Business Management

If you are in any leadership capacity within any organizational structure, it behooves you to have at least a cursory understanding of Organization Behavior tenets. In other places it may be referred to Industrial Psychology or other such terms, but they all refer to how an organization behaves both in a macro and micro level. How people react individually within company settings, how people interact with one another, and how the company as a whole reacts, are all components involved in the studies of Organizational Behavior.

Dating back to Plato, where in his frustration with the Grecian leadership at the time, quite successfully described in his 'Essence of Leadership" the qualities of effective leaders and persuasive communication. Since that time many have applied the techniques of science to better describe the working environment. The goal of all of theses social sciences is to attempt to predict, explain, and control the outcome thereby generating controversy over the ethics of 'controlling' workers behavior.

Understanding these principles gives a person no more control over another any more than understanding mob psychology can help a policeman control a riot. Yet just like the policeman, a leader with understanding could predict possible outcomes when certain variables are introduced. Utilizing this knowledge along with effective communication can help bond a group into a cohesive team that will willingly move toward a common goal.

There are many modern models available to research from the Carnegie School of thought to the Arbinger's Institute where studies in self-deception are the focus. Remember that no one model is perfect and that every company must be selective in what they try to implement. Submitted here are the 7 'C's to developing a change in any corporate culture.

Commitment

Don't start any change process unless leadership is committed to the end result. There is nothing more demoralizing to a workforce than to have change imposed for the sake of change. Make sure that it is understood by everyone in leadership that there is a goal and commitment to that goal is expected and accountable.

Catalyst

What is the root cause of why leadership would want to change a corporate culture? Bad employees or bad processes. It is the difference between pruning a bush or tying it to a support to help it grow. Make sure you understand the implications before you begin.

Clarity

Describe the goal, why the goal is necessary, and what benefits are realized when the goal is achieved. Sell it, and keep on selling it.

Compatibility

Make sure that what you are trying to implement fits the organizational structure. Trying to implement LEAN manufacturing techniques in a telemarketing office is probably not a good fit. That doesn't mean that trimming non-value-added portions of a telemarketing process is not an obtainable goal, it does mean that configuring the model to fit the environment is paramount.

Change Management

Understand the change process and how it affects people. Learn to be able to identify where individuals and groups are along the change process and help them get to the next level.

Consistency

As a leader you cannot waiver from the road. You must see the goal and help others to visualize where it lies. Whether your style is militaristic (there's the hill, let's take it), or encouraging (I can see the top, we can make it, you can do it), you are the keeper of the objective. Stay the course.

Celebrate

Reward those who promote the new environment and celebrate as a whole when you reach significant milestones. The people involved will make or break the attempt, make sure they understand just how important they are to the process.

Managers who want to ensure improvement in their department will find values in metrics learning. This is a great way of hitting targets and being on top of things. Metrics are measurable components of performance. These are the things that managers should measure to know if the program or the operations department is meeting the goals. As a standard, these metrics are placed on a scorecard that is also known as the BSC or balanced scorecard. This is what managers look into during monthly or quarterly business reviews with clients. The targets are measured against the actual scores and there are baseline scores that need to be checked to see if the current processes are normal.

Managers should be aware, though, that metrics are not the same in every company. It should also be noted that it is a mistake to copy the metrics of other companies, even if the industry is the same. The issue here is that different organizations have different targets. There may be metrics that are applicable in one company but not in another.

One common example of a metric is attendance. This is a must for employees of companies that offer real-time solutions, like customer service hotlines and fast food joints. There will be no one to answer the phones or cater to companies if the employees are not around. This means that the attendance of these employees should be measured regularly and there should be a threshold as to how many absences these employees can take. In other companies that primarily deal with sales, attendance is not much of an issue because as long as employees hit their target sales or quotas, they are allowed not to go to work for their remaining days in a certain period. As a result, the weight of attendance in the overall performance of the previous company is higher than the latter.

