What is management? What do managers do? How do I manage?
These are standard questions that most of us in the management profession have been asked more than once. And questions we asked once in our careers too. Here, then, is a basic look at management, a primer, Management 101 from my perspective.
Art and Science
Management is both art and science. It is the art of making people more effective than they would have been without you. The science is in how you do that. There are four basic pillars: plan, organize, direct, and monitor.
Make Them More Effective
Four workers can make 6 units in an eight-hour shift without a manager. If I hire you to manage them and they still make 6 units a day, what is the benefit to my business of having hired you? On the other hand, if they now make 8 units per day, you, the manager, have value.
The same analogy applies to service, or retail, or teaching, or any other kind of work. Can your group handle more customer calls with you than without? Sell higher value merchandise? Impart knowledge more effectively? etc. That is the value of management - making a group of individual more effective.
Basic Management Skill #1: Plan
Management starts with planning. Good management starts with good planning. And proper prior planning prevents… well, you know the rest of that one.
Without a plan you will never succeed. If you happen to make it to the goal, it will have been by luck or chance and is not repeatable. You may make it as a flash-in-the-pan, an overnight sensation, but you will never have the track record of accomplishments of which success is made.
Figure out what your goal is (or listen when your boss tells you). Then figure out the best way to get there. What resources do you have? What can you get? Compare strengths and weaknesses of individuals and other resources. Will putting four workers on a task that takes 14 hours cost less than renting a machine that can do the same task with one worker in 6 hours? If you change the first shift from an 8 AM start to a 10 AM start, can they handle the early evening rush so you don't have to hire an extra person for the second shift?
Look at all the probable scenarios. Plan for them. Figure out the worst possible scenario and plan for that too. Evaluate your different plans and develop what, in your best judgement, will work the best and what you will do if it doesn't.
TIP: One of the most often overlooked management planning tools is the most effective. Ask the people doing the work for their input.
Basic Management Skill #2: Organize
Now that you have a plan, you have to make it happen. Is everything ready ahead of your group so the right stuff will get to your group at the right time? Is your group prepared to do its part of the plan? Is the downstream organization ready for what your group will deliver and when it will arrive?
Are the workers trained? Are they motivated? Do they have the equipment they need? Are there spare parts available for the equipment? Has purchasing ordered the material? Is it the right stuff? Will it get here on the appropriate schedule?
Do the legwork to make sure everything needed to execute the plan is ready to go, or will be when it is needed. Check back to make sure that everyone understands their role and the importance of their role to the overall success.
Basic Management Skill #3: Direct
Now flip the "ON" switch. Tell people what they need to do. I like to think of this part like conducting an orchestra. Everyone in the orchestra has the music in front of them. They know which section is playing which piece and when. They know when to come in, what to play, and when to stop again. The conductor cues each section to make the music happen. That's your job here. You've given all your musicians (workers) the sheet music (the plan). You have the right number of musicians (workers) in each section (department), and you've arranged the sections on stage so the music will sound best (you have organized the work). Now you need only to tap the podium lightly with your baton to get their attention and give the downbeat.
Basic Management Skill #4: Monitor
Now that you have everything moving, you have to keep an eye on things. Make sure everything is going according to the plan. When it isn't going according to plan, you need to step in and adjust the plan, just as the orchestra conductor will adjust the tempo.
Problems will come up. Someone will get sick. A part won't be delivered on time. A key customer will go bankrupt. That is why you developed a contingency plan in the first place. You, as the manager, have to be always aware of what's going on so you can make the adjustments required.
This is an iterative process. When something is out of sync, you need to Plan a fix, Organize the resources to make it work, Direct the people who will make it happen, and continue to Monitor the effect of the change.
Is It Worth It
Managing people is not easy. However, it can be done successfully. And it can be a very rewarding experience. Remember that management, like any other skill, is something that you can improve at with study and practice.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Saturday, February 19, 2011
The Pathway to Reputation
Brand reputation does not happen ‘just like that’. There is a yellow brick road that is more or less paved, leading from brand professionals thinking about the subject, right down to the reputation being formed.
