Roc - Blog

WHAT THEY DON’T TEACH YOU ABOUT PEOPLE

Les Hayman — Mon, 07 May 2012 05:16:12 +0000

Business schools may be great at teaching people how to read a balance sheet, calculate net present value, internal rate of return and discounted cash flow, but they do not seem to do a great job at teaching future “masters of the universe” that management is really all about people.

Author: HBS1908; via Wikimedia Commons

Unless they will end up working for someone like Goldman Sachs, students will spend significantly more time analysing balance sheets during their business studies than they are likely to do in an entire career spanning 30-40 years in the business world. However, no matter which industry they end up in, and whatever management role, position or level they achieve they will never have learned enough about why intelligent, well educated people can act in ways that are illogical, frustrating and totally incomprehensible to their supervisors. Those challenges will only hit them in the real world.

via Wikimedia Commons

Here are some things that they should have learned to give them a faster start to successfully coping with the art of managing people.

1. What isn’t measured rarely gets done

Even if you have great people working for you, people will rarely stick to a task if it doesn’t get regularly scrutinised and measured. I am amazed at how many times I have seen a manager hand out the responsibility of a task to someone without setting down the criteria by which the results will be measured, a completion date and also a schedule for review. It’s not that people are generally lazy or not committed, but good people are generally very busy, and the urgent will take priority over those things that appear to be less so, and anything not measured will always drop to the bottom of the pile.

2. If someone doesn’t personally own a project it is unlikely to succeed

All projects need a champion to have any chance of success. Not just someone whose career is on the line based on its success, but also someone who has the ability and authority to pull in the resources and to take decisions that are needed to bring the project to a successful conclusion. I have sat through management meetings that kick off projects that are seemingly owned collectively by the management team. This helps but is not enough. There must be one person who is held responsible for the successful outcome.

3. You can’t manage behaviour through annual performance reviews

Not even through quarterly ones. Waiting until a formal performance review to address unacceptable behaviour or even good performance doesn’t work well. To effectively manage behaviour, both positive and negative, it needs to be as soon as possible after the action. Too many managers wait until the scheduled formal performance review to tell an underperformer that they have a problem, by which time it is likely that the behaviour which resulted in the poor performance has become even more ingrained. Every single interaction with an employee at even an hourly rate gives the manager an opportunity to reinforce required behaviour.

4. No matter what you say, and how often you say it, your people will interpret, copy and act based on your real attitudes and behaviour

I have come across CEOs who never stop talking about how their customers are the their #1 priority, and that they are committed to customer service excellence, or even customer delight, but who will never take calls from customers nor meet with customers on a regular basis (see “The 3 great business lies” posted August 2, 2010). People in the organisation will build their own attitudes and behaviours based on what they observe in those at the top, irrespective of how much they talk about the subject. Actions do definitely speak louder than words.

5. You must be specific about what you want done

A manager cannot just throw out a multitude of ideas that he carries around in his head as a stream of consciousness, and assume that people will understand what it is that he actually considers important. I worked for one company where one of the founders has one of the greatest minds that the technology sector has spawned, and which never stopped working. He had thousands of ideas at any time, and would share these with people whenever he visited a company site. When he would subsequently return there 6 or 12 months later, he would be amazed that quite often people had translated some of these thoughts into a real project, when all he was doing was sharing ideas. If you want something done then assign someone to the task and tell them specifically what you want. For the rest, make sure that people understand that you are just sharing thoughts and ideas.

6. Meetings are generally the worst way toget something done

Other than meetings being ok when you want to give a specific group of people some common information, they are mostly a waste of time and energy (see “Meetings bloody meetings” posted on 18th April, 2011). JK Galbraith had it right when he said “Meetings are indispensable when you don’t want to do anything”.

via WIkimedia Commons; LSE Fotostream

Managers are paid to make decisions, so trying to pass the decision process on to a committee defeats the whole management purpose. Work with those around you whilst accepting all input needed to call the shots, then work with those that you have selected, and tasked, to bring the decision to a successful conclusion.

In the words of Warren Buffet “The business schools reward difficult complex behaviour more than simple behaviour, but simple behaviour is more effective”.

I would change this slightly to “The business schools reward difficult complex analytical behaviour, when the ability to understand people is more effective for successful management.”

HOW TO DRIVE YOUR BOSS CRAZY

Les Hayman — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 06:07:02 +0000

During my career I have worked with many colleagues who have inspired and motivated me, some who made me laugh and many who made me proud of them, but I have also had a few of them who drove me crazy. Some were managers (see “There is nothing worse than a nervous boss” posted August 15th, 2011) and some were my own staff members and direct reports.

Author: ThisIsRobsLife; via Wikimedia Commons

Here are some of the characteristics that made me tear out my hair and that can drive your boss crazy:

Don’t meet commitments

Whether these were to do with commitments like bringing a large contract to completion due at a quarter end, reports to be submitted by a particular date, or just a commitment to carry out some action item, people who were always ready to commit but rarely delivered on time and in quality were frustrating. In many cases their late deliverables impacted the work of others who were dependant on them, and this would invariably scatter timelines to the wind. If you make a commitment, then drive to deliver, otherwise let someone else who can, do so.

Tell him not to worry

I had one country MD who was always telling me not to worry about him, but to focus on others who he felt were less experienced than him. With days to go to the end of a quarter, when he would only be sitting on about 50% of his most recent forecast, he would still be telling me not to worry because everything would be all right. It occasionally was, but I quickly realised that the only way that I could get to a lack of worry about his operation was if he was physically not there to worry me at all. Your boss is paid to worry about the business but you just need to make sure that you are not the one that is making him do so.

Author: Vincerama at de.wikipedia; via Wikimedia Commons

Cover up mistakes and bad news

Covering up mistakes just makes them harder to resolve as time passes. The same is true for delivering bad news, as it will rarely get better through neglect. The sooner after it happens that a problem can be highlighted and addressed, the easier it is to resolve. Covering up mistakes, or delaying bad news, is no different to lying and therefore totally unacceptable in any business context.I always told people that they would not be fired for making an honest mistake, but only if they quickly made it known to the right people who could help with its resolution and that they learned from it.

Be negative all the time

I find it hard enough to cope with people who have been told that they should always be positive and optimistic about everything no matter what, but I find it even harder to live with people who are always negative about everything and everyone around them. People who will always focus on what can go wrong and why things haven’t worked before and can’t work in the future, are incredibly frustrating, and are a destroyer of the mirth and joy that comes from a great job in a great company. It is good business sense to identify barriers to progress, and having a devil’s advocate in the team provides balance, but perpetual “nay-sayers” need to be weeded out.

Author: Jean.julius; via Wikimedia Commons

Have all the answers

It is wonderful to have smart people in the team but people who believe that they always have the right answers get in the way of building creativity in a team, as they stifle input from others. (see “Is it fanatics or fools who are the problem” posted April 23rd, 2012). A great team needs people who encourage debate and dissension, and draw out ideas from those around them. Those that believe that they themselves are always right get in the way of long term sustainable success.

Sacrifice the outcome for the process

I have always believed that “doing the right thing trumps doing the thing right”, particularly when it comes to servicing a customer’s needs. I have never understood, for example, why Air France will not let you get on an earlier connecting flight when you have a restricted ticket, if the flight is not full anyway, and it really makes no difference to the airline whether you take up a seat on this flight or the next. It is just that mindless staff, who have not been empowered to make any decision beyond when they take a loo break, stick to the rules, when bending them would make the airline not only more human but would also engender more loyalty in their customers, while not costing them anything extra. Empower your people so they can focus on doing great things, sometimes even despite what is written in the policies and procedures manual.

Spring surprises on him

As a manager, I hated last minute surprises. I always preferred to know well ahead of time if, for example, a country operation was looking like not meeting its forecast, as this could at least give us an opportunity to try and do something to remedy the situation. Waiting till the eleventh hour to surprise your boss, when it is too late to do anything, other than get angry, is not a smart position in which to put yourself.I was once taken in to a customer meeting which had been presented to me as a friendly “meet and greet” with their CEO. It actually turned out to be a “bash the supplier” session where I was berated about our lack of commitment to their success, about which it later transpired our account exec had been pre-warned, but was too scared to report. All I could do was listen intently, nod wisely and commit to doing something about remedying the situation, and then give the sales exec a decent boot where the sun doesn’t shine when we got away from the tirade of abuse.

Play politics

I have always hated company politicians even more that I have hated people who struggled in their role, as at least you could try and do something about strugglers with some developmental activities, whereas those that love the Machiavellian intrigues are hard to change. Politicians will always be the ones who are ready to listen and spread rumours and are always the ones who can cloud “bad-mouthing” of others in the cloak of concern for the well-being of the team. The only way to handle those that love the political game is to make them go and play their games somewhere else, preferably in a competitor.

I understand that one’s primary focus should be on doing your job really well, but it doesn’t hurt your career to ensure that your boss doesn’t see you and your area of responsibility as being an area of concern, as “There is nothing worse than a nervous boss, particularly if you are the one that is making him nervous.”

ARE FANATICS OR FOOLS THE PROBLEM ?

Les Hayman — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 06:48:35 +0000

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
Bertrand Russell

Whilst it may not have been his primary intent, I always find it interesting how accurate Bertrand Russell was about the business world.

via Wikimedia Commons

I understand that executives have to show absolute certainty and no doubts when presenting themselves or their plans to their people, but when looking at building a business strategy and direction for an organisation, I have found that those that start with absolute certainties often end up with doubts, whereas those that start with some doubts can ultimately build some certainties.

I love people who are enthusiastic and passionate about the world, their business and their ideas, and I have tended to believe that “nothing succeeds like excess”, but find it very hard to work with fanatics who believe that they are the only ones who have access to, and an understanding of, the ultimate truths in life, whether it covers their business strategy or their understanding of how to work with and manage people.

Like their religious counterparts, business bigots not only believe that their way is the only way, but as a result believe that everyone who diverges from their version of the truth is a heretic and hence needs to be purged. These managers tend to surround themselves either with those looking for a messianic vision or with “yes-men” who toe the line and who offer no dissension, no questioning of the path to be taken and hence who offer little chance for driving change and innovation. Skilled managers not only hire people who will challenge them but also add a few “crazies” to the mix who will challenge most things as a matter of principle.

The problem that I find with managers who are fanatical about their own beliefs is that they either have little ability to drive true long term sustainable innovation, or else tend to drive their version of innovation down their own narrow alley, as summed up by Winston Churchill with “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.”

So, at which point does a fanatic become a fool ?

The easy answer is that a fanatic becomes a fool when he gets it wrong, for as long as he is deemed to be right, he is seen as a visionary.

Steve Jobs was seen by many to be such a visionary and fanatic after forming Apple in 1976 with Ronald Wayne (who sold out in 1977 for $800) and Steve Wozniak who had just invented the Apple 1. They enjoyed considerable successes and Jobs was seen as being charismatic and persuasive, but he was also seen as an erratic and temperamental manager who believed it was “… either my way or the highway …”. Despite the successful launch of the Macintosh in 1984, the following year Jobs lost his attempt at a boardroom coup against John Sculley the CEO, who had been brought in from Pepsi. The board had sided with Sculley because, despite being told to stop doing it, Jobs continued to “ … launch expensive forays into untested products …”, wasting R+D budget at unsustainable rates. The board removed Jobs from his management position, resulting in his resignation and departure from Apple to form Next.

Author: jurvetson; Source: flikr; via Wikimedia Commons

The board had sided with the manager rather than the fanatic.

Many analysts believe that had the Jobs coup succeeded , the company, which struggled under Sculley, would have found it even harder to stay afloat under Jobs had he won the boardroom battle for control of Apple.
He came back to Apple in 1996, when they purchased Next, and took the helm in 1997 until his death in 2011.

This time the fanatic was right, and his fanaticism drove Apple towards its position today as the world’s most valuable company and well on the way to becoming the first company with a market cap of over $1 trillion.
But I believe that Steve Jobs is the rare case where fanatics can actually sustain the business success for a long term.

The problem is that the so called “Steve Jobs leadership style” has become a holy piece of corporate truism, when it is in reality a work of fiction, asI find it fascinating that a man who was a great “gadget designer” has become the epitome of the great leader.

Jobs always believed that people who disagreed with him just didn’t understand Apple or the market and he didn’t tolerate them. He paid little attention to building a successor despite being aware of his illness since 2003, and built a culture where people at Apple were scared to get into an elevator with him in case even a minimal conversation with him could result in them losing their job, despite the fact that this “Elevator Encounter” story was pure fiction and was only meant to illustrate his mercurial and despotic style (see http://vanshardware.com/2010/07/the-legend-of-apples-steve-jobs/ ). However, the story and its resultant culture creation in Apple is a true indication of the Steve Job’s style of management.

Fortune called Jobs “… one of Silicon Valley’s leading egomaniacs …” and Jef Raskin, a former colleague, said of him “Steve would have made an excellent king of France”, alluding to the fact that disagreement and disobedience would automatically result in death.
The issue is that leadership success is very situational, and Jobs came back into Apple at a time when his vision, gadgetry and fanaticism were needed to turn around the company’s fortunes, but to believe that this formula then applies well to other start-ups or companies generally is nonsensical.
Fanatics have their place, but for very specific situations and mostly for limited times, as they will always be unreasonable, and while it takes unreasonable people to drive change, it takes professional management to turn change into sustainable success.

As even understood by a true “King of France”, Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte said “There is no place in a fanatic’s head where reason can enter.”

via Wikimedia Commons; GNU Free Documentation License

WHY CEOs FAIL

Les Hayman — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 06:34:48 +0000

A lot of CEOs don’t succeed, and some who do, do so only for a short time. I have come to the conclusion that there are a number of different reasons that CEOs fail. Here are 10 of the most common ones.

1. Outlive the Founder/CEO role

There comes a time when the most successful founder has to step aside and hand over to professional management, and I have seen too many founders who did not see that their time had come and gone. In my own career, Ken Olsen of Digital is one such example. Olsen, a visionary who pioneered the minicomputer revolution was well past his use by date when he uttered the phrase “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home.”

Author: Snaevar; via Wikimedia Commons

2. Believe their own marketing

Being a successful CEO is heady stuff. You are loved by your people, your customers, the markets and the press. It is not hard to get to a point where you lose all humility and start to believe that you have all the answers, and start to believe in your own brilliance and omniscience. CEOs can lose contact with their own people, their customers and their markets, after all, when one is so important, why bother with anyone else ? CEOs who lose perspective are unlikely to be able to continue to succeed.

3. Run out of steam

Some CEOs just run out of momentum. The business world today is a tough, competitive, ever changing environment which requires continuous rethought and re-invention, and not all CEOs have the ability to live through more than a limited number of product and technology generational shifts. For example Olsen at DEC did not prepare for the PC revolution and Wang did not manage to live past proprietary operating systems being replaced by the likes of Unix.

By Dpbsmit; via Wikimedia Commons

4. Lose the faith

It’s not easy to stay motivated and lead a company on a downward slope, and at any given time about half the companies in any industry, are heading in the wrong direction. Once great companies like Kodak, who pioneered and once dominated their industry can lose the way completely and the CEO, no matter how skilled, may not be able to reverse the slide once the downward momentum is too steep.

5. Peter strikes

The Peter Principle is alive and well. Great divisional heads do not necessarily make great CEOs, and even CEOs who have been successful in one company can hit their competence ceiling in another company in the musical chair movement of CEOs that we see in some industries.

6. Generational shifts

Some successful CEOs just get non-chronologically too old and out of date too quickly and do not adjust to the changing expectations in the new generations of workers. Younger employees have different expectations of “the meaning of work”, and CEOs who do not understand these differences will find it hard to lead and motivate their organisations

7. Diverge from the corporate path

I have seen Country MDs who decide that the global corporate direction just isn’t right for their country, and therefore decide that they will just continue to head on in their current well-trodden path rather that toe the company line. This is fine if you own the company, but is not acceptable to global management in a large, multinational, publicly listed company. I have recently seen one country MD in a large global F-1000 company who just made the decision that his market was not subject to the quarterly reporting requirements imposed, and started just doing an annual forecast. He didn’t last much longer.

8. Test of time

What we did yesterday to be successful will not necessarily work today, and what we do well today will not necessarily work tomorrow. You can be surfing on the crest of a wave one moment and the find yourself buried head first in the sand in the next. The markets and customers can be very fickle and in the dynamic and changeable environment in most industries today, not all strategies will necessarily have a long shelf life.

By Stan Shebs; via Wikipedia Commons

9. Cultural misfit

Some executives can be great in their own environment but cannot make the shift to a global CEO role because they do not understand nor accept that there are serious cultural differences that need to be complied with and honoured. One company I worked for had the global CEO come and visit a major account of ours in the waste disposal business in Asia. The customer CEO was always very serious, very decorous and had never exhibited an open sense of humour, all which fitted well with the local cultural standards. During the meeting, despite a clear briefing, our CEO suddenly decided that he had come up with a wonderful slogan for the customer’s company being “Your trash is our cash”, and could not resist uttering this pearl of wisdom again and again. It took us months after the visit to convince the customer that our CEO was just exhibiting an American sense of humour and was not a raving lunatic.

10. Lose the plot.

Some CEOs just lose the plot. The quirks and peculiarities that helped to get them to the top just get more pronounced and more unbalanced after they get to the top office. As we age our personality traits tend to become more pronounced, and some characteristics that seemed somewhat endearing and mildly idiosyncratic can turn into serious lunacies. I knew one CEO who was a fairly aggressive driver, who always kept a running commentary going about the stupidities of everyone else on the road. When his chairman visited him at his holiday home in Marbella Spain one time, he completely lost the plot while driving to a restaurant, and gave chase and finally rammed another driver who had moments before suddenly cut in front of him. This incident made the chairman question the CEO’s sanity and ultimately resulted in his removal.

Author: Charles01; via Wikimedia Commons

As M.H. Alderson, American sports coach said “If at first you don’t succeed, you are running about average”.

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN YOU SHOULD STEP ASIDE ?

Les Hayman — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 05:31:16 +0000

I have always believed that someone in a senior executive role, particularly a CEO, should not stay in the job for more than about 5-6 years, as I believe that everything that you will do after that is likely to be just a rerun, and you will also become too accustomed to what is, rather than what should be.

This realisation hit me personally when I was in the chair of President/CEO SAP Asia Pacific. I had built the Asia Pacific Region initially from Australia/NZ where I had started as MD in 1994 and then into ASEAN/India and finally Japan/Korea/China. By 2001 we had operations in 13 countries with 3500 employees and revenues of € 1B. It had been one hell of an exciting 8 year comet ride, basically from a standing start.

Author: ASDFGH; via Wikimedia Commons

I had been fortunate to be able to gather a really solid management team, with strong young regional VPs, including a skilled, mentored and ready successor, a great CFO, well blooded and experienced services heads and good country MDs. Our management meetings in the early years were exciting, energetic, passionate, noisy, animated and interesting.

I noticed in about 2001 that these meetings were becoming less controversial, less fiery and less passionate. I guess that I could have written this off as just being the maturing of the organisation, which would have been an easy excuse with which to convince myself, but it just didn’t sit well with me.

I collared two of my closest advisors in my team to find out what had changed, and found out that since I had been appointed to the SAP Board in 1999, my management team had decided that with my now added global responsibilities, I should not be burdened with handling internal, general SAP Asia Pac issues. They had therefore instituted a separate Asia Pac regional management meeting, on the day before the one that I chaired, to nut out all the issues so that they did not have to bother me with them. This was where all the energy, passion and fire that should come from any management team was been exhibited and expended. By the time it all got to me, things had already been discussed, fought through, agreed, resolved and sanitised.

This definitely made my life easier, while making my management meetings somewhat bland, but it also made me think about the fact that after 8 years at the helm, I may have actually become unnecessary, and that it was time I gave my Asia Pacific management the chance to create their own successes and mistakes (just as I had been given), and build their own future, rather than having to live with mine.

Luckily, SAP had some interesting things for me to do in Europe, so I was able to hand over to my successor and ride off into an SAP European sunset where I stayed for another five years to my retirement, and where I have continued to live.

Author: amadeusm; via Wikimedia Commons

I was fortunate that I had this epiphany at the time because in hindsight the region was definitely ready for a change. Having built the region from infancy to adulthood I had come to think of it as belonging to me personally, rather than being something that I held in stewardship for, and by the good grace of, SAP-Ag. The region had also been built piece by piece over the eight years, so I was personally connected to the employees, but as growth continued at this frantic pace the region needed more structure and process as well as personal relationships and linkages. My successor, being Swiss, was more capable of achieving this than I would have been.

I have met quite a few CEOs who were not as fortunate to have received the warning shot early enough, and have stayed on longer than they should have to the eventual detriment of the organisation.

So when is enough, enough ?

There is no question that you should go before others want you to go, but long-serving executives are generally so because they have built a record of successful performance, and usually a team of fervent supporters and allies in the organisation, and these make it hard to believe that this success is not sustainable into the future. It is also hard to give up something where you feel ownership and responsibility, that is familiar, that is comfortable, where you are well connected and networked, and when the culture, having been built by you, is in line with your personal and business belief systems.

One ex-CEO, who I now sit with on a board, told me that he knew it was time to step aside when after 6 years in the job he started to see a re-cycling in the issues that his executive team, and his organisation, had to face and resolve. This made him understand that it was time for a new team to face these issues in new ways, and he put a plan in place to not only replace himself as CEO, but also a number of his older senior management team at the same time.

A good leader understands that his responsibility is not to himself but to the health and success of the organisation and its people and to hand over the reins, particularly at a time of great success, is not easy to do, but totally necessary. One critical strength of any leader is how well he can build his successor, and I believe that the time to step aside is even more a question of how over-ready your successor is to step up to your role than how under-ready you are to step aside. (See “Characteristics of a successful manager” posted July 18, 2011).

Dietmar Hopp one of the SAP founders and CEO for 10 years till he unexpectedly stepped aside in 1998 at the height of the company’s success, said it all “It is better to go too early than too late”.