Another common metric that companies have is CSAT or customer satisfaction. This is a metric that is commonly found in industries where there is direct communication with customers. Normally, surveys are sent to customers and the customers will answer these surveys and send them back. This becomes the venue in informing the company the areas in which it can improve on. CSAT is commonly found in the fast food industry and customer service-oriented forms, like phone hotlines. However, this metric is not that applicable in manufacturing industries.

Manufacturing industries, on the other hand, focus more on production. The performance of employees is measured by the amount of products they can produce at certain time intervals, provided that the machines are working right. Obviously, attendance is also a great factor in manufacturing industries because people will not be able to produce goods if they are absent.

And lastly, the biggest challenge in metrics learning is quality. This is practically the essence of all types of outputs. High quality is often correlated with high customer satisfaction rating and high productivity, precisely because people buy goods and services due to quality, not just the price. Managers should carefully look into this metric if they really want their businesses to succeed.

To be sure that you won't be losing everything in the early years of your business, sufficient preparation, like hiring the best people, being organized, and setting up strong and solid motive metrics should be present.

When you start a company, you must plan everything very carefully. Just like a building, foundations need to be strong in order to hold the entire structure for a long time. No matter how rough the winds may be, you can be sure of the building's stability. A young company is always easy prey for larger and older companies. Especially if your company is directly in competition with these old-timers, they will make sure they get all your customers, or worse, even buy you out.

To prevent older and larger companies from getting at you, putting up a solid defense and outsmarting them should be the first things you do. By solid defense, we mean that you do not give in easily, like losing customers. Turn customers into loyal consumers of your products and services. For sure, even if you think your competitors are almost at the brink of stomping you down to the ground, loyal customers will be your life support and their patronage will keep your company alive.

Other than making an impression and making your customers loyal to your brand, you can do a lot of strengthening at the backend of your company as well. This is your work force or your employees. If competitors are not able to penetrate and get in the front door with your customers, they can sneak in at the back and take aim at your employees. Knowing you have an outstanding line up of workers, they can "bribe" these workers to leave your company for theirs by offering attractive compensation packages. Being old and well-established companies as they are, you know they can afford that.

To remedy this possibility of pirating your employees, you resort again into making your workers loyal to your company. If you can successfully motivate your employees from the start and you engage in open communication by showing them what your plans are for the company, you just might increase your chances of keeping your workers loyal to your company. Instilling in your workers the right amount of motivation weighs heavier than a fat paycheck.

The success rate of making workers loyal and stay in your company is never 100% because there are workers who would not hesitate moving to other companies for larger compensation packages. This should be understandable, after all your employees are working in your company for money in the first place. Knowing the inevitable fact that piracy of your workers can be the most serious threat to your company, continue to organize your company further and make sure to practice excellence all the time. If this is unavoidable, then the main thing to do here is to implement quality motive metrics. This way, your employees will be motivated enough to stay loyal to your company and remain under you employ. Incentives and bonuses are definitely a must here so make sure to be ready with these.

Attaining success in retailing would not be so much of a challenge with the use of a balanced store scorecard. This tool allows retail companies to be able to integrate the principles of a Balanced Scorecard into their business strategies.

Retailing is commonly defined as the sale of goods and other merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store or small business lots, where consumers make their purchases. Purchasers from retailers can be private individuals and businesses or corporate accounts.

Usually, the price technique employed by retailers is cost-plus pricing. This is done by adding to the retailer's cost to a particular mark-up amount or percentage. Another commonly used technique is the suggested retail pricing, which involves using the price suggested by the manufacturer. To increase the efficiency of retail sales, many companies have adopted the principles of the Balanced Scorecard to achieve success in their business operations.

