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This article explains the role of an operation manager.

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The operation managers duties depend on the structure and size of the company -- but generally, the operations manager budgets and manages resources.

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This infographic shows the role of a production manager.

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This article goes into the differences between data and information. It is very thorough and give a lot of good information.

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Data vs. Information - Differences in Meaning

Data are simply facts or figures - bits of information, but not information itself. When data are processed, interpreted, organized, structured or presented so as to make them meaningful or useful, they are called information. Information provides context for data.

For example, a list of dates - data - is meaningless without the information that makes the dates relevant (dates of holiday).

"Data" and "information" are intricately tied together, whether one is recognizing them as two separate words or using them interchangeably, as is common today. Whether they are used interchangeably depends somewhat on the usage of "data" - its context and grammar.

Examples of Data and Information

The history of temperature readings all over the world for the past 100 years is data. If this data is organized and analyzed to find that global temperature is rising, then that is information.

The number of visitors to a website by country is an example of data. Finding out that traffic from the U.S. is increasing while that from Australia is decreasing is meaningful information.

Often data is required to back up a claim or conclusion (information) derived or deduced from it. For example, before a drug is approved by the FDA, the manufacturer must conduct clinical trials and present a lot of data to demonstrate that the drug is safe.

"Misleading" Data

Because data needs to be interpreted and analyzed, it is quite possible - indeed, very probable - that it will be interpreted incorrectly. When this leads to erroneous conclusions, it is said that the data are misleading. Often this is the result of incomplete data or a lack of context. For example, your investment in a mutual fund may be up by 5% and you may conclude that the fund managers are doing a great job. However, this could be misleading if the major stock market indices are up by 12%. In this case, the fund has underperformed the market significantly.

Video Explaining the Differences

Etymology

"Data" comes from a singular Latin word, datum, which originally meant "something given." Its early usage dates back to the 1600s. Over time "data" has become the plural of datum.

"Information" is an older word that dates back to the 1300s and has Old French and Middle English origins. It has always referred to "the act of informing," usually in regard to education, instruction, or other knowledge communication.

Grammar and Usage

While "information" is a mass or uncountable noun that takes a singular verb, "data" is technically a plural noun that deserves a plural verb (e.g., The data are ready.). The singular form of "data" is datum - meaning "one fact" - a word which has mostly fallen out of common use but is still widely recognized by many style guides (e.g., The datum proves her point.).

In common usage that is less likely to recognize datum, "data" has become a mass noun in many cases and takes on a singular verb (e.g., The data is ready.). When this happens, it is very easy for "data" and "information" to be used interchangeably (e.g., The information is ready.).

References

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What's the difference between Data and Information? There is a subtle difference between data and information. Data are the facts or details from which information is derived. Individual pieces of data are rarely useful alone. For data to become information, data needs to be put into context....

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This shows how managers can utilize data and become more effective. Data is becoming a large part of our world and managers need to know how to utilize it.

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Big data analysis is helping organizations better analyze their customers, predict the competitive landscape and suss out emerging trends before they go mainstream -- all of which helps companies maintain a competitive edge. But turn the lens inward, and big data can also be a competitive advantage by helping managers sharpen focus on hiring, retention, compensation and developing top talent.

Which candidate should I hire? Who should I promote? Who's going to leave the company within the next few months? Does John or Jane deserve that raise they asked for? These are questions managers regularly ask themselves. Their answers are typically based on their gut feeling instead of hard evidence. But big data is changing all that for managers, putting information at their fingertips and allowing for more scientifically sound decision-making. "Ultimately, decisions like this should be made on quantifiable data -- but people aren't that great at decision making and are swayed by factors they shouldn't be. Thankfully, with the right statistical techniques, you can predict to a certain extent how people will behave and base decisions on that -- it gives you a slight advantage over guessing, but even a small advantage can make a huge impact," says Dave Weisbeck, CSO for workplace analytics firm Visier.

Reducing turnover

Turnover is expensive -- recruiting, hiring, onboarding and training a new employee can cost upwards of 1.25 times their salary. That means businesses must make smart hire, and retain them in order to get a decent return on their investment.

Predicting why and when talent will leave can provide a lot of insight and save firms a substantial amount of money. "Organizations want to keep the talent they have, and by using historical data to make predictions about the future, you can often figure out what patterns are behind turnover. When people start leaving, it often happens in waves -- turnover contagion. Big data and savvy analysts and engineers can write algorithms that find these patterns and pinpoint the cause -- who's the manager? How long is their commute? When's the last time they got a raise? When was their last promotion? Then, you can put plans in place to mitigate those factors. Give that rock star a raise. Let them work from home a couple days a week. Have a talk with that manager," says Weisbeck.

Leadership development

Big data and analytics also help organizations make sound decisions around succession planning, career progression and leadership development by tracking performance, success and other metrics. Who should step into a role when an employee does leave? What will offer the team the best chance of success based on current performance? "Our customers are using these analytics to plan and build the next generation of their leadership and make decisions about where to place their best and brightest talent," says Weisbeck.

But analytics can also help determine what motivates great talent and what initiatives in talent development, hiring and retention are delivering the greatest ROI beyond simply increasing compensation and promotions. "Sure, if you throw money at your people, maybe they'll stay. But what else is driving them? Because we have around 60 years of payroll data, we can correlate with data points like productivity rates and make correlations and predications about things like how productive employees are once they've come back from a vacation. We can track their productivity and match it up with the dates they were at work and see how that is related. As a manager, I can use patterns like this do help me decide how to incentivize employees," says Marc Rind, vice president of product development and chief data scientist at ADP.

