Business / Management Blogging (my extracts).
FORMAL BLOGGING ON MANAGEMENT AND BUSINESSQUESTIONING THE VALUE OF ?VAST?September 4, 2005 05:36 PMI really endorse the idea of a shift towards self-sufficiency, sustainability, and a more holistic lifestyle in general. I am fully aware of business (economies) life cycles; what is born will die (clearly, unless biotechnology and nanotechnology get it its way). What worries me the most is the lack of greater (formal and informal) ?private and systems of solidarities? (e.g. insurers, re-insurers). They cannot pay for an incurred ?loss? if there are not (i) Capitalistic firms (frictionless-ly) and (ii) if Solidarity is not brought into action (pragmatic solidarity to make the core business get the ?financials? soundly). I really support these values. How do WE, as an example, build infrastructures (tangible and intangible ones) for almost 7 billon demanding souls? Here?s, to me, the ?catch.? Maybe a ?Catch 22.? I believe we must apply the best of values, the highest of ethics, but we also need that the developing world to get entrepreneurially rolling to have the ?purchasing empowerment? to interrelate with the rest of the ?already-spinning? world. Otherwise, and truly respecting everyone?s POVs, I don?t know how we will get it right. YOU CAN BUY ?MATERIAL THINGS? AND AT THE SAME TIME YOU MUST (NOTE THE WORDS ?YOU MUST?) ENRICH YOURSELF INTELLECTUALLY AND SPIRITUALLY. Evidently, just buying ?stuff,? without the CONCURRENTLY ENHANCEMENT OF THE INTELLECT AND THE SPIRIT, WILL BREED ?-NOT SO METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING?- ?BRAINLESS CONSUMERS.? This must change. It?s absolutely necessary for most everyone to get ?advanced risk management? empowerment. You may have the idea (US$1) and the plan (US$ 1 MN), but you have to have the risk management capabilities plus the entrepreneurial ability (US$ 1 BN). It?s not only because the ?ups and downs? of global economy; also because of those ?ups and downs? from global climate, global ecosystems, global politics, global societies that rest on the pervasive concerns (?life/death? environments) of the ?un-incorporated.? To ?reimagine? is not to get stalled; it is about getting better and better at manufacturing (tangibles and intangibles) and simultaneously becoming aware about how to get/provide the preconditions (the fittest possible framework) for others to responsibly take part in the ?better sides? of globalization with sustainability and adaptability. Any betterment of the mind and the spirit WITHOUT WORLDWIDE SOLLDARITY WILL PRECLUDE THE VIABILLTY OF THIS CIVILLZATION.Posted by Andres Agostini at September 4, 2005 05:36 PMMBWA REDUXSeptember 10, 2005 10:39 AMYes, there is an unbearable problem with the lack of MBWA (Managing By Wandering Around) implementation. Corporations and academies ?tooled? the minds of workers and students, respectively, from the ?abstract? and in accordance with a Jurassic common sense. I see many CEOs lost in their ?systems of beliefs and values? (?). The tsunami of technological and societal change ?seemingly? ¡s way too much for them, not to mention the transformations stemming from the environment, among others. They are ?grabbing the past? (missing the present and hence the future) as they un-heartedly reiterate everywhere: ?...think in the unthinkable...be entrepreneurial...?Many of these ?past grabbers? (PGs) do a great deal of ?slogan preaching? about the importance they consider the ?intellectual capital? has, but, in actuality, DO THEY REALLY CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE? Very few do, most don?t. Absolutely everyone must walk the ?freelance? pathway. PGs are too busy understanding the hearing-impairing noise from the ?swirl of change,? similar to an ongoing Cambrian Explosion. They just don?t get it and there is not much time to explain it thoroughly.As it has been said, WILL YOU PAUSE WHILE CHINA, INDIA, RUSSIA (PROBABLY) AND OTHERS ARE 100% OVER ACTIVE? They all want to ?conquer? the global economy as some ill-theoreticians (PGs) fail to take into account NOW the thinkable and the unthinkable at the same time (simultaneously). You can manage ?Mean and Lean,? but you can never ?underplay? the legitimate expectations of your ?team.? Yes, that ?team? which represents the ?boat that most everyone has to board? and with said «sprit de corps». Say what? What team? What team work? What «sprit de corps»? Then, many of these ?past grabbers? (PGs) lacks ethics and values (not the recursive search for ?unprecedented profits,? namely ?economic value?). Lack of ethics and values, with absence of MBWA (to name one), can disrupt a whole civilization. If to this we add, ?I don?t care about the fate of my employees, associates or clients...,? the volume of the ?noise? will go beyond the most creative imagination.It?s difficult. Most everyone (not to say everybody) has to be his/her own ?employer and employee.? Extremely difficult, but never impossible. If the ?past grabbers? (PGs) are ruling out their ?intellectual capital? constituency (brainy workforce), they will commit a bigger crime by and against themselves. As damage is self-inflected onto themselves by these ?evangelizers of the alleged entrepreneurial spirit,? the over-dynamics of the ?RISING ECONOMIES? will not stop, in fact it might even get much more accelerated. This is the real deal. What is the name of the game? RESPONSE: ?Zero-sum frame of reference, collectively put in action in the battlefield.? I wonder, What do they mean to ?gain? for themselves? It?s a sine qua non to de-flaw the flawed immediately. In the mean