Author: Smalltown Boy at de.wikipedia; via Wikimedia Commons

WHEN YOU KNOW THAT MANAGERS ARE AMATEURS

Les Hayman — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 06:23:37 +0000

I have had a number of instances in recent years where I have become involved with a company and fairly quickly come to the conclusion that the management team that has been tasked with effectively running the company is actually incapable of delivering on that responsibility.

I believe that anyone in a role where management capability needs to be observed and measured, whether in the role of a management coach or as a board member, should be aware of a number of warning signs that point to the fact that the company executive management may be actually incompetent.

1. Wrong hiring decisions keep being made at senior levels.

When the executive team too often have to terminate senior people who they themselves recruited, it is a serious sign that something is wrong with the management team. Good managers hire good people and go through a stringent recruitment process to make sure that they are hiring the right person for the role. Incompetent managers hire emotionally and with “gut-feel” rather than with a structured understanding of what they need and what they should be looking for, and tend to hire people who are weaker than they are, and who will not be a challenge to manage. These weak hires can then be blamed and terminated when things go wrong as a way of diverting attention from the manager involved.

Author: Tanemori; Source: Hatena Ftolife; via Wikimedia Commons

2. Tough decisions are made but rarely executed

Strong management can not only make tough decisions, but will carry out their plans to successful execution and completion. Managers who talk tough but do not execute are a danger to success. I worked with one management team which rightly took the decision that they had no option but to go through a process of cutting heads and the closing of some small non-performing subsidiaries, as the previous 12 months had seen rapid headcount expansion without the expected increase in revenues (a warning sign in itself). The executive team agreed on “who, where and when”, and advised the board of their decision and the details for execution. When the dust had settled, very little had actually been achieved against their own plan, beyond having a long list of excuses and justifications as to why they had changed their minds at the last minute.

3. Deadlines are not met

A deadline that is set, and agreed, is a commitment and executive teams that consistently miss committed deadlines will not honour other commitments either, and this is unacceptable, and a serious sign of incompetence. One board that I am a member of regularly receives its board papers from the CFO on the night before the board meeting despite the commitment that this will be distributed at least 48 hours beforehand, enabling the board to have some chance to review them. This has happened so often over the months of my involvement in this board that it is just another indicator that the CFO needs to be replaced.

Financial Statements Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.; via Wikimedia Commons

4. Love of external consultants and professionals

A management team that readily calls in external consultants is often covering up their lack of skill, knowledge and capability. Bringing in an external consulting company to ratify the strategy, or perpetually bringing in external legal advice for example is generally a sign of “covering one’s arse” and can show that a management team does not have enough confidence in themselves nor their decisions to be effective. Not only is it expensive and habit forming, but external consultants are generally like a case of herpes, in that once established internally are impossible to get rid of.

5. Inconsistent stories from the members of the same management team

A management team that can’t agree on their stories is an obvious sign of a management team in disarray. I recently sat through a presentation from a CFO who presented the proposed budget for the coming year to the board, to find that half of the management team refused to commit to the numbers when pressed for their agreement. The management team were so divided that work was occurring and decisions being taken in camps and without the involvement of all the team members. When a management team is this divided it is a sure sign that not only is the team not working but that the CEO is incapable of pulling the team together. Definitely time to make serious changes in the team.

Author: Areyn (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

6. Meetings bloody meetings

Competent management take the decisions needed for their area of responsibility and keep the relevant people advised of their actions. Incompetent management teams spend most of their time in meetings, which are a great way to try and spread responsibility when things don’t work (See “Meetings bloody meetings” posted 18th April, 2011), and are also a great way for managers who don’t know what they are doing to look incredibly busy and always “on the go”. Meetings are one way of keeping everyone advised on what is happening but are rarely successful vehicles for decision making or business management.

7. Working incredibly long hours

Executive teams that always work very long hours, and tell everyone about it, are generally not functioning well. Effective managers know how to prioritise and manage themselves in a way that means that they work hard (and mostly longer hours than those they manage) but that still gives them time to “refuel and replenish” with friends and family. Incompetent managers try to cover up their lack of capability by working excessively long hours as their visible “badge of courage”, and as a smoke screen to the fact that they don’t know what they should be doing. If they can’t manage themselves they definitely can’t manage anyone else.

As Peter Drucker said

“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to get their work done”

Author: Jeff McNeill; via Wikimedia Commons

ENGAGEMENT HAS A NICE RING TO IT

Les Hayman — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:43:40 +0000

I have long found it worrying that all of the numerous studies of employee engagement point to the fact that at any one point in time, in most companies, only about one-third of employees are fully engaged, with about one-third partially engaged, and one-third actively disengaged, some of these last ones being “terrorists” who actively work to recruit others to actually undermine those who are engaged.

I define engagement as being actively involved physically, mentally and emotionally with passion and energy, and with a profound connection to the company.

I have no question that employee engagement is directly related to the quality of management in an organisation, and that in tough economic times when people are being asked to do more with less, it can become harder to keep people fully engaged, as people become emotionally disconnected driven by pressures like fatigue, lack of direction, belt-tightening and downsizing of work-mates.

Author: Jonnie Nord (User:Zaphod); via Wikimedia Commons

But employee engagement needs to be a key critical focus of all managers and should be a major measurement of management performance, as it is one the most important elements of business success, significantly more than having a sexy product or marketing message, both which can be very short lived.

Gallup’s analysis of about 200 separate employee engagement surveys in 2009 found that

“business units scoring in the top half on employee engagement double their odds of delivering high performance compared to those in the bottom half, and that those in the 99th percentile are five times more likely to deliver high performance than those in the 1st percentile.” (See Gallup´s Employee Engagement Analysis).

Furthermore their survey of 42,000 randomly selected working adults showed that disengaged workers cost the US economy an estimated $ 350 billion annually.

George Gallup; via Wikimedia Commons

In France, whilst I have no numbers for the loss to the economy, a recent article in the Economist highlights the fact that French workers are not lazy, as most of Europe cares to believe, but that they just actively hate their bosses. (See http://www.economist.com/node/21538733).
The report states

“In fact studies suggest that the problem with French employees is less that they are work-shy, than that they are poorly managed. According to a report on national competitiveness by the World Economic Forum, the French rank and file has a much stronger work ethic than American, British or Dutch employees. They find great satisfaction in their work, but register profound discontent with the way their firms are run.”

A 2010 study by BVA, a polling firm showed that over 40% of French employees actively dislike their firm’s top management, ranking France last out of 10 countries for worker’s opinion of company management. Whereas in US, UK and Germany about 70% are satisfied with their management, in France it is less than 30%.

French management styles are still generally very hierarchical seeing management concepts like “empowerment” as being an Anglo-Saxon maladie. Furthermore the majority of French CEOs come from one of the handful of “grandes ecoles”, and through what is known as “parachutage” suddenly appear in CEO roles direct from the civil service. Alexandre de Juniac was unexpectedy appointed CEO of Air France in 2011, coming directly from his position as Chief of Staff to Christine Lagarde when she was Minister of Finance. No need to fight your way through the ranks in the business or even the industry, no need to develop some management skills along the way, you just need to get high marks in the school exams and keep your nose clean in the public sector long enough to end up in the top slot of a multi-billion euro enterprise.
No wonder Air France is such a moribund, infuriating airline with rude, arrogant, condescending and uncaring staff (See “I hate Air France” posted July 11, 2011), and no wonder French workers are generally disengaged from their companies and their jobs, even more than the global average.

Author: priceminister; via Wikimedia Commons

Despite all this information about the impact of employee engagement on a company’s performance, very few organisations use employee engagement as a measurement of management performance.
I have seen it regularly measured in employee surveys, usually through responses to 5 or 6 questions like “I am proud to work for the company”, “I am seriously considering leaving in the next 12 months” and “I actively promote the company to external candidates”, but generally many just seem to accept the 1/3 ratios as being an acceptable metric of business reality.
I consider this to be short-sighted and believe that most companies should focus less on recruiting more people and more on increasing employee engagement as a way of driving improvements to business results.

I have managed to convince one company that I work with to use employee engagement as a key measurement in management performance and its inclusion in calculating management bonus payments. Furthermore they will not allow incremental recruitment if the business area has less than 60% of employees that are fully engaged and more than 20% disengaged. These are not world shattering metrics even though they are a great improvement on current results, as they still allow for 20% sitting on the fence, but at least they are a starting point in making employee engagement seen as a serious business metric in this particular company.

I am actually surprised that employee engagement and other metrics such as employee turnover are not seen as major decision points when people make financial decisions about in which companies to place their investments. I would always rather bet on the people as a starting point before I would even start to look at products, services and past financial performance.

I have long believed that people are the only true sustainable competitive edge, and how passionate and committed they are to the company is the only true measure of whether great performance can be achieved.

As Peter Drucker, business guru, said

“But I like to think that a lot of managers and executives trying to solve problems miss the forest for the trees by forgetting to look at their people — not at how much more they can get from their people or how they can more effectively manage their people. I think they need to look a little more closely at what it’s like for their people to come to work there every day.”

Author: Jeff McNeill; via Wikimedia Commons

WHEN YOU KNOW IT IS TIME TO CHANGE COMPANIES

Les Hayman — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 19:32:09 +0000

I have always believed that people join companies, but leave managers.
Surveys tell us that over 70% of corporate departures are because an employee was not able to build a working relationship with his immediate supervisor, which seems logical as one’s boss does totally control the major elements of your working life.

But there are times when even having a great boss is not enough. Here are some of the times when you should think about whether you are working for the right company.

1. When the politicians get promoted

There are companies where the ability to “play the game” becomes more important than just getting on with it and doing the job well. People who spend a lot of time telling everyone how hard they work usually aren’t, and those that tell everyone how good they are, are generally not, so when self-promotion is mistaken for a true indication of skill, it means that the politicians, rather than those who are the real contributors to company success, are getting recognition through managing upwards, which is a serious sign of a dysfunctional environment.

Author: Alaiche (own work); GDFL permission; via Wikimedia Commons

2. When senior execs don’t have integrity

Integrity is when what one believes is the same as what one says is the same as what one does. Talk is cheap, and anyone can tell the world that the most important element of business is, for example, the customer or the employee, but behaviour is the only measure of whether senior executives in a company actually live their beliefs. Lying is never acceptable. Kenneth Lay, Chairman and CEO of Enron, said just before its collapse “Our liquidity is fine. As a matter of fact, it’s better than fine. It’s strong.” Any company where reality and behaviour do not match rhetoric is not a worthwhile employer.

via Wikimedia Commons

3. When the customer is not a priority

You can survive for a while on clever marketing (“We are the dot in dot.com” didn’t save Sun Microsystems) or great technology (the Segway is sexy but used mainly only by lazy tourists), but ultimately if you disregard the needs of the customer you cannot have long term success. Modern communications enable customers to be widely heard, and the old maxim that a happy customer will tell 10 others while an angry customer will tell 100, now needs to be updated to the reality that an irate customer can tell tens and even hundreds of thousands.

4. When people are not treated as the major asset

Ultimately, people are the only sustainable competitive advantage, and companies that do not treat their own people with respect will never accord respect to anyone else. Companies that are serious about their employees ensure that they have a chance to develop and grow, and ensure that there are opportunities available for them to progress in their skills and their careers. If you can’t go off to work “with a song in your heart” you should find somewhere else where you can sing with passion and gusto.

5. When the bureaucrats take over

Doing the thing right should never get in the way of doing the right thing. Making sure that the right processes are in place ensures accuracy and consistency, but when the processes delay the ability to act, and get in the way of actually running the business it is a slippery slope. Data General in the 1980s had a reputation as a dynamic, fast moving upstart that could have given Digital Equipment, the much larger mini-computer market leader, some serious competition. The reality was that it was a centrally controlled, process-bound, bureaucratic, administrative nightmare. The only person in the company who could make any real business decisions of worth was Edson De Castro the founder and CEO, who ran everything from his office in Westborough, Massachusetts. Despite being four times larger, and despite DG having better “bang for the buck” offerings and a more aggressive sales force, Digital could hold them at bay just through being less bureaucratic and hence more responsive to competitive needs.

6. When the silo walls become impenetrable

When departments compete rather than co-operate and openly bad mouth each other it will be impossible to align strategies and therefore difficult to drive success. When Sales and Marketing can’t say anything good about each other, people complain about HR, Engineering whinge about the lack of financial data and everyone hates the IT Department it is time to accept that something is seriously amiss with both the CEO’s and senior executives’ abilities to build cohesive, supporting teams to effectively run the business.

7. When the majority of promotions are from outside

Great companies build their people and prepare them to be able to compete for vacant senior roles. One measure of a worthwhile employer is that at least 70-80% of promotions are made from internal candidates rather than mainly rushing to steal from a bunch of look-alikes at competitors. If there is not any effective succession-planning or mentoring process implemented, and little emphasis is placed on personal development, it is unlikely that it is a company with great advancement possibilities for internal candidates.

8. When pay for performance never quite rewards the best people

Nearly all companies tout their commitment to rewarding people for their contribution to the success of the enterprise, however that is defined, but few have true performance based reward systems in place beyond sales commission schemes. Reward systems need to go beyond the sales organisation, and beyond a token “bonus for all”, and should include rewards based on more than just monetary incentives. Effective reward programmes need to include individually tailored elements such as opportunities for overseas assignments and paid learning to be truly worthwhile.

My belief is that to be truly successful in whatever job you do, you need to do something you really love, working for a boss you respect and admire, in a company you can be proud of, and which values and rewards you as an individual. It may not be easy to find, but it is definitely worth the effort to try to do so.

As best-selling business author Harvey MacKay said

“Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”

Bewegung im Markt für HR-Cloud-Anwendungen: Oracle und SAP zahlen Milliarden für den Markteinstieg

Thomas Wolf — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Als agiles und vorausschauendes Unternehmen bietet ROC seit dem letzten Jahr RaaS™, HR Reporting as a Service. Wir haben den Trend zu Cloud-Services im HR-Bereich offenbar richtig erkannt: SAP und Oracle investieren erhebliche Summen in die Akquisition von Firmen, die Lösungen auf diesem Gebiet anbieten. Oracle strebt die Übernahme der auf Personalmanagement-Software spezialisierten Taleo Corporation an. SAP übernimmt gerade die Firma Success Factors, die Cloud-Anwendungen für Personalmanagement anbietet.
Der Umstieg auf SAP- oder Oracle-Lösungen in der Cloud wird bei den meisten Firmen sicher noch einige Zeit in Anspruch nehmen.

RaaS können Unternehmen dagegen in einigen Tagen oder Wochen live nutzen, abhängig vom Zustand ihrer HR-Basisdaten. Wenn alle Daten gepflegt sind, die man zur Berechnung von Performance-Indikatoren braucht, dann reichen Tage, um Reports, Dashboards und Cockpits des strategischen HR-Reportings über das Internet auf die Bildschirme der Entscheidungsträger des Unternehmens zu bringen.

Mehr Informationen zu RaaS finden Sie hier.

Neuheiten in den verschiedenen Versionen von SAP Talent and Org Visualization by Nakisa (TVN)

Oliver Stegmann — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Ibrahim Nagy, ROC Experte zu TVN (der SAP HCM-Lösung zur Visualisierung von Organisationsstrukturen und Nachfolgeplanungsprozessen) und verwandten Themen, stellt in seinem neuesten Blog-Beitrag im SAP SDN Community Network die Geschichte der Neuerungen in den verschiedenen Versionen dieser Lösung vor, beginnend mit Version STVN/SOVN 1.0 bis zu SAP TVN und SAP OVN 3.0 SP2
Wenn Sie sich fragen, ob eine Migration sich für Sie lohnt, lesen Sie hier nach (in Englisch)
Ibrahim als ehemaliger Nakisa-Mitarbeiter kennt die Applikation bestens, sowohl von seiner Ausbildung bei Nakisa wie aus vielen Kundenprojekten bei Naksia und bei ROC.

WHY ARE SO MANY MANAGERS SO BAD AT RECRUITING ?

Les Hayman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 07:57:23 +0000

Putting the right people in the right place is a critical skill of any manager and yet for many this is a serious weakness, resulting in them regularly putting people into roles where they can’t succeed. Not only is this an expensive mistake to make, but it can be highly disruptive to the team and the organisation.

Here are the most common recruitment mistakes that I have seen.

1. Overlooking internal candidates too quickly.

A key role of any capable manager is to ensure that they develop some strong successors, yet in most large companies about 70% of management positions are filled from outside. This not only shows that many managers do not do workable succession planning, either from a fear of competition or because they just don’t have the skills needed to build the next generation of leadership (See “Characteristics of a Successful Manager” posted July 18, 2011).

Author: Colin Smith; via Wikimedia Commons

This “grass is greener” need to often look outside, can demoralise existing employees who rightly believe that they should be given the opportunities to advance their own careers. Rarely does someone come into a new role, from any direction, being 100% competent. Even the most brilliant, well experienced and capable external hires will need the time to come to grips with basic drivers like understanding the culture, identifying the land-mines and sacred cows and mastering the informal networks that enable things to get done. I have found that an existing employee who has been with the company long enough to be “blooded”, and who may be a good 70% fit for promotion is in many cases a better solution that an external candidate who may appear to be a 90% fit. The problem is that we tend to be more aware of the gaps in skills/knowledge of an internal candidate than being able identify them in an external one, so we favour the external option.

Author: Robert R. McRill; via Wikimedia Commons

2. Looking for someone who has done this exact same job before.

Many managers (and professional recruiters) tend to look for candidates who are currently in exactly the same role to be filled, in the same industry, generally at a competitor. There is no question that past proven behaviour in a similar role is a reasonable indicator of future behaviour, but only if nothing is ever going to change, which is not true in the business world. Successful recruiting needs to take into account some new and differing elements that candidates can bring to the role. For SAP to just fill roles by poaching from Oracle and vice versa does little to drive innovation and creativity, and ultimately is just another version of musical chairs.

3. Hiring in one’s own image.

Many managers recruit by looking in their own “rose-tinted” mirror. The belief is that “I have been successful in this company doing things this way, so anyone who looks, thinks and smells like me will therefore also be successful”. It creates a team of clones that do everything in the way that their manager would do them, and who therefore question little and change nothing. I believe that it is important for the health, and ultimately the success, of any organisation that there is a group of people with a common goal, but with varying ideas, styles and opinions, and not just a group of leader look-alikes. It is important that you have at least a few “crazies” in your team, who do question things, have a way of looking differently at situations, and are capable of creative thought. It is unfortunate that creative people are viewed with suspicion and dread by most managers, as If you always do what you have always done you will always get what you already have.

4. Believing that smart, well educated people can do anything and everything.
They can’t !!!
One senior executive who I worked with continually kept putting really well-educated, loyal, technically brilliant, incredibly intelligent people that he really liked, into senior management roles for which they were totally unprepared and unsuited. He was then surprised that, despite his support and protection, most ultimately failed and had to be replaced, and in many cases pushed out of the company. It meant that by putting people into positions for which they had not been groomed and prepared, not only did he screw up key elements of his organisation, he also kept losing really great people who could have added significant benefit in the right roles. It may be true that really smart people, with the right characteristics, can do most things, but it is unlikely that they can do everything well immediately, and demands of the business world can rarely wait for them to ultimately work it all out.

Author: Uri Rosenheck (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

5. Believing that professional recruiters will always give you what you need.

Professional recruiters whether internal or external will only give you the best of what they have on their books, or what they can find through their network, rather than what you may actually need. Add to this the reality that very few managers can adequately define and describe to them what it is that they actually need, beyond handing over an HR prepared and fairly standard job description for the vacancy. You therefore end up hiring the best of the candidates that are available to you at that time. It’s just like democracy at work. You get to vote for the best candidate that the party machines have put in front of you from a small and generally unimpressive bunch, which is why we end up with politicians with about as much real value as a toothpick (see “We get the leaders we deserve” posted February 2, 2011). A far better solution, particularly if going externally, is to involve as many people at the right level in your company in the search. The odds are that they will know of people who would be strong candidates, and they would tend to recommend people that they would welcome, and be proud of having found for the company.

You always need to dig deeper and work harder to find the right person to fill a critical slot. It should never be done with haste or without adequate thought and investigation.

As Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, Swiss-American psychiatrist and author says

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

GIVING POSITIVE NEGATIVE FEEDBACK

Les Hayman — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 08:19:03 +0000

Noted French writer Francois de la Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) said “Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.”

via Wikimedia Commons (United States public domain)

Many managers find it uncomfortable to give negative feedback or to criticise one of their team, but it is a key part of a manager’s responsibilities if s/he is to ensure that unwanted behaviour does not become seen as being acceptable.

Before launching in to a formal session of “constructive criticism” the manager must ask himself whether it is really necessary because it is a serious departure from what is acceptable, or is just a minor blip in normal behaviour. Perpetual need for negative feedback with the same individual means that more serious action may be needed, or if needed regularly to many of the team members it suggests that there are deeper issues with what values have been established as acceptable in the group. It is far better to work on having your team members buy into the values and culture (sum of behaviours), than to spend a great deal of your time chastising your people.

via Wikimedia Commons/United States public domain

If negative feedback on behaviour is needed, it is important that it is done as close as possible to the occurrence if it is to have any real impact, but it must be handled and delivered in a way that ensures it is effective in driving behavioural change and does not demotivate the receiver. It must be specific and relevant as if you are too tough, emotions and resentment will over-ride common sense and hence learning, and if too vague the message will not be understood.

Here are some ways to help handle it.

1. Make sure you have all the facts before giving your feedback.

There is nothing more demotivating to a subordinate than to have you rush in with negative feedback if you are not 100% sure of the real facts. It not only undermines your position of authority, as your team member can divert discussion by correcting you, but also questions your thoroughness as a manager by being seen to act on misinformation. Ask questions not only about what actually happened, but also what the person was trying to accomplish by their actions and therefore why did they act the way that they did. Remember that you will be giving “constructive criticism” of the actual behaviour that you do not want to see repeated, rather than of the individual.