Intent
Brand management aims to create brand by intentional action. Deliberate decisions are made about brand personality, brand values, brand positioning, brand logos, etc. Attention is paid to customers and competitors. Done smartly, the whole strategy and culture of the company are lined up behind the brand to deliver on the intent.
And yet none of this is the brand. It may be intended to be the brand, but brand itself is still far away.
Enactment
Despite best intent, there’s many a slip and the enactment of brand-oriented plans will never come off perfectly. Even when people start with a perfect intent, they have to formulate their action based on their inner world of understanding.
Unfortunately, the map is not the territory. But we constantly act as if it is. We take our inner maps that we have built to help us understand the world around us and then formulate actions that will perfectly achieve our intent. But the plan is already flawed because nobody has the right map. Our inner maps are gross simplifications of a massively complex outer reality.
And as if this was bad enough, even putting the perfect plan into action is doomed as our actions are secretly twisted by our inner biases, goals and deeper needs.
Enactment is still not the brand. However it is getting closer than the intent. It is the difference between Argyris’ Espoused Theory and Theory In Use. You are what you do, not what you say. Company values is the totality of what their people do, not a neat list of values on the website.
Like a bullet fired, the enactment of the brand has no meaning until it reaches its destination. And even then it has far to go before a reputation is formed.
Perception
When the brand messages in all their glorious forms reach the people standing in their way, the brand itself is starting to form. This happens in the perception that is created in the heads of both intended customers and innocent bystanders. It is as perceived by everyone who touches the brand in any way, whether from a lifetime’s experience or a brief third-hand mention from a passing stranger.
Perception does not come clean and pre-packaged. We take direct experience and infer meaning by passing it through a set of highly-biased perceptual filters. First we classify, using broad mental models and unique memories. Then we assess for immediate threats. Then we test against expectations and goals, re-predict the future and compare against our values. To complicate things further, all of this is biased by our current emotional state.
The eventual perception we infer is thus far from the sensory inputs we receive. Even after the original perception, we continue to ponder, muse and reflect on our experiences, changing their meaning even further.
Perception is the brand as experienced. Perception is not reputation, but reputation is perception.
Transmission
When I buy something from a company or otherwise experience the brand, I am getting a first-hand snapshot of what the brand really delivers. From this I directly develop my perception of the brand. On the other hand, if I listen to what others say then I am getting a second-hand version of events. I get their perception, which I then modify via my perceptual process. And if that transmission is third-hand, fourth-hand or more, then the effect is multiplied further.
Communicated perception is reputation, but from a single person it is just a single data-point. If I am inclined to believe that person and act on their perception, then for me, that is all the reputation I need. But many people do not just go on the say-so of a single point of authority. They listen to others and think for themselves, too.
Communication
We not only listen to other people when they talk about brands—we also talk back, asking them questions and offering our own perceptions. Out of the conversation a shared meaning (or as much as this can happen) arises. Thus brand reputation may be viewed as being socially constructed.
Thus reputation is not created in individual perception, nor even in a second-hand, unidirectional transmission, but in the dynamics of real communication between two or more individuals.
True communication is communing, the joining of minds as is sought in open inquiry or dialogue. However this nirvana seldom happens. It is more like a battleground of ideas and wills, where evolution occurs in real-time. Discussions go around and about and eventually the loudest voice or the clearest idea takes root as an unspoken, tacit agreement.
In many ways, the birth or change of a brand reputation is tied up with the brand reputation of the people doing the arguing. People with strong reputations, who command attention and trust, have the greatest potential to forge the actual reputation of the brand under discussion.
Diffusion
Beyond the local conversations whereby I get a personal sense of brand reputation, there are thousands of such conversations that travel across the unbroken network of human relationships. This is where the total reputation of the brand is built. There are many factors that affect diffusion, as identified by Everett Rogers and others.