A caveat, though: While using analytics can help cut costs by determining where organizations can get the biggest bang for the proverbial buck, they don't eliminate the need for more personal feedback from employees, says Rind. "You always need to take into account the background and the context, and by all means don't discount workforce surveys and employee polling -- your workforce wants and needs to have its voice heard. But when it comes to seeing these patterns and being able to measure return on investment, workforce analytics is powerful," he says.

Measuring Diversity

As diversity becomes even more of a competitive differentiator, companies are doing all they can to track and manage recruiting, hiring and retention initiatives. Workforce analytics can help figure out what's working and what isn't. "For one of our clients, the big question was why, if they're hiring a very diverse staff, why there wasn't greater diversity overall? What they found when they looked at the data was they were hiring, sure, but these people were leaving. They narrowed the problem down to three departments, tracked what the issues were with retention and were able to fix them," says Weisbeck.

Copyright © 2015 IDG Communications, Inc.

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How data analytics helps managers be more effective

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Big data analysis is helping organizations better analyze their customers, predict the competitive landscape and suss out emerging trends before they go mainstream -- all of which helps companies maintain a competitive edge. But turn the lens inward, and big data can also be a competitive advantage by helping managers sharpen focus on hiring, retention, compensation and developing top talent.

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This is an excellent research paper (White Paper) on the role of power in leadership.  It is a study on how effective leaders use their power and statistical findings of demographics personal thoughts.

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This really shows the difference between having power vs control. It is important to not try to control employees since this can lower morale and cause resentment.

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Many leaders, especially those new to leadership roles, make the mistake of wanting control over the actions people take rather than power over the people.

The rationale for this preference is different for different people.

A supervisor I managed many years ago was promoted to a management role on the other side of the country. I called him a month or so after his promotion to see how he was settling in being a manager rather than a supervisor.

He said he was finding in difficult. Supervisors would not do what he wanted and no matter how many times he demonstrated how things should be done, they did not comply. No matter how much he showed his displeasure they might conform for a while and then they would revert to "the way they had always done it".

I enquired whether he had asked for their views on the changes he wanted to make. He said, "Yes". I asked him what he did with their advice. He said, "I explained to them why it was wrong and told them they needed to change. I then showed some of the guys on the floor what they should be doing too."

"What did they do with your requested changes", I further enquired.

"Nothing", came the reply.

I then enquired how he would have felt if I came into his area when I was his manager and started to tell him what he was doing wrong. "I would have not liked it", he commented.

"What about it would you not have liked?" I probed further.

"I would not have liked you telling me what to do and doing my job for me", he sighed the reply.

He was trying to control what they did and what their subordinates did rather than exert influence over them.

Power over a person means that we can influence what the other person does.

It is much better to have and to cultivate power than to try to exercise direct control. For one thing, if, as a manager, you are directly controlling what everyone does then you will be limited to running a very small organisation well or a larger organisation badly. Span of control and twenty-four hours in a day does not permit anything else to happen.

So if power over people is better, how do we as individuals build our power base and as managers help others to build their power?

Legitimate power can be increased by changing reporting lines, getting higher levels of authority and, sadly with some people, by changing titles and the trappings of office.

What is termed "Reward Power" can be increased simply by doing things for people. The sense of obligation that exists to do something to deserve the "reward" freely given is high in most people. In any new organisation where I am going to spend a lot of time, I know to make life easy for the personal assistants of the key people. Being flexible, polite and engaging builds a bank of rewards that one day, in most cases, will be redeemable.

Expert power can be changed by taking on extra learning and volunteering for cross functional projects to get greater breadth of expertise or by concentrating on a niche to get greater depth of expertise.

When I had my first ever serious discussion with a boss about my career development, he showed me a matrix with six boxes in it. Each box had a broad level of competence he wanted to "cross-off" to increase his likelihood of influencing Human Resources and senior management to progress his career. The jobs he had chased since joining the company were those jobs which ticked off a specific box. He was not seeking increased legitimate power in his career development; he was seeking increased expert power.

Confident, assertive (not aggressive) people have referent power. In my experience, leaders who lack expert and or referent power are more likely to want to control than influence.

My wife of more than thirty years is a good example. (I have to be careful here, she proof reads my articles).

Going back thirty years ago, my wife did not have much legitimate power and although she built rapport readily, by working hard at it, she did not have referent power. She needed, however, to have control to feel comfortable and relaxed about her daily life. She did not like change.

She also had a great sense of right and wrong and when leading groups wanted to control what they did to make sure they did what was "right". When things were done which were not "right" she fell back automatically to legitimate, and at times, coercive power.

Fast forward thirty years and I increasingly see a powerful woman who relies on expert power occasionally and referent power most of the time.

"What changed?" you might asked. The answer is always many things but one example of how people can develop referent power and should be encouraged to develop referent power involves her work with choirs.

She always played music and loved singing. On our return to Australia some eight years ago she agreed to take on the administrative/leadership role of a choir she had joined. She had some experience in Fiji and in London of leading groups and felt she could cope.

Using the most severe yardstick, she didn't. She hated cold calling looking for gigs. She did not delegate much. She did not like being directed by the head office in Canberra. She was not in control of the choir and did not like it. She resigned. She desperately wanted to sing but was upset enough that she left the choir for a short while. Some time after rejoining she was asked to take on the role again.

She made a better fist of the job this time. She delegated more, she forced herself to cold call looking for gigs and began to realise that it was not so hard once she had a "script" of the things to say. The control issue though had not gone away completely.

The remarkable moment came when she was asked to conduct the choir, the choirmaster of the time having moved overseas. She found something she was passionate about. She found something that did indeed give her high doses of power, legitimate power. After all, a conductor conducts and a choir follows.