2. Make sure that they accept ownership.

You must ensure that they understand what happened and that they have ownership of the situation before giving your feedback. If they do not accept that they were at fault, or if they blame it on factors outside their control, you will have little chance of getting them to accept that they will need to change their behaviour in the future.You need to focus them down to their own actual actions and accept the results. You should also not try and “sugar coat” the situation by telling them how wonderful they are despite this slip. You are there to be specific about this instance and not about their past performances, and the oft recommended style of “You are a really punctual person, but you need to shower more than once a week” is only for weak beginners.

3. Don’t state the obvious.

If the subordinate states that s/he knows that he messed up in this instance, there is not much point going on about the fact that s/he did so. It is better to be able to discuss why it happened and what caused the “lapse” rather than harping on about the error. Smart people actually do know when they make mistakes, and your job as a manager is to make sure that they learn from them and don’t repeat them. Continuing to beat them around the head after they have truly acknowledged their transgression has a diminishing return, so you should move on as soon as you see that they fully understand why the behaviour is unacceptable.

4. Praise can be public but criticism cannot.

Berating someone in front of others is generally more negative on the manager than on the employee. It suggests that you either cannot control yourself or that you struggle with confronting someone in a one-on-one situation. You must privately ask the person to come to your office and have the behavioural adjustment conversation behind closed doors. Sticking your head out of your office door into an open plan area and screaming “John get your arse in here immediately” won’t cut it, as you want them to focus on the message that you deliver, rather than on the embarrassment that you are handing out.

5. With criticism, one size doesn’t fit all.

You have to know the person, and understand how they will take criticism before you start. The highly sensitive and more junior staff will need to be handled differently than the tougher and more experienced ones. It is important that you remember that your goal is to stop unwanted behaviour rather than to just berate someone for their faults. You are trying to build a person’s usefulness and not stifle their creativity, rather than get them to a point where they are scared of making a mistake and therefore will not try anything new ever again.

As Winston Churchill (1874-1965) said

“Criticism may not be agreeable but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.”

Author: Birtish Government; via Wikimedia Commons

WHO WANTS TO BE A CEO ?

Les Hayman — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 07:56:41 +0000

I am often asked about what characteristics I believe are needed to be able to become a successful CEO. It’s not an easy question to answer as there are so many different aspects that one can address, and libraries of management books have been written in an attempt to quantify some reasonable directions for those that are keen to see whether they have the wherewithal to get to the top office.

By Raysonho@Open Grid Scheduler; via Wikimedia Commons

I understand that a CEO needs to be able to drop the “I” in favour of “We”, have a good strategic mind, be creative, be able to build a great team, be able to delegate and cascade responsibilities through the organisation and possess many more elements that are key to all senior executives, but I also believe that there are some characteristics that are at the heart of, and are specific and critical to, being a great CEO.

Here are just a few that I consider to be mandatory.

1. While you don’t always have to be right, you do have to always appear to be certain.

Once you have all the needed input from all relevant areas, you have to be able to make a decision, come up with an idea, a plan, a strategy and act quickly to make it happen, taking your team with you. I understand that “consensus” is important in the leadership team (See “Stupid Management Ideas” posted 29 August 2011), but the role of the leader is to ultimately choose a direction and pull the team together to achieve it. You cannot allow the organisation to flounder through indecision at the top.

2. Being a business leader is not just about being able to paint a wonderful picture of what can be done, but means that you are able to keep a watchful eye on the business, ensuring that everyone has an understanding of where they fit in, what is expected of them, and how they need to go about successfully fulfilling their role, all driven with a sense of urgency to make it happen.This means that you need to have a real understanding of what is happening in every part of your own business as well as within your external ecosystem. It means understanding what behaviours are being reinforced at all levels, rather than just a belief that “If it is stated, so it shall be”.

3. You really do have to fully understand the numbers.

It’s not enough to be able to read, understand and decipher the P&L and the Balance Sheet, but you have to get to a point where you have a solid feel for what is happening in the organisation from every aspect of the business, and to be able to use the numbers to drive needed change. Great CEOs can “smell” things that are starting to fester before they go bad, and will act immediately to drive initiatives to attack areas of potential weakness.

By Hooton99; via Wikimedia Commons

4. A CEO needs to be passionate about identifying and solving problems, and being able to understand the ones that s/he needs to specifically focus on, and those that should be delegated to others. There will always be too many things to do in the time available and the most successful CEOs know which problem areas s/he should attack with passion, these being the most critical for them to personally address for the success of the organisation. CEOs must learn to manage their time expertly by making sure that they understand how to focus their energies on the important issues rather than just the urgent ones.

5. You will need to have a highly developed sense of farsightedness, even prescience, to be able to understand what has to be done for the future health of the business. This means that you will need to be at “expert” level in what is happening in your industry, in your competitors and most importantly with your customers’ changing needs and expectations. You will also need an ability to look around corners as well as just looking straight ahead. What can appear as a tangent to others can also be an important business direction for the future needs of yourmarketplace.

By Jupiter75 (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

6. You have to be a great communicator, rather than just a great public speaker, though it does help if you can develop and hone this skill to an art form as well. You will need to ensure that people have a clear understanding of what needs to be done and their roles in achieving the set goals, and to do this well CEOs need to have highly developed written and oral skills. This means being concise, specific and non-ambiguous. You will also need strong communication skills to be able to build confidence in staff, investors, partners and customers not only when the business is humming, but also when the company is facing challenges, which even a great company gets to do from time to time.

7. You have to learn to skilfully sift reality from bullshit.

By User:Anynobody; via Wikimedia Commons

“If it sounds too good to be true it probably is” is a great starting point, and commitments that are not built on valid, measurable and reliable data (such as a strong pipeline supporting an aggressive forecast), should be relegated to hope rather than substance. The higher you climb, no matter how approachable you believe you are, the harder it will be for people to tell you any really bad news. You have to ensure that people understand that the sooner weaknesses can be identified the sooner they can be addressed and rectified, and you cannot have people around you that do not help you drive the business based on all realities, not just the pleasant ones.

As Peter Drucker said “There is nothing that is so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

By Jeff McNeill; via Wikimedia Commons

COME BACK E.T. EUROPE NEEDS YOU

Les Hayman — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 08:01:23 +0000

Here we are in November 2011 and despite efforts by the Greek Prime Minister to personally derail the rescue, the Euro has been resolutely saved … yet again.

This time all that was needed was to increase the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) bailout fund from 440 billion to one trillion euro, which represents a mere € 3000 per person in the Eurozone, which is made up of about 350 million now thankful and relieved residents. These large numbers just roll off the tongue now that we have all come to regularly confront numbers that go well beyond the familiar 6 zeros for 1 million to 12 zeros for 1 trillion.

By en:User:Eugene van der Pijll; via Wikimedia Commons

It was also decided to let the Greeks off paying back 50% of their sovereign debt, which the European banks will just have to accept as their share of supporting the Greek standard of living. This was considered to be an easier solution to implement than getting the Greeks to actually pay taxes. It is important to understand that this cannot be considered a “default” as that would spook the markets and create a global financial meltdown, but should just be seen in the same light as retail pre-Xmas sales discounting, meaning we can all sleep more easily knowing that our savvy leaders have saved us from a “fate worse than death” … or should that be “a fate worse than debt”.

China was immediately identified as being ready to contribute to the EFSF bailout fund with an amount of about € 100 billion euro which is less than 5% of their foreign exchange reserves currently sitting at about € 2.3 trillion, so really “just a drop in the China Sea” ( as we will all now have to describe small amounts).

The EFSF themselves have agreed to take a “junior tranche” of € 200 billion and thus take the first 20% of the risk away from other investors, in a very similar way that the U.S. banks were able to convert high risk toxic mortgages into AAA loans up until 2008, when it all started to unravel.
Credit Rating Agencies immediately confirmed the EFSF Fund’s AAA rating so everything must be OK this time around, as these Agencies have all proved themselves to be so accurate and believable.

The Chinese are keen to invest in the EFSF, even though it will not give them a great return, as it will establish them as a responsible major world power and will also enable them to protect their export markets, as there is little benefit to the Chinese economy to have a bankrupt Eurozone. It is also important for the Chinese to keep the euro alive as a counterweight to the US dollar, thus ensuring that no one currency can overwhelm the Chinese Yuan (Renminbi).

Author: Elyyo; via Wikimedia Commons

It will also be an opportune time for the Chinese to ask for the removal of the European arms embargo, as it would be hard to keep denying our benefactor access to life’s basics such as modern weaponry.

As China will still have over € 2 trillion to play with, it will also put them in a strong position to buy up some interesting European assets as Governments try to raise much needed funds from some serious privatisation moves.
Not bad for a communist regime which only recently started moving towards “free market” reforms.

The only question that now remains is … Where does the other € 700 billion come from ?

If we look at the foreign exchange reserves of other potential investors we see the following in the top 5 … Japan € 800 billion, Russia € 370 B, Saudi € 325 B, Brazil € 250 B, India € 220 B.
These 5 therefore have a total of about € 2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, and if they were willing and able to invest an average of say 5% each (also for very little return), the EFSF could raise another € 100 billion giving them a total of about € 400 billion.

I know that my calculation is just a simple layperson’s view of the problem, and that it would take some serious economists to work out the real numbers. I also know that even though € 400 billion is a decent number, but even allowing for a large error factor to compensate for my simplicity, we do seem to be a little bit short of our € 1 trillion target. Even if Germany and France could contribute another € 100 billion on their own (about 30% of their combined foreign exchange reserves of € 280 billion) we would still only be about half-way.

This would mean that as the money is not readily available here on earth, the only way to get it would be that we find some extra-terrestrial life-forms who might be keen to buy up some interests in Europe as part of a longer term colonisation program.

E.T. where are you when we need you ?

Author: Inyuki (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

However, finding E.T. may be hard to do quickly, and as the markets are still jittery and will not accept any long delays for an acceptable solution, I recommend that we should just sell Italy and the “PIGS” (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain) in their entirety to the Chinese, rather than forcing them to buy up these countries in a piecemeal fashion.

This sale of the “I-pigs” ( to give it a more modern name and as a tribute to the late Steve Jobs) will also get rid of Silvio Berlusconi, who is embarrassing all of us, raise significant amounts of capital and remove the need for a bailout fund anyway as we will have gotten rid of Europe’s sick little piggies. We can then distribute the proceeds amongst those of us who are left in the 12 remaining Eurozone countries and who have been almost-nearly-just-about living within our means. This will then enable us all to rush out and buy significant amounts of Chinese manufactured goods making sure that the economic system which we have built over the last 200 years is perpetuated.

Sadly, Gerhard Schroeder called it correctly in March 1998 when he said “The euro is a sickly premature infant, the result of an overhasty monetary union.”
It should finally resolve itself when we all adopt the Yuan.

By: SPD-Schleswig-Holstein; via Wikimedia Commons

THE SOONER YOU FALL BEHIND, THE MORE TIME YOU HAVE TO CATCH UP

Les Hayman — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 07:30:18 +0000

Douglas Adams (1952-2001) author of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” said – “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

Author: Nicosmos (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

Why are most people so prone to procrastination ?
Why do so many of us keep putting off things that we know need to be done ?

I actually know a significant number of colleagues (as well as friends I was with at school) who convinced themselves that “they worked best when under pressure”. This meant that they could justify to themselves and all around them,that their best approach was to leave everything till the last possible minute. They could then do a panic-induced, adrenalin-driven rush to complete the task at hand, and would seriously believe that the result was their best work.

Author: Sallybradford; via Wikimedia Commons

This ability to procrastinate appears to be as prevalent in CEOs preparing for a shareholder meeting as it is to low level staff asked to complete a relatively simple task.

I believe that there are 4 main reasons why people tend to procrastinate, and you will need to learn how to handle these within yourself, and also in your subordinates if you are a manager.

1. When the task is so large it seems overwhelming.

When we are presented with a large task, it is often hard enough just to see how it can even be started let alone how it can be achieved, and we can become totally overwhelmed by the task. The only solution is to just accept the age-old advice that the only way to eat an elephant is to do it one bite at a time. However it is not just enough to start with trying to break down the one massive task into many small “bite-sized” tasks, but most importantly you have to do it as soon as possible. The problem with these elephant tasks is that with the passing of time they tend to grow in size and perceived complexity to reach mammoth and mastodon sizes. The quicker you can break a large task down into its smaller composite pieces, the sooner you can start to tackle parts of the project that can be attacked and resolved in a reasonable time, and the sooner you can see which parts of this project can be allocated to other people around you.

2. Fear of failure

Many people have a problem with procrastination because they are so obsessed with being right that they have built a belief that the only workable solution is a 100% solution, which then paralyses their ability to act. The most afflicted are the “Super-analytics”. These people are so task perfection driven that they can never have enough data to actually make a decision. If you give one of these people 100 days to complete a task, they will spend 99 days doing research and gathering as much data as possible and the 100th day trying to convince you that they are almost there, but if you could just give them another 100 days to complete the task they will be able to come up with the perfect solution. Trust me on this … they won’t. The solution is to not give large complex tasks to people like this, but to give them to people who understand that 100% solutions only exist in fairy tales and business school case studies, and who are driven to deliver a well thought through, well-constructed solution that can be implemented, and that has more than just a reasonable chance of success.

Author: Pablo X (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

3. It’s just the way some people are built

Some people seem to have made procrastination an integral part of their personality. They are easily distracted, do not have a lot of self-control and find it very hard to make decisions about their lives. These are the people we all know who are always “about to start a diet” or “about to start saving for a big holiday” or “about to start learning French”, but never quite get around to actually doing it. The only way to manage these people (if you actually do want to keep them in your team) is to take the decision and planning out of their hands. If you need them to do something, make it a mandatory part of their schedule. For example … “every Monday, every week from 9-11.00am you will be in this room to do this task”, or “every Friday at 5,00pm you will put on my desk your weekly report. You will schedule one hour every Friday from 3.00-4.00pm for this task and no other”. If you can take the uncertainty out of their lives, they can actually perform the tasks that are assigned to them but they do take extra management time.

4. People tend to put off doing unpleasant tasks

It’s never easy to get around to doing a boring or unpleasant task whether this as pedestrian as preparing a report for someone in a position of power knowing that this will never actually be used for anything worthwhile, or as tough as having to haul someone over the coals for unacceptable behaviour.
To handle something like the former, I would always try and treat it as sport by challenging myself to insert things in the report that would not only test whether the recipient actually read it, but if s/he did, whether s/he was actually smart enough to find them. Just in case s/he did read it, it was always done in ways that I could always blame on “typos”, after all s/he was in a position of authority. Doing it this way made it challenging and turned it into a more pleasant task.
As for the latter, I have always found that delaying something tough, like feedback on behaviour, will never make it easier than it is if done immediately on seeing it or on finding out about it. The longer the time that you allow to pass, the more the perpetrator will believe that it is acceptable behaviour and the harder it will be for you to address. Do it immediately and get it done when the rebuke and correction will have the most effect.

Author: L'Aquatique (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

As Olin Miller says “If you want to make an easy job seem mighty hard, just keep putting off doing it.”

Strategisches Personalcontrolling in 24 Stunden?

Rolf Hagenow — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Einführung eines strategischen Personalcontrolling Systems in nur 24 Stunden? Wie soll das gehen?

Wie so oft heute liegt die Antwort in der Cloud: Reporting as a Service, RaaS™ von ROC. Und natürlich brauchen Sie eine solide Basis, damit das funktionieren kann: ein SAP® ECC HCM System.

Falls Ihnen 24 Stunden trotzdem kaum glaubhaft erscheinen: Wir haben das gerade erfolgreich bei einem amerikanischen Unternehmen umgesetzt, sogar in einem internationalen Projekt, mit unterschiedlichen Zeitzonen und komplexen Kommunikationsbedingungen. Der Kunde war sogar in etwas weniger als 24 Projektstunden „live“.

Ganz konkret, wie geht das, RaaS™ Pro in 24 Stunden zu installieren?

Sie benötigen ein SAP® HCM System
Sie spielen unser Datenanalyse-Tool „RaaS Extraktor“ in ihr SAP HCM-System ein
Sie prüfen und validieren die Daten
Sie laden die Basisdaten für Ihr monatliches Berichtswesen via Excel auf ihren Rechner
Sie melden sich bei RaaS Pro mit ihrer User Id an
Sie laden die Daten via sicherem Upload direkt in unser RaaS Business Warehouse
Sie rufen unsere vorkonfigurierten Strategiedashboards, Detaildashboards und Webberichte auf
Sie sind fertig und können ihrem Chef die neuesten HR-Kennzahlen in eingängigen Grafiken vorlegen

Wenn Sie mehr über RaaS Pro erfahren möchten, dann klicken Sie einfach hier: www.raas-hcm.com

IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY …..

Les Hayman — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 06:35:13 +0000

I understand that the salary that you are paid for the work that you do is important, but there are many things that are more important if you want to have a successful career, and to ultimately do well.

By Hersfold; via Wikimedia Commons

Here are 10 things that I see as being more critical to focus on than your actual salary:

1. Never do a job you hate

No matter how much you get paid for doing it, if you hate what you are doing the odds are that you won’t do it well. Doing a job that you love does give you a greater chance of being good at it, which will bring you a greater chance of success and ultimately more rewards.
You work 5 days (at least) out of the 7 available each week, so why would anyone in their right mind want to spend 70% of their time doing something they actively dislike.

2. Never work for a boss you can’t respect

Your immediate supervisor controls your working life. S/he decides what you do, who you get to do it with, how you are measured, whether you are developed, how you are rewarded, what resources you get, if you get promoted etc. If you cannot build a solid working relationship with your boss, you have little chance of doing well. If you love the company you are in, try to get reassigned to another team. If not, find a company you can love, and make sure that you meet and interview your future direct boss (rather than just a recruiting team) before accepting a job.

3. Never work for a company you can’t be proud of

It makes life significantly sweeter if you can feel seriously proud of the company you keep. It makes it easier to sell and support the products and services that they offer, to believe in the company direction and objectives, and to sell the company to people you know and do business with, and hence add to your success. The most successful marketing is done by staff, customers and partners rather than by TV advertising. Air France has interesting TV ads, but it is very rare to hear anyone say anything really positive about the company.

4. Never work where you can’t directly contribute

The more you can make a serious, measurable contribution to the success of the business, the more valuable you will be in the organisation, and the more promotions and rewards will come your way. For example, I have always believed that it is better to have a direct line job in a revenue/profit role than to take a head office role counting and collating the success of others, even if that role appears more senior and is initially for a higher salary. The counter/collater is always more dispensable than the business generator and ultimately less valuable.

5. Try to get equity as part of you compensation package

Money is an obvious need today for paying the bills but equity is a chance for building some future wealth. This is true not just for start-ups but for established companies as well. If you pick your employer well, both for what they do and the people that they have, there will be a serious possibility that you will benefit significantly as they build shareholder value into the future.

Author: Roland Weber; via Wikipedia Commons

6. Negotiate a pay for performance package

Try and negotiate a package that is based on your personal contribution and efforts rather than one where they share a standard bonus for everyone.
I had one role in my career where the executive team were all paid the same performance bonus on the overall success of the company, irrespective of the individual’s contribution, and I always felt that this was inequitable. I have always believed that team performance should form a part of the performance evaluation but should not be the whole, and that the major part of the performance bonus should be paid on individual measurement and contribution against one’s goals. If you believe in yourself, find a company that thinks the same way and then work your arse off to overachieve against your goals.

7. Find a job where hard work is seen as more important than work-life balance

I understand that you should not kill yourself on the job, and that these days it is critical that you manage your time effectively and that good luck and timing can play a role in success, but I have always found that the harder (and smarter) I worked the luckier I got. We all have examples of people who did not have much ability and were not one of the sharpest quills on the porcupine, but who happened to be in the right place at the right time and who walked away with millions. Wish them luck because they belong to a very privileged but very small club. The majority of successful people have worked hard for what they have achieved, and if you want to join them then you need to copy their commitment and their attitude to hard work.

Author: KVDP (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

8. Look for a company that has built a true reputation for people development

I have always stressed that it is critical that you be able to update your CV every year with new knowledge and/or skills, and that if you can’t do that every year you have not just stood still, but have actually fallen behind your peers. Find an employer that believes that they have a responsibility to help their people grow and develop, not just in formal education but also in on-the-job-training.

9. Try to find a company that believes in overseas assignments as part of their culture

We live in a global market with global competition, and gaining experience in multiple regions is not only a lot of fun and interest in the acquisition, but will build your worth in an ever changing ever more complex marketplace. The trick is to prepare for it. I know of a young man who spent 3 years learning Mandarin and when his company opened an office in China he was asked to be part of the team to do so, at a significantly more senior role than the one he held. His peers felt that he had been blessed by good luck, but as we all know, real luck is when preparation an opportunity meet.

10. Find an employer that is known for having “the best and brightest”

This will not only position you as (hopefully) being part of an elite group but will give you access to smart people to learn from and emulate. In the IT sector in the 1960/70/80s, having worked for IBM was a great thing to have on your CV. In the 1970/80s so was having worked for DEC. Today it definitely helps to have spent some time at companies like Google or Apple. Target the equivalent companies that stand out in your industry and go and sell yourself to them … it is worth the apprenticeship.

As Marilyn Monroe said “I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.”

Author:Stephen Witherden; via Wikimedia Commons

If you focus on being wonderful at what you do, rather than on the job that pays the most today, the rewards will come and in the long run will be significantly greater.

BUSINESS LEADERSHIP ISN’T CHANGING QUICKLY ENOUGH

Les Hayman — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:43:10 +0000

If global competition and business processes are changing so quickly, why aren’t our leadership practices changing at the same rate to keep up with business needs?

A recent study carried out by Development Dimensions International (DDI), a US based Talent Management organisation, showed that whilst business needs and the business environment have all changed dramatically, business leadership practices have hardly changed in the last decades to keep pace.