Some people know more people and talk more than others. Some people are listened to more carefully than others. The brand perception as received by these people will thus travel further than from others.
But people belong to groups, and almost by definition converse more with in-group people and have different attitudes toward them than towards out-group others. Reputation is thus likely to grow differently within each group. Brand ideas will jump between groups like a forest blaze leaping a fire break only when there is sufficient heat and sufficient connection.
And at any one time, reputation reaches as far across groups as the fire has spread. In some it may be fixed and established, whilst to other it may still be novel and a subject of heated debate.
Decision
In the final analysis, the value of a brand comes in the simplification that it brings to decision-making. The inferred promise of a brand enables us to short-cut the evaluative part of the decision process. In our inner construction of the brand we have already done this, mapping out a simplified meaning.
When we choose between brands, rather than guess or choose on tangible aspects such as price, we compare the brand values that we have inferred and hence rapidly make what we assume will be a wise and safe decision.
The reputation of a brand includes an element of reliability. The psychology of judgment under uncertainty rears its head here, and our perceptions of 100% reliable are very different from even a 99% perception. This explains at least in part the fragility of reputation. The psychology of betrayal and retributive justice is another minefield for the unwary.
Intent
Brand management aims to create brand by intentional action. Deliberate decisions are made about brand personality, brand values, brand positioning, brand logos, etc. Attention is paid to customers and competitors. Done smartly, the whole strategy and culture of the company are lined up behind the brand to deliver on the intent.
And yet none of this is the brand. It may be intended to be the brand, but brand itself is still far away.
Enactment
Despite best intent, there’s many a slip and the enactment of brand-oriented plans will never come off perfectly. Even when people start with a perfect intent, they have to formulate their action based on their inner world of understanding.
Unfortunately, the map is not the territory. But we constantly act as if it is. We take our inner maps that we have built to help us understand the world around us and then formulate actions that will perfectly achieve our intent. But the plan is already flawed because nobody has the right map. Our inner maps are gross simplifications of a massively complex outer reality.
And as if this was bad enough, even putting the perfect plan into action is doomed as our actions are secretly twisted by our inner biases, goals and deeper needs.
Enactment is still not the brand. However it is getting closer than the intent. It is the difference between Argyris’ Espoused Theory and Theory In Use. You are what you do, not what you say. Company values is the totality of what their people do, not a neat list of values on the website.
Like a bullet fired, the enactment of the brand has no meaning until it reaches its destination. And even then it has far to go before a reputation is formed.
Perception
When the brand messages in all their glorious forms reach the people standing in their way, the brand itself is starting to form. This happens in the perception that is created in the heads of both intended customers and innocent bystanders. It is as perceived by everyone who touches the brand in any way, whether from a lifetime’s experience or a brief third-hand mention from a passing stranger.
Perception does not come clean and pre-packaged. We take direct experience and infer meaning by passing it through a set of highly-biased perceptual filters. First we classify, using broad mental models and unique memories. Then we assess for immediate threats. Then we test against expectations and goals, re-predict the future and compare against our values. To complicate things further, all of this is biased by our current emotional state.
The eventual perception we infer is thus far from the sensory inputs we receive. Even after the original perception, we continue to ponder, muse and reflect on our experiences, changing their meaning even further.
Perception is the brand as experienced. Perception is not reputation, but reputation is perception.
Transmission
When I buy something from a company or otherwise experience the brand, I am getting a first-hand snapshot of what the brand really delivers. From this I directly develop my perception of the brand. On the other hand, if I listen to what others say then I am getting a second-hand version of events. I get their perception, which I then modify via my perceptual process. And if that transmission is third-hand, fourth-hand or more, then the effect is multiplied further.
Communicated perception is reputation, but from a single person it is just a single data-point. If I am inclined to believe that person and act on their perception, then for me, that is all the reputation I need. But many people do not just go on the say-so of a single point of authority. They listen to others and think for themselves, too.