time (yoctosecond to yoctosecond), the managerial ?revolt? of ideas will come from the ?bottom-up? into a more horizontal, HIGHLY AMORPHOUS, BLURRED framework.The Web, on the other side, offers nearly unlimited opportunities to access contacts and knowledge, hopefully business as well. I have the hypothesis that, because of the GREATER CONNECTIVITY AND INTERACTIVITY we now have, the optimum will be amplified into the best, as the flawed will be amplified into the worst. I would imagine that the most convenient for everyone?s best interest is to leverage his / her ?personal capital? (education, training, business relationships) via the Internet to the utmost. In addition, imagination and creativity ? in all fields of knowledge? have never been as vital to each and every one of us as in the current times. I am not sure if the type of imagination and creativity required NOW by business and management has any past precedent. The term ?precedent? will have to be, by the way, redefined. We need badly a brand-new word.WHAT TO DO (ATTEMPT)? One just might: (i) Create intuitively, (u) Create insightfully (intuitively + discerningly), (iii) Create counter-intuitively, (iv) Create based on forward-thinking, (y) Create based on go-against thinking, (vi) Scan around without intent, (vii) Diversify his / her curiosity, and (viii) Merge the seven practices aforementioned. Practice serendipity à la new millennium. Create pre-conditions to exacerbate your serendipitous practices to fall into a zone of a not yet identified knowledge (perhaps, a ?breakthrough?). Meeting the unknown is finding new knowledge in due time in a flank not under our watch (yet). We need to pay attention, both to small changes and their patterns as well as to trends. One needs to become SPECIALIST IN GENERALLTY, another expression for ?grasping? and ?commanding? the interdisciplinary (hidden) aspects of business within a cross-functional, multidimensional mindset and a restless spirit. Be rampantly creative. Search to learn the un-learnable. A place to pick up ?at least? an invaluable ?piece of knowledge.? Iterate the learning and the picking up.One will need to go from being a pragmatic Re-imaginelogist to a practical Re-imaginengineer (a Re-imagine activist). One will need to literally love ambiguity. Resist and resist; adapt, adapt, and re-adapt, FOREVER. Raise the ante. Get the lucrative risk. De-peril the dangers. Up the ?gaining facet? (upside). Outsource the hazardous dimension (downside). WHAT TO DO WITH ONE?S CURIOSITY? RESPONSE: ASCERTAIN YOU?RE THE MOST CURIOUS PERSON IN YOUR BUSINESS. Speaking of curiosity and as per Stephen Hawking (may wish to bear this in me), ?My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.? Let?s not forget about MBWA.Posted by Andres Agostini at September 10, 2005 10:39 AMLEADERSHIP?September 11, 2005 06:56 PMA dexterous leader knows how to converse with the team through his style, his voice, and his manner. Additionally, he communicates nonverbally what he believes and how he lives. Both capability and personality are evident. Consequently, he makes achievement easy for others. Under his oversight, the members of the team can bring together and combine their efforts. ?Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes.? ?Peter F. DruckerNowadays complexities require of a set of very unique attributes. I call the empowered with these attributes ?TransLeader.? The forthcoming is Part 2. I will here venture some ideas, principles or tenets or prcepts (label it as you wish) that a corporate manager (leadership exerciser) may wish to consider. These are ideas to be applied by business settings (here ?creative tension? has been invited to exercise maximum mind expansion). Between one idea and the other, the reader is the only one who makes the connection. Some of them is to be understood metaphorically ones, others are literarily. NOTA BENE: This is a call for business imagination. As follows:SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 26 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Don?t worry about being surprised by the unexpectable. Just carry on expecting the unexpectable, regardless of the implicated chaos. Create instability as the essence of your strategy. Keep in mind: a more volatile external environment requires a less stable internal world. Seek out substitutes and opportunities to increase productivity by measuring the mass used in your business today, and getting it to decrease every year. Respond with more rapid and varied adaptation.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 27 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Conduct thousands of tests of products, prices, features, packages, marketing channels, credit policies, account management, customer service, collections, and retention. Make informed but subjective judgments. Push ahead before the competition could catch up. Seize the opportunity?even when not really prepared.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 28 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Empower talented people. Accelerate talented people very quickly, because that?s where you get the value. Place bets on future values. Cross boundaries, change jobs, and form new teams to meet evolving needs. Align with the business. Use good economic judgment. Be flexible. And be empathetic to your colleagues.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 29 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)It?s okay to break the rules in the right way. Going around doing randomly disconnected things. Develop all the peripheral relationships you need to be effective organizationally. Manage the connections rather than the structure. Also know how to hybridize.