Go Mobile – Design Your Business Website for Smart Phones First

In earlier postings ((“Are Businesses in My Hometown Mobile Ready?” and “Is Your Business Website Missing the Boat on Smartphones?“)) I have pointed out what must now be a commonplace bit of knowledge about how customers are behaving – well over 50% in the US are using their smart phones as a primary tool to access the Web.

A recent article, “How Mobile-First Became Mobile-Only in the Emerging World” by Alec Oxenford, Co-Founder and CEO, OLX raises the interesting point that we need to move away from starting our web development work with the desktop as the target and start with the smart phone. Instead of adapting the sprawl of the desktop to the confines of an iPhone or Android device, start from the mind set that most of our customers are reaching us via that screen, not the desktop.

This will lead to some very different conclusions about what information should appear where. For example, for a retail business, how easy is it on a smart phone for your customers to find out where you are located, what your hours are and what your telephone number is? How many pinches, scrolls, and menu taps are required? Since this is such fundamental information this should be on the first screen they see.smartphone penetration by age and income in the US

Performance, Contribution, Results, Commitment – Drucker’s The Effective Executive – 4

“To Focus on Contribution is to Focus on Effectiveness”

Peter Drucker's The Effective ExecutiveThis is the fourth in a series discussing the 1968 book by Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive: the definitive guide to getting the right things done. In this part we will focus on the third chapter, “What Can I Contribute?”

“The effective executive focuses on contribution. He looks up from his work and outward towards goals. He asks, “What can I contribute that will significantly affect the performance and results of the institution I serve?” His stress is on responsibility.” ((all quotes in this posting come from pages 52 – 70 in Peter Drucker The Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done. Revised. Collins Business, 2006.)) …..

“The man who focuses on efforts and who stresses his downward authority is a subordinate no matter how exalted his title and rank. But the man who focuses on contribution and who takes responsibility for results, no matter how junior, in in the most literal sense of the phrase, “top management”. He holds himself accountable for the performance of the whole.”

What Is Contribution?

Contribution refers to three areas critical to organizational success: Continue reading

Time Management for Effective Managers – Drucker’s The Effective Executive – 3

Time – a most valuable resource but always fleeting

In the previous posting in this series we closed with Drucker’s five essential practices for managers.

Effective managers:

  1. know where their time goes.
  2. focus on outward contribution.
  3. build on strengths….
  4. concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results.
  5. make effective decisions.

Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive

This posting focuses on the first of these, time.

Time is a central resource, yet unlike other resources it cannot be inventoried, purchased, or controlled in any way. It is always the scarcest resource. Thus the use of our time and the organization’s time is critical to achieving results.

Effectiveness Depends on Continuous, Uninterrupted Blocks of Time

“Time in large, continuous, and uninterrupted units is needed….” ((all quotes are from Chapter Two – Know Thy Time in Drucker’s The Effective Executive)) A manager who can only find brief moments for reflective thought is bound to think about only what is at hand, what they already know, and what they have already done.

Drucker argues that there is a three step process that is the foundation of effectiveness in managing time. First is recording the use of time, second is managing time, ((the use of the word “managing” here refers to the setting of priorities and making choices about the use of time. There is no sense to thinking that time is managed in the way every other resource in the organization can be managed.)) and third is the consolidation of discretionary time. These are the steps to coming to grips with how one’s time is being used now.

Reducing Time Wasters Continue reading

Peter Drucker’s Little Red Book for the General Manager

Peter Drucker's The Effective ExecutivePeter Drucker’s The Effective Executive was first published in 1967 and has been in print ever since. I first read it during the 1980s. When I began to coach general managers and owners of small businesses I re-read it with a fresh perspective.

The Effective Executive continues to be a book that I return to for its little pearls of wisdom. Once you get over the now obscure examples from WWII and the 1950s and its dated language (e.g., the pronoun “she” never appears), it remains  a most useful and continuously provocative statement of the tasks of the general manager.

Here are a few quotes for illustration.

  • “In every area of effectiveness within an organization, one feeds the opportunities and starves the problems.”
  • “…the more an executive works at making strengths productive, the more he will become conscious of the need to concentrate human strengths available to him on major opportunities. This is the only way to get results.”
  • “No one has much difficulty getting rid of the total failures. They liquidate themselves. Yesterday’s successes, however, always linger on long beyond their productive life. Even more dangerous are the activities which should do well and which, for some reason or other, do not produce. These tend to become… “investments in managerial ego” and sacred.”
  • “Systematic sloughing off of the old is the one and only way to force the new.”
  • “…no decision has been made unless carrying it out in specific steps has become someone’s work assignment and responsibility. Until then, there are only good intentions.”
Find this little book (183 pages long), read it. You will be enriched.