The DDI study showed that:

“The leadership practices in most organizations received a resounding thumbs-down, with only a quarter of the HR professionals questioned for the report rating the quality of leadership in their organization as very good or excellent, and just a third of leaders giving themselves and their peers high marks.”

via Wikimedia Commons

A worrying finding of the study is that despite the emphasis that is being given to all aspects of leadership today, and despite the fact that corporate leaders are under global and public powerful scrutiny at all times, the results of the survey show that the quality of business leadership has not improved, and may have actually been declining for a long time in relative values against new and confusing market environments.

Of even greater concern is that there was little confidence that companies are building the next generation of high quality leaders. Only 18% of those surveyed felt that “… the leadership pipeline will produce the individuals needed for the future … “ (only 14% in the US), yet less than half of the companies surveyed had a process for identifying high potential talent and even fewer had a process for growing and developing these individuals once identified, despite the fact that this was seen as one of the key skills expected in business leaders. This becomes even more critically important in an environment where the baby boomers are all in the process of moving out of their corner offices and into their retirement condos in Florida and Nice.

Author: W. M. Connolley (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

Supporting the DDI findings, the American Management Association found that fewer than one in ten Fortune 1000 organisations actually had made any attempt to integrate recruitment, or management development and succession planning, with strategic business objectives, and found that only 1 in 5 companies even have any succession plans in place to cover the sudden loss of a key executive, and a quarter of them had no succession plans in place at all.

Even when companies do have Hi-Potential programmes and succession plans in place, these are often just window dressing and thus disregarded, as in many cases they are done to be seen to be doing the right thing rather than representing any real plans to identify, develop and build future leaders. Most Hi-Potential programmes are based more on a manager’s propensity to identify and salute those that are acting in his image, and most succession plans are based more on what those above expect to see rather than a true reflection of who should be the right person to take a step up. When it comes to promotions, over 70% of senior executive appointments tend to come from outside the organisation anyway, and of the less than 30% that are internally filled, about 70% will be totally different to that shown in the succession plan, meaning that generally less than 10% of promotions are based on any real planning at all.

This may be the one major reason that so few companies bother to do any real succession planning in the first place.
Quite a vicious circle !

If management in an organisation is not good enough to start with, how will they know what initiatives are needed, and how they should be implemented to drive the changes that are needed to improve the situation?
This is also not helped by today’s business schools.

Author: Tatu Monk (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

For example, many of the case studies used in helping to educate our future business leaders are even older than the MBA students, and whilst they may help students in the process of problem solving, and may even deliver some interesting lessons in business life, they do tend to suggest that not much has changed in the last 20+ years, for example, in the way that business is done, in the way that technology has become so pervasive, in how people are managed and motivated, in the changing expectations and definitions of work in successive generations or in the way that partnerships or co-opetitions are handled. Most importantly these case studies do not take into consideration how social media are changing the entire world, including business, and not just personal, communication. I understand that some of these topics may be covered separately but this does not seem to be enough.

One problem with most business schools is that many of their academic theories don’t actually work well in business practice, while conversely the things that good managers do to succeed in practice don’t actually work well in the business school theories.
So we keep seeing once great companies going into decline, and we excuse this as just being a result of some global economic downturn, new competitors or changing markets, rather than on inadequate management skills that have had little real chance of being able to adjust and adapt quickly enough.

Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is that is the most adaptable to change”.

Author: Elliott & Fry; via Wikimedia Commons

To this I would add … “At some time in the life cycle of every organisation, its ability to succeed in spite of itself runs out.”

SUN TZU WOULD GO BROKE TODAY

Les Hayman — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 06:50:47 +0000

I am amazed at how many business people falsely believe that “Business is War”, and how many young managers and MBA students see Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” as being the holy bible for waging business in the same way that one would wage war. I know that Sun Tzu made some very pithy and relevant statements like “Know yourself, know your enemy, win the war”, but how this became an earth shattering business truism is questionable, except maybe for those who look for easy answers to the meaning of business life in books like “The One Minute Manager” and “Who Moved My Cheese”.

Author: FrankWilliams; via Wikimedia Commons

Whilst there are some obvious similarities between the business world and that of the military, these are not enough to ensure ultimate success if one was to run a business in the same way that one would conduct a war. For a start, if business really was war, then it would be easy for senior officers from the armed forces to transition into the business world when they retire from military service, which it rarely is.
I have many friends from different branches of the military who had to go back to square one to try to adjust to the business world, despite being at the rank of at least Colonel, Commander or Air Commodore, and who were used to leading large numbers of troops.

War and business are based on winning and beating the opposition and there is nothing wrong with that analogy, but it really doesn’t go much further.

Here are some reasons why …

1. War is based on death.

The power of a military in war is not just based on whether its people are prepared to die for their country, but also on how good they are at making their opposition die for theirs. Business is not based on the body count that you can inflict on your competition, and is never a matter of life and death no matter how many times one uses that analogy to motivate a sales force.

2. War will have dramatic negative impacts on communities, both economically and physically, on both sides of the conflict.

The sacrifices that are made by non-combatants in wars have generally been higher than that made by the military personnel involved. Businesses are there to benefit the communities that they are in from both an economic and a human perspective, and will help to grow and nourish a community. Contrast this with the destructive impact that warring forces have on any community that they come in contact with.

3. In war, your enemy is to be hated and slaughtered at every chance and there is never any thought that there could be advantages to working with your enemy to benefit both sides.

Contrast this with the business world where serious competitors will share technologies in ways that enhance their abilities to succeed, and ultimately deliver choices to the marketplace in which they compete strenuously. One example being that SAP traditionally has always been one of the biggest resellers of the Oracle database. The more successful that SAP is, the more money it has to pay in royalties to its arch rival Oracle. The net result is that both companies benefit and so do their customers.

Author: Vladislav Bezrukov; via Wikimedia Commons

Autthor: Peter Kaminski; via Wikimedia Commons

4. Military management is based on command and control in strict hierarchies and blind obedience.

An order is an order and must be carried out as given, or offenders can face strict punishment, court marshal and even death.
Great businesses thrive on dissension, discussion, creativity and innovation. The “lower ranks” are encouraged to question things and to drive change, and are rewarded for this.

5. In war one of the greatest atrocities that can be committed by any member of the armed forces is to change sides.

In business the movement of personnel from one company to another is part of the lifeblood, maturity and richness of any industry. Some movement is considered advantageous for personal growth and development, and it helps that one can show a reasonable number of different employers throughout ones work history, and to be able to show how each of them helped to create a more rounded and valuable individual.

6. Historically, the army officer corps was made up from the ruling classes, usually the second oldest son of a wealthy family who had little financial future as his elder brother was due to inherit both the title and the property, and therefore leaving him only a choice between the military and the clergy. This meant that wars were generally orchestrated by the in-bred offspring of cousins who had married each other, and times haven’t changed all that much, as officers are rarely built from the ground up, and the lowest ranks are generally made up with those that have little choice. Businesses on the other hand are much more Darwinian. The most successful business people are those who are smart, have learned how to live and succeed within ever changing environments, can manage resources, are visionary and have shown that they have the ability to lead and motivate others.

The problem is that the “Business is War” attitude is not only invalid on its own, it also drives all the wrong behaviour.
It rewards autocrats who believe that they are always right, it stifles innovation by limiting dissent, it sees people as dispensable headcounts and it encourages empire building, hoarding of information and viewing everyone outside the team, division and company as adversaries. Customers are seen as needing to be conquered rather than as business partners, and competition to be crushed rather than being seen as business opportunities.

I have no question that conversely “War is Business” but the belief that “Business is War” is only for the simple minded, and they need to get a wider reading list than Sun Tzu, Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson if they want to succeed in today’s business world.

Author: Carlos Latuff; via Wikimedia Commons

Neuer Blog der RaaS-Community

Rolf Hagenow — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Unsere RaaS-Kollegen haben einen dedizierten Blog geschaffen, in dem Sie Informationen aller Art zu HR-BI in der Cloud finden können:

RaaS-Blog

WITH THE GREATEST RESPECT

Les Hayman — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 06:37:31 +0000

To be successful in any career it is critical that you become au-fait with “management speak”, as there are many instances when what is said is not really what is meant. Saying one thing and meaning another can be called irony, but it can also be called hypocrisy, being two-faced, dishonesty and cowardice. Whichever form it takes, it is important that you familiarise yourself with the true meanings of these phrases that are used by many managers.

Here are a few to get you started:

“With the greatest respect” is generally used when someone is about to insult you, but they hope that it won’t get you too angry. It actually means “with no respect at all”, and is just an attempt to diffuse the insult that will follow. This expression can also be used upwardly.

Author: ChinaFlag (own work); via Wikimedia Commons

“In all honesty” is used by people who want you to feel that what they are about to say has significantly more value than if they just said it on its own. It is meant to elicit the feeling that the speaker must be telling the truth, and that what they will say next has great significance and will be equivalent to a wondrous pearl of wisdom.

“I haven’t started yet but I have been thinking about it a lot” is a cover-up for the fact that a project is behind schedule and that the speaker will either need an extension or will submit an inferior result.

“The pipeline is light but I am confident of making the numbers” means that the sales strategy is based on hope, despite the fact that hope is never a strategy. It means that even if the numbers are actually achieved, the speaker has no understanding at all of what is actually going on in his business area and that it was just good luck that he achieved the goals … this time.

“What a creative idea” usually means that the idea will not get past the speaker, either because s/he hates or mistrusts anyone who is truly creative (as most managers prefer the safety of those who support the status quo), or else s/he thinks that you are an idiot and has used the word “creative” as a synonym for “stupid”.

Author: -Majestic- at en.wikipedia; via Wikimedia Commons

“Let me get back to you on that” means that they have no interest in what you are saying and are just trying to stop the conversation, or that what you have said is too complicated for them to understand, so they will have to go to their assistant to explain it to them in case it is actually something that they should know.

“Great idea but the CEO would never go for it” always means that they do not like the idea, but do not want to say that to you, so they will feign their support and will lay the blame on an authority figure above them who is not as creative or supportive of you as they are.

“Why don’t we sleep on that” means that they do not want to discuss this any further, or generally ever again, and that they would prefer to move on to their own topic which they consider much more interesting than yours.

“I hear what you say” means that they have not been listening to you at all, and will now comment on the one thought that is in their mind on this topic.

Author: David Benbennick; under GNUF License; via Wikimedia Commons

“My mind is open on this issue” means that the speaker has no idea of what needs to be done and is therefore accepting of any opinion, generally taking the most recent one that s/he has heard as their interim stated position. What they really mean is that their mind is blank on the issue.

“Let’s look at this from 30,000 feet” usually means that the manager has no idea of the details that are needed to solve a problem or set a specific direction, so looking at something from 30,000 feet allows the speaker to pontificate his own brand of generalisations without having to admit that s/he has no clue about what actually needs to be done.

“It’s hard to turn an oil tanker” is the manager’s way of saying that he has no idea of how to circumvent the bureaucracy that exists in the organisation to actually achieve anything worthwhile, by suggesting that change is impossible (and unwelcome) in anything as large and as wonderful as the company has become.

“Let’s talk about that offline” usually means that the conversation has become embarrassing for the manager so he is not prepared to continue it in public where it will become increasingly obvious to the whole group that he actually knows nothing about the topic. This way he can make it personal by pretending that it can be better handled in a one-on-one.

“Help me to understand” is usually a roundabout way of saying that what has been said is really stupid, and that no matter how many times, or different ways, the idea is repeated it will never make sense to the speaker.

“How brave of you” is just another way of saying that you have either just uttered, or done, something that is totally career-limiting, and that you may as well go and start to update your CV and to pack up your cubicle.

As was said by German scientist and satirist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799) “The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted”

Author: Daniel Schwen; under CCA-Share Alike 2.5 License; via Wikimedia Commons

ROC-Experten aktive Blogger im SAP Developers’ Network (SDN)

Oliver Stegmann — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Unsere Experten sind aktive Mitglieder der SAP SDN Community. In diesem Beispiel (link) macht Ibrahim Nagy Vorschläge zur Verbesserung von Nakisa OrgChart.

Ibrahim als ehemaliger Nakisa-Mitarbeiter kennt die Applikation bestens, sowohl von seiner Ausbildung bei Nakisa wie aus vielen Kundenprojekten (sowohl bei Naksia als auch bei ROC). Seine Vorschläge zielen auf praktischen Nutzen in Projekten. Bis sie in neue Produktversionen von Nakisa Einzug halten, können Kunden von seinen selbst entwickelten Ad-hoc-Lösungen profitieren.

RaaS unter den 3 besten Cloud Service Produkten bei den EuroCloud Deutschland Awards

Rolf Hagenow — Thu, 19 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

RaaS von ROC (Reporting as a Service) wurde von EuroCloud Deutschland als eines der drei besten Cloud Service Produkte ausgewählt, neben Produkten von weltweiten Schwergewichten wie VMWare (2.9 MRD $ Umsatz) und Salesforce.com (Umsatz 1,6 MRD $).

Wir freuen uns natürlich über diese Auszeichnung, insbesondere darüber, dass RaaS sozusagen aus dem Stand in die erste Liga aufgestiegen ist. Im Überschwang erlauben wir uns ein kleines Selbstlob: Wir haben offenbar frühzeitig einen Trend erkannt und die notwendige Agilität bewiesen, ihn in ein konkretes und solides Angebot umzusetzen.

Wichtiger für unsere Kunden: RaaS bietet ihnen einen schnellen und sicheren Einstieg in professionelles HR-Reporting und in Cloud Computing, gemäß dem Motto der EuroCloud Conference: Cloud Computing ist die Zukunft – aber sicher.

Wir waren uns natürlich sicher bezüglich der Solidität und der Sicherheit von RaaS. Die Nominierung unter den drei besten Cloud Service Produkten zeigt, dass kompetente Fachleute unsere Auffassung teilen.

Ein Grund mehr, RaaS zur Erhöhung Ihrer Agilität im HCM zu nutzen.

Mehr zu RaaS finden Sie hier

DO WOMEN MAKE BETTER MANAGERS ?

Les Hayman — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 07:34:22 +0000

I was recently asked during a press interview to describe the best boss that I had ever worked for.

It wasn’t hard to do, as during my time at Sun Microsystems, when asked to drive a global project for 6 months in the US, I had the opportunity to work for one of the most impressive executives that I have met in the last 45 years.

The fact that she was a woman, and her having moved on to greater roles over the last 20 years despite a serious bout with illness, made me wonder whether women actually make better managers than do men.

Christine Lagarde, French Finance Minister and someone tipped as a potential future Prime Minister, and one of the few really impressive politicians that I have met (see « Vive l’European Parliament » posted 20/09/2010), believes that women make better policians than men « … because they are not slaves to their libidos », which she believes made them « … more able to make more cool-headed judgements ». She told the US Network ABC « This Week » programme on October 11, 2010 that « … men’s sex drive, testosterone and egos impaired their decision making ability ».

Christine Lagarde at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 25, 2007. Copyright by World Economic Forum swiss-image.ch/Photo by Remy Steinegger

If this is true, and I have a lot of admiration for Lagarde and not much for most politicians I have met, who did tend to be male, does the same hold true for management roles ? And if it is true, why are there not more women in senior management positions ?

In the Top 300 European companies women make up only about 12% of board members (up from 10% in 2008), although Norway at 38% does skew the results somewhat. The latest Catalyst figures show that women only make up 11% of Fortune 1000 company board members, and that 25% of the Fortune 1000 still have no female board members at all.

3 women managers of successful wine chateaux (close friends of mine)

Professor Khalid Aziz, CEO of Aziz Corporation, a leadership development « maven » believes that women managers have a « … less short term outlook and are more holistic, big picture and reasonable ».

He lists his top-10 reasons why women make better bosses than men :

1. In a still sexist world, women have to be better than men to succeed.

2. Women tend to be less « bullet-headed » than men and prefer to understand the big picture before proceeding.

3. More adaptable to the needs to change

4. More willing to see other people’s point of view

5. Less bloody minded in conflict.

6. More holistic people managers, understanding the different influences on staff.

7. More willing to admit mistakes.

8. Better at collaboration.

9. More open to seeing their own failings.

10. Better team players.

I once asked a male CEO why there were no women on his board, and he told me that he would love to have some women on the board, but hadn’t been able to find any that were suitable. I therefore asked him what were the backgrounds and qualities that he was looking for in a female board member, and he listed a long string of qualities that most of his current male board members didn’t actually have.

I guess that he just wasn’t really looking hard enough.

BEING SERIOUS IS OVERRATED

Les Hayman — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 07:29:27 +0000

I have found that many people, particularly as they become more senior in their corporate life (or just get older), start to take life and themselves much too seriously, supposedly in line with their elevated status. They therefore tend to create an environment that only has focus on the seriousness of the tasks involved, and the important role that they actually play in achieving them. I once had a software developer describe his supervisor as “… someone who could suck the joy out of the room just by saying good morning”.

I have always believed that while it is critical that you are serious about the role you perform in life, whether as an individual contributor, an executive or in the community, you should never take yourself too seriously.

In business, it is important to regularly remind yourself that the only difference between a manager and the people being managed is the job description. I understand that there are differences in salaries and other elements like office space, remuneration, status and visibility, but one should never grow to believe that these differences include self importance.

For me a sales manager has no more importance in a company than the 10 salesmen in his team who collectively generate $ 20-30 million in revenues each year. In reality the role of the sales manager is mainly to support and serve the sales force by ensuring that he makes their role as easy to execute as possible, and to facilitate their success. This means that the manager has to spend his time as a coach and mentor to his people, but also has to spend time and effort removing barriers to their success and protecting them from internal politics and bureaucracy so that they can focus on selling.

I have therefore always believed that the critical measure of a great sales manager is that the vast majority of his sales team individually earn more than he does.

Ultimately, the only role of any manager, at any level, is to create an environment where people can be unbelievably successful (see “I live to work or I work to live” posted 5 July, 2010). Amongst other things, this means that work needs to be enjoyable. I don’t mean “entertaining” which is an objective of the manager (Michael Scott in the US version) in the TV series “The Office” , who at one point says “I guess the atmosphere that I’ve tried to create here is that I’m a friend first and a boss second, and probably an entertainer third”.

I don’t believe that the objective of any manager is to be a friend to his people, and one should not confuse “friendly” with “friendship”. Neither should a manager see his role as being one of “entertaining the troops”, but I do believe that it should be an objective to make it fun, and that to ensure that the lighter sides of life (and there are many) are regularly celebrated.

I understand that people will define fun in many different ways but, in a work context, I see fun as being able to work in an environment where people can succeed and be suitably rewarded, where their skills can be utilised and developed, where they can be challenged, where they can work with people they can trust and from whom they can learn, where they feel safe and valued, and very importantly where they can laugh often and loudly. People need to want to be at work as an integral and worthwhile part of their life, not just as a place that they have to go to so that they can make enough money to pay their bills.

Back in the early 1980s DEC Australia had a very basic company car policy, particularly when compared to other IT companies. Irrespective of your role, if it justified a company car, you could have either a Toyota Corona or a Mitsubishi Sigma, neither being cars that would have excited the boys of “Top Gear”.

One year I ran a sales competition that involved mounting a Rolls Royce hubcap on a plaque and calling it the “DEC luxury car scheme award, phase 1”. It was a great success and sales reps worked hard to earn the right to have it sit on their desk for a month, as not only did it signify their personal success, but at the same time it had a minor dig at the company. Despite its success I was asked to drop my plans for phase 2 the following year, which was planned to be a Rolls Royce steering wheel … I guess that we were just having too much fun.

Creating an environment that is always serious, that does not see the humour in life’s situations, that believes that laughter should be reserved for private rather than work time and that does not understand that all of life is meant to be fun, can never achieve the balance that makes the work environment a serious way to work and a fun place in which to do it, and therefore will not create an opportunity where people can succeed.

As Oscar Wilde said “Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow”.

FIFTH SECRET OF TIME MANAGEMENT

Les Hayman — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 06:29:40 +0000

You have to kill interruptions as much as possible.

The first step is to take control of emails.

It’s interesting that we have established rules and procedures for physical interruptions, for example if someone’s office door is closed, if they are obviously on a phone call or If they are in conversation with someone else, we are conditioned not to interrupt unless it is a serious emergency.

Email doesn’t work this way, and for many people is an immediate interruption, as too many people look at email as it hits their inbox and bleeps, whether on their desktop, laptop or hand-held.

The other problem with an email is that until you open it, you have no real understanding (beyond the alert and who was the sender) as to what priority level it may be, and therefore whether it actually warrants the interruption that it has created. We tend to give emails elevated levels of priority that go well beyond what they deserve. I believe that very few emails are sent with the belief that they will be handled instantaneously, but most people accord them that privilege.

Try this for test.

Send an email to a group of 6-8 subordinates or peers saying “Call me when you read this”. You will be surprised at how quickly you will get the return calls, despite the fact that no competent manager could ever assume that email is a way to get an instantaneous response. If it was time critical they would at the least have left a message on your voicemail.

The problem is that handling emails one by one is a terrible time waster.
What happens is that when something interesting happens you can receive at least 20 emails on the same topic, for example “Leo Apotheker being appointed CEO of HP”. At least if you group your emails, and only actually work your inbox just a few times a day rather than every time you are beeped, you can save yourself a lot of individual responses describing your surprise.

Secondly when you know that you have 100 emails to handle in just the 1 hour that you have scheduled, you tend to be much more succinct and bloody-minded about how you handle them than doing them one at a time. The key is to turn off the email bleepers, and schedule email time when it suits you to handle email rather than as though each email was a gift from above.

The second step in managing interruptions is to try and club physical interruptions together as well by letting people know when you will be readily interruptible. You can do this by regularly scheduling “open door” (green) time. In the same way that I suggested that you need to schedule private time (red time) for appointments with yourself (see “Second Secret of Time management” posted 30/9/2010), you should also schedule regular times when anyone can come in to interrupt you.