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 30 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Reach out to others with corresponding roles across the organization to learn and share ideas. Move around and support your colleagues when needed. Enable innovation by bringing DIVERSE elements together. Without these kinds of connections, DIVERSITY has little inherent value.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 31 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Empower others and yourself by the whole chaotic percolation of ideas at the bottom of the organization. Bear in mind: Empirical evidence, based on small tests, always carried the day. Attract very bright people with initial proof of concept, then plug them into your organizational structure.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 32 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Maintain common interfaces and cross-functional capabilities that allow work to flow and value chains to talk to teach other. Harvest the idea, then propagate it wildly before the mimicry of competition sets in.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 33 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Employ diversification to spread their risks. Be willing to take the risk of shaping the future according to your own design. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, but don put all your eggs in one basket. Beware of this: Discontinuities, irregularities, and volatilities seem to be proliferating. Remember: Without risks, life poses no mystery.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 34 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Seed, select, amplify, and destabilize the situation are the two management ideas for accelerated evolution. Don?t expect a perfect feedback system in a volatile environment. Don?t be excellent at doing; be excellent at changing, too. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speaking of leadership, said: ?The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.?Posted by Andres Agostini at September 11, 2005 06:56 PMSALLY HELGESEN ?September 12, 2005 12:29 PMAny car manufacturer today must pay attention to the granularity of details. Zillion details. In learning a lesson from the Japanese, they may just have to assimilate a key feature. The feature of being grandiosely minimalist to have the empowering capability to work out any nano-detail (macro-flaw), regardless of its size. Getting the inspiration and the OUTCOMES from MBWA (Managing By Wandering Around) and remembering ?A Passion for Excellence?? The zeitgeist (the spirit of the time) has changed the weltanschauung (worldview). Many people ?allegedly empowered with the highest education? speak about, as an example, the chaos. They, nonetheless, don?t know how to tackle it as a practical manner. They entertain the idea in theirs minds and the more the idea gets entertained, the most become in dire straits, the ?supposed-to-be? incumbent or the ?alleged? practitioners.Many have the intellectual capital but a great percentage doesn?t wish to make that specific resource productive and competitive. Almost as if they were expecting someone else to make the effort on their behalf so that they can ?collect? the fruits later on. Fully empowered with knowledge, expertise, dexterities, experience but WITHOUT A TASK-ORIENTED SOUL? How many characters like these does one know? Many, too many! A great number of them in key tenures at important corporations. Regardless of the intellectual capital and their desired not to make a progress, HAVE YOU SEEN THEIR FACES WHEN AN OUTSIDER COMES ALONG WITH A BETTER AND BIGGER (IN-DETAIL) PLAN?Incidentally, What if Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Bell Labs, Los Alamos Laboratories and other R&D plus Centers for Business Innovation will grow, as an illustration, green, premium gasoline (with out the petroleum industry) from molecules and bacteria by applying nanotechnology and biotechnology? HAVE YOU THOUGHT OUT A SCENARIO OF LAB-MADE GASOLLNE TO AUTOMOBILES WITHOUT THE PETROLEUM INDUSTRY? Don?t they already make some sort of alcohol or diesel (motor fuel) out com crops in the U.S.? I know there are so many alternative fuels (nitrogen cells, gas, biomass, hybrids) and sources of energy. I have read these great organizations ?along with many other? will make the new technological wave in 9 to 10 years, making the ?Molecular Technology? be a reality as Meyer, Davis and Davis tell us. These authors (Meyer, Davis and Davis) in ?IT?S ALLVE? tell us that some scientists are growing com plants? What do they not harvest? Com. WHAT DO THEY HARVEST? AFFIRMATIVE RESPONSE: PLASTIC-BASED POLYMER. Will this have an impact on carmakers themselves? I wonder. Consistently, I wish to share a Dr. Richard P. Feynman?s thought: ?We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.?The upcoming is Part 3. I will here continue to venture some ideas, principles or tenets (label it as you wish) that a corporate manager (trans-leadership exerciser) may wish to consider. These are ideas to be applied by business settings (here ?creative tension? has been invited to exercise mind expansion). Between one idea and the other, the reader is the only one who makes the connection. Some are to be understood metaphorically ones, others are literarily. NOTA BENE: This is a call of business re-imagination. As follows:SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 35 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Explore the extremes, where nonlinear effects kick in. Sometimes, the extremes contain pleasant, nonlinear surprises. Imagine things that engender loyalty towards your organization. Through experimentation with detailed measurements and discipline and logical analysis, you find profitable innovations.