1 - workplace politics
introduction
• Have you heard of Enterprise Rent-A-Car?• Hertz, Avis, and National Car Rental operations are much more visible at airports. Yet Enterprise owns more cars and operates in more locations than Hertz or Avis. Enterprise began operations in St. Louis in 1957, but didn’t locate at an airport until 1995. It is the largest rental car company in North America, but only 230 out of its 7,000 worldwide offices are at airports. In virtually ignoring the highly competitive airport market, Enterprise has chosen a cost leadership competitive strategy by marketing to people in need of a spare car at neighborhood locations.
• Its offices are within 15 miles of 90% of the U.S. population. Instead of locating many cars at a few high-priced locations at airports, Enterprise sets up inexpensive offices throughout metropolitan areas.
• As a result, cars are rented for 30% less than they cost at airports. As soon as one branch office grows to about 150 cars, the company opens another rental office a few miles away. People are increasingly renting from Enterprise even when their current car works fine. According to CEO Andy Taylor, “We call it a ‘virtual car.’ Small-business people who have to pick up clients call us when they want something better than their own car.”
• Why is this competitive strategy so successful for Enterprise even though its locations are now being imitated by Hertz and Avis?
• The secret to Enterprise’s success is its well-executed strategy implementation. Clearly laid out programs, budgets, and procedures support the company’s competitive strategy by making Enterprise stand out in the mind of the consumer. It was ranked on Business Week’s list of “Customer Service Champs” in both 2007 and 2008.
• When a new rental office opens, employees spend time developing relationships with the service managers of every auto dealership and body shop in the area. Enterprise employees bring pizza and doughnuts to workers at the auto garages across the country.
• Enterprise forms agreements with dealers to provide replacements for cars brought in for service. At major accounts, the company actually staffs an office at the dealership and has cars parked outside so customers don’t have to go to an Enterprise office to complete paperwork.
• One key to implementation at Enterprise is staffing—hiring and promoting a certain kind of person.
• According to COO Donald Ross, “We hire from the half of the college class that makes the upper half possible. We want athletes, fraternity types—especially fraternity presidents and social directorspeople.” These new employees begin as management trainees. Instead of regular raises, their pay is tied to branch office profits.
• Another key to implementation at Enterprise is leading—specifying clear performance objectives and promoting a team-oriented corporate culture. The company stresses promotion from within and advancement based on performance.
• Every Enterprise employee, including top executives, starts at the bottom. As a result, a bond of shared experience connects all employees and managers. Enterprise was included in Business Week’s “50 Best Places to Launch a Career” three years in a row. To reinforce a cohesive culture of camaraderie, senior executives routinely do “grunt work” at branch offices.
• Even Andy Taylor, the CEO, joins the work. “We were visiting an office in Berkeley and it was mobbed, so I started cleaning cars,” says Taylor. “As it was happening, I wondered if it was a good use of my time, but the effect on morale was tremendous.”
• Because the financial results of every branch office and every region are available to all, the collegial culture stimulates good-natured competition. “We’re this close to beating out Middlesex,” grins Woody Erhardt, an area manager in New Jersey. “I want to pound them into the ground. If they lose, they have to throw a party for us, and we get to decide what they wear.”
• This example from Enterprise Rent-A-Car illustrates how a strategy must be implemented with carefully considered programs in order to succeed. We have to discuss strategy implementation in terms of staffing and leading. Staffing focuses on the selection and use of employees. Leading emphasizes the use of programs to better align employee interests and attitudes with a new strategy.
Staffing
• The implementation of new strategies and policies often calls for new human resource management priorities and a different use of personnel. Such staffing issues can involve hiring new people with new skills, firing people with inappropriate or substandard skills, and/or training existing employees to learn new skills. Research demonstrates that companies with enlightened talent-management policies and programs have higher returns on sales, investments, assets, and equity.• This is especially important given that it takes an average of 8 days for an Tunisian company to fill a job vacancy at an average cost per hire of 4dt
• If growth strategies are to be implemented, new people may need to be hired and trained. Experienced people with the necessary skills need to be found for promotion to newly created managerial positions. When a corporation follows a growth through acquisition strategy, it may find that it needs to replace several managers in the acquired company.
• The percentage of an acquired company’s top management team that either quit or was asked to leave is around 25% after the first year, 35% after the second year, 48% after the third year, 55% after the fourth year, and 61% after five years
• In addition, executives who join an acquired company after the acquisition quit at significantly higher-than-normal rates beginning in their second year. Executives continue to depart at higher-than-normal rates for nine years after the acquisition.