Within weeks, she was transformed. The legitimate power had morphed into referential power. She was consulting with the choir members, innovating to make life easier for them, making choir more fun and challenging them as individuals and as a choir but knowing when to take a step back when the change is too much.

She now conducts three choirs a week as her reputation has spread. She is confident and caring and leads the people in her choirs to do things they thought they could not.

The key was to find something she was passionate about. Leaders with referent power have one thing in common above all; Passion!

My wife no longer seeks to control the choir or Canberra directly. She allows the passion for what she does to flow through in all of her choir activities. She now has the kind of power and control she could only have dreamt of through exercising control alone.

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Many leaders, especially those new to leadership roles, make the mistake of wanting control over the actions people take rather than power over the people. The rationale for ...

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These are excellent strategies for motivating employees today. Using a combination of these techniques will help the workplace environment and help you have happier employees.

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Businesses across the globe face the growing challenge of workforce retention and boosting employee engagement, while at the same time staying focused on results. Keeping employees happy while holding them accountable seem like mutually exclusive goals, but not according to David Hassell.

Hassell is the CEO of , a leading employee performance management software company that has grown considerably over the past five years by creating a culture that focuses on granting trust, being transparent, being willing to be held and hold others accountable, and embracing freedom and flexibility. He believes when you build an environment where people have the space to be their best selves, they are self-motivated and accountable. He shares five tips on how create that type of environment in your company.

Some leaders equate accountability with micromanagement. They think the only way to ensure results is watching employees like a hawk. But that command-and-control style of management produces fear, which never results in true accountability, Hassell says.

"Intimidation doesn't solicit authentic accountability, and any sense of responsibility born of fear won't last long. Sure, people will get their work done, but it isn't self-motivated. They'll only perform to the point where they won't incur your wrath," Hassell explains.

Intimidation also stifles creativity in the workplace. Hassell says while an employee who is worried about his or her performance may strive to do better, they'll also be stressed out and frustrated from perpetual fear, which "locks up the flow of creative ideas and lowers motivation."

Employees should be committed to their jobs from a place of desire, not fear. "Fear can motivate, but it will never inspire people to be more engaged and show up as accountable, reliable people," he adds.

One way to ensure you're not leading with fear is by trusting your employees. Trust is the center of accountability and the core of a healthy company culture. It leads to self-motivated engagement, instead of fear-driven motivation. Some studies show more autonomy leads to better employee performance.

"As the leader of an organization, your primary job is to communicate the vision, give people the information, tools and resources to march toward it, then get out of the way," Hassell shares. "Not only will getting out of your staff's way allow them to be as productive as possible, it will also allow you to focus on your responsibility to drive the company forward strategically."

The workplace moves quickly today, and employees can become confused by changing priorities and goals. It's difficult to hold workers accountable if you don't clearly explain expectations and update them regularly as projects and responsibilities shift.

"Without well-articulated goals, employees quickly get frustrated, and frustrated employees stare longingly at the exit sign," Hassell explains.

He suggests managers have regular conversations with their teams to let them know what's expected of them individually and collectively. "Meet weekly to realign everyone around their high level objectives. Give and receive regular feedback so expectations remain clear. If you wait until an employee's annual performance review to discuss accountability issues, you're way behind the curve."

No one likes to have tough conversations about performance in the workplace-not employees and not managers either. But those conversations around poor performance are a part of accountability. Your move? Accentuate the positives.

Employees know when they're falling short of goals. They don't need a tongue-lashing; they need support. "Positive reinforcement and constant support work better than intimidation or fear of being fired," Hassell says. "When employees know their manager supports them, they're more likely to be fully engaged in their daily tasks."

It's also important to have those conversations when employees are doing well. Highlighting strengths and offering compliments and rewards fuels productivity and creativity and increases engagement.

When leaders apply the preceding tips, it creates an environment where employees are more likely to grant trust to their leadership. When there is mutual trust between employees and managers, there can be transparency, vulnerability, and authenticity.

Leaders can model these values by holding themselves accountable. "A leader willing to say, 'I dropped the ball on this initiative' welcomes the same candor from everyone else at the company," Hassell says.

Mutual trust also improves communication between managers and employees. "By regularly asking your team questions, you invite them to communicate their big wins, their innovative ideas, and the places where they're stuck. You instill a sense of ownership in your talented team," Hassell says.

Having those types of conversations regularly creates a safe environment in which accountability doesn't seem like a burden, but rather a support mechanism.

Ultimately, your business can get the results it desires without throwing carrots around the office or using sticks to prod people into action. It just takes the right kind of accountability. He concludes, "By giving and receiving regular feedback in a culture that highly values trust and accountability, people will naturally show up more engaged, empowered, and driven to do their best."

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Motivate Your Employees With This Proven Strategy (And Eliminate Carrots And Sticks)

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Businesses across the globe face the growing challenge of workforce retention and boosting employee engagement, while at the same time staying focused on results. Keeping employees happy while holding them accountable seem like mutually exclusive goals, but not according to David Hassell.

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This article by LinkdIn shows the importance of motivated employees. The author shows how managers can attract better talent and help morale by motivating their employees.

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The ability to do work and willingness to do work both affect the efficiency of a person. The ability to do work is obtained with the help of education and training and willingness to do work is obtained with the help of motivation.

Willingness is more important in comparison to ability. For example, a person is highly educated and he is recruited on this very basis. But it is not essential that he will do outstanding work.

He shall have to be motivated to do good work. This is possible only through

Motivation. Therefore, motivation improves efficiency. The efficiency of a

Person is reflected through increase in productivity and decrease in costs.
2) Helps to Change Negative or Indifferent Attitudes of Employees:
Some employees of an organisation have a negative attitude. They always think that doing more work will not bring any credit. A Mentor uses various techniques to change this attitude.
3) Reduction in Employee Turnover:
The reputation of an organisation is affected by the employee turnover. This creates a lot of problems for the managers. A lot of time and money go waste in repeatedly recruiting employees and giving them education and training.