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 36 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Test things at the bottom of the organization that lead to big insights. Test, experiment, measure, and optimize. Institute hard-core analytic optimization. Architect your entire infrastructure to operate in real time. Let your account-management programs to be driven by experimentation.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 37 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Dream up programs that might be of value to customers, and then test them. A successful test often triggers other behaviors, and you should follow these with more new offers. Shift to roll-out, because ah of a sudden your competition get a preponderance of one product of my organization that they?ve never seen before.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 38 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Have a free flow of resources to where the value is. Rather than penalizing people who fail, praise them for their commitment and intentions. Reinforce the tolerance of risk and failure. Revise your best practices. Observe, orient, decide, act. First to fight now means first to learn.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 39 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Fly great distances, meet new people, and encounter new ideas. Have a freedom of thought, the passion for experimentation, and the desire to imagine your future. Believe in not commonly believed opinions.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 40 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)It?s about getting more from less. That?s the true road to wealth. Focus on changes, challenges, and opportunities. Earn more while spending less. Reach a higher level of output. Pursue profit maximization. Remain competitive. Adapt to revolutionary innovations in technology and business efficiency the soonest. Craft value creating relationships. Establish guidelines, offer insight, and provide inspiration. Identify, analyze, and maximize your learning opportunities.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 42 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Evaluate, identify, select, negotiate, manage, turn around, govern, implement, anticipate, and ensure success. Generate immediate cost savings. Realize a cash infusion from the sale of assets. Relieve the burden of staffing.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 43 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Be freer to direct your attention to the more strategic aspects of your job. Keep your logic compelling.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 44 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Destabilize in order to live closer to the edge of chaos. This means being agile enough to change as the environment does, but not so fluid as to lose its defining structure. Walk the walk as well as talking the talk of the Adaptive Enterprise.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 45 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)A lesson: The word adaptation describes the interaction between an organism and its environment.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 46 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)TO BEAR IN MIND! But one thing an evolutionary and ecological perspective tells us for sure: If several major forces are at work, they will not progress in separate straight lines ?they will interact chaotically, creating unforeseen changes.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 47 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Be willing to adapt very quickly, to pounce on an opportunity when you see it, to change the organization, to think about new developments, and to be always very open to any change in any direction.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 48 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)You have to be the equivalent of selective forces in nature, which calls for a willingness to let people in the organization to explore, to flourish and develop.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 49 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Separate to promote independence, selfish thinking, and local solutions. Learn from each other?s mistakes and successes, and you?ll get better and be able to operate at a much more accelerated pace, based upon the knowledge that has been transferred.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 50 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Get your organization into a massive amount of knowledge and experience that creates a great breeding stock for subsequent ventures.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 51 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Explore continually evolving technology and applications, while also creating different units to exploit commercial opportunities not always closely related to the founding capabilities.