The BSC management approach was pioneered by David Norton and Robert Kaplan, Harvard Business School graduates. This concept seeks to strike a balance between a company's business activities and the company's performance in terms of achieving strategic goals over a certain period of time. In the context of retailing, it can be used to measure employee performance, operational efficiency, and customer satisfaction. By using numbers or numerical data, like sales figures, the BSC arranges data in such a way that managers are able to detect changes in business results, including very minor changes that could cause a significant impact in the future. Unlike other performance evaluation systems, the BSC does not only focus on traditional financial metrics, but it also takes into account other business perspectives, including the financial perspective, internal business processes perspective, innovation and learning perspective, and the customer perspective. The financial perspective is obtained through the use of financial indicators that determine progress. This perspective is that which many shareholders are most concerned of. Internal business processes perspective, on the other hand, takes into account processes, like production, sales, and logistics, and relate them to the criteria of efficiency, quality, and cost reduction. The innovation and learning perspective, meanwhile, measures anything that is important to employee development and retention as well as skills improvement. Lastly, customer perspective seeks to gain a positive customer perception of one's business.

The first step in the adoption of the BSC approach in a business organization is to create a model for a scorecard. This requires the development of a common goal that could serve as a basis for achieving success in all departmental endeavors. Moreover, key factors that are important for organizational success need to be identified. These critical success factors need to be integrated into performance evaluation systems to make all employees more aware of them. Then, the concept of BSC and a detailed explanation of how the company intends to achieve a balanced success need to be cascaded to every member of the organization. With a store scorecard, the principles of the Balanced Scorecard will be easier understood by all members of the organization regardless of their respective departments.

You may be familiar with the children's verse: "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down", with the weeble being a doll that has all it's weight at the bottom. And come what may, the doll will always return to a centered position no matter how hard it is pushed over. Imagine this in the form of a leader. Imagine what it would be like to be able to remain steadfast as a leader in the face of huge challenges. What does it take to remain grounded so that your team can perform at its best...even through the tough times?

The last decade has seen unprecedented economic success with year after year of continued growth. Leading others in organisations can be both rewarding and challenging in the good times...but what about when the going gets tough? How do you motivate, even inspire others in your organisation when recession hits, when downsizing begins. And how do you do that when your job could be on the line too? Now the time has come for coping with an economic environment where things aren't automatically going well - something we've termed as 'Grounded Leadership'.

The news headlines are pretty stark. Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England recently said "...the nice decade is behind us". Predictions abound of a global slowdown in the economy. Some organisations such as high street retailers in the UK are already beginning to cut back. It could be only a matter of time before many organisations begin to tighten their belts, to ride the rough waters of a slow-down in a bid for future success.

Resilient organisations need rugged leaders, so how can leaders continue to bring the best out in their teams, to achieve more with less with a backdrop of threatened cutbacks and downsizing? Even more challenging, how do you do all of this when you know deep down that your job could be on the line too?

First ask: Who am I being?
Imagine you're an actor in a long-standing TV soap. Your character is loved by millions of viewers and you have settled into the role...it's now become your life. And then, out of the blue, the producers decide that your character is going to meet an untimely end. How do you think you would react as a professional actor? Would it be to become 'victim' to the circumstances and let your feeling affect your performance? Would you be happy with the rest of the cast and your avid fans seeing you at your worst in the final stages? Definitely not! We know of course that true professionals would put their own feelings to one side and deliver the performance of their lives. They would be guided by the thought of the cast, crew and their loving public thinking of them for years to come in glowing admiration....their 'performance of a lifetime'. So the first place to start in being a 'grounded leader' is to ask yourself, "Who am I being, victim or the complete professional"?

Second reflect: How is the team responding?
There is no doubt that change creates emotion. What's more change in difficult times can create anxiety, even stress. Of course stress in small doses is a positive thing. For example some of the world's best presenters rely on the nerves beforehand to help them perform at their peak. There is a point however when stress and anxiety become debilitating. Once this point is reached, the effects can be all consuming and are likely to effect performance negatively, something an organisation is desperate to avoid when the tough times arrive. So how can we recognise the difference between 'healthy' levels of stress and levels that need handling?