• Turnover rates of executives in firms acquired by foreign firms are significantly higher than for firms acquired by domestic firms, primarily in the fourth and fifth years after the acquisition
• It is one thing to lose excess employees after a merger, but it is something else to lose highly skilled people who are difficult to replace. In a study of 40 mergers, 90% of the acquiring companies in the 15 successful mergers identified key employees and targeted them for retention within 30 days after the announcement. In contrast, this task was carried out only in one-third of the unsuccessful acquisitions.
• To deal with integration issues such as these, some companies are appointing special integration managers to shepherd companies through the implementation process.
• The job of the integrator is to prepare a competitive profile of the combined company in terms of its strengths and weaknesses, draft an ideal profile of what the combined company should look like, develop action plans to close the gap between the actuality and the ideal, and establish training programs to unite the combined company and to make it more competitive.
• To be a successful integration manager, a person should have (1) a deep knowledge of the acquiring company, (2) a flexible management style, (3) an ability to work in cross-functional project teams, (4) a willingness to work independently, and (5) sufficient emotional and cultural intelligence to work well with people from all backgrounds
• If a corporation adopts a retrenchment strategy, however, a large number of people may need to be laid off or fired (in many instances, being laid off is the same as being fired); and top management, as well as the divisional managers, needs to specify the criteria to be used in making these personnel decisions. Should employees be fired on the basis of low seniority or on the basis of poor performance?
• Sometimes corporations find it easier to close or sell off an entire division than to choose• which individuals to fire.
SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
• Selection and development are important not only to ensure that people with the right mix of skills and experiences are initially hired but also to help them grow on the job so that they might be prepared for future promotions.• Executive Succession: is the process of replacing a key top manager. The average tenure of a chief executive of a large U.S. company declined from nearly nine years in 1980 to six years in 2006.
• Given that two-thirds of all major corporations worldwide replace their CEO at least once in a five-year period, it is important that the firm plan for this eventuality. It is especially important for a company that usually promotes from within to prepare its current managers for promotion.
• For example, companies using relay executive succession, in which a candidate is groomed to take over the CEO position, have significantly higher performance than those that hire someone from the outside or hold a competition between internal candidates.
• Some of the best practices for top management succession are encouraging boards to help the CEO create a succession plan, identifying succession candidates below the top layer, measuring internal candidates against outside candidates to ensure the development of a comprehensive set of skills, and providing appropriate financial incentives.
• Prosperous firms tend to look outside for CEO candidates only if they have no obvious internal candidates.
• Firms in trouble, however, overwhelmingly choose outsiders to lead them (the best way to force a change in strategy is to hire a new CEO who has no connections to the current strategy)
Identifying Abilities and Potential
• A company can identify and prepare its people for important positions in several ways. One approach is to establish a sound performance appraisal system to identify good performers with promotion potential.
• Doug Pelino, chief talent officer at Xerox, keeps a list of about 100 managers in middle management and at the vice presidential levels who have been selected to receive special training, leadership experience, and mentorship to become the next generation of top management• A company should examine its human resource system to ensure not only that people are being hired without regard to their racial, ethnic, or religious background, but also that they are being identified for training and promotion in the same manner.
• Management diversity could be a competitive advantage in a multi-ethnic world. With more women in the workplace, an increasing number are moving into top management, but are demanding more flexible career ladders to allow for family responsibilities.
• Many large organizations are using assessment centers to evaluate a person’s suitability for an advanced position. Corporations such as AT&T, Standard Oil, IBM, Sears, and GE have successfully used assessment centers.
• Job rotation—moving people from one job to another—is also used in many large corporations to ensure that employees are gaining the appropriate mix of experiences to prepare them for future responsibilities. Rotating people among divisions is one way that a corporation can improve the level of organizational learning. General Electric routinly rotates its executives from one sector to a completely different one to learn the skills of managing in different industries.
• A set-up where individuals from diverse backgrounds, different educational qualifications and varied interests come together to work towards a common goal is called an organization.
• The employees must work in close coordination with each other and try their level best to achieve the organization’s goals.
• It is essential to manage the employees well for them to feel indispensable for the organization.• Organization management helps to extract the best out of each employee so that they accomplish the tasks within the given time frame.• Organization management binds the employees together and gives them a sense of loyalty towards the organization.
Essential Features of Organization Management
• Planning– Prepare an effective business plan. It is essential to decide on the future course of action to avoid confusions later on.– Plan out how you intend to do things.
• Organizing– Organizing refers to the judicious use of resources to achieve the best out of the employees.– Prepare a monthly budget for smooth cash flow.
• Staffing– Poor organization management leads to unhappy employees who eventually create problems for themselves as well as the organization.– Recruit the right talent for the organization.*
• Leading– The managers or superiors must set clear targets for the team members.– A leader must make sure his team members work in unison towards a common objective. He is the one who decides what would be right in a particular situation.
