Management Quotes

Outsiders think of Silicon Valley as a success, but it is, in truth, a graveyard. Failure is Silicon Valley’s greatest strength. Every failed product or enterprise is a lesson stored in the collective memory. We don’t stigmatize failure; we admire it.
— Mike Malone

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Entrepreneurship and Failure

Subjective judgments do not become objective simply by translating them into numbers. More importantly, when some of the options under review require ethical considerations, we can cloud the difference between right and wrong when we translate all options into a quantitative order of dollar values. If you tell me that option A contains a moral impediment and option B is pristine, that is substantially different than if you tell me that option A has a probability adjusted present value of $2 compared to $1.50 for option B. And yet we tout the virtue of net present value analysis because it does that very thing.
— James Haines

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Ethics and Social Responsibility

For future business leaders, the state of business, and our country, we need to get beyond seeing diversity as just achieving the desired profile—whether it be racial, a gender balance, or even a certain age mixture. We assume that if we get rid of all of the “isms” —racism, sexism, and so forth—that everything will be okay. Wrong. If you don’t know how to manage a diverse workforce, you won’t move your company forward. The challenge becomes: Can you, as a manager, create an environment that allows you to access talent, however it comes packaged?

…The biggest misconception companies have about diversity is that it is politically correct terminology for affirmative action, that it’s a politicized concept. If that’s how your company embraces diversity, you’re up against a brick wall. Let’s be clear. There is diversity—achieving the “right” racial or gender profile—and there’s diversity management. The latter takes a set of principles and combines them into a framework that can be used by the CEO, managers, and other executives to enhance their business decisions,
— R. Roosevelt Thomas

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Diversity

The mistake that most [finance teams] make is assuming that forecasts are about predicting and controlling future outcomes. The purpose of forecasting is to inform decision making (to help shape future outcomes), not to predict the future. In reality, forecasting is necessary only because organizations cannot react instantly to changing events. That’s why fast reaction is more important than (even accurate) prediction - because accuracy is rarely achieved. Indeed, the only certainty about a forecast is that it will be wrong. The question is by how much. Narrowing that variation comes from learning, experience, decent information systems, and ultimately, judgment.
— Jeremy Hope

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Failure and Management

In the early 1900s, Fredrick Taylor applied a scientific method to the management of workers in an effort to improve productivity. Known today as Theory X, its recommendations included a division of labor, similar to that used by Henry Ford in his assembly lines that separated tasks into discrete activities that could be handled by appropriately trained individuals and teams.

But Taylor’s approach, which was widely adopted by manufacturers, had a shortcoming: it ignores human complications, including ones related to workers’ personal needs and interpersonal reactions with other employees. Although they worked harder and with greater efficiency, worker dissatisfaction spread, and appears to have been a factor in the rise of labor unions.

After WWII, Theory Y, or the human relations movement was ushered in by psychologists and other professionals. This strategy emphasized a view of workers through a psychological prism, emphasizing their fit with their company, rather than as a commodity. That too, however, is being supplanted by a new school of thought.

Current organizational thought is focusing on Theory U, which seeks to empower employees through self-esteem and independence. Theory U, which itself is in an evolutionary stage, recognizes that companies today require innovative thinking and collaboration across traditional boundaries, ranging from organizations to cultures.
— Jagdish Sheth

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Management and Organizational Behavior

Successful companies ask themselves, “What must I keep at home?” rather than “What can I send to LCCs?” The burden of proof shifts from the LCC advocate (often procurement) to the existing producer (manufacturing), which now needs to prove - and improve - its own competitiveness. Best-practice companies investigate and communicate the LCC options and costs, specify the target costs that will be considered competitive, and then give the organization a reasonable chance to meet or beat the target internally. Usually the organization will increase its efficiency and justify keeping a fairly large portion of the supply chain in-house.
— Jonathan Cowan, Katrina Helmkamp, Jim Hemerling, Hubert Hsu, Michael Zinser

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Outsourcing

We act as if diversity training is a shot to protect you from the measles, rather than preparation to allow you to go out and address diversity effectively. Most of what’s done under the rubric of diversity training is fundamentally awareness training. One of the big challenges we have is getting people beyond awareness.
— Dr. R. Roosevelt Thomas, Jr.

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Diversity and Human Resources

Strategic thinking is dialectical. In the process of inventing the image of the future, the strategist must mediate the tension between constraint, contingency, and possibility. The underlying emphasis of strategic intent is stretch – to reach explicitly for potentially unattainable goals. At the same time, all elements of the firm’s environment are not shapeable, and those constraints that are real must be acknowledged in designing strategy.
— Jeanne Liedtka

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Strategy

Strategic thinking is hypothesis-driven. In an environment of ever-increasing information availability and decreasing time to think, the ability to develop good hypotheses and test them effectively is critical. Strategic thinking is both creative and critical in nature, and figuring out how to accomplish both types of thinking simultaneously has long troubled cognitive psychologists, since it is necessary to suspend critical judgment in order to think more creatively Strategic thinking accommodates both creative and analytical thinking sequentially in its use of iterative cycles of hypothesis generating and testing. Hypothesis generation asks the question what if…?, while hypothesis testing follows with the critical question if…, then…? and brings relevant data to bear on the analysis. Taken together, and repeated over time, this sequence allows us to generate ever-improving hypotheses, without forfeiting the ability to explore new ideas. Such experimentation allows an organization to move beyond simplistic notions of cause and effect and provides ongoing learning.
— Jeanne Liedtka

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Strategy

Because design solutions are always matters of invented choice, rather than discovered truth, the judgement of designers is always open to question by the broader public.

…this notion of the inevitable need to justify to others the ‘rightness’ of the design choices made – is perhaps the most significant implication for the design of strategy processes in business organizations. Because strategic choices can never be proven to be ‘right’, they remain always contestable and must be made compelling to others in order to be realized.
— Jeanne Liedtka

No Comments » Posted by Administrator / Design and Strategy