Whenever I was in home base, I would always try and schedule 2 regular 30 minute sessions per day when anyone could come in to my office for a chat or to ask or tell me something. The rules were that no-one could actually make an appointment during that time or close the door, and anyone could come in at any time no matter who was already in the room. It was not allowed to become an unscheduled meeting, just an ad-hoc chat session. I considered this to be a true open door policy, rather than just writing that you have one. Once people got to know that these times were available they started to schedule their time around my availability, seriously minimising my interruptions, but still leaving me easily approachable on any quick-fix topic.

Some executives I have worked with have even taken the additional step of not having chairs available in their office during these sessions, making those who drop in much more succinct and much keener to have their say and then depart.
As you may actually also have some free time during these open-door sessions, it’s also a good time to do some of those tasks that are graded as “C”s on your do-list, as these do need to get done some time and they can normally handle interruptions.

By the way, it doesn’t hurt to turn the mobile phone off occasionally as well.

Focus can have a great bearing on success, and the more you can control interruptions, whether physical or electronic, the more you can achieve it when needed.

SELL, SELL, SELL

Les Hayman — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 06:56:17 +0000

Nothing happens in this world until somebody sells something!

Which makes “selling” the noblest profession of them all !!
It may not officially be the oldest profession, but I doubt that even that could have existed without some sales effort.

I am not talking about the pressure selling of things that people don’t need and can’t really afford such as we have seen in the housing industry in the US most recently and which has brought the world to its economic knees. I am talking about the professional selling of products and services that can add value to people and organisations.

I was surprised when I first joined SAP to find that the Germans generally don’t actually hold any salesmen in high regard. The common term for a salesman is “Klinkenputzer” (door knob polisher), and salesmen are considered to dwell way down the bottom of the social scale with grave diggers and septic tank cleaners, and only just barely rank above serial killers.

In the same way that Ken Olsen, co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), believed that salesmen were really unnecessary, as he believed that they couldn’t do anything significantly more than could be achieved by mailing out the PDP-8 and PDP-11 handbooks, the German culture of engineering excellence tends to believe that “ … if you build it they will come …”. This is based on the fact that if people or organisations need things they will seek them out, and then you just need to demonstrate that you are the best available. It may work well when you are the only game in town, but starts to get shaky when you have serious competition and the market starts to look for more than just product excellence from its suppliers, such as industry knowledge, an understanding of its pain points and how to solve them, and a mutually beneficial business relationship that is based on more than just product price-performance ratios.

DEC, who drove the mini-computer revolution and dominated the market in the 70s and 80s, is no longer with us, and I have no doubt that part of their demise was because they never really overcame this basic lack of belief in the need for a skilled, professional, passionate, capable sales force. It did survive and prosper for a time based on the “let’s change the world” culture, and brilliant engineering, but faltered as competition flourished and the world started to change towards non-proprietary operating systems and networked workstations and PCs. (Building a multi-directional matrix organisation that strangled initiative and killed personal accountability didn’t help either, but that’s another story).

I remember an article in Fortune magazine in 1979 comparing DEC and Data General titled the “The Gentlemen versus the Upstarts”. It was interesting that both companies used this as marketing material, as they were equally proud of their labels. The problem is that gentlemen finish last and upstarts can eventually annoy everyone, so both are now resting with the Dodo.

The one serious survivor in our industry is IBM, who I believe have written the book on professional selling. When I first started playing with computers back in 1965 (See “My son is in typewriters” posted on July 08, 2010), the IT Industry was dominated by IBM and the “BUNCH” being Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data and Honeywell), all no longer with us. IBM, despite a serious hiccup in the 80s is still here and flourishing. Whilst they have always been towards the forefront of most technologies, they have rarely been at the leading edge, having been a fast follower in many instances rather than the initiator, and yet they have remained a force for over 60 years.

I have always believed that one of the major reasons for this has been their sales professionalism. Many companies paid significantly more, many companies had hungrier and more aggressive compensation plans and sales forces, but few have matched the skill and power of the IBM sales machine. I had the opportunity to experience this first hand in my 8 years at International Harvester in NZ and afterwards when competing with them in the late 70s and 80s (IBM was a partner rather than a competitor at SAP), and have always been impressed with their sales excellence, which I believe has been unmatched in the industry.

The major thing that IBM seems to have always understood, beyond the need for serious training programs and the protection of their culture, is that whilst being at the forefront of technology is important, true competitive edge lies in the quality of your people and the right to engage with the customer, elements that IBM have built into their corporate DNA over the last 60 years.

Outside of a small handful of the large global consulting companies IBM more than anyone has earned the right to engage at all the relevant senior levels in major companies around the world. Their sales teams are welcomed in board rooms because they are seen as serious value add and as business advisors, not necessarily because they have the latest “hot” products.

That’s what professional selling is all about.

FOURTH SECRET OF TIME MANAGEMENT

Les Hayman — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 06:51:47 +0000

H.H “Breaker “Morant (1864-1902) is credited with having said “Live every day as if it was your last, because one day you will be right.”

He was spot-on as on February 27, 1902, at the age of 38, he was executed after conviction for murder during the Second Boer War (1899-1902). He became an Australian folk hero (despite the fact that he was actually English), with a major movie about him having been made in 1980 and which is still considered a classic today.

I am sure however that his notoriety is not based on his advice on time management.

There is no question that his advice is sound, it’s just very hard for people to live their lives as though they really did believe that their life span was seriously limited without actually casting a dark veil over their existence. In actual fact we all tend to live a large part of our lives as though we were indestructible, which does help to explain the kamikaze style of driving one finds in most of Europe.

I believe that the more realistic advice is to live every day as if it was in the last week before going on holidays.

I am always amazed at how much can be achieved in just one week as people focus on finishing off all the things that have lain dormant on their to-do lists for months, just before they set off for their annual 4-6 weeks break (usually starting in August here).

For some, they could actually achieve most of their annual goals by coming in to work just for the latter part of the month of July.

I believe that this is driven mainly by the fact that most people seem to feel that they will not be able to relax completely on vacation if they still have items that have not been crossed off their list of outstanding tasks. The fear that somehow this list will then rob them of sleep with nightmares of things like business plans not written and performance reviews delayed.

Even more compelling seems to be the fear that coming back to all these, now even more delayed, tasks will mean that they will be already behind their work schedule on the first day that they come back from vacations, rather than allowing themselves to just get more and more behind over time as a natural part of their working life.

There seems to be a visible build-up both at work and at home, of making sure that that the time to vacation departure exhibits better planning, better focus, and significantly better use of time available to finish off outstanding tasks.
Imagine the amazing increases in productivity that could be gained if everyone worked like this every single week of the year.

I am therefore of the opinion that companies would be better served if instead of allowing a single 6 week vacation break, they forced their staff to actually take three lots of 2 weeks annual leave spread across the year, as at least that way they could guarantee at least 3 weeks of focussed activities per year rather than just the one.

THIRD SECRET OF SUCCESS

Les Hayman — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 06:53:45 +0000

Being able to update your resume (curriculum vitae) every year is an important part of success.

I am not suggesting that you update it and put it out on the street, just that you need to be able to update the contents every year, and that you should also set up a formal process, and allocate time, to make this happen. (See “Second Secret of Time Management” posted 30/9/2010).

You have to ask yourself “What do I know today that I didn’t know a year ago, what can I do today that I couldn’t do a year ago or what can I do measurably better today than I could do a year ago ?”

If you can’t answer positively to at least one part of this question, then you have not only just wasted a year of personal growth, but you have actually gone backwards, as those that you compete with may not have let the time pass so unproductively.

I am not just talking about competition as being the sole concern of those that are seeking to climb the corporate ladder, but I am including all elements of business, politics, study and life in general.
It is just as true for a corporate executive, a wine maker in Bordeaux or an MBA student, and it also holds true for retirees, despite their supposed non-compete status.

As the Rolling Stones say “And time waits for no one and it won’t wait for me”.

I also believe that you do need to do this personal review as a formal process, as just doing it whilst you drive to work, or navigate your tractor through the vines, makes it too easy to gloss over details and so delude yourself into believing that you have actually achieved a year of personal growth. A formal process implies that not only will you need to list these “upgrades” to your skills and/or knowledge, but that you will also be able to document evidence that these upgrades have actually occurred.

I find that it also helps to seek outside confirmation from for example peers, subordinates and superiors (in a work context), or partners and friends (in a personal context) that they have also seen visible evidence of these changes, and would be prepared to sign off (if asked) on the changes in your resume.

It’s also not enough just to list a promotion, as climbing a rung on the corporate ladder is not in itself a sure sign that you have actually advanced your skills or knowledge in the last 12 months, only that you have been chosen as the best of what is available in the selection process.

Some promotions are more an indication of the lack of skill of the promoters rather than a sure sign of skills in the one promoted. In the latter half of the 20th century, the IT industry grew massively each year, and became a breeding ground for promotions of the “most visibly able” rather than the “truly capable”, as in many companies the growth in the number of management positions to fill was greater than the growth in skilled candidates. It was only towards the end of the 1900’s that tough times showed that many had titles that far exceeded their true abilities, skills and experience to actually effectively fill the role.

These are generally the people who are first to go when culling processes start, and we should have learned by now that in this century the regular corporate cull has become a fact of life.
True learning and skills development, and putting this knowledge to use, is not only a key element in corporate life preservation, but is also what makes life more interesting and worthwhile.

The Olympic motto in Latin is “Citius, Altius, Fortius” which translates to “Higher, Faster, Stronger ”.
To this we should add “Acutulior” which means “cleverer”.

SECOND SECRET OF SUCCESS

Les Hayman — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 05:55:54 +0000

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” Alvin Toffler

I am often amazed that so many people seem to not understand that learning is a journey and not a destination.

You should never stop learning, whether it is for new skills or new ideas, and you need to be prepared to adjust both elements as the world changes around you. It is also important these days to differentiate between information and knowledge, and to understand that information may be interesting for conversations at dinner parties but little else if not applied, and that knowledge that is not translated to actions has little value, as knowing what to do is less important than actually doing what we know.

Too many people seem to believe that there are distinct stages in their lives, with very little overlap:

Ages 1-25 “Learning” phase (School and University)

25-65 “Doing” phase through working (25-55 in France … see “Vive l’avantage” posted 27 Sept 2010)

65-85+ “Resting” phase (for many the “TV watching” phase … see “Vive la France” posted 25 June 2010)

There is a pervasive attitude amongst many senior, well educated people that once they have graduated with their PhDs and MBAs that they are now past their learning phase and that from now on they will just absorb anything extra by osmosis as they just go about doing things. I have always seen early formal education mainly as a way to learn how to learn, and as acquiring a “hunting license” in the job market. However, just because you have a license to do something doesn’t actually mean that you will get the opportunity to actually do it, nor does it mean that you already have the skills to do it well. In most cases these skills need to be developed and honed over a lifetime before they can be well deployed. To become proficient, learning and practice must continue forever whether formal, on the job, through coaching and mentoring, reading and trying, and failing sometimes just to not get too overconfident. (See “First Secret of Success” posted on 16.09.2010).

This belief that they already know enough tends to be truer of people in management roles, as individual contributors, such as engineers, at least have an understanding that their science keeps changing with each new breakthrough in their field. Managers have to go through this same process of learning, as the science of management changes with the changing expectations of each generation. Management styles of “command and control” may have worked with my father’s generation, but already didn’t work with mine, and certainly don’t work with today’s generation who see a much more collaborative style of management with much more involvement in things like job definition and measurement. (See “Quality of Management for the Future” posted 02/09/2010).

It is our ability to continually redefine ourselves as the world changes around us at an ever more rapid rate that will define our ability to keep on succeeding.

As Charles Darwin so succinctly puts it “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

I have less problem convincing younger people of this, but am amazed at how many board members of major companies resist ongoing training, some even seeing this need for further learning as being a visible show of weakness to subordinates. It may be acceptable to have a noted university professor come in and talk to the board on some related subject as this can be seen more as an intellectual exercise rather than a learning one, but I have found significant resistance when I have suggested that a corporate board could do with some serious training on, for example, how to function effectively as a board.

At least I am fortunate that in my retirement I get to mix with lots of younger people. I could not imagine a more terrifying existence than having to spend all my time just with people my own age, as I have long believed that it’s what you learn after you know it all that really counts.

HR … WHAT’S HR GOT TO DO WITH INNOVATION? ISN’T THAT R&D?

Les Hayman — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 06:22:06 +0000

Why is it that when you talk about innovation most people can’t look beyond product innovation?

It’s a wonderful thing to have superior products, particularly if you can create products that people just love to have and to use, like Apple. My wife only got her first Apple product, an i-Phone, about 6 months ago and quickly followed up with an i-Mac. She is now very keen on the idea of an i-Pad.

Apart from the fact that I can’t play “Angry Birds“ I am quite happy with my Blackberry, which I see as being a reasonable competitor to the i-Phone.

I believe that what makes Apple unique is not just its product line as whilst I can accept that this is outstanding, I also understand that there are serious alternatives, and that under the law of averages I am sure that someone, fairly soon, will come up with another quantum leap in “hand-held magic”, and that this will become the newest god to the cognoscenti. I believe that what makes Apple so unique and competitive is that on top of their great products, they also seem to have a great culture, and it’s this culture that drives their innovation, and hence their superior products.

It’s interesting that even though Apple has been around since the 70’s it doesn’t seem to have developed the rigidity that long established companies tend to have, despite the changes in CEO over the years and despite their growth. They have somehow managed to retain a casual and free character, and resisted any real push for policies and procedures or dress codes or time sheets. As a result, they seem to have created a common desire, energy and enthusiasm to create great products and to beat and baffle their competition.

I believe that this ability to grow from start-up in 1976 to a company of about 35,000 permanent and 2,500 temporary staff and revenues of US $ 43 B in 2009, and yet retain this “maverick” culture after 35 years, is a rare and enviable achievement, and I believe that this ability to help create, protect and build culture is a critical role for HR to play, as it is a major driver of innovation.

I have always believed that innovation is not just about genius (hiring the brightest and the best), but more about “How we do things around here” (culture), and as Peter Drucker says “ … hard work over a long period of time … “ (see “The 3 great business lies” posted August 2, 2010).

I was once asked to help a senior software development manager who was having a problem with his team, which was made up of about 20 young “geniuses”, and who just weren’t delivering the goods. I was in his office listening to his complaints about his team’s lack of creativity, when one of his young team members interrupted us in an obviously high state of excitement. It seems that he had been up most of the night working on a technical roadblock that had been bothering the team for over a week. After I pushed his boss into accepting the interruption, this young man proceeded to describe his breakthrough with considerable pride. His boss heard him out, and then without missing a beat described his own solution, which he had come up with some days earlier, but had kept from the team to see what they could do. As the young man left the room, his boss turned to me and said “See that … no creativity”. I added “… and even less tomorrow”.

I have found that the further you move up the management structure, the less is management aware of the real culture of the company, and the more there is a belief that “… if you write it, so it shall be .. “, and hence a belief that as it is written in the published mission, vision and values statements it must be true. This is one of the reasons that companies sometimes struggle to execute a strategy, as the culture will oppose it, and for a company to be successful it must ensure that its culture, being its values and behaviours, are aligned to its strategy.

It is important to understand that culture is evolving and changing all the time. As the company grows, it will change. Every time new recruits come in to the company, they will bring their own behaviours and values with them, and will have some impact on the culture, even if only a little if the company culture is very strong. But if the company is going through significant growth, these changes can be dramatic. Culture will also be impacted by external conditions, like changes in legislation, competition or market conditions, and whilst some of these may be positive and some may be planned, a vast majority happen clandestinely, and out of sight and awareness of senior management.

This is where a strong HR department can play a critical and pivotal role by working with management to help identify and develop the patterns of behaviour and values that the company needs for it to be successful.

HR needs to be able to assess what is the true company culture, (for example, by noting what people do rather than what they say), to work with management to develop what they see as being the desired culture and the roadmap to move from one to the other, by determining the elements in the current culture that should be kept, and the elements that need to be changed.

This whole process of change is one of the key platforms for driving innovation, and HR organisations have a key role to play in its successful execution. This covers many areas that HR has traditionally been responsible for anyway such as stringent recruiting practices, induction programmes that ensure recruits understand the integrity of the company, being “What we believe is what we say is what we do”, and the values that the company holds to be true. Adding to this the management, protection and development of the required company culture should be a critical step for HR, and will bring HR closer to the CEO as it should be his priority as well.
I see this as being a key business “value-add” role for HR to deliver, and a significant step towards an HR organisation becoming a “Player”. ( see HR … Polite to Police to Partner to Player posted August 26, 2010).

SECOND SECRET OF TIME MANAGEMENT

Les Hayman — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 12:11:53 +0000

Diaries are meant to be an aid to help us all manage our time allocations but in most cases are rarely used in a way that actually helps people to really achieve this.

The problem is that most people use diaries mainly as a means of giving other people access to tying up the available time. For example, when I was working at SAP, by the time I had diarised the requirements of things like board meetings, executive meetings, regional reviews, country visits, budgeting sessions, sales meetings, direct report weekly one-on-ones, mentoring sessions, customer conferences and speaking engagements about 70% of my available time was already allocated by the time the year started. The 30% that was left was quickly eroded by ad-hoc meetings, emergencies and a myriad of other reasons why people just had to see me.

If one of the critical success factors of competent managers is to spend time planning and building the future, then there was not a lot of time available to do this. Most studies have shown that very few executives spend more than about 10% of their time planning, and actually spend most of their time in meetings, “fire fighting” and handling emails and correspondence.

So how is an executive meant to be able to find the time to plan and the time to actually complete the “A-level” items on his priority list (see First Secret of Time Management posted September 23, 2010)?

I have found that one key way to help achieve this is to make appointments with yourself, in the same way that you would make appointments for other people, and to treat these with the same level of priority and importance. You have to make sure that your assistant understands why this is important. I used to always tell my PAs that they had to give these times the same level of priority for non-disturbance as if I was with one of my direct reports doing a formal performance review, which meant that unless the building was burning down I did not want to be disturbed. My PA was not to say that “I was on my own”, as that is an immediate invitation for a knock on the door, only that “I couldn’t be disturbed” and to then either schedule an appointment or to take a message for me to call back when I was free.

These “private-times” need only be as little as an hour each, but it is important that you do not allow interruptions as these can destroy any creative train of thought, and planning requires both thought and creativity. If you don’t have a PA or are in an open-plan cubicle, book a meeting room or go and sit in the park, and turn off your portable. I have found that it is better to schedule these daily private-times early in the morning when your mind is fresh and there is also less chance of interruption. If you leave it to later in the day there is a good chance that circumstances will overtake you, and you will end up having to surrender them to address some “emergency”, but I also understand that this is not always possible. I always set these daily ones at 8.00-9,00 am each day, before most people came into the office, before the normal day’s frenzy had begun, and before most scheduled meetings. Travel permitting, I would try and schedule an hour per day, an extra 3 hour session per week, and also a day per month out of the office, giving me about 10 hours of uninterrupted, jealously-guarded, personal time per week. Not a great amount to take out of a 50+ hour working week, but precious and productive if used properly. You should also try and schedule these before you start looking at emails, as these have a way of taking over your attention and activities, and are also just another distraction from your focus on those tasks that are critical for your own role, its responsibilities and your own success.

I know of people who receive, and handle, over 200 emails per day, leaving very little time to actually do very much else, and who probably go home at night content in the thought that they have achieved a lot in their day.
The challenge is to be able to differentiate between the important and the urgent. The urgent will always be there, but if you don’t make time for the important, it just won’t get done.

It is important to remember that “When you are up to your arse in alligators, it is hard to remember that your original objective was to drain the swamp”.

FIRST SECRET OF TIME MANAGEMENT

Les Hayman — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 06:24:27 +0000

Can anyone really manage time?

We all get allocated exactly the same amount, just 24 hours per day, and yet some people never seem to have enough time and always have a growing mountain of undone tasks, and others seem to be able to do an incredible amount in the same period, and rarely fall behind.

I believe that it is obvious that we can’t actually manage time per se, but we can all definitely manage the events that take up our time..

We have always been taught that to be successful, one of the first things that we should do regularly is to take our “To Do List” and categorize it by importance into A,B,C tasks, and that we should not do the Bs until all the As have been done and so on. I believe that in managing how to effectively use our time, this is definitely not the starting point.

The critical starting point is to look at whether the task should be on the “do list” in the first place and, particularly for those in management roles, whether it should be allocated to someone else or whether it should be done at all.

For example, over most of my working life, I had a basket on my desk marked “PRORITY” in very large letters.

Whenever I got a request from above or from a peer requiring significant work by me or my people, usually having to provide some mountain of statistics on my part of the organisation to someone in some vague part of the matrix, I would always ask myself whether, by completing this task, I would be adding serious value to the organisation. Would this task somehow enhance critical elements such as revenues, profits, competitiveness, customer or staff satisfaction? If the answer was a resounding “no” to all of them, I would place it in this priority basket strategically placed in a prominent position on my desk. If the requestor then stuck his head in my office to ask me where I was with his request, I would show him that it was in my priority pile and that I would get to it as soon as I could get out from under the mountain of other tasks that had even more priority. This would normally satisfy him long enough for his departure, usually pleased with the fact that his request was considered critical.

I would then ask myself the same questions as I had originally, as to what would be the value to the organisation if I now spent the time to complete this task. If the answer was still “none at all”, it would go back in the priority basket. If the request had come from my direct supervisor, or above, after about three requests or a serious demand, I would actually allocate the time to do it. However, most of the time, it simply just went away.

I am not advocating open anarchy in the corporate environment, but am just illustrating an example of what I mean about our ability and responsibility to “manage events”. I have found over the years, and particularly in a matrix-obsessed structure, that there are many people who justify their existence simply by asking others to provide multiple variations of metrics in the organisation. These can create an incredible amount of work for many, but do very little to actually deliver any benefit to anyone except for helping build the perceived importance of the requestor. I have found that many times these requests are just based on an incompetent’s need for some visible activity, and like a bad case of wind, will just pass with time.