Communication
We not only listen to other people when they talk about brands—we also talk back, asking them questions and offering our own perceptions. Out of the conversation a shared meaning (or as much as this can happen) arises. Thus brand reputation may be viewed as being socially constructed.
Thus reputation is not created in individual perception, nor even in a second-hand, unidirectional transmission, but in the dynamics of real communication between two or more individuals.
True communication is communing, the joining of minds as is sought in open inquiry or dialogue. However this nirvana seldom happens. It is more like a battleground of ideas and wills, where evolution occurs in real-time. Discussions go around and about and eventually the loudest voice or the clearest idea takes root as an unspoken, tacit agreement.
In many ways, the birth or change of a brand reputation is tied up with the brand reputation of the people doing the arguing. People with strong reputations, who command attention and trust, have the greatest potential to forge the actual reputation of the brand under discussion.
Diffusion
Beyond the local conversations whereby I get a personal sense of brand reputation, there are thousands of such conversations that travel across the unbroken network of human relationships. This is where the total reputation of the brand is built. There are many factors that affect diffusion, as identified by Everett Rogers and others.
Some people know more people and talk more than others. Some people are listened to more carefully than others. The brand perception as received by these people will thus travel further than from others.
But people belong to groups, and almost by definition converse more with in-group people and have different attitudes toward them than towards out-group others. Reputation is thus likely to grow differently within each group. Brand ideas will jump between groups like a forest blaze leaping a fire break only when there is sufficient heat and sufficient connection.
And at any one time, reputation reaches as far across groups as the fire has spread. In some it may be fixed and established, whilst to other it may still be novel and a subject of heated debate.
Decision
In the final analysis, the value of a brand comes in the simplification that it brings to decision-making. The inferred promise of a brand enables us to short-cut the evaluative part of the decision process. In our inner construction of the brand we have already done this, mapping out a simplified meaning.
When we choose between brands, rather than guess or choose on tangible aspects such as price, we compare the brand values that we have inferred and hence rapidly make what we assume will be a wise and safe decision.
The reputation of a brand includes an element of reliability. The psychology of judgment under uncertainty rears its head here, and our perceptions of 100% reliable are very different from even a 99% perception. This explains at least in part the fragility of reputation. The psychology of betrayal and retributive justice is another minefield for the unwary.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
The Branding message in a New Month
There is no doubt that whenever we're to experience another month, we are always preparing for: new heights, character, blessing, expectations are always on the high side, either positive or negative. And each new months are profoundly branded that we all know their names, infact; some of us even know what each months means Biblically or otherwise, February and March, biblically means: "New Heights". In line with this; if each month, year etc, comeswith an expectation in the minds of the target audience, the qustion now is: What is/are the perception of Nigerian in arriving in each of these months, what are the plans of our representatives at the governement house, how did they intend to make our brand promise a reality via "Nigeria, Good People, Great Nation", are we really a good people from on-the-inside? Fine Nigeria is a great nation, but mind you, a nation cannot be great when the people in it are not great cus a nation does not drive itself, it's being pioneer by the intellectuality of the people that resides in it. As i want to saddle us with the responsibilty of a branded mind that would achieve a targetted goal in this new month of February, pls be positive about this country, it ddoesn't matter what the "fear-dogs" are doing, but with you and me, together with same vision, mission, mandate and task, we'll indeed make Nigeria the homeland of "good people, great nation"!
Still to come: New Month - My Brand, My Mind
Kind Regards
The Diamond Team
Info: 08060037277, 07093175098
www.diamondstarint-brand.blogspot.com
www.diamondstarint-francis.blogspot.com
Still to come: New Month - My Brand, My Mind
Kind Regards
The Diamond Team
Info: 08060037277, 07093175098
www.diamondstarint-brand.blogspot.com
www.diamondstarint-francis.blogspot.com
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