Only motivation can save an organisation from such wastage. Motivated people work for a longer time in the organisation and there is a decline in the rate of turnover.

4) Leads to stability of work force

Stability of workforce is very important from the point of view of reputation and goodwill of a concern. The employees can remain loyal to the enterprise only when they have a feeling of participation in the management. The skills and efficiency of employees will always be of advantage to employees as well as employees. This will lead to a good public image in the market which will attract competent and qualified people into a concern. As it is said, "Old is gold" which suffices with the role of motivation here, the older the people, more the experience and their adjustment into a concern which can be of benefit to the enterprise.

From the above discussion, we can say that motivation is an internal feeling which can be understood only by Mentor since he is in close contact with the employees. Needs, wants and desires are inter-related and they are the driving force to act. These needs can be understood by the Mentor and he can frame motivation plans accordingly. We can say that motivation therefore is a continuous process since motivation process is based on needs which are unlimited. The process has to be continued throughout.

We can summarize by saying that motivation is important both to an individual and a business. Motivation is important to an individual as:

1. Motivation will help him achieve his personal goals.

2. If an individual is motivated, he will have job satisfaction.

3. Motivation will help in self-development of individual.

4. An individual would always gain by working with a dynamic team.

Similarly, motivation is important to a business as:

1. The more motivated the employees are, the more empowered the team is.

2. The more is the team work and individual employee contribution, more profitable and successful is the business.

3. During period of amendments, there will be more adaptability and creativity.

4. Motivation will lead to an optimistic and challenging attitude at work place.

5) Helps to Reduce Absenteeism in the Organisation:
In some of the organisations, the rate of absenteeism is high. There are many causes for this-poor work conditions, poor relations with colleagues and superiors, no recognition in the organisation, insufficient reward, etc. A Mentor removes all such deficiencies and motivates the employees. Motivated employees do not remain absent from work as the workplace becomes a source of joy for them.

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Why Motivation is important in an organization

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1) Improves Performance Level: The ability to do work and willingness to do work both affect the efficiency of a person. The ability to do work is obtained with the help of education and training and willingness to do work is obtained with the help of motivation.

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These are leadership styles that Forbes is predicting will shape the business world in years to come.

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There's no "right" way to be a leader. Everyone who steps into a management or executive role has a different style of motivating and guiding people, and effective leadership means finding the way that works best for both you and your team.

Good leaders also know when it's time to adjust their approach, and are able to adapt to the ever-changing demands of the workforce. We asked 14 members of to share their insights on the biggest and most influential leadership and management trends of 2018.
1.Encouraging All Team Members To Be Brand Ambassadors
Leaders are starting to recognize that every employee is an opportunity to provide the market insights into the culture, quality and standards of the organization. By leveraging social media, particularly LinkedIn, every employee can become an ambassador. Those messages can be hugely amplified by the employees. It's effectively free PR but more powerful, because it's authentic and believable. - Tyron Giuliani, Selling Made Social
2.Investing In Human Capital Development
Leaders and companies will recognize the long-term benefit of focusing on human capital development. Taking a vested interest in helping employees thrive in all areas of their lives (not just work), will create more engagement, productivity and overall happier employees. - MJ Impastato, H2H Systems
3.Increasing Emphasis On Empathetic Leadership
Value-driven Gen Y and Gen Z talent will continue to leave command-and-control cultures for collaborative workplaces. The value of leadership empathy will be sky-high in 2018. The ability to understand, relate to and be sensitive to employees, colleagues and communities will be paramount. We will see an even greater emphasis on listening, relating and coaching to drive effective leadership. - Loren Margolis, Training & Leadership Success LLC
4.Focusing On Individual Growth
With so much focus on diversity and inclusion, we may have overlooked the value and power of separation. I say 2018 will be the year of individual growth. The steady stream of dramatic events in 2017 have forced us all to ask some tough questions about life, and I think many will turn to their employers for help and support in clarifying one's purpose and how to actualize one's full potential. - Derrick Bass, Jr., Clarity Provoked
5.Leading By Actions And Examples
Leaders have long gotten away with vocally supporting policies and procedures, but their actions say otherwise. That tide will turn. With so much light being shed on unacceptable behavior in all workplaces, leaders will begin to understand they need to not only hold their teams accountable for proper behavior, but hold themselves accountable as well. - Lesha Reese, Lesha Reese, LLC
6.Turning Organizations Into A Truly Customer-Centric Business
While leaders have been discussing being "customer-centered" or "customer-focused" for a while, in 2018 it's time to walk the talk. With robust customer feedback mechanisms and reporting, there is simply no excuse for not adapting to what customers really want today. Customers are no longer loyal to a brand, they're loyal to experiences that work for them. Talking is not enough. It's time to act. - Jeannie Walters, 360Connext
7.Embracing 'Work-Life Blend'
Industry leaders, such as Apple and Amazon, are recognizing how working from home helps acquire and retain top talent. But this is just one part of the equation. In 2018, companies will recognize that work-life blend is key. They won't just opt for bean bag chairs and ping pong tables, but create jobs and schedules that allow staff to better blend their work and lives to reduce burnout and increase output. - Kyle Elliott, Kyle Elliott Consulting
8.Paying Attention To Internal Factors That Are In Their Control
To make better decisions, we crave certainty. However, smart leaders I work with are recognizing nothing's certain in the outside world. In 2018, the winners will be those who redirect their attention to what's happening inside their organizations, getting clear on who they want to be and what success looks like. Focusing first on what's in their control will help them make decisions that matter. - Darcy Eikenberg, Red Cape Revolution
9.Taking Workplace Sexual Harassment More Seriously
The end of 2017 saw a rise in the #MeToo movement. I believe that more employers will be less tolerant of sexual harassment in the workplace and will work to deal with claims more seriously to set the tone for their organization. - LaKesha Womack, Womack Consulting Group
10.Taking A Stand On Social And Political Issues
Last year was a watershed year for leaders articulating a point of view on sociopolitical issues such as DACA, diversity and inclusion, immigration and refugees. Remaining quiet or staying out of the fray is no longer an option. In 2018, we will see a big emphasis on C-suite leaders developing their ability to be ambassadors for the values of their companies. New recruits will demand to know. - Shoma Chatterjee, ghSMART
11.Proactively Elevating And Retaining Women Leaders
It may come as no surprise, but one of the major leadership/management issues for 2018 will likely involve proactive efforts to elevate or retain women leaders. Another likely trend will be developing new, creative strategies for retaining skilled staff. Low unemployment and a lack of skilled workers is expected to continue to be a challenge for businesses in 2018. - Rick Gibbs, Insperity
12.Implementing Agile Talent
With the rise in freelancers and remote work, companies will be moving more towards the implementation of policies and procedures to work with agile talent. Organizations will need to train their managers to effectively onboard and utilize the agile talent to complete projects more efficiently while maintaining a strong organizational culture. - Manpreet Dhillon, Veza
13.Having An Objective Outsider
Many companies are great at in-house training and coaching, and there is great value in working in the same environment as your coach or mentor. However, it's oftentimes difficult to be objective when you are seeing the same people every day. Your perception gets clouded and it becomes hard to be impartial around team challenges or feedback. Having an independent outsider helps all gain clarity. - Frances McIntosh, Intentional Coaching LLC
14.Promoting Continuous Education
As the business landscape persistently grows in competitive intensity, every organizational member must be smarter. Therefore, continuous learning will be at the forefront of management's agenda to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. Learning will not be confined to formal training performed within the business. Learning will extend to a growing number of online micro-learning platforms. - Steven Maranville, Maranville Enterprises--The Venture Creation Corporation