The skill in effectively managing ones use of available time is in allocating priorities, but only after deciding whether the tasks should be done at all, and if so, then by whom.
Too many managers, particularly if vocationally brilliant, will pick up difficult tasks or problems from their subordinates, just to show the world that they still have the vocational skills.
This then creates a situation where the subordinate can now take management control by being able to ask his manager for progress reports, removes an important learning opportunity for the subordinate, and takes up time that the manager should be using to run his business. I once worked with a senior head of development, with responsibility for about 5000 people, who often took on the task of debugging a piece of software that one of the programmers had been struggling with, and he considered this as being a reasonable way to spend his time.

The best (and most amusing) book I have read on this subject was “Managing Management Time” written in about 1960 by William Oncken, Jr (1912-1988), and I have always recommended this book as one of the most illuminating on this subject. Even after 50 years, I still consider this book a must read for anyone in a management role.

The ultimate way to succeed is to do the critical things that focus on the business of effectively fulfilling the role and responsibilities of the position to which you have been appointed. This is very different from focussing on the busyness of completing a myriad of tasks, particularly if you should not be doing them anyway.

THE PROBLEM WITH COMPROMISE

Les Hayman — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I have always hated compromise!

I believe that the problem with compromise is that no-one really gets what they want and therefore no-one is really committed to the success of the compromise decision, and I find this to be as true in personal as well as in business life.

On a personal level, I have a belief that outside of politics and religion, it is very rare that two people can feel as strongly about any decision, and therefore whenever there is disagreement about something like where to go for the next holiday, what colour to paint the living room or what next car to buy, you should always ask each other how strongly you each really feel about this on a scale of 1-10. If you are really honest about the scoring, it is unusual for there to be a tie, and you should always go with the highest rating in the belief that that person will be the most committed to the success of the decision taken.

I am amazed at how many times I will strongly disagree with someone about something until I am asked to give my passionately stated position a score and, when I think about it honestly, realise that I may really only be say a 4 and don’t really have a strong position on the subject, as against having a strong propensity to having a position on the subject.

I believe that this is true of most people. We are taught through life to defend our position on most (if not all) subjects, so tend to be ready to defend every belief we have without really thinking through whether this is seriously important to us. I love it when this leads to serious debate and discussion over a dinner party for example, but it can be incredibly disruptive when you have family and friends who will disagree on everything as a matter of course.

I have found this to be particularly true of some friends the older that they get. I have one old friend from Australia, who moved to Spain about the same time we moved to France. Over the last 10 years he has become more and more strident about the fact that we chose France, and he has even called me an idiot for doing so, when Spain should have been a more obvious choice. I find this hard to cope with as the question of where I choose to live is definitely a 10 for me, but I doubt that where I should live should even rate as a 1 for him. When I point this out it just seems to get him angrier about why I chose France, particularly when I tell him that where he chooses to live doesn’t actually rate at all with me. I understand that he is just trying to justify his decision, but I don’t understand why we are having this disagreement at all, as I consider it irrelevant to our relationship.

I find it just as true in a business context, and I believe that much of it is the result of moving vocationally-brilliant, rather than people-brilliant individuals into management positions. Rather than let people get on and do what is important in the way that makes most sense to them, vocationally brilliant managers will often tend to try and come up with a better solution than their subordinate, and a better way of doing the task, as this will satisfy their vocational needs, and also show their subordinate how clever and innovative they still are, despite having been pushed into a management role.

I have always believed that a subordinate with a solution that I would have graded as being 70% right, will make a better go of it, than my riding over the top of him with my 80% approach. I will of course try to advise and counsel him, but will eventually let him know that I will support him in every way that I can, but that it’s his project, his decision, and his responsibility to make it work. If he is committed, and capable, I know that he will go out of his way to make a success of it, which I believe would not necessarily have been the case had I overridden him with my proposed solution, or had tried to talk him into a compromise approach, which would have meant that neither of us would have been fully committed, and I believe that commitment is key.

Scott McNealy at Sun Microsystems used to have a saying that “You can agree and commit, or you can disagree and commit, but you have to commit”, an expression that I have loved since I first heard it in 1989. I have sat through numerous meetings, even at global board levels, where everyone commits to a direction that has been forged over hours of argument and debate, only to be already discussing with cronies about how to get around, or away from, the decision on their way out of the meeting room. It’s one of the reasons that I hate meetings as a format for decision making. I have always preferred people to come to a meeting with the decisions for their business area already made, and then have to defend them to their peers. This at least gives you a clear understanding of ownership, and also removes the “hide-in-the-herd” reaction if things don’t quite pan out.

Meetings tend to be built on compromise, and I believe that this is the worst starting point for decision making. I believe that it is better for business success to give people the responsibility and the authority to make decisions needed for their business unit, and to build the culture in the organisation that encourages and supports this, and doesn’t punish people for making honest mistakes along the way.

In the long run, this approach yields much better results both in private and business life, than does any approach built on compromise.

I remain uncompromising on not making compromises!

QUALITY OF MANAGEMENT FOR THE FUTURE

Les Hayman — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:44:40 +0000

I believe that “People join companies, but leave managers”.

People will join a company in the belief that the image and reputation that it projects is what they are looking for in an employer, and as such somewhere that they can learn, develop and grow, be challenged, meet and work with great like-minded people, and have fun along the way.

The vast majority of people tend to leave a company because they have not been able to establish a credible working relationship with their immediate supervisor. It is rarely about money or working conditions. This seems reasonable, as your boss is the one who determines what you do, who you get to do it with, how you are measured, how you are rewarded, how you are developed and what opportunities are presented to you.

I therefore consider “Quality of Management” not only one of the critical elements for talent retention and development, but also the key element for business success.

One of the disappointments in my move to Europe in 2001 was that I have seen little evidence that European companies have created a culture of management as a profession. Management skill appears to be more of an add-on to vocational brilliance, rather than being viewed as an art, a science and an asset in its own right. The idea is that management skill is a “nice to have” rather than a mandatory part of an executive’s role.

I had a long series of interchanges with one executive who actually told me that managers were like horses, and that “ … in life you were either born a race horse or a draft horse, and race horses shouldn’t pull carts and draft horses shouldn’t run at Epsom … “. His belief was that any skilled, intelligent, well educated professional could become a manager, and that being intelligent he would work out what was needed to fill the role. Interesting thought, but I have always believed that the difference between a race horse that looked good, and one that could also win races, was how well you trained and prepared the horse for what was expected of him. (see Flogging a Dead Horse posted on July 2, 2010)

1. Furthermore the predominant European management style of “command and control” will not wash well with the next generation.

There are changed expectations that rather than a top down approach to management, the future will involve much more discussion, much more involvement, much more collaboration, much more personal involvement in role definition, much more peer review, and much more self managing teams, as well as possibly significantly less full time work.

2. Emergence of mega-corporations.

I also believe therefore that the nature of Corporations will also change dramatically, and as such so will the need for management needs and skills change with it.
Over the last decades, we have seen the emergence of mega-corporations. We have seen more mergers and acquisitions this century so far, than we saw in the entire 200 previous years of business history. Companies grew because they could, as capital was readily available in support, and from a belief that “bigger is better”, and in particular as a way to counter the competitive threat coming from countries like India and China.

I believe that the days of the mega-corporations may well be numbered. Under the current economic realities, companies are not prepared to keep hiring just to build hordes, whilst at the same time I see a changing attitude amongst young people today to the concept of fulltime employment, whatever the weekly working hours, or vacation plans.

3. The days of joining a company for life are long gone.

The days of joining a company for life are long gone, even with my own generation, and whilst my children’s peers still considered the idea of a career spanning maybe a handful of companies, I see that today’s youth can see careers that involve working for 20 or more companies in their work life. On top of this there is a rejection by many of the idea that they will be “allowed” to take 4 or 6 week’s vacation each year. They want to build a work life where for example, they work full time for 6 months and then trek in the Himalayas for 3 months, or work on an “awesome” project for say 2 years, but then spend a year back at university doing something interesting, or sailing round the world.

4. Coming growth of the independent professional.

I see therefore the coming growth of the independent professional, who chooses what he does and when he does it, and with/for whom, linked in to and visible to his potential hirers through specialist networks where his skills and experience can be vetted and proven, and where he can bid for and/or receive offers for roles that suit his skills and his personal requirements.

This is very much the way that movie studios work, bringing together the specific team that they need to make a particular film, which will then disband on its completion. The sequels will bring together some of the same people, but it is unlikely that they will ever reconstitute exactly the same crew as needs will have changed somewhat over the intervening time period.

I believe that many Companies have a long way to go to establish a culture of management as a profession for today. Their onward journey to be able to professionally manage the next generation may be just too great a distance for them to cover.

I was wondering whether anyone else had also seen this trend away from the concept of full-time employment and a move more towards something more like the film studio model.
I would be interested in your comments and input.

HR … POLITE TO POLICE TO PARTNER TO PLAYER

Les Hayman — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:04:47 +0000

Whenever I speak to a group of HR Professionals, I tend to start with the need for HR organisations to go through a process of change, and I call this transition “Polite to Police to Partner to Player”.

HR people have always tended to be the politest people in the company. You can go to them with any problem or issue, and they will always listen intently and politely. Most of the time they can’t actually help you solve the problem, but at least they won’t be checking their emails over their shoulder every time they get an alert of a new message in their inbox.

Some years ago someone decided that HR could also become the protectors of company policies and procedures. Suddenly HR people had to contend with policing for strayers from things like the official paths that covered the travel policy or relocation allowances. Whilst I was running HR at SAP, I tried to give as much of this away to the Finance department as I could get away with. This was not as big an issue as it sounds as generally Finance people love a policing function … it is actually one of the things that makes them want to go in to work in the mornings. It was not that I wanted my HR team to have less to do, but I didn’t want HR to be seen as a “nay-sayer” and a barrier to the business, and this was just one step of many.

Today HR organisations have been positioning themselves as Business Partners. The trend has been to move the administrative roles over to shared-service centres meaning that this frees up the HR professionals to focus on helping the business lines solve their human issues.

Note that I said “human issues” rather than “business issues”, as I have found very few HR people that have a reasonable grasp of the difference. When I ran HR at SAP, I arranged for some bright young HR professionals to do an MBA, based on my belief that this would give them a better understanding of what business issues actually meant. Unfortunately it worked too well. As soon as they finished their MBA they immediately, and successfully, sought roles outside of HR. I am sure that they must exist out there somewhere, but I have still to meet working HR professionals with an MBA.

I have a belief that the role of “Partner” for HR is a reasonable step but it is not enough. I see an HR Partner as being someone who helps to implement a business strategy that has been developed by others. I believe that HR has to become a Player. To me a Player is someone who plays an integral part in developing the strategy, rather than just helping to implement it.

HR should be playing a critical role in helping to develop any business strategy, and I am constantly amazed at the number of companies who seem to not understand that there must be a logical link between any business strategy and the company culture (sum of the behaviours). For example, it makes no sense to develop a strategy based on building a capable partnering strategy, when in the DNA of the organisation is a belief that the only font of knowledge exists with them alone, and that all partners are just lowly versions of themselves, rather than professional, capable, value-add “side-kicks”.

I define culture as “the way we do things around here” and if there is any area of business reality where HR can play a pivotal role, it is in helping line managers to build the culture, to help build required behaviour. If this definition is valid, then it is not hard for HR to become an integral part of helping to set strategic direction, to help channel behaviour and to make a serious contribution to adding measurable value to the business.
Everyone is always telling HR people that they “have to get a seat at the table”, but very few people can actually describe what this actually means. I doubt that most HR people could actually find this mythic table let alone get a seat.

The sooner that HR people can understand that there are “no HR problems” and only “business problems that HR can help managers to resolve”, and the sooner that they can help managers to understand that no one can develop an executable business strategy without understanding whether their people can meet the strategic needs, the sooner HR can sit down with the grownups.

MOVE THEM UP OR MOVE THEM OUT

Les Hayman — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 07:21:31 +0000

I have long believed that managers need to always have a “ladder” of their people graded from best to worst performer. This is not just to ensure visibility of the top performers, but also to ensure identification of those that need help. The problem is that most managers find it very easy to work with the people who are doing well, as that generally means easy contact and positive conversations, but find it hard to work with those that are struggling, as that involves some confrontation and considerable effort.

I am not saying that managers should stop having significant focus on their best people, but I am often amazed at how many people don’t actually understand that they are not performing to the expectation of their immediate supervisor until they have their annual performance review at the end of the year, generally too late for remedial actions to be taken.

I believe that the role of a manager is to personally work with whoever is on the bottom rung of the ladder and to focus on helping them to move up. This generally means that the manager will need to expend effort as it involves some coaching, some development and some hand-holding from the manager (and even others) for a while, but this is one of the things that managers are meant to do anyway, even though few actually do so. Once the manager realistically feels that his charge has now moved off the bottom rung, this will then uncover the next person that needs help, and the manager can now shift his focus and efforts to this one. In this way, a manager will develop a team that is continually improving.

Keeping the focus just on the top performers may be easier but doesn’t necessarily achieve much improvement in the team. Moving a hi-performing employee from 100-105% performance is not only harder, but also doesn’t deliver as much benefit to team success as does moving a struggler from say 70-90%. Too many managers leave people sitting on the bottom rung for too long, without remedial action being taken quickly enough and then it becomes too late to do anything to save them.

I have always believed that if you hire people for their strengths then you can’t remove them for their weaknesses until you have made significant effort to help them to overcome these. Only after you have expended this effort jointly, and they are still sitting on the bottom, can you now consider more critical action hence “Move them up or move them out”.

I believe that the same holds true if a manager has a team where all are great performers and are all achieving their goals. There are still significant benefits to be gained by focussing on “moving up” whoever is the least of the hi-performers and keeping the whole process alive.

By “move them out”, I mean initially looking at whether they can be moved out of their current role, and into a role where their strengths can be used to add value to the organisation. If the recruitment process that brought them in to the organisation was well run and stringent, then there is significant chance that they can still be valuable in a different role. Only as a last resort should they be terminated. A “hire ‘em fire ‘em” attitude is too expensive and disruptive to any organisation, and should never be allowed to become a way of compensating for bad management practices.

IT WAS GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME

Les Hayman — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 07:27:25 +0000

When I was appointed to the SAP Global Extended Board in 1999, my bosses at the time (the Global CEO and the Board Chairman) approved my title as “CEO Asia Pacific, Board Member SAP-AG”. This was based on the fact that no-one outside of Germany really knew what “Extended Board” meant, and they felt that anyway we had a 12 member Global Board and I was part of it.

When I took over the role of CEO Europe Middle East Africa in 2001, my secretary who was new to SAP, asked me what I wanted on my business cards. I handed her a copy of my Asia Pacific business card and told her to just change Asia Pacific to EMEA and so on … seemed like a simple solution.

That is until she went for printing advice to the PA of my predecessor, who immediately rushed to her boss to have this stopped. It appeared that in the previous 2 years (he and I had been appointed to the Extended Board at the same time), he had had “Member of the Extended Board” on his business cards as compared to “Member of the Board” which is what I had on mine. He seemed to be bothered that somehow my title seemed more senior than the one that he had used.

I pointed out that my business cards had been approved by both the Board Chairman and the CEO of SAP, but this was not acceptable to him, and he kept coming up with numerous reasons why I couldn’t have the cards the way that I had stipulated.

I kept pressing him for the real reason that he opposed it, and under my persistence eventually blurted out “Member of the Extended Board was good enough for me, so it should be good enough for you”.

An interesting thought.

I have come to believe that just as parents needs to believe that one of their responsibilities is to make things easier for their children, so managers need to believe that one of their responsibilities is to make things easier for their successors. It is totally wrong to believe that “What was good enough for me is good enough for who follows me”. It is actually critical for the growth and success of any organisation that everyone in a people responsible position has a strong belief that “What was good enough for me is definitely not good enough for my successors”.

For example I believe that a critical role for every manager is to build and grow the interdependencies across departments and geographies to ensure strong linkages for their team, and thus making the goals of their own team easier to achieve in the future. Another critical role is to grow the skills, knowledge and experiences of their managers and individual contributors so that their ability to perform gets easier every year. In other words, to keep growing their net worth.

I see that being given management responsibility for a team of people is akin to being given a garden to look after that you will ultimately have to pass on to someone else to care for.

You have choices to make.
You can just leave the “garden” alone and hope that nature takes its course, that rain and sunshine comes in the right quantities and at the right time, and that the weeds don’t strangle the flowers.
You could also choose to just do a little bit every once in a while, throw around a bit of manure, mow the grass when it gets really high and pull out the occasional and most obvious of weeds.
Or you could choose to really help to make this garden grow and flourish. You can encourage the best of the growth, add water and fertiliser as needed, weed out the parts that could strangle the good growth and add to the wealth of what exists.

Planting Spring Flowers

Flowers

Just believing that what is good enough now is what will be good enough in the future is unacceptable for a professional manager. Managers should be measured on whether they are net creators of talent for the organisation, whether their area of responsibility grows and develops in line with the changing needs of the organisation, and whether their team becomes more effective in meeting their goals year on year. In other words how well can a manager grow, develop and improve his “garden”, rather than believing that his role is to just keep it alive.

To stay with the gardening theme, I have come across too many managers who use the “mushroom approach” to people management. They keep their people in the dark and occasionally pour a bucket of manure over them.

THE THREE ENVELOPES

Les Hayman — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:28:58 +0000

Just after I was appointed to the role of IT Manager at International Harvester NZ about 40 years ago, a colleague told me a story that highlighted the tenuous nature of management roles.

It involved the removal of a CEO by his board after the company had delivered a number of years of unspectacular performance, and his replacement by a new, younger recruit from their industry.

On his last day, the departing CEO was clearing out his office when the replacement CEO arrived unexpectedly. After exchanging some mild pleasantries along the lines of “no hard feelings” and “it’s not personal”, the new CEO asked his predecessor whether he had any advice to share. The departing CEO handed him 3 numbered envelopes with the instructions that they should be opened in sequence if all else failed.

The new CEO threw himself into his new role. He visited the remotest parts of the company, listened to all opinions from every level of management, spent time with the engineers and on the shop floor, spoke to customers and suppliers, and after 12 months he felt that he had a real understanding of the company and the issues that it faced. His only problem was that he didn’t have a clear idea of what he had to do to bring the company back to competitive strength.

He then remembered the 3 envelopes in his desk drawer and opened the first one. It said “Blame your predecessor”.

He took the advice, and at the next board meeting told the board that after 12 months of in depth study he had come to the conclusion that his predecessor had been the problem, and that to save the company he would now have to go about changing everything that his predecessor had implemented during his tenure. This pleased the board as it supported their decision to remove the previous CEO, so they quickly allocated significant budget and resources to the CEO to effect the changes proposed.

Armed with this mandate, the CEO spent the next year changing every element of the company’s business processes both internally and externally. Unfortunately, even after all these changes, the company’s fortunes had not significantly improved.
Out came envelope number 2. It said “Reorganise”.

Armed with this new strategy, he reported at the next board meeting that now that they had totally changed the way the company worked, the current structure did not fit and that they would now have to go through a total global restructuring. Again the Board was thrilled that their CEO was so dynamic and once again voted him significant budget and resources to effect the changes.

After another 12 months of turmoil, and when things had still not improved, he opened the final envelope. It said “Prepare 3 envelopes”.

I recently saw a report from Price Waterhouse that said that the average tenure of a gobal CEO today is about 2.7 years. This means that few CEOs today are ever really tested, as they don’t serve long enough in the role to actually have to live with their decisions, directions and implementations.
I guess that just like art imitating life and vice versa, we have now reached a point in the business world where life actually imitates humour.

THE 3 GREAT BUSINESS LIES

Les Hayman — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 08:00:02 +0000

It is incredible that marketing organisations within companies spend such an incredible amount of time
developing a company’s mission, vision and values statements and yet they all tend to come up with
basically the same things over and over again, generally covering their elevated commitment to
Customers, People and Innovation.

For example, taken directly from their web-sites …

“Ensuring a high level of satisfaction among our customers and partners is a core component of our business” Microsoft

“Dedication to every client’s success.” IBM Values

“It’s about investing in our employees and their futures. For it’s only when they realise their full potential that we can achieve our broader business goals” British Airways

“SAP is committed to recruiting and retaining top talent … we strive to allow individuals to
realize their full potential.” SAP Values

“Faced with multifaceted competition, Air France is innovating constantly, including a proactive human resources policy for development of individual and collective programs” Air France (my translation from the French).

“BP is progressive, responsible, innovative and performance driven. We push boundaries today and create tomorrow’s breakthroughs through our people and technology”
British Petroleum

And yet, whilst every company professes to be heavily focussed on these 3 lofty aspirations, generally these tend to be the 3 greatest lies in the business world, approximating to:

1. Our Customer is #1
2. Our People are our greatest asset
3. We are driven by innovation

I haven’t chosen the above companies to suggest that they are examples of those that are guilty of expressing values that they don’t believe in, just that they all express their commitment to the same high moral ground … not in itself a bad thing, but in many companies what they write is very different to the behaviour that they exhibit. Ultimately any company is just the sum of its behaviours, its culture or “the way we do things”, irrespective of what they put in print for our edification.

1. Our Customer is #1

Companies will always profess that their customers are the number 1 priority. I believe that in many companies “customer focus” would be lucky to make it into the top-10. The latest marketing “whimsy” is to have a goal “to delight customers” without any real understanding of what this would entail, and when just being able to meet basic customer expectations is already a tough but worthwhile task, and something most customers would consider a major advance.

I prefer Apple’s approach to defining their customer commitment which is “We are genuinely interested in solving customer problems, and we will not compromise our ethics or integrity in the name of profit”. Simple and achievable.

2. Our people are our greatest asset

When it comes to “Our people are our greatest asset”, over my 40+ years of corporate life I have seen only a handful of companies that truly try and live this. The majority seem to see people as being either “bums on seats” or, as one CEO I worked for who believed that people were just part of his business formulae that could be manipulated and used as any other physical asset, without any consideration for peoples’ personal aspirations and needs … so much for having a CEO with a mathematical rather than a business background. SAS, who were voted as the #1 company to work for by Fortune Magazine’s 2010 survey of employees globally, says it well “If you treat employees as if they make a difference, they will make a difference”.

