamwork

Management used to call their people human resources (HR), but some individuals may find this humiliating. Employees are people, those actively participate in the social life of organization and wider environment, and thinking about them as materials will demotivate them. Can we say «customer resources» or «consumer resources» thinking of customers as bags of money? Some call employees a «pool of talent». That’s much better, however why pool? It may negatively highlight lack of structural alignment of «talent» within organization unconsciously scaring potential employees, investors and customers away. In addition, it is hard to believe that organization is having talents only (however it may reveal the way how organization defines the term talent).

Is it good to be too official – telling your people «dear human resource» or «dear employee» on the letter of congratulation or recognition? Do people feel pleased to be like small screws in the big machine and will read the text following «dear employee»?

This is not about how do we label our people, this is more about how do we treat them. We can treat them in humiliating and condescending way, but can think of and treat them in friendly and respectful way. Let HR manager tell senior manager about human resources as a pool of talented individuals, but god forbids line manager referring his team as the pool or resource. ...

» The Strategy – How?

Organizational strategy is the subject which was discussed for a long time already and is currently a hot subject targeted by many famous managerial scientists and managers themselves. There’re different schools of definition of strategy, of the ways of its creation and operation. Let me please focus on one of famous articles of Michael E. Porter «What is Strategy?» from Harvard Business Review of November-December 1996’s release. You can buy it, or I found it here available for reading.

I would like to graphically present how I see the theory Porter is describing.

Figure 1. The components of The Strategy

I have composed all the matters Michael Porter is talking about on this slide. Excellent, however question «how do I start?» remains open. And how you start and how you come to this «integrated cloud» is another source of your competitive advantage. Porter is talking of parts and required components of the strategy, thus we assume all them should be considered. ...

» Talented men leave. Dead wood doesn't

I came across of this expression when was researching on the talent management over the online sources in the internet. There’re a number of instances (link1, link2) including the article titled «Why employees leave organizations?». Authorship is ascribed to Mr. Azim Prejmi, CEO of Wipro, however it is not proven (I asked Mr. Prejmi to confirm or deny, but he did not respond yet).

In short, article states that most people leave organizations not because of some organizational problems, but because of relationship problems or conflicts with immediate manager (boss). Final statement is the one I used in the title of my post.

The background of such grievous articles is belief that the boss is everything and there’s no way to get rid of him or her. Yes, this is the case in specific cultures, where power distance is high and respect of authority is a way of life, however with penetration of western companies and work life of these cultures makes status quo changing. I would argue that «dead wood» as phenomenon should appear in large bureaucratic structures, where business performance management systems does not work well, thus I believe it is not right to even guess if there’re more such kinds of managers in western or eastern cultures – the nature of their contribution and rules they play are just different, thus, for example, Japanese manager’s performance would be better judged by native Japanese, as the same French manager to be judged by native French. I think «dead woods» should be a temporary phenomenon – as we are moving to global culture of business, standards of business conduct and personal relationships, we should see less and less people of those profiles in the business.

Now – is it what can only be done on the issue raised – talented men to leave, bad bosses to stay? Can we turn this seemingly bad situation to something good? Yes, we can, if we will say «dead wood to leave, talented men don’t». Let me raise some arguments for as well as constraints to this approach. ...

» The Manager: a split of personality

My friend and colleague Dmitry has been to India some time ago to teach people there on his subject he is an expert in. He told me an interesting feature of how work teams are historically and culturally organized there. Indians organize themselves into the teams by their caste identity – what makes us think that all the people in the team have same «version» of national sub-culture. Second feature of Indian team is that it features two centers of power: first center is team manager, and another is team leader. And this is very interesting: manager does hold power of authority, however has a mindset to consult and comply with team leader’s opinion and guidance. Team leader is having power implicitly given by all the team members, and is the one listened to and asked for advice and guidance. Leader is respected and trusted, and uses his judgment and influence with the group and between different groups to resolve operational and strategic issues.

What is the classical model employed by most of organizations? This is a model where manager, in addition to his/her administrative role, is expected to be a leader and be competent in the business segment – i.e. manager wears 3 hats simultaneously – administrator’s, team leader’s and business expert’s. ...

» Welcome to business, Mr. Hacker

Who is Mr. Hacker? Is it Mister, Missis or Miss? How is it to employ a hacker and is it good to be this kind of individual?

Before going to discussion about properties of hacker, let's give definition to the leadership and the process of leadership.

Leaders are people who are expected to be and are seen to be influential on important matters. Leadership means the process of influencing other people in the ways which are more or less acceptable for them.

There is a word «influence» in both definitions. Influence is a process when person or a group affects what other person or group does or/and thinks. Inputs for this process are powers. Powers can be sourced from «inside» of the individual, from the disposition or from formally given properties. All these include information, personal characteristics, control over resources, position, social connections, expertise (French and Raven, 1960).