• Control– The superiors must be aware of what is happening around them.– Hierarchies should be well defined for an effective management.– The reporting bosses must review the performance and progress of their subordinates and guide them whenever required.• Time Management– An effective time management helps the employees to do the right thing at the right time.– Managing time effectively always pays in the long run.
• Motivation– Motivation goes a long way in binding the employees together.– Appreciating the employees for their good work or lucrative incentive schemes go a long way in motivating the employees and make them work for a longer span of time.
Management Style - Meaning and Different Types of Styles
• The art of getting employees together on a common platform and extracting the best out of them refers to effective organization management.• Management plays an important role in strengthening the bond amongst the employees and making them work together as a single unit. It is the management’s responsibility to ensure that employees are satisfied with their job responsibilities and eventually deliver their level best.• The management must understand its employees well and strive hard to fulfill their expectations for a stress free ambience at the workplace.What is Management Style ?• Every leader has a unique style of handling the employees (Juniors/Team). The various ways of dealing with the subordinates at the workplace is called as management style.• The superiors must decide on the future course of action as per the existing culture and conditions at the workplace. The nature of employees and their mindsets also affect the management style of working.
Different Management Styles
• Autocratic Style of Working– In such a style of working, the superiors do not take into consideration the ideas and suggestions of the subordinates.– The managers, leaders and superiors have the sole responsibility of taking decisions without bothering much about the subordinates.– The employees are totally dependent on their bosses and do not have the liberty to take decisions on their own.– The subordinates in such a style of working simply adhere to the guidelines and policies formulated by their bosses. They do not have a say in management’s decisions.– Whatever the superiors feel is right for the organization eventually becomes the company’s policies.– Employees lack motivation in autocratic style of working.• Paternalistic Style of Working• In paternalistic style of working, the leaders decide what is best for the employees as well as the organization.• Policies are devised to benefit the employees and the organization.• The suggestions and feedback of the subordinates are taken into consideration before deciding something.• In such a style of working, employees feel attached and loyal towards their organization.• Employees stay motivated and enjoy their work rather than treating it as a burden.• Democratic Style of Working:• In such a style of working, superiors welcome the feedback of the subordinates.• Employees are invited on an open forum to discuss the pros and cons of plans and ideas.• Democratic style of working ensures effective and healthy communication between the management and the employees.• The superiors listen to what the employees have to say before finalizing on something.
• Laissez-Faire Style of Working– In such a style of working, managers are employed just for the sake of it and do not contribute much to the organization.– The employees take decisions and manage work on their own.– Individuals who have the dream of making it big in the organization and desire to do something innovative every time outshine others who attend office for fun.– Employees are not dependent on the managers and know what is right or wrong for them.
Section II –management skills
• To be successful, there are many skills a manager needs to master. The adapted Kammy Hatnes' pyramid structure allow us to show the increasingly difficult management skills that a manager must master at each level and to also display how these management skills build on each other to help him achieve success in his management career.• The result is the Management skills pyramid. Each level of the Management Skills Pyramid is listed below.The Management Skills Pyramid, Level 1
• shows the basic skills a manager must master just to get the job done. These are the fundamentals of the management job:• Plan• Organize• Direct• ControlThe Management Skills Pyramid, Level 2• After you have mastered the basic skills in level 1, you need to move on and develop your skills on Level 2 of the Management Skills Pyramid. These are the management skills that you use to develop your staff. There are many specific skills required, and these are discussed in Level 2 of the Management Skills Pyramid, but they are grouped into these categories:• Motivation• Training and Coaching• Employee Involvement
The Management Skills Pyramid, Level 3
• When you have become skilled in developing your staff, it's time to focus on Level 3 of the Management Skills Pyramid, improving your own development. These management skills are grouped as:• Self Management and• Time Management• Time management gets its own category because it is so important to your success in all the other skills.
The Management Skills Pyramid, Top Level
• The peak of the Management Skills Pyramid, the single skill that will help you the most in developing success in your management career, is leadership.• As you develop your skill as a leader, as you make the transition from manager to leader, you will achieve the success you truly want in your management career.Conclusion
• You can probably become a manager without having all of these skills, but you’ll need all of them to be really successful and to get promoted to higher levels of management. • For every one of these skills, there are various levels of performance. No one expects a new manager to be superior at every one of these skills, but you should be aware of all of them, and you should do everything you can to learn more about each skill. Some of that learning will come through education. But much of the learning will come through experience — trial and error.
• Just learn as much as you can about each skill, take nothing for granted, and focus on doing the very best that you can do. Learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them. And ask for feedback — in many cases you won’t know what you could do better unless someone tells you.
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