3. Innovation

Innovation in most companies seems to be only based on their view of “genius”. The belief that if you hire bright, well educated people, that this will be enough as they will work out how to create something different or new. Genius is a critical ingredient but it is not enough. I prefer Peter Drucker’s view of innovation which is more based on “… hard work over a long period of time ..” and where the company culture (sum of behaviours) is conducive to driving change because it is part of a company’s DNA, rather than just a reaction to crises. This means that beyond just being based on genius, innovation needs to be built on things like how well you match company objectives with employees’ personal needs, whether you can build commitment and engagement, if you encourage people to take calculated risk, how you handle failure and whether you allow newly recruited bright young people to question things and drive change. Larry Page, co-founder of Google says “Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways” … hard work over a long period of time!

It’s a pity that so many companies can’t seem to realise that to be more successful they could start by focussing on turning into reality these 3 statements that they have already enunciated in their Vision, Mission and Values.

When it all boils down, committed customers, partners and staff are the only true competitive edge, and if given the environment, encouragement and opportunity to contribute, will drive the innovation needed for success.

CONGRATULATIONS … YOU’RE A HIGH POTENTIAL … HERE IS YOUR TATTOO

Les Hayman — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 07:37:37 +0000

Ever since Jack Welch told the world something along the lines of “ … look after the top 10% because they create the magic ..”, every company has put some effort into implementing a “High Potential” or “Top Talent” programme (Pesto effect ?), that attempts to recognize people that are not just top performers and achievers in the company, but also to identify those that have the potential to go further, to do more, maybe even to get to the top.

In most of the “HiPo” programmes that I have seen, this is akin to placing a brand on the forehead of the anointed. It is a title conferred on an individual that he will openly wear and parade brazenly in his work arena. Some companies even go as far as to have the title printed on the individual’s business cards and I have seen one company that handed out a lapel pin to the appointees.

How wrong can you get?

Firstly, as this honour is generally limited to about 2% of the employee population, managers now have to explain to the other 98% that they have lesser or limited or no (?) potential at all compared to the chosen 2%. Not an easy job for any manager, and incredibly de-motivating for those that have worked hard, and who have achieved the goals set for them. Managers must remember that whilst they may have for example 20% Top Performers of which only about 10% may be Hi Potential, there are still another 80% who keep the business going, and merit attention. When managers talk about “talent” it should cover all their people not just the few at the top.

The other issue is that you have now set expectations in this chosen 2% of “wunderkind” that something momentous is now due to happen to them, like an imminent promotion.

I worked with one company that had an employee population of about 60.000 and a manager population of about 6.000. Their employee turnover was relatively low at about 4%, so no more than about 240 managers would depart annually (both voluntary and involuntary). At 2%, HiPos numbered about 1.200, so it doesn’t take a mathematical genius to work out that even if the company was in high growth (which was pretty average for their industry), there were just not going to be enough management jobs opening up to meet these expectations. What was interesting was that the departure rate of HiPos was about treble that of general staff, so the HiPo programme, which had been specifically designed to retain the talent, was actually driving a lot of them away, because of unmet expectations that had been set in the minds of these smart, ambitious people. If you can’t meet these expectations, they will find someone else who can, and they do.

Managers cannot afford to turn the high potentials into a club of the chosen people.

I believe that this will make the programme have as many drawbacks as advantages.

Don’t misunderstand me … I am not saying that programmes that recognise hi potentials should not exist, I am just against their implementation as an exclusive club and the term “High Potential” becoming a title, with all its attendant expectations of what should happen to those branded as being superior.

I have always believed that what a manager should say to those that he does consider of high potential is along the following lines:

“I am delighted with your performance for the following reasons ….. (enunciate them). I believe that you have exhibited potential beyond your current role, and therefore in support of that I, as your manager, will ensure that you have the opportunity for personal development and growth while you are in my team, so that if a more senior/interesting/challenging/rewarding role should become available in the future somewhere in our organisation, you will be better prepared to be able to compete for it.”

No commitments beyond the fact that you as his manager are prepared to spend your own time, effort and energy to help him further his development in whatever direction you jointly decide is needed. This makes his development programme a personal one, jointly owned with his manager, rather than an obligation from the company, and enables the manager to allocate some measurable and challenging tasks/projects that will enable the individual to grow and develop and also to be tested.

As a responsible manager you will ensure that all your direct reports will be going through some training and development during the year anyway, as one of your critical goals is to improve the skills and value of all your people, so no-one has specifically been openly elevated above his peers.

The fact that you believe that you have some individuals in your organisation that merit development and investment beyond the norm can be advised upwards, but without fanfare, without the badges and without the attendant over setting of expectations.

People of high potential are a valuable resource and should be nurtured and developed and given every chance to progress, and Jack was right when he said that they can “ … create the magic …”.

It is just unfortunate that too many companies have rushed into their HiPo programmes, maybe because of the “Pesto Effect” driving HR to be able to tick another box, without any real understanding of their people and the land mines that they have sown for themselves.

HR … THE PESTO EFFECT

Les Hayman — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:47:26 +0000

A number of people have asked me to write of my experiences running a company internal HR department after 40 years in business roles. When I was first asked whether I would do this, rather than retiring, I felt that it was a bit like asking Attila the Hun to look after the Vestal Virgins. I have to admit that it was probably the hardest job that I ever had, the two years being both challenging and frustrating, and it changed and molded many of the views that I have about people and about management.
I have therefore decided to do a series of regular pieces on HR … this is the first one.

I’ve never had a lot of time for “camp followers”… people who seem to flit through a seemingly infinite list of momentary passions. For the manically fit it can move from tai-chi to yoga to step aerobics to spinning to whatever is the latest craze to come out of body obsessed California. It’s not the changes themselves that I object to, as I understand that it is important to not get bored with the latest exercise regime as one is then more likely to stick with it. What I do object to is the religious fervor with which every new “answer to life” is greeted, the passion that the adherents build, and that they then feel the need to convince everyone else around them that this is the answer to all things wonderful in life … at least for this week.

It’s not true just for the exercise nuts. I’ve seen it with friends who went through EST, gestalt therapy, past life regression, polarity and on and on towards some Nirvana like state just over the next emotional mountain.

I have also seen it with people in HR departments. In my 2 years as Global Head of HR at SAP I often wondered whether there was some sort of global consciousness that swept across the HR world with the speed of a pandemic, as there always seemed to be the latest passion that was sweeping through the HR Community as the answer to the people related ills in organisations.

I decided to call this the “Pesto Effect”.

Ten years ago no-one had heard of pesto, and then suddenly it was everywhere. You could go to any restaurant anywhere in the world and the odds were that pesto would be somewhere on the menu.
I even saw a hot dog seller in New York who had a sign saying “Mustard, Ketchup, Pesto”.

One of the bibles of the global HR community is the “Conference Board Report”. It publishes the latest information on what are the priorities that are being addressed by HR departments around the world supposedly gleaned from their vast legion of subscribers. During my tenure it seemed to follow a sequence along the lines of “Shared Services”, then “Succession Planning”, then “Engagement”, then “Talent Management”, with a new area of priority seeming to come to the top every year, this being considered the priority HR problem that needed immediate addressing.

I have often wondered, along the lines of the chicken and egg question, about what came first.

Did the Conference Board Report canvas all their subscribers and decide that this was the “priority de jour”, or did they decide that this would be the focus of their own research for a particular year, and let the Pesto effect sweep this around the world turning it into reality ?

It does seem surprising to me that there should be this common people need in most companies at about the same time. I would have expected that each company would have its own distinct issues based on its maturity, culture, management skills, market position and a 100 other pressures that should drive an HR organisation to focus on helping management solve issues that are specific to the business needs at the time, as a way of HR adding measurable value to the Company.

Until HR professionals start to understand that there are no such things as “HR problems”, only business problems that HR needs to help management to resolve, they will continue to be relegated to non strategic, non priority positions in their companies.

I find this disappointing as I believe that whilst “Our people are our greatest asset”, or similar worded clichés, appear in every corporate mission and vision statement, it is generally untrue, and I still believe that people are the only true, sustainable competitive advantage that a company can build.

Products and services can give short term market advantage, but can be copied or bettered in an ever shortening timeline. Having people in an organisation that are committed, engaged and passionate about their company is the true wealth in a company, and HR organizations have a pivotal role to play in this being achieved.

GYMNASTICS AND BUSINESS

Les Hayman — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:07:23 +0000

Some time ago I was surprised to learn that in gymnastics competitions at global levels such as the Olympics, achieving a “perfect score” for a perfectly executed routine in any of the disciplines, needs more than just the perfection of the routine itself.

The judges hold back a small percentage of the overall score in search of 3 extra elements. Whilst these in themselves are not a huge part of the overall score, for these world class athletes they can mean the difference between just a great score and actually winning the gold medal.

The 3 elements are Risk, Originality and Virtuosity.

Risk …The athletes generally train 8 hours per day, 7 days a week for 4 years to get to the Olympics after a lifetime of preparation. The judges want to see that they are prepared to take a calculated (not crazy) risk in their routine, to go for the Gold.

Originality … The judges are always on the lookout for something new in the routine.
For many years the “iron cross” on the rings was a part of every gymnast’s repertoire.
At the London Olympics in 1948, one of the competitors became the first person to do it upside down (inverted cross), and he would have received the bonus for originality. Since then it became a standard, and expected, part of every competitor’s routine, and does not attract any bonus points.

Virtuosity … The judges look for at least one element in every routine, whether it is a mount or a tumble or whatever, where they could consider that the athlete would be amongst the best in the world in that particular element, before they would award this bonus in the overall score.

It became quickly obvious to me that these 3 criteria are just as critical in the business world, and I have included an element of these in my performance reviews over the years.

Calculated risk is a critical element of business success not only at the organizational but also at the personal level, whether it is standing up to one’s boss, or speaking up for your beliefs against a generally popular decision, or choosing one particular direction from a vast choice and sticking with it to a successful conclusion, and I have always sought and encouraged this level of bravery. A manager has to ensure that he can have some “crazy” people in his team who are prepared to question things and thus drive change, if allowed. Too many people take the safer route, which involves keeping ones head below the parapet, not questioning decisions taken, joining any stampedes and keeping away from taking individual and measureable risks. I believe that this is one reason why so many companies have built cultures of continual meetings. The justification is usually that it drives greater involvement, but the reality is that it is generally done for covering ones tracks. If the resultant team outcome is successful, everyone can lay claim to the decision. If it is a failure everyone can blend back into the safety and anonymity of the herd.

Originality, not just in product or service innovations, but also in how and what we do to address business need, are today more critical than ever, especially the “how”. How we build successful and loyal relationships within our ecosystem of customers, partners and suppliers. How we establish ourselves as an integral part of the community. How we build commitment and engagement with our own staff. Some years ago, to gain some competitive advantage, it was just about enough to develop an innovative step change in your product. In the automotive sector, for example, it could then take your competitors years to be able to catch up. With today’s technologies, product advantage even with the patent madness we have created, can generally only be measured in months. The “how” you do things is much harder for your competitors to emulate. What we did yesterday to be successful will not work today, and what we do today will be unlikely to work tomorrow. If we don’t keep changing we become predictable, and being predictable makes us competitively vulnerable.

Virtuosity in the Olympic gymnastics involves the judges looking for athletes to be amongst the best in the world. This ability to hire the best in the world is significantly harder in a business context, as most companies tend to hire the best that is available to them at the time, and this will depend heavily on how they go about targeting the pool that they will get to choose from. I worked with one company that believed that they were hiring the brightest and the best that were keen to be part of changing the world. When we surveyed the previous year’s intake, we found that the majority of them had joined for safety reasons, which was exactly the public image portrayed by this company. We quickly had to separate the recruitment image from the overall global company image to try and appeal to the needed would-be world changers.

I have never expected people to be the best in the world, but I have always expected and believed that, irrespective of their role, they owed it to themselves to be the best that they could be.

MANAGING YOUR CAREER

Les Hayman — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 11:25:50 +0000

I have found that most people do very little to manage their own careers.

The majority of people seem to work their way through their jobs with varying degrees of skill and commitment, and wait for opportunities to present themselves, then pick the ones that they consider to be the best out of what is on offer. It is therefore no great surprise that many people seem to have much to complain about in their present role, whatever it is.

I believe that it is critical that you plan out your career much more proactively, by looking up in the organization at people that you admire, and at the roles that you seriously believe that you would want to have, and work a career and development plan that supports your ability to move along that trajectory. Of course it is mandatory that you have the required capabilities, or can develop them, so it helps to be personally honest in this assessment.
I have met a lot of people who could tell me that in the future they wanted to be a CEO for example, but who had little or no idea of the steps that they would need to take to get there, neither the upward movements needed nor the personal development plan to build the commensurate skills. These sort of career aspirations are just based on hope, and hope is never a strategy.

It is also critical that you find a good mentor. Most people wait (and hope) for the company to appoint one which I believe to be totally wrong. It is better to pick someone you admire and respect that is on your trajectory, and approach them directly. Very few senior executives are personally approached by younger people and asked to be their mentors. Most of them too wait for the system to appoint their mentees, and I am sure that both sides would prefer to make their own choices, rather than have someone in HR, for example, make these decisions for them.

To make this approach you must be well prepared and be able to articulate your case, your reasoning, and also, critically, why it would be important and beneficial to the mentor, as well as the benefits to the company. You should also have a plan of what you intend to do, and what you will need from the mentor. In other words you will need to sell yourself, and nothing makes a sale easier than being prepared and understanding the needs of the buyer (mentor), as well as a good understanding of the product (you).

I have also found that there are 3 Golden rules that are the starting point for at least managing the enjoyment and fulfillment of what you are doing, and therefore at least creating the potential for some success in your career. These are:

1. Never do a job you hate.
2. Never work for a boss you can’t respect.
3. Never work for a company you can’t be proud of.

I am constantly amazed by the number of people I come across who hate what they do, but do it anyway. If you do a job that you hate, there is a really good chance that you won’t do it well anyway, so it is unlikely that you will get moved out of it to something more interesting and exciting. It often boils down to money. People will tolerate a job they dislike because it pays more than what they would really like to do.
However, I believe that if you can do something that you really love, not only will it make your life more worthwhile, but if you do it really well, there is a good strong chance that the money and rewards will come anyway. I am particularly dismayed by the number of people I come across in management roles that would have preferred to have stayed in the role of an individual contributor, but moved into management to get more money, more influence, more prestige. I regularly have to spend time with companies that I work with, helping them to build dual career paths to overcome this lack of opportunity for great professionals.

I have been fortunate in my career over the last 40+ years to have worked for some outstanding managers, and I have not stuck very long in a role where my immediate supervisor was not someone that I could look up to and respect. From surveys done regularly, it appears that the vast majority of people change jobs because they haven’t been able to build a solid working relationship with their immediate boss. It is not surprising, as your immediate supervisor is the one who basically decides what you do, whom you do it with, how you are measured, how you are rewarded, how you are developed and what opportunities are presented to you. In other words they control your entire work future, so it makes no sense to stay with someone who sees that future as being very limited.

Lastly, you have to ask yourself whether you would readily try to entice people that you know, admire and respect to come and join the company that you work for, and whether you talk about your employer with enthusiasm and excitement to your friends and family. One of my personal tests was always whether I was prepared to wear my employer’s logo on my chest on one of the many T- and Polo shirts that IT companies love to hand out.

I recently noticed that Air France staff have stopped wearing name tags, and that this is now voluntary rather than mandatory. This suggests to me that many (if not most) are actually not very proud of their job nor their company. When I questioned one staff member about this, she told me that management had advised them that if people had complaints they could complain about the company and not the individuals. This appalls me as I have always believed that companies are really just the sum of their individuals. No wonder that it is such a lackluster company when it comes to customer service.
These days, if I need help from someone in Air France, I always seek out someone with a name tag.
At least I then have a reasonable chance of talking to someone who actually “does give a damn” about their job, their company and hopefully about me as a customer.

I LIVE TO WORK OR I WORK TO LIVE

Les Hayman — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 09:59:15 +0000

The great thing about being a Manager is that you only have one primary objective.
All you have to do is to create an environment where people can be unbelievably successful.
I understand that this is easier to say than to do, but it’s not a bad starting point.

To me one of the critical measurements of this has always been whether your people will get up on a freezing cold, wet Monday morning and say “Thank God the weekend is over, I can now spend another 5 days at work”.

I am not talking about work/life balance here…. I am talking about work being an integral part of life.

I have always been staggered by how many people fail to make this association. I find it hard to understand how many people have the attitude that they have to “work” 5 days per week so that they can “live” the other 2 days per week. This means that many people spend about 70% of their life doing something that they basically dislike so that they can then spend 30% of their life doing “fun” things … like watching TV ?

I will quite often ask people to list the 10 things that they love doing most in life, based on the premise that if they could spend the major part of their life doing these 10 things that this would make their life more enjoyable, more interesting and more fulfilling. It is very rare that people put “watching Television” down as one of their Top 10, and yet it is amazing how much time people actually spend in front of the Box. The trouble is that it is just too easy to drop down on a sofa in front of the TV after a “hard day’s work”, even if there is nothing worth watching, and anyway, it is critically important that we are up-to- date with the News …. much more acceptable an excuse than watching the 56th rerun of “Friends”, which will be on next anyway.

In most cases the Top 10 things that we actually love to do tend to take some time, effort and planning… it’s a lot easier to just plonk ourselves down on the sofa. There has to be something worthwhile due to come on at some time on at least one of the 500 channels that are available.

WRONG !!!

I have numerous Anglophone friends in France that have both French and English satellite TV, which theoretically should give them about 1000 channels to choose from, but in reality they actually have access to about 20 channels repeated 50 times, just in different languages.

Now that I live in France, I am fascinated by the National obsession with retirement. Even 25 year olds freshly out of university, and starting their first job seem to already have their eye on when they can retire.
So can one assume that retirement in France means that a whole new world will open up when this Valhalla-like point arrives. That it will herald a whole new period of creativity and learning , and catching up with all those things that full-time work kept one away from.

It appears not to be the case. Most retirees seem to spend their time in front of their TV or sitting outside their cottage watching the traffic go by. I once got into trouble by suggesting at a conference that France could solve all its Energy needs by hooking up the chins of retirees to the National Grid. That way we could at least get some benefit out of all those heads swiveling round as another Peugeot or Citroen went through the village at warp speed.

I understand that there are many people who have had little choice in what they have had to do in life, and I deeply sympathise with them. However I don’t sympathise with those people I come across more often that are well educated and intelligent enough to make choices in their lives, and do little but complain about their lot.
In these cases, my advice is that if you won’t change your job, at least change your attitude. This is, after all, something that you can control 100%.

FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE

Les Hayman — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 09:54:39 +0000

I have lived and worked in Europe for the last 9 years after more than 30 years working in the IT Sector in NZ, Australia, Singapore and the USA, and have worked with, for, and also been responsible for, hundreds of different Managers at varying levels of seniority in that time. I came to Europe with high expectations of what I would find from a Management skills perspective. I have to say that I have been extremely disappointed by not only the Management skills that I have found here, but also by the attitude that I have found towards building professional Management.

Europe has generally not built a culture of management as a profession, not built a culture where management skill is highly valued as critical a skill as vocational excellence, but has tended to build business cultures where management as a science, as an art, as a way of life is seen as just an add-on. In many cases, management excellence is only seen as a “nice to have” rather than as a mandatory set of skills in senior executives. There is a lot of discussion in Europe about “leadership” and this is often transposed and confused for “management”, but in most European countries, the objective is the discussion itself, rather than the desire to go beyond this alone … discussion means that you can sound knowledgeable without ever having to do something that can actually be measured. It means that the Academics can expound all their theories about Management, without ever having had to live them. I have had numerous arguments with Academics in most countries when I felt that their theories could not work in practice. They tended to believe that this was acceptable as my Management practices could not work in their theory anyway. The problem is that this “academic attitude” is also prevalent in much of the Business World.

When I first joined the SAP Extended Board in 1999, I was the then CEO/President of SAP Asia Pacific. We had worked very hard over the previous 5 years to ensure that at SAP APA we had implemented working Management Evaluation, assessment and development programmes in place for all levels of management, and I felt that this was something seriously absent in SAP on a Global basis. When I put a proposal in front of the Board to turn this Management Excellence@SAP Programme into a global reality, I had some interesting reactions from other Board members. One of the executives in particular told me that he felt that Managers were like horses, and that in life you were “…. either born a race horse or a draft horse, and race horses shouldn’t pull carts and draft horses shouldn’t run at Epsom”. His feeling was that any intelligent, well educated, skilled professional could become a manager, and that being intelligent, he would work out what he needed to do in his own time.

Interesting approach, but I have always believed that the difference between a race-horse that looked good, and was well bred, and a racehorse that could actually win races was how well that race horse was trained, and how well he had been prepared beforehand for what was expected of him.

The idea that you could leave a racehorse sitting in a field until race day when you threw a saddle and a jockey on his back, and then expected him to know what to do, and perform well, made as much sense as believing that you could just wake up one morning and play Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, having never actually learned to play a musical instrument. Moreover, whilst this brilliant-to-be Manager was acquiring his skills, what was happening to the people for whom he had been given responsibility?

Even after we had gone ahead (initially on a “skunk works”) with some enthusiasts from across the Company, and then successfully implemented the needed Management Development Programmes on a global basis, and had started to put some measurable value on Management as a skill, and as an asset, at SAP, I still would receive messages from this particular Executive with jokes about “flogging a dead horse”.

The belief that Europe will grow and develop as a major economic powerhouse that will be able to compete against the Americas and the Asians, appears to be more of a hope than a real strategy. I doubt that this will be possible until we all understand that skilled management and leadership is a critical starting point for success, that these don’t just happen because we wish them to, and that creating these skills involves more than just spending a few weeks at INSEAD and then handing out titles.