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14 Leadership Trends That Will Shape Organizations In 2018

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There's no "right" way to be a leader. Everyone who steps into a management or executive role has a different style of motivating and guiding people, and effective leadership means finding the way that works best for both you and your team.

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This author shows some of the issues todays leaders face and ways to overcome them.

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In a series of panel interviews at our Kravis Leadership Institute, we asked some high-level leaders from a variety of sectors to name the leadership challenges that young people will face in the near and distant future. Here are their top five.

1. Electronic Communication/Virtual Teams. This is already happening. Much of teamwork today takes place through electronic communication via videoconferences, shared documents, text/email, etc. Moving forward, this will increase. Many teams may rarely or never meet face-to-face, doing most of their work via electronic communication.

2. Globalization. Our leaders emphasized the importance of being "culturally intelligent " and culturally adaptable. They mentioned the importance of learning about cultural rules, business norms, and proper etiquette. "It is important to study the culture you are working in before you travel, and during your time there," said one of our international executives.

3. Internet Over-Dependence. One of our leaders said that easy access to online data can be an unfortunate crutch that can lead to a decline in leaders' problem-solving skills. Internet search engines should not be a substitute for creative thinking and problem-solving.

4. Information Overload. Several leaders suggested that we all need to learn how to manage information overload. "We are overcome with information - it's like drinking from a fire hose," said one leader. "We need to learn how to manage it all and how to recognize what's important and relevant. Moreover, being able to store and easily access important information is critical, so management systems need to be in place and used regularly.

Finally, several of our panelists mentioned the importance of not over-relying on electronic communication and taking the time to meet with key constituents and collaborators face-to-face. "Get coffee together," said one executive. Another said, "It's important to connect directly - to break bread together and truly get to know one another at the personal level."

I want to thank the members of the Kravis Leadership Institute Advisory Board members for these important insights.

Follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/ronriggio

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5 Top Leadership Challenges for Today's World

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In a series of panel interviews at our Kravis Leadership Institute, we asked some high-level leaders from a variety of sectors to name the leadership challenges that young people will face in the near and distant future. Here are their top five. 1. Electronic Communication/Virtual Teams. This is already happening.

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This shows the differences between leading and managing. Not every manager is a leader and not every leader is a manager.

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Leaders influence. Managers direct. While it may not be that black and white, leaders generally do focus on what matters and why as managers focus on how. Both use different forms of influence and direction at different times. But leaders have a bias to influencing by inspiring and enabling through advice and counsel while managers have a bias to command and control.

Coca-Cola's Doug Ivester was crystal clear on the difference. Sometimes he'd come to us and say,

This is your decision to make. I'd like to give you my thoughts as input.

Since he was the CEO, we always considered his thoughts. Most of the time we did things the way he suggested. Sometimes we disagreed. We quickly learned that going back to the CEO and telling him that we decided he didn't know what he was talking about did not make for pleasant meetings. But it did work when we went back to him and said,

Wanted to follow up on the decision we made on this subject. After we talked to you, we did some more digging and uncovered five things that you could not have known about. Given those new findings, we decided to go a different direction than what you had suggested.

He was fine with that.

Other times he'd say,

See these stripes. I am the CEO of this company. I'm going to give you some direction which you will follow.

It was extraordinarily helpful to know when he was giving us input for us to consider in our decision and when he was giving us no choice but to follow his direction.
Decision versus input
The more companies I help with their executive onboarding and team onboarding, the more I'm becoming convinced that clarifying decisions versus input solves a whole host of other problems.

