In retail the kind of shortcuts I would take were cost effective solutions that weren't strictly legal but nobody was sick and I achieved the best stock results: If there was a best before (not a legal use buy date) I would still sell the product at a much reduced price to its original. For example, any produce, even beer that had a best before date, I would sell it a couple of days beyond that date at a significantly reduced price.Other managers would throw vast quantities of perfectly good food and drink down the drain and report stock results of more than 8%. Use buy different kettle of fish. Beer would be the best one, due to the size of the store-way too large for what the turnover was-this was a massive issue, items would, especially if some of my team weren't rotating the items, approach their use by and best before dates. I used superior tactics in dealing with this, by reducing items early and by very little at first.They would get snapped up and I would lose very little of my stock result. Other managers would be so poor in this, its a joke really that I've been out of the senior management game for so long. I'd visit, lets say Steve (Rides)-I'd say to Steve, "what is that huge bin full of beer for Stevie?" he would say "oh I forgot to reduce it in time, my assistant missed it." That simply wouldn't wash with me, I was on top of all these matters. He'd thrown away over £1,000 of perfectly good beer. This was terminal, common sense tells you that if he was to reduce a four pack of beer from £3.99 to £3.49 a couple of days before its Best Before date you're only going to lose 13% of its total value. He was throwing away 100% if you add up the cumulative impact of this behaviour you get one very good manager who is respected by all senior management and another who is being demoted to the smallest shop in the UK with so little commission per week, he might as well become my deputy, even though he was previously my superior in the first place, when I was a party going animal at 16yrs of age.
Having said all of that he was one of the warmest friendliest guys you could ever expect to meet outside of the sharp end of management/leadership /management Accounting for decision makers/soon viral marketing Dan Synergism wizardry.
I spoke about how the workplace for a leader is different to his leadership approach on the outside of work, if you read the most successful managers book and Capello examples, the leader is both in control and supportive. Very intense. I needed assistance from Human Resource coordinators, the manager has to be able to adapt his emotions. For example, Barack Obama has expressed his anger and demanded action. This will heighten his perceived sense of control, if his body language had remained as warm and welcoming as when he's integrating foreign nationals into the US. We as a globe would have not lost respect, sub-consciously formed the opinion that he's a little soft and will accept poor performance and mistakes as the norm. A leader doesn't have mood swings, a leader focus' solely on the matter in hand and displays natural emotions in view of the public, he has to remain loyal to his/her natural instinct. He says he's thinking about this all the time, that's not necessarily a good thing. Why? Leaders should have time to switch off and spend some quality time in their free time environment ..Completely remove themselves from their leadership responsibilities, just switch off for a short period. I failed in that respect, walking the streets on a marketing campaign on my only day off-far too frequent occurrence. I would talk shop at any function I attended, I must have bored the living daylights out of people. I've since realised that there has to be two separate worlds. People need down-time to relax and refresh themselves. Even if its only a short period one day a week.
Not that the president needs any advice from me, I still wish I could help in some way. These leadership and management books are different gravy. Especially when you've been in a senior position, no matter how long ago it was. If I hadn't been in a senior position, these books would just be words with no depth to them. None of my writing is plagiarism there are extracts which I use and word myself differently and graphs and diagrams which I use the outline of and enter my own words. If I was back at University now, I would be confident of getting a 1st. The most senior lecturer said is about your notes-how good your notes are when someone is doing a presentation. Well, I can write on the page neatly, without looking observing body language and speech. I can write this way so quickly I could be the model student. I hope to apply at Harvard Business School.
Business leaders in France:
- Average Career starting Age-31:
- Time to top-16yrs:
- Background from business owning -1/3:
- Foreign Nationals-2.5%
In the US studies found that females were subject to judgement by subordinates to be more effective leaders than males. Researchers came up with two possible explanations. First, women in the west tend to develop those values & skills that support an empowering, facilitating leadership style. Both men and women prefer this style, although, as I will show you on twitter, face book, buzz, & blogspot, not always the most effective. The 2nd possibility arises from the difficulty that women still face in achieving promotion. Those who overcome barriers may be more competent than average male colleagues. In many ways leaders are successful because they are different For instance comparing the backgrounds of soccer managers Charlton and Lippi may reveal little to someone wanting to choose another person to fill a vacancy. This suggests to me that we should concentrate less on innate or learned traits ans more on what people actually do their behaviour. Groups perform differently: Autocratically led groups worked well so long as the leader was present. Kwik Save 96-00 Members however, were unhappy with the leaders’ style and tended to express hostility. Democratically led groups did not quite so well. Members had positive feelings with no hostility .Efforts continued even when the leader was absent. Note they didn't perform as well. Others say this didn't describe or proved too inadequate in describing real managers. Tannenbaum and Schmidt produced a continuum reflecting the differing degrees of subordinate participation.
© John Naylor
Management By Walking About - MBWA
The Rule of a successful manager/entrepreneur MBWA = Management by Walking About-Mr Obama is most certainly doing that.If you wait or people to come to you,you'll only get small problems.You must go and find them.The big problems are where people don't realise they have one in the first place. W. EdwardsThis type of management involves the following
- Managers consistently reserving time to walk through their departments and/or to be available for impromtu discussions. (MBWA frequently goes together with an open-door management policy.)
- Individuals forming networks of acquaintances throughout their organisations.
- Lots of opportunities for chatting over coffee or lunch, or in the corridors
- Managers getting away from their desks and starting to talk to individual employees (this is a key morale boosting exercise- You'll have unity - your team will appreciate the consideration ) The idea is that they should learn about problems and concerns at first hand. At the same time they should teach employees new methods to manage particular problems. The communication goes both ways.
The difficulty with MBWA is that employees suspect its an excuse for managers to spy and interfere unnecessarily. This suspicion usually falls away if the walkabouts occur regularly,and if everyone can see their benefits.
MBWA has been found to be particularly helpful when an organisation is under exceptional stress for instance,after a significant corporate reorganisation has been announced or when a takeover is about to take place.
It is no good practising MBWA for the first time on such occasions,however.It has to have become a regular practice before the stress arises By the turn of the century it did not seen extraordinary that managers should manage by walking about.
The technologies of mobile communications made it so much easier for them both to walk about and stay in touch at the same time.
By the turn of the century it wasn't unusual that managers should walk about. the technologies of mobile communications made it so much easier for them to walk about and stay in touch at the same time.
It was in the 1950's that white collared managers just sat in offices barking orders out. They rarely emerged from the offices, turning them into fortresses from which they rarely emerged. Edicts were sent out to the blue-collar workforce whom they rarely met face to face. The outside world filtered through via a secretary who, traditionally, sat like a guard dog in front of their (usually closed) office door. Even in the 1980s such practices were not uncommon, as demonstrated in the film 9-5.
MBWA was popularised by becoming an important part of "The H-P Way", the open style of management pioneered by Billl Hewlett and Bill Packard, the two founders of the eponymous computer company. Many of the practices of the H-P way became widely copied by corporations throughout the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The idea received a further boost when Tom Peters and Robert Waterman
wrote that top managers in their "excellent" companies believed in management by walking about. In his second book, A passion for excellence, Peters said that he saw "managing by wandering about" as the basis of leadership and excellence. Peters called MBWA the "technology of the obvious". As leaders and managers wander about, he said that at least three things should be going on:
- They should be listening to what people are saying
- They should be using the opportunity to transmit the company's values face to face
- They should be prepared and able to give people on-the-spot help
Reference The Economist Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus ISBN 978-1-84668-108-0
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