The 6 New Management Imperatives by Bruce Temkin – comments

Bruce Temkin has published a free book on his blog ((experiencematters.wordpress.com)), The 6 New Management six management imperatives bruce tempkinImperatives – Leadership Skills for a Radically Changed Business Environment. Mr. Temkin sets out to define a “new set of skills” for managers. These are the 6 new imperatives:

  1. Invest in culture as a corporate asset
  2. Make listening an enterprisewide (sic) skill
  3. Turn innovation into a continuous process
  4. Provide a clear and compelling purpose
  5. Extend and enhance the digital fabric
  6. Practice good social citizenship

Lists like this one are very popular. I have been known to make lists of key practices and the like. But for the practicing manager lists are frequently tough to integrate into day-to-day work. Mr. Temkin’s six imperatives falls into this problem category. Overall, the six imperatives are reasonable enough as they stand. But I want to take a closer look at each and then suggest a more global approach. Continue reading

Book Review – 12 The Elements of Great Managing and Making These Actionable

12ElementsGreatMng-book-cvrThe Gallup Organization has been publishing books on management and high performance organizations regularly for quite some time. The encouraging elements in all of them are that they are  based on real data from real people about real work.  I have recommended two earlier books from Gallup, Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman, First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently, 1st ed. (Simon & Schuster, 1999) and Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, Now, Discover Your Strengths, 1st ed. (Free Press, 2001). 

I recently read 12 The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter (Gallup Press, New York 2006) another in this series. Don’t be deceived by the title, this book is really speaking from the perspective of how employees experience high-performance management. So a little translation is required to uncover the implied principles and practices of the 12 elements. Here are the twelve elements as presented in the introduction to the book ((pages xi and xii)) .

  1. I know what is expected of me at work
  2. I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right.
  3. At work, I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day.
  4. In the last seven days, I have received recognition or praise for doing good work.
  5. My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.
  6. There is someone at work who encourages my development.
  7. At work, my opinions seem to count.
  8. The mission or purpose of my company makes me feel my job is important.
  9. My associates or fellow employees are committed to quality work.
  10. I have a best friend at work.
  11. In the last six months, someone at work has talked to me about my progress.
  12. This last year, I have had opportunities at work to learn and grow.

A footnote at the end of this listing states that “Each of the Q12© statements above represent millions of dollars of investment by Gallup researchers…..”. This is one of the reasons these Gallup books are interesting. There is lots of data embedded in them. It is well worth the time to read through and absorb the anecdotes that flow from the data.

The questions I have about this list are not about the validity of these statements. They seem to jive very well both with anecdotal observation and the findings of many other studies about the attitudes and feelings of people in high performance organizations. The questions facing a manager is how to create the business culture, infrastructure and processes that produces these results in the human resources of the organization?

Without attempting anything exhaustive here, let’s take a look at several of these 12 elements and see how one might convert them into actionable tasks for a manager.

Looking at the first two elements,  applying Lean principles and practices creates an environment in which every person knows what is expected of them, how they are to accomplish the tasks, when the results are required, and what success looks like in terms of detailed deliverables of a product or service.  And, they receive immediate feedback concerning all of these characteristics from those around them in the work flow.

Since good Lean work design involves visual, simple feedback mechanisms, quality is a result of the process and failures are dealt with immediately. Apply Lean principles and practices develops processes that directly connect the work at hand to elements eight and nine. Central to Lean practices is the principle that quality is a outcome of the process and failures are identified in the flow and quality issues are resolved down to the root level.

Lean principles and practices include a focus on the development of every individual in the organization to be fully cross-functional in their skills. Typically this is implemented through specific cross-training requirements so that, over time, every individual learns to be a fully qualified practitioner of multiple skills required by the company’s processes and long-term goals. or

Element seven, “At work, my opinions seem to count.” requires some further comment. High performance organizations require the involvement of every associate’s mind and energies to solve problems and carry out the work at hand. It is not optional in a high performance environment. So, by definition, every person’s engagement counts. The word “seem” needs to be replaced by “does”.  A little further quibble here. Opinions are not very useful without the supporting facts and thought processes behind them. This is the reason that high performance organizations, whether they identify themselves under the banner of Lean ((Lean is the American name for the Toyota Production System, also more broadly the Toyota Business System. There is no standards organization for lean principles and practices. A good starting point is Womack, James P., and Daniel T. Jones. Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation, Revised and Updated. 2nd ed. Free Press, 2003 and The Lean Enterprise Institute)) , Baldrige ((Baldrige National Quality Program Criteria)) , EFQM ((European Foundation for Quality Management)) , or ISO9001-2008 ((International Organization for Standardization ISO9001-2008 Quality management systems — Requirements)) , use disciplined problem solving techniques that everyone learns to use. This assures that everyone’s engagement in the problem is represented, but the problem solving is fact-based, gets to the root, and is actionable.

Element 10, “I have a best friend at work.” is clearly beyond the control of management. It is understandably nice, but definitely not a controllable element of any work place.

Some elements are particularly subject to influence by the behaviors of senior management. Elements 3, 4, 5, 6, and 11 are typically elements to be found in high performance human resources management processes. But, making those processes come to life can readily be driven by the example of senior management in how they manage the selection, development and pruning of the people who report to them. If they practice sound high performance human resource practices, those practices will cascade down to everyone in the organization. It goes without saying that a component of that is direct involvement by senior management in oversight and monitoring of the health of the human resources management processes in the organization. A simple example of this is to impose a rule that no manager, even to the CEO level, can receive a pay grade review if they have any outstanding performance reviews for their subordinates. This drives timeliness quite nicely.

To conclude, this list of 12 elements is an interesting starting point to venture into high performance management. The list is really a slice of the results that flow from high performance management practices. The trick here then is to reverse engineer the list to uncover high performance practices from the world of Lean, Baldrige, and other high performance models that can be applied in your particular business environment. Building a high-performance organization is one sure approach to developing an organization that produces great results and solid answers to the 12 elements of great managing as described in 12 The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James K. Harter.