The most important thing for any two people to clarify as they are working together is which of them is going to make which decisions at any point in time so they know when they should be deciding and when they should be providing input into the others' decision.
Decision versus input for CEOs and Boards
CEOs and boards are a case in point. It's important for all the players to be clear on when the board is deciding versus advising and when the CEO is deciding and informing versus recommending.

At the risk of being overly simplistic, in general, for issues of:

Governance: the board should decide and the CEO should recommend and implement.

Strategy and long-term and annual plans including P&L, cash flows and balance sheets: the board should decide and the CEO should recommend and implement.

Operations: the CEO should decide and lead and the board should advise and be kept informed.

Organization: the CEO should decide and lead and the board should advise and be kept informed.
Decision versus input for partners
In any organization, there are natural (and unnatural) partners. It's helpful for these partners to be clear on which of them is deciding and which of them is influencing which decisions.

Take the case of a magazine publisher and editor-in-chief. They must work together as partners and communicate all the time. In general, it seems to work best if the editor-in-chief advises on marketing and pricing while the publisher makes those decisions. Conversely, the publisher should advise on content while the editor-in-chief makes those decisions.
RACI
Many have found the RACI framework helpful:

Accountable: Answerable for correct and thorough completion of deliverable or task.

Responsible: Does work defined and delegated by accountable person.

Consulted: Provides input and advice (Two-way communication)

Informed: Kept up-to-date (One-way communication)

Note the accountable person may answer to a higher approving or commissioning authority that delegates the task or project to that accountable person. RACI applies within the task or project.
Implications for you
Think input versus decide. For each important decision, clarify who makes the decision and who is providing input to the person making the decision and be explicit about which you are doing at any point in time..

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The Fundamental Difference Between Leading And Managing: Influence Versus Direction

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Leaders influence. Managers direct. While it may not be that black and white, leaders generally do focus on what matters and why as managers focus on how. Both use different forms of influence and direction at different times. But leaders have a bias to influencing by inspiring and enabling through advice and counsel while managers have a bias to command and control.

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This shows the importance of emotional intelligence in the world of business today and how the definition of a leader is evolving in our changing environment.

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In recent decades, the definition of leadership has been changing, and an emphasis on emotional intelligence has emerged. Emotional intelligence, or EQ, has become recognized for its correlation to success in work and personal life, to motivation and to overall well-being. In business, high-EQ people have become desirable to employers due to the various advantages they enjoy.

Some of the most successful and influential people in history have had high emotional intelligence, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill and Warren Buffett.
What is Emotional Intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is a person's ability to recognize, understand and manage their feelings and emotions, as well as those of others. According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence has the following five components:

1. Self-Awareness: Recognizing and understanding your own strengths and weaknesses, your emotions and moods, and the effects these things have on other people. A self-aware person is not easily offended by criticism, but rather learns and adapts.

2. Self-Regulation: To think before doing and to express your feelings maturely with restraint. Rather than being controlled by emotions and impulses, an emotionally intelligent person can control impulses and emotional responses.

3. Internal Motivation: High EQ people are self-motivated, pursuing personal goals for reasons of self-development and self-gratification, rather than money, titles, external praise or esteem. This could mean getting into humanitarian work because of a true passion, rather than seeking out the highest paying job.
4. Empathy
Empathy involves recognizing, understanding and feeling the emotions of others. Unlike sympathy, empathy involves actually sharing the emotional experience another person is having. When a friend loses a family member, sympathy is flowers and a hug - empathy is shedding tears alongside that friend and not by choice, but due to actually feeling their emotions. Empathetic people genuinely understand and respond to the needs of others.

Robert F. Kennedy is one example of a highly empathetic leader, whom, upon being exposed to the suffering of African Americans, was so moved that he shifted his political priorities to address their needs.
5. People Skills
Emotionally intelligent people easily build trust and respect with others. They are good at managing relationships and building networks, and they avoid power struggles and deceitfulness. Their high levels of the first four components of EQ make for deep bonds and genuine, non-competitive friendships.
Why is emotional intelligence important in business?
In a study that involved over 2,600 hiring managers, 71% said they value high EQ over high IQ.

When asked why, they cited the following reasons:

* High EQ employees are better at staying calm under pressure.

* They listen as often or more often than they speak.

* They lead by example.

* They make more thoughtful business decisions.

* They take criticism well and admit their mistakes and learn from them.

* They keep their emotions in check and can discuss tough, sensitive issues thoughtfully and maturely.

* They are able to effectively resolve conflict.

* They are empathetic to coworkers and react accordingly.

In my consulting work, I saw one startup fail because the founders did not listen to each other and couldn't compromise in the face of difference. I sat in on founders' meetings and watched a lack of self-regulation and empathy lead to doors slamming. I have attempted to mediate such meetings and found success only when participants were willing to practice demonstrating the behaviors that comprise the components of emotional intelligence.
How To Increase Your Emotional Intelligence
Luckily for humanity, there are ways to increase emotional intelligence through practice. Here are some of them!

* Pause before speaking, acting or responding. This allows for initial impulses to fade, and for undistorted reflection and reasoning to occur.

* Listen to others. Listening allows us to better understand the needs and emotions of others. Listening takes the focus off one's own needs and shifts it to those of everyone, enabling better solutions that benefit more people.

* Attempt to control your thoughts. We cannot control what happens to us, or the emotions we feel in a moment, but we can control how we respond to them if we practice directing our thoughts. Rather than blaming oneself or another person when something negative occurs, consider alternative explanations. Maybe the circumstances leading to such an event resulted from many combined factors, the product of which was beyond any one person's control.