The answer is to be on the look out for defense mechanisms. A defense mechanism is the human being's built in behaviour that provides protection against anxiety and our self-esteem. They also help us vent our feelings of angst about the situation we find ourselves in. Literally dozens of defense mechanisms have been hypothesized over the years. The help that we can get from observing defense mechanisms is that if we notice a significant increase in them in those around us, they act as an advanced warning system that tells us how people are responding to change.

Defense mechanisms work by protecting our own sense of self-esteem and well being by minimizing the incongruities between the external world and ourselves. For example, denial is one of the most common defense mechanisms we can see in ourselves. Imagine, hearing the following conversation around the coffee machine at the office in when the company experiencing tough economic conditions: "But our organisation will be OK, we've got plenty of cash assets and the management team wouldn't dream of laying people off any of their loyal staff."

It's a fair assumption that the group could be stressed or anxious and coping with it through denial. Here are some more common defense mechanisms a grounded leader will be on the lookout for when things become more challenging and anxiety creeps in. Which ones do you notice happening more often in those around you in a time of crisis? Here's the five we come across most frequently: Repression or "I'm doing everything to pretend it's not happening" Repression is the fundamental mechanism of defense. Repression is the process of keeping things out of our consciousness. If you did something last week you are utterly ashamed of, you try not to think about it and eventually may even be unable to recall doing it. Everyone uses repression, but excessive repression has a cost. That is, repression requires large amounts of psychic energy and energy tied up in this fashion is then unavailable for other, more adaptive uses. But remember that there is only so much psychic energy to go around. Sigmund Freud called these suppressing energies 'anticathexes'. As more and more anticathexes are put into place, behaviour becomes more and more constrained, controlled, and inhibited. With too many anticathexes, there's little energy left for anything else.

Denial or "Yeah, but this won't effect me"
When people are overwhelmed by a threatening reality, they often turn to denial: refusal to believe that the event took place or that something is the way it is. Consider the mother who refuses to believe that her son has been killed in an accident and acts as though he's still alive. Denial also is implicit when a child assumes a role of power while playing, thereby hiding feelings of inferiority. Denial complements repression. Both keep from awareness things that the person feels unable to cope with. The two differ in the source of the threat. Denial keeps from awareness something from the outer world, whereas repression keeps from awareness something from the inner world. What they have in common is a defense against coming to terms with change and therefore preventing the ability to embrace it and move on.

Reaction Formation or "This is the best thing ever...honest!"
One way to guard against the release of an unacceptable impulse is to make a point of emphasizing its opposite - a process termed reaction formation. For example, a team member may deal with hostile feelings towards impending changes in the organisation by repressing their true hostile feelings and replacing them with effusive, 'over the top' positive displays. Reaction formation is usually detected on the basis of the intensity of the reaction and on the basis of its appropriateness. If the person seems to "go overboard" with the behavior, or seems "driven" to engage in it at any cost, then you may be seeing reaction formation.

Projection or "They've been waiting for this opportunity"
In projection, anxiety is reduced by attributing your own unacceptable impulses, wishes and desires to someone else. We all have a tendency to assume that other people are much like we are - a kind of benign projection. But if we see something unacceptable in ourselves, projection provides a way to hide from it, while still expressing it in a distorted form. For example, if you have feelings of hostility and resentment toward others, you may deal with them by developing the belief that others are "out to get you.' Projection serves to disengage oneself from aspects of one's own feelings and actions, but it also can cause problems. It can make people behave in ways that increase the likelihood of confirming their distorted view. If a person projects his hostile feelings onto others, he may act aggressively in order to defend himself. If the victim of this aggression retaliates, the person has confirmed his faulty view that others are hostile toward him. What gets lost, of course, is the fact that he induced the hostility through his own actions.