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 52 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Replenish customers on demand. Take the client as an agent, and create an agent-based point of view.PS: Tom, thank you for your work. In the positive side and in my case, it is impossible not to get my minded over stimulated while reading you. Beyond that, you communicate to make the reader wish more (to research withoutlimits). Thanks.Posted by Andres Agostini at September 12, 2005 12:29 PMSTUFFED!September 14, 2005 01:47 PMIf they just didn?t get the MBWA (Managing by Wandering Around) way of ?thinking and acting before? and if they don?t wish to get on the ?RE-IMAGINE approach?, AMONG MANY OTHERS, they just might desire to read some words of good judgment. Dakota tribal wisdom ?as an example? says that when you discover you?re on a dead horse (worn-out weltanschauung), the best strategy is to dismount (to admit that creatively rethinking through your business is your next approach to get a new, practical mindset).A part of the Re-Imagine methodology (I also call it ?TransLeadership?) is to get your intangibles and tangibles ?as per your core-business? to (be):1.- Servitize.2.- Productize.3.- Webify.4.- Outsource (strategically ?cross? sourcing).5.- Relate your core business to ?molutech? (molecular technology).NOTE 1: Surf dogmas; evade sectarian doctrines.GE?s ?workout,? incidentally, had four primary goals (in case a reader is interested):A.- To build trust.B.- To empower employees.C.- To eliminate unnecessary work.D.- To create a new paradigm for GE, a ?boundaryless? organization.Then, GE?s ?workout? must be upped to next (illogical) logical step, which adds zillion serendipitous actions to enhance such a ?workout,? adapting it to your specific framework.NOTE 2: ??to a level of process excellence that will produce (as per GE?s product standards) fewer than four defects per million operations?? ? Jack Welch (1998).NOTE 3: ??PROBABLE IMPOSSIBILLITES are to be preferred (NOW) to improbable possibilities?.? E Aristotle.NOTE 4: ?If all forms of arts aspire to be like musical forms of science aspire to be like mathematical.? ?George Santayana.COMMENTARY ON NOTE 4: To be creative in the battlefield TODAY will require the concurrent application of science (based in silico, multidimensional mathematics), and arts plus political intelligence.WHAT TO ATTEMPT TO BE SUCCESSFULLY CREATIVE?I.- Plan and execute many ?futures? (plausible ones not). Engage in serious, actionable scenario planning.II.- Empower your team and yourself with ADVANCED RISK MANAGEMENT. This is a sine qua non.III.- While bearing in mind the aforementioned ?I? and ?II,? take SERENDIPITY into your daily Creativity Agenda. Learn from mistake. Learn from failure. Lear from the magnitude of effort deployed to make serendipity around the fastest and the most fruitful. Learn from your own experiments ?PATTERNS.? Learn from your industries trends. Learn about other industry?s trends. Learn from the as-of-now society trends. LEAM THE UNLEAMABLE.THINK AND ACT UNSYMMETRICAL. Place narrative and numerical data into a data-mine system. Transform data into information. Convert information into knowledge and then into profit. The imminent is Part 5. I will here keep on to venture some ideas, principles or tenets (label it as you wish) that a corporate manager (trans-leadership exerciser) may wish to consider. These are ideas to be applied by business settings (here ?creative tension? has been invited to exercise mind expansion). Between one idea and the other, the reader is the only one who makes the connection. Some are to be understood metaphorically ones, others are literarily. NOTA BENE: This is a call of business re-making (extreme makeover). As follows:SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 77 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Seek the hidden. De-learn the learned. Make the covert overt. Implement ipso facto.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 78 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)De-peril your risks. Empower your financial risks to work for you. Hire them; get resigned from your bricks-and-mortars (a future not plausible).SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 79 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Plan, lead, and manage.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 80 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Understand your business depth today. Develop better ways to service your enterprise in the future.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 81 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Before ?outsourcing,? NOW ?Worldwide Sourcing? or ?Competitive Sourcing?.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 82 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Have fewer staff and run a lean operation. Favor those who leverage third-party relationships that don?t tie up capital and consume resources.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 83 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Strategically enhance your organization?s core competencies. Address any outstanding issue with your employees, unions, and the community. Find the lowest total cost or best value.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 84 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Recognize impact on internal operations. Capture the big picture.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 85 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Track benefits, realize quick wins, and motivate critical stakeholders to remain committed.