Candor - the Biggest Dirty Little Secret in Business

can·dor  (kndr)

n.

Frankness, honesty, or sincerity of expression; openness.

The biggest dirty little secret in business is the lack of candor.  It blocks smart ideas, quick action, and it’s absence as a cultural norm prevents good people from contributing everything they've got. People often don't communicate in a straightforward manner; they don't put forward the kind of ideas that might stimulate real debate. Instead, they withhold comments or criticism, they sugarcoat bad news, and they keep things to themselves in order to maintain appearances. Lack of candor permeates every aspect of business, and yet it is absolutely damaging.

A better Approach to Vendor Evaluation

Vendor evaluation is often inadequate. Typically, pricing and systems criteria are given greater weight in the decision versus people and performance management.  In some cases, vendor selection is based on past business relationships rather than a pragmatic evaluation of capabilities. 

The following vendor evaluation protocol provides guidance regarding the key areas to consider in vendor evaluation and a point scale for weighing each component of a vendor’s capabilities. Companies can compare vendors objectively by rating each vendor’s capability in each area and weighting according to the percentages and then adding up the total.

The Supplier Risk Scorecard

The supplier risk scorecard provides valuable guidance for supply base rationalization decisions and maintaining the health of core suppliers, and is useful to a company that evaluates its dependency on a given supplier, as well as the financial solvency, and innovation investment, customer concentration of its key suppliers.

Rather that evaluating suppliers using aditional supplier evaluation dimensions such as on-time delivery, production yield, and price/ value relationship, which ignore the inherent “riskiness” of the supplier, the scorecard evaluates vendors' financial solvency.

Dependence on suppliers is based on expenditure over time, not just current transactions. Financial viability of suppliers includes considerations of their liquidity, capital structure, and cash flow. Suppliers’ revenue concentration should be monitored to understand suppliers’ dependence on Delta and other large customers.

Project Risk Management

Risk Management Plan

There are four stages to risk management planning:

1. Risk Identification
2. Risk Quantification
3. Risk Response
4. Risk Monitoring and Control

Risk Identification

There are different kinds of risk:

• business risks
• generic risks

Risks need to be identified and defined: what are their causes and will be their impact?

Risk quantification

Risks need to be quantified in two dimensions: impact and probability.  Prioritization of risks can be done using a matrix that combines probability and impact.

Risk response

There are four things that can be done in response to risk: 

1. Avoid
2. Transfer
3. Mitigate
4. Accept

A risk response plan should include a strategy and action items.  This means a who, what, when, where, why plan needs to be developed.

Risk control

It's important to continually monitor the status of risks so that it will be known if they have turned into a problem.  It's also important to keep track of the effectiveness of risk mitigation steps, and to follow risks so that it is known when they have passed and no longer represent danger.

From a White Paper by Project Perfect: http://bit.ly/cNOHvb

What are the Basics of Good Managing?

The first basic skill of good management is to select good people. When you hire, you are selecting a human being with innate patterns of memory, learning, emotion, and overall behavior. Know what talents you need in a new team member. Ask open ended questions and listen for specifices. The best predictor of future behavior is frequent past behavior.

The second basic skill of good management is defining clear expectations. Confusion hampers efficiency, focus, teamwork, as well as pride and job satisfaction. Despite consensus on the need for for clarity, research shows that less than 50% of employees claim to know what is expected of them at work. 

It's managers who make the difference between clarity and the lack thereof. Good managers begin bringing clarity to the virtually every employee encounter. They do this tactfully, so as not to suggest distrust or disappointment.

The third basic skill of good management involves praise and recognition. Every behavior has a consequence, which will be positive or negative, immediate or future, and certain or uncertain. The least powerful combination of these is a consequence that is negative, future, and uncertain. The most powerful is the exact opposite: positive, immediate, and certain.

To be the most effective as a manager, we must recognize excellence immediately, and praise it. As obvious as tis may seem research shows that less than a third of employees report that they frequently receive recognition for their work. This either means that they either do not often do excellent work, or that their excellent work was not recognized. Neither of these situations is a good thing.

Praise is a creative act, it is a cause of good behavior. Excellence is the result of practice and incremental improvement.  Celebrating these gains is a part of the drive toward excellence.

The fourth skill of good management is showing care for your people. Research studies show that employees are more productive when they feel that someone at work cares about them. This is a causal link; employees who feel cared about are less likey to call in sick, have on-the-job accidents, file workers' compensation claims, steal from the company, or quit, and they are more likely to advocate for the company to family and friends.

Mastery of these skills won't guarantee that you are a great manager, but doing so will assure that you are a good one. These skills will come naturally to some people, but will be more of a challenge to others. Knowing what you need to do to achieve excellence as a manager is the first step in winning the battle.

Adapted from: Buckingham, Marcus, The One Thing You Need to Know ...About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success. New York: Free Press, 2005, pp 73-125.

Eight Leadership Skills for succeeding in the 21st Century

Embrace change.  

Know your purpose in life and the values that support it.

Expect the best while preparing for the worst.

Act decisively.

Learn from every experience.

Laugh often and enjoy the journey.

Celebrate the small victories.

Help others to succeed.

Based on a white paper by Mark Sanborn: http://bit.ly/a9OGhF

The Twelve Cardinal Sins of ERP Implementation

The biggest issue in ERP use is implementation failure.  This often comes about as a result of the Twelve Cardinal Sins of ERP Implementation, which are:

1. Lack of top management commitment
2. Inadequate requirements definition
3. Poor ERP package selection
4. Inadequate resources
5. Resistance to change/lack of buy-in
6. Miscalculation of time and effort
7. Misfit of application software with business processes
8. Unrealistic expectations of benefits and ROI
9. Inadequate training and education
10. Poor project design and management
11. Poor communications
12. Ill-advised cost-cutting

There are numerous similarities of this list with the essence of John P. Kotter's book "Leading Change" (http://bit.ly/bRwhJ1). To succeed in implementing any kind of major change in an organization there are several requirements. It's necessary to establish a powerful guiding coalition and to assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort. A vision of this change must be created and communicated, others must be empowered other to act on this vision so that obstacles can be removed and small victories achieved. These improvements must then be consolidated and new approaches institutionalized.

Too often, change is dictated by executives who have little or no understanding of the processes underlying their business. Without this understanding, there is little chance that a chosen solution will represent an improvement, and in a worst case, it could be a disaster. Regardless of of the outcome, if the people doing the work of the business don't believe in the proposed change, it is destined to fail. The most important part of implementing change is to get the buy-in of the workers and give them the support that they need so that they can succeed. This means resources, training, and rewards for the extra effort required to bring about change successfully.

Adapted from a White Paper by Rockford Consulting

http://bit.ly/aigWub