Corporate culture

Why communities matter in business leadership

August 2, 2009 11:18 pm by Ravi Mattu

Two weeks ago, in a small church hall in north London, my three-year-old son picked up his Transformers lunchbox, said goodbye to a few of his friends and gave an end-of-term cuddle to the women who work at the nursery he attends four mornings a week. It was the end of term and summer holidays beckoned.

Our nursery isn’t especially fancy. The hall is a little worse for wear. The toys are not particularly new. Unlike some of the other nurseries in the neighbourhood, it doesn’t do organic food, it doesn’t have guinea pigs for the children to take care of or a vegetable patch where they can grow carrots. Come to think of it, it doesn’t have much outdoor space at all. Occasionally, the children go to the playground in a rather grim council estate nearby and I have persuaded myself that the bratty kids who once pelted me with water-filled balloons from the same playground have moved to another town.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Posted in Corporate culture, Creativity, Leadership, Management | Permalink

Managers who act like owners

July 7, 2009 1:29 am by Stefan Stern

What would your customers say if they could see your expenses claim? The abstemious can rest easy. But extravagant restaurant receipts, first-class travel and accommodation, huge taxi fares – such things might not endear you to the people you are supposed to be serving. You should expect a tough conversation about the prices you charge if customers get the impression you are enjoying the high life with their money.

That is why smart business leaders advise their colleagues to imagine they are spending their own money when they are out on company business. Act like an owner, the adage goes. Be responsible. Think before you splash the company’s cash about.

This is a micro-level example of what has been called the “principal-agent problem”. Even the most senior managers are not, usually, the owners of the business they are working for. It may not be easy for them to think and act like an owner. At the same time, can owners be confident that managers are working in the company’s best interests and not simply pursuing their own selfish agenda?

The remainder of the article can be re here. please post comments below.

Posted in Corporate culture, Management | Permalink

A Free exchange of ideas

July 2, 2009 2:41 pm by Ravi Mattu

John Gapper reviewed Free: The future of a radical price, the latest book by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired (US edition) in today’s paper.

And over on John’s blog, we have been engaging in our first ‘interactive review’ – opening up our pages to the author to respond and exchange ideas with the critic.

The discussion threw up some interesting ideas and, being the FT, they were discussed in a suitably civilised way.

I’m sure a lot of readers have thoughts on this so feel free to pitch in with your comments (registration is required but this isn’t too onerous).

Posted in Corporate culture, Creativity, Innovation/tech, Management, Marketing/sales, Strategy/ops | Permalink

Are Generation Ys the new Baby Boomers?

June 18, 2009 1:05 pm by Ravi Mattu

For anyone wondering whether we have our finger on the pulse of management, our story on how Generation Y is may be more similar to the Baby Boomers than marketers and managers had thought taps in into a rich vein of discussion right now on a group commonly defined as “demanding, selfish, text-addicted job-hoppers with little loyalty to their employers”.

In addition to the studies mentioned in the story (one by London Business School’s Centre for Women in Business the other from the US-based Center for Work-Life Policy), LBS has opened up a blog called Genderation Y on the issue and the Ashridge Business School has just released Generation Y: Inside Out, a research project into this sector of the workforce.

Posted in Corporate culture, Management, Managing others | Permalink

How to rebuild trust when it is in short supply

June 16, 2009 1:13 am by Stefan Stern

Is trust a renewable resource? We have to hope that it is. If trust cannot be restored from its current sickly condition then leaders will soon find their task becoming almost impossibly difficult. The old quip about knowing when the boss is lying – his lips move – will be the new conventional wisdom. Managers will take their place alongside politicians, second- hand car salesmen and journalists as yet another undesirable element: social outcasts.

Many are gloomy about the chances of greater levels of trust returning to corporate life. If you are viewing the world from London, which is a global centre of excellence for cynicism, it is hard not to be. But trust is declining just about everywhere. The most recent findings from the Edelman trust barometer, a well-established annual survey, found that 62 per cent of “upper income, highly educated” people in 20 countries had less trust in corporations than they did a year previously. I doubt if averagely educated, average income people would be any more trusting either.

This much you know already. But can anything be done about it? Last week, I went to a seminar in cynical old London in search of help.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Posted in Corporate culture, Leadership, Management, Managing others | Permalink

Cry “oh, God!” for HRH Harry

January 12, 2009 5:02 pm by Stefan Stern

The blogosphere is already bursting with agonised comment about Prince Harry’s unwise and unpleasant remarks, captured on video, which he made as a Sandhurst cadet in 2006. The management blog is not about to add to the extensive ongoing chatter on racism, real and imagined.