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 86 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Early anticipation of changes can drastically reduce the time and cost of addressing them. Seek the quick win(that long forgotten in an ignored ?but mission-critical? flank).SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 87 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Research assiduously which of the available external market capabilities fit best with your strategic objectives.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 88 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Articulate these management principles more precisely, implement them more systematically, and rely less on the intuition of a few gifted leaders. Don?t write strategy, GROW IT. Don?t think in terms of maximizing your share of the market but of maximizing your share of experience. Build an innovation laboratory capable of creating a steady stream of the new ideas to stay ahead of the competition.SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 89 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Differentiate or die. Be mindful that improvisation is too important to be left to the fortuitous. Consider that life is sustainable through the unperceived and those universal laws that are unknown to us. Continuity is over-dead; it hasn?t yet reincarnated. History will be reshaped by the sudden and sharp change, namely ?frenzy volatility.?SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 90 - (metaphoric ideas for updated management practitioners)Launch your employees with confidence into a somewhat chaotic environment, knowing that they will direct themselves toward optimal performance to success. Instill in the staff a loose, self-organizing culture?in search of new opportunities. Motivate and develop others to learn to change to prevail. Sharing ideas, ??an eye is not an eye because you see it; an eye is an eye because it sees you?? ?Antonio Machado.Posted by Andres Agostini at September 14, 2005 01:47 PMCOMMENTS: BEST FIRST JOBJanuary 13, 2006 11:05My first job was at a mortgage bank. I then had to make a detailed ?data base? of ah loans granted for this end since the bank got incorporated. My boss back then was respectful and supportive. It was a good opportunity to get started in the practical matters in times when your actual experience (to be applied) is minimal. With this job as with any other job, I have encountered a great opportunity to learn as I get paid. Regardless if you work for an employer or on your own, any professional responsibility is a major opportunity to enhance your professional abilities. Any way, in life you develop new dexterities and skills as your professional life gets more complex. And due to the nature of technological change as it increases at a quantum rate today, one is exposed to many industries and hence to many different ways to re-imagine not quick fixes but fundamental solutions to ever-increasing, intertwined, intricate problems posed by this business world of ?ours.? The first job is the step you make when you go from theory to the real world for the first time. It offers you the possibility to have a solid job as a reference on your résumé so you?re not perceived as a ?rookie? forever. Some would say that it does not matter how expert one is, because one is always learning (and de-learning the old and re-learning the new) so he is a rookie even when he gets closer to retirement. This first job is a milestone that allows you to walk a long ascending pathway full of obstacles. ?Obstacles? is another word for enhancement opportunities of dexterities and skills. When your skills and dexterities get enhanced ?thanks to that first job?your portfolio of advancement options gets broader. I have the strong opinion that being exposed to many professional responsibilities gets you the largest vista. It somehow gets you into the infancy of ?systems thinking.? Without the ?first job? and the updating of oneself is not possible to get so globally sophisticated. Without global sophistication one gets precluded from the (global) economy. One has now to think ?beyond beyond.? A great deal of ?future practicing? and foresight enactment to improve your scenario planning will not suffice. One needs to be working every second on his ?personal capital? for good.Posted by Andres Agostini at January 13, 2006 11:05SOLUTION TO MY SOLUTION ISSUE, PLEASE!January 13, 2006 03:34Thank you for posting this interesting subject matter and inquiring on it. Yes, it seems that when one has an already ?packaged? (defined/designed) product/service to a client, he/she may say ?this is too good to be true.? Without the provider?s violating its copyright and trademarks, it has been proven useful to get the product closer to the client?s ethos and ethnology. This?by no means?will represent any damage either to the client or to the provider. First and foremost, the solution must be defined by a major discussion (friendly and professional conversation at once) between the client and the ?provider.? Who can provide the ?solution? must pay huge attention to a number of things ([1]details and [2] the granularity of details from the ?systems? stance), (a) What the client is saying, (b) What the client is saying between lines, (c) What the client is not saying but as per the provider is crucial to get to the solution, (d) What the client might inadvertently, un-deliberately be distorting in the ?core message,? (e) If the client is exuding some type of fear. The provider, in my opinion, must also pay attention to (i) connotations, (u) semantics, and (iii) contexts. These three aspects are increasingly important as technology growth is more ?rampant? and as (would-be) ?collaborative? environments are more diverse and dynamic. Any noise must be identified and taken away