* Praise others. Praising others on a habitual basis trains your brain to focus on the good in others, which encourages empathy and allows for a deeper understanding of people's needs and motivations. Praise also sets the stage for thoughtful discussions on tough issues, as it decreases defensiveness and encourages openness to opposing thoughts.

* Reflect on criticism and search for ways to grow from it. Criticism can sometimes be hurtful, but it can always be helpful, as it exposes us to true outside perspectives. In the face of criticism, ask yourself: How can I improve and grow from this?

* Pay attention to body language. Much of communication is non-verbal. If you only listen with your ears, you could be missing out on how a person really feels, and even efforts to help them will thus be misinformed.

* Apologize. Intentions get misunderstood and feelings get hurt regularly. Apologizing shows compassion and encourages us to better understand one another while building trust and respect.

* Try to see from another person's point of view. When in disagreement, consider the needs, motivations and emotions that may be shaping another's priorities and opinions. Ask the reasons behind their thoughts and try to genuinely understand them. Maybe then, common ground will be found.

* Communicate your feelings. When you are offended or upset, communicate to the offending party in a calm, non-threatening way so everyone can gain a mutual understanding and avoid future problems.

In business and leadership, it is clear why emotional intelligence is so important. In the increasingly diverse world we live in, EQ is a necessary tool for providing social and economic solutions to people of vastly different circumstances and needs.

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Emotional Intelligence In Business And Leadership

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In recent decades, the definition of leadership has been changing, and an emphasis on emotional intelligence has emerged. Emotional intelligence, or EQ, has become recognized for its correlation to success in work and personal life, to motivation and to overall well-being. In business, high-EQ people have become desirable to employers due to the various advantages they enjoy.

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This is a Canadian company that offers tests and assessments for employee selection. I thought it was interesting how they use algorithms to find the best candidates.

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Make great hires with confidence

Psychometrics Canada helps organizations make better talent decisions. Our proven selection process gives you the edge, identifying top-tier employees who have the ability and desire to help your organization succeed.

Psychometrics Canada provides employee assessment solutions and strategic guidance to help clients identify talent, develop potential, and enhance organizational performance.

Why use Employment Tests?

With years of talent assessment expertise, our business psychologists guide you through the process of using employment tests in the selection process to uncover top performers and ensure job fit.

We understand making the wrong recruitment and selection decision is costly. The US Department of Labor estimates that the cost of a poor hire is 30% of their first-year salary. That is the simple-to-quantify portion. Consider the impact to morale, productivity and engagement of other employees in your organization when an individual isn't the right fit.

Our well researched, valid, and reliable personality tests are used in the employee selection process to help organizations hire more effectively and mitigate this risk.

Starting with a thorough job analysis, our experts identify key traits required for success in the role. Benchmarks are set for attributes such as situational judgement, knowledge, personality, safety and verbal, numerical and spatial reasoning.

We understand that the addition of recruitment testing may be a change to your current talent management process. A lot of organizations still rely on time-consuming resume review and behavioral interviews. As an HR professional, you know that first impressions and "gut feel" result in bias and the potential for adverse impact. The addition of objective hiring assessments to your process will make it faster, defensible, and more consistent.

Our client data demonstrates that used correctly, employment tests helps find candidates who fit and leads to greater organizational success:

$500,000 saved per year in turnover costs (manufacturer)

60% fewer accidents in the workplace

7 times more likely to be dependable

1x more likely to provide excellent customer service

54% reduction in turnover (retail organization)

Our Employee Selection Solutions

Our pre-employment screening solutions are highly relevant, practical, cost-effective, and quickly delivered.

Targeting high volume, entry-level positions, we work with HR departments to integrate hiring assessments into your recruitment process to quickly identify high-performing candidates. Our personality tests will compare a candidate's test scores against job benchmarks - providing an evaluation of person-job fit. Our assessments measure candidates on safety, reliability, sales potential, ability, and personality.
Ideal for hiring: Learn more about our Pre-Employment Screening Tests. front line retail, hospitality, manufacturing, service technicians, and call center employees.
Hiring managers and key contributors requires more than a pre-employee screening assessment. That is why Psychometrics offers our Employee Assessment Tools, tailored for mid-level positions. Our experts will select and administer a series of ability, situational judgement, and personality tests to identify candidates who possess the characteristics you require for success.
Ideal for hiring: Accountants, Engineers, Maintenance Supervisors, Financial Analysts, Human Resources, Buyers, Finance, Operations, Sales, and more. Learn more about our Employee Assessment Tools for selecting managers and professionals
An in-depth interpretation over the phone of each candidate's results, highlighting their strengths, weaknesses, and job-fit is included in the package. Identify potential, strengths and weaknesses, how individuals will engage people, solve problems and execute strategy.
Ideal for hiring: General Managers, Marketing Directors, Chief Financial Officers, Vice-President of Operations, Superintendents, Chief Executive Officers Learn how our Executive Testing can benefit your company..
For key roles, the stakes for selecting a top performer are higher. To meet this demand and to manage the increased risk to your organization, our business psychologists will use a battery of talent assessments to help you make difficult selection decisions. Uncover which candidates will develop strategy, articulate vision, innovate, and manage complexity.

Which Employee Test Do I Need?

If you're unsure what Employee Selection Tools are right for your organization, contact Psychometrics today. Our experienced team will be happy to answer any questions and walk you through the process.

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Employee Selection Tests & Hiring Assessments | Psychometrics

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Psychometrics Canada provides employee assessment solutions and strategic guidance to help clients identify talent, develop potential, and enhance organizational performance. With years of talent assessment expertise, our business psychologists guide you through the process of using employment tests in the selection process to uncover top performers and ensure job fit.