But there’s something else about this episode that the British army will, I think, find quite upsetting. And that is the highly informal briefing technique used by the Prince as he speaks to his comrades in the film.

I’ve been down to Sandhurst (near Camberley in Surrey) to watch the cadets in action. They are not trained to talk like this, casually, with a pen in the mouth. Officers should speak with clarity and brevity. They should make sure their instructions have been understood – and not just bark the words “any questions?” as quickly as possible in a way designed to deter further questioning.

I have no doubt that Prince Harry has become a serious and professional young officer, especially after seeing active service in Afghanistan. But this short video clip will cause him and the army profound embarrassment.

Posted in Corporate culture, Leadership | Permalink

Column: the secret to survival in 2009

December 23, 2008 1:38 am by Stefan Stern

Usually I would hesitate before taking issue with Larry Summers, the former Financial Times columnist and soon-to-be chair of the National Economic Council for Barack Obama, US president-elect. I feel certain that his grasp of economics is firmer than mine.

But on one specific point I find I must challenge him. Prof Summers once observed that: “In the history of the world, no one has ever washed a rented car.” The remark has always been seen, rightly, as a telling insight into the nature of ownership.

But on Saturday July 3 2004, at a self-service car wash on the outskirts of the Italian city of Pisa, my wife and I shattered Summers’ first law of rented cars. Reader, we washed one.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Posted in Corporate culture, Strategy/ops | Permalink

Party time – I’ll cry if I want to

December 9, 2008 5:11 pm by Stefan Stern

So – what sort of a 2008 has it been for you? Any exciting plans for the new year?

These apparently harmless questions have turned out to be a rather unwise conversational gambit during this year’s party season.

Redundancy, that more-or-less silent assassin, has been moving among us. There have been a lot of sudden, unwelcome taps on a lot of unsuspecting shoulders.

Some people have been (temporarily) spared. But for how long? You can hardly blame anxious professionals for throwing themselves into this year’s Christmas parties with an even greater sense of desperation than usual.

Desperation is what it can take to cross the threshold of yet another “festive”, alcohol-fuelled gathering. There is all that standing around to put up with, talking too loud, staying up too late, eating too much ludicrous, fancy-schmancy food.

At this time of the year you understand what Philip Larkin meant when he described, with dread, what his social life held in store for him:

“I could spend half my evenings, if I wanted,
Holding a glass of washing sherry”
(from Vers de Société)

Which is not to say that I can’t enjoy a couple of glasses of (decent) wine with friendly and entertaining colleagues every now and then, even when it’s cold and dark outside and you’d really rather have been home a couple of hours ago. I do like a good party. But why do so many of them seem more like work than play?

Humbug. For many people, this year’s Christmas party motto has been: “Drink, scoff, cackle – for tomorrow we start looking for a new job.”

Posted in Corporate culture | Permalink

Pick of the week

December 8, 2008 5:31 pm by Stefan Stern

Keeping your head when all about you are losing theirs – Marshall Goldsmith explains how -
Reagan administration veteran Lawrence Kudlow on why the bailouts are going too far. His answer – supply-side reforms of course!
Fortune’s Anne Fisher on what to remember when travelling on business. We may all be global nowadays, but there are limits to what we should assume about foreign markets.
Lucy Kellaway has discovered something else you can do to take your mind off the recession.

Posted in Career/skills, Corporate culture, Expat/travel, Hard times | Permalink

Clock-watching bosses need to discover the Japanese concept of ‘ba’

November 26, 2008 11:53 am by Adam Jones

BBC Radio 4 broadcast an ostensibly light-hearted programme that made me grimace yesterday. It was about punctuality and time management and featured a factory that docked the pay of workers going to the toilet outside scheduled breaks.

Punctuality may be important but too much oversight eliminates those informal interactions that make work more productive as well as more bearable. Who hasn’t picked up a useful snippet of work information from a colleague during a moment of impromptu down time?

I’d almost forgotten about the programme when a couple of hours later I came across an illuminating profile of Ikujiro Nonaka, the Japanese management guru, in the new edition of Strategy + Business, the house magazine of Booz & Company.

Continue reading: “Clock-watching bosses need to discover the Japanese concept of ‘ba’”

Posted in Corporate culture, Managing others | Permalink