Let's now return to the original subject. Who is a hacker? Sit down for a minute and try to understand or feel what does this term mean for you. I have done some research on descriptions of it, all are taken off the Internet. I would like to explicitly note at this point that «hacker» is positive term by default. Negative opponent is called «cracker».

Now can we give cumulative definition to the term Hacker? Let me try to do it:

Hacker is an individual who enjoys exploring capabilities of self and others in order to extend those capabilities and manage toward his/her goals successfully, being motivated intrinsically up to the point of obsession. Hacker uses «trial and error» method and respects fast feedback. Hacker is having implicit code of ethics, and does not engage into activities contradicting this code. Hacker can «wear» white hat being creative and constructive, but can change the hat to black and become destructive, however not illegal. ...

» Quality as a Value

We all use word “Quality”, but what does it mean? There’re a lot of descriptions we can find on the web, and this fact stresses that it is not a simple term.

Let us guess that the meaning of the word may depend on the context, and on the position and personality of “appraiser”. Statements about “high quality” or “low quality” may mean nothing to you if you do not understand matters being told about. Consumers used to look for and desire “high quality” and suppliers used to base their competitive advantage on the Quality as one of major distinctions of their products, services and corporate culture. But the good question is - do end user, the customers, need that quality being focused on by suppliers (e.g. do ISO certificates automatically mean that output production is of appropriate Quality as perceived by customers)?

If we would look to the theories of Quality and their applications, we will see that they penetrate all the aspects of our lives: from fully applied for technology products to more sophisticated for services and business management. Another theoretical model in wide use is Quality-gaps model (see p. 10). However, words are nothing if they do not work – thus let’s look at how Quality is articulated and implemented at HP.

At its web site, HP states it is “providing products, services and solutions of the highest quality”. Does quality apply to products, services and solutions only, or is it just an apex of iceberg we are told to look at? To understand, let’s look deeper to the history of HP.

“This Old House” story narrates that Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard were identifying name of HP with Quality, articulating it as one of Values the company is built on. Another source is legendary book “The HP Way” (pp. 121-125). It states that quality of products was essential from the beginning simply because HP was producing testing equipment used to test and benchmark another equipment, thus by default HP had to make products of extraordinary quality, otherwise it would not be able to compete and win DOD’s contracts. ...

» HP and IBM: mission possible?

We all know that these companies are in competition, but is it the case nowadays? Is there an opportunity for “The Japanese Way”, where rivals cooperate?

The results of marketing research on these two companies were a surprise for me. I am new in marketing, and everything I learn is exciting. My colleague Michael, who is a marketing director at one of the well-known multinational companies, has been my guide for where to get information and how to analyze it. He said what I am doing (and actually did) is called “desk research”, when you are sitting at the desk and using the internet and papers, the opposite to the field research.

I have used only publicly available sources, located at corporate websites: Complete IBM 2006 Annual Report and HP’s 2006 annual report.

Let me describe, in short, what I found, and comment on it. Both companies are Hi-Tech companies, and have a long and successful history ...

» What is a Strategy?

What is Strategy and do we need all this stuff? First of all, let’s give definition of strategy (find more of them at google):

Strategy is a pattern of activities followed by an organization in pursuit of its long-term purposes

There’re 3 important components (source: B713 Fundamentals of Senior Management (2003), Open University):

• Strategy is concerned with the broad pattern of organizational activities, not day-to-day detail
• Long term here is a period of time of 3 years and more;
• Purposes may change over time as a response to changes in internal and external environment.

I would suggest Strategic would mean something in general, looking forward and at the same time achievable.

We may argue that we do not need strategies – world is changing so fast that we are simply unable to plan our time and actions long-term forward. At some extent this statement is true – we may not be successful with strategy chosen, or someone else can be successful without explicitly stated strategy. This reveals two points:

• Strategy is not constant. It is required to review it regularly, and adjust it to the conditions of internal and external environment;
• If someone says s/he does not have a strategy – do not believe it! It may be a “trade secret”, as well as being implicit and not realized consciously.

Now why strategies? Do we really need them? Yes, we do. Human nature does not like many things, and one of them is uncertainty. We may be concerned about the future, not even realizing this fact. What helps people to become more self-confident and subsequently successful is a long-term planning of major steps and milestones within their lives. As plan is being executed, people put checkmarks, or if something is not achieved or overachieved – review plan and correct it. ...

» Hello World!

Good morning, day, evening and night,

please let me invite you to my blog named “The Strategic View”. Having searched through google search I realized that there’re not many such blogs, and, as soon as these strategic and analytical matters are of interest for me, make my thoughts and findings public and value-adding for you. My objective is very simple: I would like to share ideas, and get feedback and comments on them.

I will be grateful if we all together will support collaborative environment free of harassment and embarrassment, benefiting everyone on the net.

Let's learn together. Have fun!
Eugeny