from THE TRUE, UNAMBIGUQUS SIGNAL(S). Often the client?s message can be a problem if it is cumbersome. Occasionally it is superficially awkward but sufficiently daring for the provider to have a migraine. One has to understand the culture of the organization. Regardless of the culture of the organizations, each one has his/her own personal cosmology without a fail. Both must be respected and considered at the same time to succeed. But one must also understand the ?psychology? of the client?s official making the request. Sometimes the provider is using ?analog words? (similar parlance) as those of the client. The client gets, anyway, so angry and sometimes offended because the provider didn?t use the exact words he/she likes or prefers the most. The more complex the topic under discussion ?regardless of your ?educating? the client?the better off the provider will be if he/she tries to explain the solution with the client?s vocabulary. For providers this might prove to be challenging. But any provider must ?bridge any gap? between its product/service and the client?s requirement. It is good to pay maximum attention to the ?body language? of the client?s official as well. Having ?ice-breaking? dialogues in other settings outside the formal ?business-like? one is often crucial to understand (empathy) the person. Facilitating a client a ?business-based breakfast? has offered me an ?extraordinary clue? to get back to the business-like setting with a greater understanding of what the client?s official is trying to tell (request/expect from me). Whenever possible, it is key to ask questions about the requirement/expectations to the people under and above the client?s official to try to gain a more illuminating (discerned) insight. Anyway, to me a ?solution? is in no way a ?quick fix? but a ?fundamental, optimum solution.?A more fundamental solution is even a more holistic one, especially when it is practiced/rendered systematically. Some people mistakenly associate ?solutions? (optimum) to ?quick fixes? (sub-optimum). Every company not only has its own culture. It also posses a ?defined glossary,? by means of which they interrelate within and beyond the organization?s boundaries. If a provider can use this defined glossary, the psychological connection will be better. In advance, the provider can tell the client that ?as metaphor(s) or a ?clean cut? communicational resource?and in order to be more effective, he/she will use some of the company?s language with great respect. This can save time, money, headaches, and clients. Quite often?as of these current times impose? is becoming almost impossible not to see someone ?engaging in a confrontational debate.? I would do always my best to make it an amicable, ?fluid? dialogue to get the win/win (optimum) results in due place and timely.Posted by Andres Agostini at January 13, 2006 03:34SCALE LIMITS? ?BUILT TO LAST??January 14, 2006 05:21 PMThis has been a generalized issue for a long time, organizational ?Scale Limits,? especially since enterprises went global indeed. I believe some new criteria have not been instituted, because some universal laws are yet unknown to us (up to now). Nonetheless, there is some interesting data. Lord John Browne, group chief executive of British Petroleum, an applied physicist, structured BP as an atomic system with its stemming sub-atomic systems. What Browne did is to me quite some novelty to consider. Incidentally, he is also a ?non-executive director of the Intel Corporation.? To make a point on the ?Scale Limits? and as per the book ?Presence,? ?... Not many people realize it, but VISA INTEMATIONAL IS ARGUABLY THE LARGEST BUSINESS IN THE WORLD, WITH OVER $ 3 TRILLLON IN TRANSACTIONS AND A MARKET VALUE APPROACHING A TRILLLON. Yet to many it doesn?t even look like a business. It?s organized as a self-governing network of more than twenty thousand member institutions that are also its owners. It?s governed by a constitution that stipulates how governing boards are elected, the rights and obligations of members, how new members are admitted, and how members can be disqualified. In short, one of the world?s largest corporations operates as a self-governing democracy...The genetic code became Visa?s purpose and principles, its governing ideas, and the core governance processes spelled out in its constitution. The subsequent work of prototyping and institutionalizing took over four years, but in the end Visa International was formed, more or less in its current form....?I believe it is quite interesting to bear in mind the Visa International case. I don?t see its geometric growth slowing down any soon. In order to address the ?scale limits? hurdle(s) very differently, it may be easier to tackle the grave ?corporate governance and concurrent risks? à la Visa?s Magna Carta perspective. The ?Scale Limits? issue has many angles. Clearly a talented-leadership (shared throughout any organization) will be essential along with STRONG VALUES (applied ones). A remedy to this challenge is to concentrate on deepening a strategic position, rather than broadening and compromising it. One approach is to look for extensions of the strategy that leverage the existing activity system by offering features or services or advantages that competitors would find unattainable or expensive to match on a stand-alone basis.Put differently, managers can ask themselves which activities, features, or forms of competition are feasible or less costly to them because of supplementary activities that their organization performs. Deepening a strategic position requires making the firm?s activities more