VIVE LA FRANCE

Les Hayman — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

The French Unions have called for National Strikes in response to the Government’s announcement that it will raise the official pensionable retirement age in France from 60 to 62.

This could be the first real test of the Sarkozy Government and its resolve to drive through needed reforms to ensure that France doesn’t implode economically. So far the Sarkozy Government and the Unions have been nervously circling each other without any real attempt to test the others “stomach” for an all out confrontation.

In Australia the qualifying pensionable age is 65 phasing to 67 by 2017, in Germany it has recently been raised from 65 to 67, in New Zealand it is 65 but with pressure to move to 67, as just some examples where there appears to at least be an acceptance that falling birth rates and ageing populations demand critical changes.

It is heavily supported by changing life expectancies, which in France have risen from an average for both sexes of 68 in 1950 to 80.7 in 2005 (Gilles Pison, Population and Societies 410, INED March 2005). At the same time, by comparison, Australia’s has similarly risen to 81.2, Germany to 79.4 and New Zealand to 81.2 (Figures from United Nations statistics (2005-2010).

It does appear that moving France’s retirement age to 62 is in reality a very minimal step considering the situation with retirement conditions in the rest of the world.

The notion that what is past is past and that this generation needs to ensure that we live up to our responsibilities rather than to just pass the problems on to the next generation does not appear to sit well with French Unionists. There is an attitude that as others have benefitted from easier conditions in the past, so now it is their turn to benefit in the same way, and to hell with the consequences… someone else can clean up the mess. I see this as being exactly the sort of selfish, “I’m all right Jacques” attitude that could flush this country down the gurgler.

It is obvious that we cannot continue with the excesses of the past, as these were totally unsustainable. The French Budget Deficit is estimated this year to be at least 5.6% of GDP, which is well beyond the EU ruling of less than 3%, and even higher than Greece (which has just crashed) at 3.7%. Even the UK, who have at least admitted that they are in a “parlous” state at 4.6%, have started to take measures to address the issues with an austerity budget, and serious clampdowns on public sector spending.

Strikes in France appear to be one of the main National Sports, and with France having been knocked out of the World Cup, there appears to be little else to satisfy the sporting hunger.

What I find most amazing is that in France only about 10% of all employees are actually Union members, whereas even Australia and New Zealand are over 20% (OECD Figures, from EIRO in France), so ultimately they represent only a very small percentage of the French population. It is therefore madness that in the past, successive French Governments have backed down on needed reforms whenever the Paris crowds took to the streets in opposition.

Most French people I know are hard working, responsible people who understand that France, like most other countries, has to rein in the excesses of the past, and that there will be a price that we will all, jointly have to pay.

The Sarkozy Team was voted into power in the belief that they would “have the balls” (quote from Christine Lagarde, French Minister of Finance in a BBC Interview 24th June 2010) to execute these reforms that were needed to bring France back to economic health.

For the sake of my adopted country, I dearly hope that the French Voters and Christine Lagarde were right.

GROWING A NEW LEG

Les Hayman — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 20:12:57 +0000

I was in Belgrade, Serbia, recently to speak at a conference of Business people.

On the way in from the Airport to my hotel, I asked the young driver as to whether he felt that things had improved or worsened since my last trip to Belgrade a year earlier. He said that he felt that things had gotten worse, but that it was all going to be all right soon, as the Government had said that things would get better next year.

It seems that all around the world, people are waiting for the Economic Crisis to end, and for things to get better sometime next year.

I think that it is time that we stopped talking about this Financial Crisis as though it was something that was about to end, and started talking about the New Economic Reality instead, as I believe that this environment of economic restraint, of uncertainty and of regular market heaving surprises will be with us for a long time.

Companies (and individuals) who sit around waiting for things to get better are a lot like a man with one leg sitting around waiting for it to grow back … it just isn’t going to happen !

A man with one leg needs to get on with living. He can go out and get a prosthetic leg and get on with his life. It will not be the same as before, and he will need to make some adjustments, but it can still be a good and worthwhile life. In the same way, I believe that Companies need to get on and learn to live within the new Economic Environment in which we now find ourselves. It will not be the same as before, as obviously that was unsustainable, but it can still be a worthwhile existence.

Waiting for “the Government” or the “Central Bank” or some other external body to make the Business Environment better doesn’t make any more sense than the man with one leg waiting to develop lizard-like qualities so that he can regenerate a limb.

The success of the Companies and Organisations that we are part of depends totally on the ability to adjust our business models and our thinking to the new realities, and the sooner we can make these adjustments the more successful we will be.

If by some fluke of chance Governments and Central banks do work out some way of making things better for us all, we should just take this as an added bonus, rather than something that we were all depending on.

TEACHING OLD DOGS NEW TRICKS

Les Hayman — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:14:12 +0000

I have been regularly surprised about how many Managers I come across who believe that a valid Management approach is to look for people to do something wrong and then to help them correct it. I surmise that this satisfies two basic urges that these managers must have. The first one is that it gives them a chance to prove that they are more skilled than their subordinate, and therefore justify their elevated position, and secondly it gives them a chance to show that they have retained the Vocational skills that made them the brilliant “engineer” that they were in the first place. For many this helps to overcome the worry that being just a “manager” is not enough.

I have always believed that this is totally the wrong approach, and I am reminded of a friend of mine in New Zealand who went through a rather messy divorce. After the departure of his wife and son, he realized that he was rather lonely and decided that he should get a puppy to keep him company during the evenings and weekends.

Unfortunately the puppy got into the habit of peeing on the floor of his bedroom. Being a skilled “Engineer”, and seeing a problem that needed solving, he attacked this problem with incredible zeal. Every time that he found a puddle of pee, he would grab the puppy by the scruff of the neck, drag it into the bedroom, rub its nose in the pee, slap it on the rump with a piece of rolled up newspaper, and throw the puppy out of the window. ( he had a one story house so no need to call the SPCA). He could justify this approach by rationalizing that he had shown the puppy the problem (pee on the floor), had administered the resulting punishment (slap), and had shown the solution (do it outside).

After about 10 days of this the puppy started going into the bedroom, peeing on the floor and jumping out the window.

The problem with this approach to problem solving is that the puppy obviously understood the process. It was just trying to cut out the bits that it didn’t like …. It didn’t like having its nose rubbed in the pee nor being slapped with the newspaper.

People are no different.

When we make mistakes, none of us particularly like having our noses rubbed in it, neither do we like being punished for it.

As a result, when Managers take this approach to problem solving, the result is that people take the same approach as the puppy… they start to cut out the bits that they don’t like, such as being caught, reprimanded and punished, which means that mistakes often get hidden rather than being made visible and resolved jointly.

The way to train a newly acquired puppy to pee where you want it to, means that you have to dedicate at least the first weekend to training the puppy on what is expected. You do this by taking the puppy out to the required dog loo every 30 minutes or so, and waiting for the puppy to pee. When it does (and they do a lot), you praise it lavishly, and at the same time give it a command as it does the job. It will very quickly associate the praise and fuss with doing the job in the right way, in the right place, and very quickly the command (like “busy, busy, busy” which we use with our five dogs) becomes the suggestion to the dog that it is time it went outside and relieved itself. The early positive re-enforcement of the behavior that is required, quickly gets established as the pattern of behavior that should be followed.

In this respect, people are not very different.

You can achieve a lot more as a Manager by looking for your people to do something right, and then reinforcing that behavior with praise and reward, than by waiting for the mistakes. I understand that there are times when the mistakes need to be addressed, but if the culture of positive re-enforcement is the predominant one in the group, the need to occasionally address the problems becomes easier to deal with and has less negative impact on the group’s ability to work openly and well together.

HR Analytics & BI– Trainings erfolgreich gestalten

Sabrina Möller — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Der Erfolg einer IT-Lösung hängt zu einem Großteil von ihrer Nutzung durch die späteren End- und Key-User ab. Die Wahrnehmung der neuen Lösung als gewinnbringend für die eigene Arbeit und ein leichter Einstieg in die Arbeit mit der Lösung sind dabei zwei zentrale Herausforderungen. Bei deren Bewältigung hilft ein auf die unterschiedlichen Nutzergruppen zugeschnittenes Training. Dabei können Vorteile und neue Möglichkeiten für jede Gruppe im Training durch konkrete Praxisbeispiele gezielt herausgestellt werden.

Bei SAP BI HCM Lösungen unterscheiden sich die einzelnen Nutzergruppen hinsichtlich ihrer IT-Affinität, ihrer Vorkenntnisse und ihrer Nutzungsziele und –intensität häufig sehr deutlich. Dies muss sich auf den Aufbau des Trainings wie auch auf die konkreten Schulungsinhalte auswirken. Die Bandbreite der möglichen zu vermittelnden Inhalte reicht von technischen Inhalten wie zum Beispiel Ladeketten, Extraktoren, Fortschreibung, Cubes, Berechtigungen, etc. über die Berichtsentwicklung bis hin zur Datenabfrage und -analyse im Frontendbereich. Idealerweise sollte der Fokus des Trainings auf die Inhalte gelegt werden, die für die jeweilige Nutzergruppe wichtig sind. In der Praxis ist es jedoch häufig so, dass ein Training für alle oder mehrere Nutzergruppen gleichzeitig stattfindet. Dies und die Diversität der Teilnehmer stellen hohe Anforderungen an die Trainer. Sie müssen die gesamte Bandbreite beherrschen und die jeweiligen Bedürfnisse der unterschiedlichen Nutzergruppen berücksichtigen.

Das Trainingsangebot von ROC berücksichtigt diese Anforderungen. Es ist modular in drei Bereiche gegliedert, die für jede Benutzergruppe unterschiedliches Gewicht haben.

1) Technische Grundlagen

2) Berichtsentwicklung

3) Analyse

Neben theoretischen Inhalten stehen vor allem praktische Übungen im Vordergrund. Anhand von realistischen Aufgabenstellungen aus der Praxis können die Teilnehmer d sich mit dem System vertraut machen und dabei lernen, konkrete Fragestellungen zu lösen. Die Arbeit im System erfolgt schrittweise und im weiteren Verlauf wird mit den erzielten Ergebnissen weitergearbeitet. Aus der Beratungserfahrung heraus werden häufige Problemstellungen im Bereich HR Analytics & Business Intelligence thematisiert und Lösungsmöglichkeiten wie auch Tipps und Tricks aufgezeigt. Dieses praxisnahe Vorgehen hat sich in der Vergangenheit sehr bewährt, da der Nutzen für das jeweilige Aufgabengebiet der einzelnen Teilnehmer, sowie das Zusammenspiel unterschiedlichen Nutzergruppen (IT, Personalwesen, Fachbereich, etc.) verdeutlicht wird.

Jeder Kurs wird von einem technisch und einem fachlichen Experten abgehalten, um eine enge Verzahnung von Technik und fachlichen Gesichtspunkten zu gewährleisten

Fragen zu dem Thema beantwortete ich Ihnen gern.

Herzliche Grüße

Sabrina Möller

ROC HR Analytics & Business Intelligence Team gründet XING-Gruppe

Rolf Hagenow-Jansen — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Am 09. September 2009 hat ROC Deutschland eine XING-Gruppe zum Thema HR-Analytics & Business Intelligence gegründet.

Ziel der Gruppe ist es Endanwender die Möglichkeit zu geben, aktuelle Themen rund um HR Analytics & Business Intelligence zu diskutieren, Trends zu bewerten, Konzepte sowie Projektlösungen vorzustellen und sich miteinander auszutauschen.

Die Gruppe wird durch das neu gegründete ROC HR-Analytics & BI-Team moderiert. Wir würden uns freuen, wenn Sie in unserer Gruppe vorbeischauen.

Im Moment hat die Gruppe über 90 Teilnehmer, die sich hauptsächlich mit dem Thema Personalcontrolling beschäftigen.

Möchten Sie mehr Details zur ROC XING-Gruppe erfahren?
https://www.xing.com/net/rochranalytics

Nutzen der Visualisierung von HCM-Daten

Luke Marson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In der letzten Zeit habe ich eine starke Zunahme der Nutzung des OrgChart Tools von Nakisa (TVN) gesehen. Viele Organisationen nutzen dieses Visualisierungswerkzeug im SAP Talent Management, um ihre Daten zu säubern und konsistent zu halten.

Sie wissen wahrscheinlich, dass HCM-Daten kritische Bedeutung für eine Reihe von Geschäftsprozessen und damit auch von SAP-Prozessen haben. Daher sind Genauigkeit und Integrität der HCM-Daten unabdingbar, wenn Organisationen den bestmöglichen ROI aus den Investitionen in ihr SAP ERP-System erzielen wollen. SAP-Funktionalitäten wie Lohn- und Gehaltsabrechnung, Workflow, Self-Service, Talent Management und Rollen-basierte Berechtigungen, bieten Beispiele für SAP-Prozesse, die stark von korrekten HCM-Daten abhängen.

Stephen Burr spricht in seinem vorhergehenden Blog über die Erkennung und Nutzung von Talent-Potenzial durch Talent-Management. Sie können kein Talentmanagement betreiben, wenn Sie nicht wissen, wo die Talente in Ihrer Organisation sind und ob die Daten über die entsprechenden Personen korrekt sind.

Towers Perrin hat in einer Umfrage zwar festgestellt, dass die Korrektheit von Daten in den letzten Jahren für weniger Organisationen ein Problem darstellte. (14% 2009, leicht gestiegen von 12% in 2008, deutlich niedriger als die 18% in 2007) Die verbleibenden Organisationen, bei denen dies weiterhin ein Problem ist, müssen eine Lösung finden, um inkorrekte Daten zu identifizieren. Und natürliche müssen sie danach Prozesse aufsetzen, um die Daten zu korrigieren und korrekt zu halten. OrgChart bietet dabei Hilfestellung.

Ich habe auch Projekte gesehen, in denen OrgChart zur Unterstützung von Business Transformationen verwandt wurde. Dabei wurden OM- und HR-Prozesse neu gestaltet, mit Veränderungen in der gesamten Organisation und der Notwendigkeit von Change Management. OrgChart bietet dabei den Vorteil, die Transformation sichtbar zu machen, während sie stattfindet.

Ich habe ähnliche Themen in meinem Blogeintrag für das SAP Developers Network (SDN) behandelt (http://weblogs.sdn.sap.com/pub/wlg/16346), der zur Zeit auf der Homepage des Blogs „SDN Business Process Experts (BPX) Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP)“ zu sehen ist. (http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/bpx/erp)

Dort habe ich OrgChart aus Sicht eines Consultants für die SAP Community behandelt, aber die allgemeinen Prinzipien sind auch für SAP-Kunden übertragbar.

Zusammenfassend denke ich, es ist wichtig für Organisationen die Visualisierung ihrer Daten ins Auge zu fassen, da dies eine der besten Methoden zur Aufdeckung von Fehlern und Inkonsistenzen in ihren HCM-Daten ist. Die Beseitigung dieser Fehler wird die Effizienz kritischer Geschäftsprozesse verbessern und damit die Effizienz der gesamten Organisation.

Gründung eines offenen Arbeitskreises HR-Analytics und BI

Thomas Meis — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Am 30.September hat ROC Deutschland einen Arbeitskreis zum Thema HR-Analytics & BI gegründet und eine erste Arbeitssitzung erfolgreich durchgeführt. Auf Wunsch der Teilnehmer wird der Arbeitskreis zukünftig regelmäßig zweimal jährlich tagen.

Zielsetzung: Eine Expertengruppe zusammen bringen, die aktuelle Themen rund um HR-Analytics & BI diskutiert, Trends bewertet und Konzepte, sowie Projektlösungen vorstellt.

Hauptthemen der ersten Arbeitskreistagung waren Kennzahlensysteme, strategische Ausrichtungen des HR-Controlling-Bereichs, der demographische Wandel, sowie die Berechtigungsvergabe unter SAP BI 7.0. Mit großem Interesse wurden diese Themen diskutiert und bearbeitet. Der ausgewogene Mix zwischen fachlichen und technischen Themen fand großen Zuspruch bei Vertretern des HR- und IT-Bereichs. Die Arbeitskreismitglieder planen für die Frühjahrstagung, sich mit den folgenden Themen auseinander zu setzen: Business Objects im HR-Bereich; HR-Cockpits & Dashboards, personalwirtschaftliche Berichtsmodule & Kennzahlen sowie Benchmarking intern & extern.

Ferner war das Interesse an einer XING-Arbeitsgruppe groß, die einen kurzfristigen und weiterführenden Austausch ermöglichen soll. Diese wird in Kürze durch ROC eröffnet und moderiert. Gerne heißen wir Sie als neues Mitglied unseres Arbeitskreises oder unserer XING-Arbeitsgruppe willkommen. Bitte kontaktieren Sie uns bei Interesse unter de.info@roc-group.com

Haben Sie Ihre SAP HCM Berechtigungen im Griff?

Rolf Hagenow-Jansen — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Bei der Einführung oder Weiterentwicklung eines SAP HCM Systems fristet dieses Thema eine Existenz am Rande oder wird erst gar nicht in der Projektplanung berücksichtigt.

Damit Sie Ihre SAP HCM Berechtigungen in den Griff bekommen und einem internen oder externen Systemaudit gelassen entgegen schauen können, sollten Sie sich von Anfang an Gedanken um eine strukturierte Vorgehensweise machen.

Die ROC Vorgehensweise deckt den kompletten Zyklus eines SAP-HCM-Berechtigungskonzeptes ab und gliedert sich in folgende Schritte:

Projektvorbereitung und Definition der Grundlagen für ein funktionsorientiertes Berechtigungskonzeptes
Analyse der HCM Prozesse und Definition der Funktionen im Unternehmen
Erstellung eines Grobkonzepts
Erstellung eines Feinkonzepts
Realisierung der funktionsorientierten Rollen
Test und Abnahme der Rollen
Produktivvorbereitung
Unterstützung bei der Produktivsetzung
Überwachung und regelmäßige Prüfung des Berechtigungskonzeptes

Weiterführende Informationen finden Sie auch auf unserer Lösungsseite zum Thema Sicherheit und Compliance oder schreiben Sie uns Direkt E-Mail: de.info@roc-group.com

Sichern Sie die bestmögliche Zukunft für Ihr Unternehmen

Stephen Burr — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Anfang Mai hat SAP sein Enhancement Package EhP4 herausgegeben. Durch diese Packages kann SAP neue Funktionalität an seine Kunden liefern, ohne deren alltäglichen Betrieb zu stören. Dieses Enhancement Package enthält zwar keine wesentlichen Neuerungen im HCM-Kernmodul, es liefert aber bedeutende Verbesserungen im Bereich Talentmanagement.

Man kann man sich natürlich fragen, ob Talentmanagement in der gegenwärtigen Wirtschaftslage überhaupt von Interesse ist.

Dazu möchte ich zunächst Damian Williams' Idee aus dem vorigen Blog, „In die Zukunft investieren“, aufgreifen: Der Schlüssel zum Wachstum Ihres Unternehmens liegt in der beständigen Weiterentwicklung seiner Leistungsfähigkeit, die wiederum nur durch das Management Ihrer talentierten Mitarbeiter zu erreichen ist.

Les Hayman (der ROC-Chairman) hat vorher darüber gesprochen, dass praktisch jedes Unternehmen in seinem „Mission Statement“ seine Mitarbeiter als wichtigste Ressource für den Geschäftserfolg bezeichnet. Aber wie viele Unternehmen beherzigen ihre eigene Feststellung? Talentmanagement ist ein Prozess, der dabei hilfreich ist.

Es ist entscheidend zu erkennen, dass Talentmanagement vor allem ein Business-Prozess ist, der durch IT unterstützt werden kann. Dabei müssen Prozesse aus verschiedenen Bereichen zusammen geführt werden: Personalbeschaffung, Weiterbildung, Performance Management, Nachfolgeplanung und Vergütungsmanagement. Nur durch diese Integration kann sicher gestellt werden, dass die richtigen Daten zusammengetragen, abgeglichen und den Entscheidern zugänglich gemacht werden.

SAP EhP4 gewährleistet die Nutzung eines gemeinsamen Datenmodells bei der zeitgerechten Bereitstellung von Daten für die richtigen Leute. Dabei werden spezifische Rollen für alle Personen im Talentmanagement-Prozess definiert: für Personalbeschaffer, Schulungsleiter, Manager, etc.

Technologie kann zwar Hilfestellung leisten bei der Erreichung von Business-Zielen, aber Unternehmen müssen sich diesen Prozess zu eigen machen, und die Unternehmensstrategie muss ein entsprechendes Engagement einfordern.

Beim Talentmanagement geht es um die Sicherung der bestmöglichen Zukunft für Ihr Unternehmen.

In die Zukunft investieren

Damian Williams — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Gemäß einer Studie von Ochre House wollen Arbeitgeber die vielversprechenden Talente im Unternehmen nicht unter der gegenwärtigen Wirtschaftskrise leiden lassen. Etwa 67% der befragten Arbeitgeber werden ihre besten Leistungsträger auch in diesem Jahr mit einer Gehaltserhöhung belohnen.

Bei den vielen Geschichten über Entlassungen besteht Sorge, dass wertvolle und wichtige Mitarbeiter verloren gehen. Wie wir alle wissen, verfügt nicht jedes Unternehmen über einen robusten Talentmanagement-Prozess. Erfolgreiches Talentmanagement ist aber entscheidend für den zukünftigen Erfolg jeder Organisation. Es daher erfreulich zu sehen, dass Manager die Notwendigkeit erkannt haben, in ihre wichtigsten Leitungsträger zu investieren. Motivierte Mitarbeiter mit einer sicheren Bindung an das Unternehmen sind die besten Garanten für eine florierende Unternehmensentwicklung. Sie stellen die Führungskräfte, die das Unternehmen in Zukunft leiten können.

Steigende Mitarbeiterzahlen zeigen dass Unternehmen in die Gegenwart und in die Zukunft investieren.