Rationalisation or "Well under the circumstances how do you expect me to feel?"
In rationalisation the person reduces anxiety by finding a rational explanation (cause, or excuse) for doing what otherwise would be unacceptable. Rationalisation often occurs along with projection because the target of the projection often provides a basis for the rationalisation. Consider the example we just used: the person who defends himself against aggression by acting aggressively. If others are hostile (the projection), it makes perfectly good sense to act aggressively in self-defense (the rationalisation). Rationalisation can also occur in the absence of projection. After a failure, for example, rationalisation maintains your self-esteem. If you've been told that your role will no longer be needed, you may convince yourself that you were thinking of moving on from this 'dead-end' role anyway. The man who is snubbed when asking for a date may convince himself that the woman really wasn't that attractive or interesting after all!

Third share: What I'm Noticing?
Roger Schwarz's ground breaking work on transparency gives us some great advice on how to begin communicating with those around us in a way that encourages mutual learning - something that Grounded Leaders always seek to encourage. Here's a simple framework you could use to share your observations with a team member when you feel they are using defense mechanisms. It follows a simple structure:

1 Behaviour
2 Feeling
3 Consequences
4 Check

And it would sound something like this: "John, I've noticed that on a number of occasions you've said that this won't effect us in the team..." (Behaviour) "...and I'm feeling that this might be some form of denial".... (Feeling) "...the consequences of denying this situation may be that we don't recognise what it's true impact might be and work through it..." (Consequences) "...so why don't we share our thoughts on what could happen and how we could handle it in a good way, what do you think?" (Check)

One trap we've seen many leaders fall into is to treat team members in the same way irrespective of their temperament and the behaviours they are exhibiting. In fact we've also come across some models of 'reactions to change' that generalise on how people respond to changing circumstances.

Our overall guidance is that reactions to difficult times will vary hugely and the grounded leader will use self-reflection, careful observation and transparency with individuals to help them achieve reduced anxiety and higher levels of performance that starts from where each individual is.

Oil prices have been rising rapidly over the past few years and almost every operation powered by oil and anything that is related with the oil industry is affected by this crisis. This is most especially true in aviation where gasoline is an essential. Not only this, but the lack of air traffic system and the sufficient manpower are also problems that the aviation is facing. This is why the proper aviation metrics have to be implemented.

These metrics are mainly concerned with the development of solutions pertaining to operation management, with every plan of alleviating the whole system. There are actually three factors that have to do with this.

First and foremost is fuel, which is the number one concern of most people. If the general distribution and oil prices become higher, airfare prices will most likely increase, and this can have detrimental effects on the industry of air travel, particularly because consumers would be discouraged from traveling by plane. Any plans of market expansion just may be set aside due to the notion that air travel can now be considered impractical in terms of finances. In addition to that, air planning has never been this difficult as you combine factors, like the plunging of dollar, financial assumptions, and the engineering of the jet fuel transport, which are all affected by the increasing fuel prices. With a small change or difference in every digit, relative changes in airline strategies occur so as to enhance revenue.

Pilot shortage for small lifts or regional airlines is worsening as well. Skilled pilots are now hard to find because of there are some airline companies that are pressured with other commitments. If a pilot were to choose between flying the mainline to Tokyo and flying to mere domestic lands, of course, it would make sense for him to choose the mainline. This is, after all, more challenging and more fulfilling in terms of career path. However, there are not too many flights flying out to Tokyo than to domestic lands, and the more competent pilots would be the ones assigned to man these international flights. Thus, it would be harder to find competent pilots for the smaller flights instead.

The aviation department should not be too much alarmed with these predicted impending setbacks in the near future. With the implementation of metrics, carefully planned following strategies and competitive tactics can be made to prepare the aviation industry. Some of these are as follows:

1. Expansion will be put on hold until there is significant revenue gain and a more stable air traffic system is established.

2. The quality of revenue is better than the quantity of revenue. The volume of passengers might be important, but flying a few people to business locations beyond the carrier's boundaries should be considered significant as well.

3. Scrutinizing the current market to keep track of revenue is essential.

4. Block times are also examined since air routes with a lower block speed demands more crew and aircraft time as well as fuel.

These aviation metrics are now carefully discussed to ensure that airline companies still meet their goal while maintaining their operations intact.