unique, strengthening fit, and communicating the strategy per se better to those clients who ought to value it. Leadership vested with strong values will be irrelevant if innovation (creativity) is not thoroughly redefined, instituted and implemented. I am speaking of the type of creativity that transfers breakthroughs through what I would call ?BlP? (Business Innovation Processes). I would not recommend anyone wait for the Technological Singularity ?just to happen,? acknowledging that everybody has his/her free will to decide whatever. Do we have in the business environment any pre-Singularity events already signaling us? Are we paying attention to any disconfirming evidence? This is not a happening. This is long-term, on-going, persistent effort that leads to an unimaginable ?conquest.? To me we must redefined the term ?unprecedented,? since its ?core meaning? won?t suffice shortly. Having biotechnology and nanotechnology collaborating with each other and irrupting in our Era, seemingly towards the Convergence of Science as per many respected authors and researchers, What could ?MOLUTECH? do to eradicate the organizational ?Scale Limits?? What are its opportunities? What are the risks? How do we subtract the risks from the opportunities? I just wonder.Posted by Andres Agostini at January 14, 2006 05:21 PMSOLUTIONS TO MY SOLUTION ISSUE, PLEASE! [PART 2]January 19, 2006 05:54 PMWhen looking at getting a client the right solution, one must appeal to many tools (often concurrently). Storytelling is?without a doubt?one of those efficacious tools as per infinite authors, more so when the story is absolutely accurate. How many times we have seen managers and entrepreneurs and public officials using the baseball parlance to explain a difficult situation. To get the story conveyed is not meant for getting anyone amused Can added value), although sometimes this is impossible to preclude. Maybe a story developed between Madrid and Spain back to the time of World War II might result useful to sample creativity to landing a ?solution.? One thing the Spaniards got from the British was the ?soccer.? The people of Spain never got a lesson/interest on how to play ?cricket.? The latter is a very British sport, extended to some few countries; none of them were ?Romanic? countries. At that time, Spain was immersed in a Civil War. My friend, some more years older than me, had a curiosity for a ?weird? subject, namely reinsurance. Reinsurance is ?the insurance of insurance,? in exceedingly plain words. Back then, speaking of reinsurance in Madrid was quite a novelty. They knew that there was ?something? known as ?Lloyd?s of London,? considered (at that time) the epicenter for the seemingly awkward activity. My friend?s father (a visionary) said that he would send him to London to learn about reinsurance. My friend finally went there. When he got the closest to Lloyd?s, he found out that people dealing there was not friendly to ?unknown? people. They were extremely specialized and focused only among themselves. He got rejected upfront systematically. No one at Lloyd?s was expecting to deal (?to place reinsurance treaties?) with a foreigner. My friend did not get discouraged at all. In the mean time, he noted that the British ?loved? playing cricket. And then he found out that he liked cricket also. He was getting to like a ?foreign sport.? Subsequently, he went to a London bookstore and bought everything he could on cricket and reinsurance. He just wanted to have an awesome grasp/command of this sport. Even more ?weirdly,? he noted that many Lloyd?s reinsurance company representatives were attending to a great deal of cricket games. He then decided to become a pundit in two areas, first and foremost in reinsurance (and as per the British standards). Secondly, he wanted to know everything on cricket. Subsequently, he knew that he needed to make a bridge between both. That is, to be able to speak about reinsurance using as many as possible cricket references/metaphors. For the Lloyd?s reinsurance company representatives it was (at least) ridicule to expect to have a foreigner speak about such a complex matter as reinsurance. But, having said foreigner speaking about reinsurance through logical cricket parlance?while making a great deal of sense?made my friend a ?British hero.? Then he passed the exam (that of society and that of one elite organization that I highly respect and admire). Then he became legendary. His personal name got to be a ?brand? not only in London, but also in Madrid and in Latin Americas most important capitals. Speaking/dealing about insurance was relatively easy in Spain and Latin America in those days. Speaking (and having the London connections) about reinsurance was so stressful, and perceived as a miracle that would never come true. Let?s remember this era was around the end of WWII. From there on, my friend was a reinsurance ?guru? (with truly powerful connections and financial affluence) not only in Spain and Latin America, but also in London and sometimes as well in the U.S. Tom has always spoken about disseminating ideas (through the Internet). I wanted to offer this story as a contribution to his ?creativity.?Posted by Andres Agostini at January 19, 2006 05:54 PMBEST FOOD-FOR-THOUGHT LINESBY GARY HAMEL, London Business School Professor, and Strategos Chairman/Co-Founder:I am no longer a captive to history. Whatever I can imagine, I can accomplish.I am no longer a vassal in a faceless bureaucracy. I am an activist, not a drone.I am no longer a foot soldier in the march of progress.I am a Revolutionary!
Andres Agostini
(Ich Bin Singularitarian!)