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This is an excellent infographic showing how the performance appraisal process works. Managers can use it to give feedback and incentives to employees.

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This is a list of the hottest recruiting trends to get talented employees. It goes into detail about each one and show you how to attract great employees.

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Recruitment requires a lot of creativity these days. In a job market that is largely candidate-driven, recruiters need to be on it left, right, and center in order to find the talent their organization so desperately needs.

That includes being aware of the current and rising trends in the recruitment land.

Some of these recruiting trends will still be relevant (perhaps even more so than last year) in 2019, but at the same time, the focus shifts onto several other parts of the recruitment landscape.

In this article, we've selected 11 recruiting trends for 2019 we believe will shape recruitment this year. Some of them you may have heard of already, but we're sure you'll find at least a few you've missed and really should be aware of.

Happy exploring!

Subscribe to our weekly content digest and stay up-to-date on everything recruitment related!

1. Collaborative hiring: Referrals & Internal mobility

There's a reason why they say two heads are better than one. When it comes to recruitment, involving your entire team in the recruitment process can be of tremendous value.

Just think of the potential that could come out of the combined (personal) networks of your team members, for example.

This is one of the reasons we see an increase in employee referrals and employee referral programs - and companies that provide AI driven technology to automate your employee referral efforts .

Referred hires generally are (among other things) more productive, more engaged and less likely to leave.

Given the current market situation, it seems only natural for companies to increase their focus on collaborative hiring even more this year.

The same thing goes for internal mobility programs.

Although not that many organizations have a (well-developed) internal mobility culture and program in place yet, this can be a great way to meet skill shortages, decrease turnover and boost engagement.
Did you know that referrals are one of the best sources of hires? 70% of companies offer cash referral bonuses for successful hires. How is your company supporting employee referrals? (Image source)

2. Growing importance of recruitment marketing

As we've said, 21st-century recruiters need all the help they can get to find the best candidates. This explains the rise of recruitment marketing solutions.

Recruitment marketing - also called the pre-applicant stage of talent acquisition - is the process of attracting and nurturing talent to your organization by marketing to them.

Just like the main goal of traditional marketing is to drive individuals to buy a company's product or service, the primary objective of recruitment marketing is to get people to apply to your organization's job openings.

This means a recruitment marketing solution that helps organizations strengthen their employer brand, reach candidates on social media and optimize their career sites (of course, there are many other possibilities depending on your company's specific needs).

To stick with the marketing jargon: this year, we'll continue to see a transition from outbound to inbound recruitment.

3. Attracting talent with transferable skills from outside your industry

With certain industries already struggling to find skilled people and a growing number of baby boomers retiring, recruiters have no choice but to look beyond the 'borders' of their industry to find people.

So rather than looking for relevant previous experience, recruiters will increasingly focus on transferable skills and hence (considerably) expand their potential talent pool.
These are examples of transferable skills you can look for when searching for your dream candidates.
4. AI

This year, in one way or another, AI will become a must-have in the recruiter's toolbox.

From automated candidate sourcing, recovery, and matching, to hiring remote workers and creating customized employee value propositions, the number of different uses of AI in recruitment just keeps growing.

5. Embracing the flexible workforce

For most organizations, their workforce already consists of a combination of full-timers, contractors, freelancers and everything in-between.

Technology, of course, is a big enabler of this kind of freelance work: people can use their smartphones, have free internet available in a lot of (coffee) places, and freelance platforms like Upwork, PeoplePerHour and Fiverr match freelancers with projects.

Especially when companies need to find skilled people urgently - and in an industry where talent is scarce - they'll have to turn to freelancers, contractors, etc. to meet their needs.

On a positive note, working with freelancers can be a good way for a company to find out if they'd like those people to become full-time employees: if there is a mutual click, you may have found yourself a great new hire!

6. Diversity hiring

Like AI, diversity hiring is one of those themes that remain relevant in 2019. Diversity in the broadest sense of the word that is; gender, ethnicity, geographical and age.

Diversity and inclusion initiatives have proven to offer many benefits, such as improved employee happiness, productivity and retention and a positive reflection on your employer brand.

7. Building and sharing your mission

Do like Nike did, basically. The American sportswear giant took a stand last year when it used a black and white photograph of NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a part of its advertising campaign to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Nike's 'Just Do It' slogan.

Kaepernick caused quite the controversy back in 2016 when he kneeled during the national anthem to show his support for people of color in the United States and to bring attention to police brutality.

More than two-thirds of consumers believe that it's important for brands to take a stance on certain political and social issues - a number that is probably going to increase even more with the next generation of shoppers.

So, even if it meant they'd lose customers - and people did indeed boycott Nike following the Kaepernick ad - Nike chose sides.

It's the same for employers.

Today's workforce is on the lookout for mission-driven employers. People want more than just a paycheck from the organization they work for, they want to have a sense of purpose in their job.

And, just like today's consumers, job seekers often want their own values to align with those of their company.

2019 will, therefore, see an increased focus of companies building and sharing their mission, taking stands and creating their own version of Nike's 'Just Do It' to attract talent.

8. Hiring Gen Z

They've been entering the global workforce for a while now, although so far, mainly in internship and entry-level positions.

Slowly but surely though, Generation Z (the cohort that comes after the Millennials, born somewhere between the mid-'90s and the mid-2000s) is now finding its way into the workplace.

If your knowledge about these Digital Natives is a little rusty, you might want to bring it up to speed again, because this year the recruitment of Gen Z will, without a doubt, accelerate.

* They are one with their smartphones

* Adapt to their (short) attention span

* It's all about video

* Don't forget about health & wellness

* Think about their growth

Gen Zers will form a major part of the workforce in coming years, that's why recruiters need to understand their needs and wants.
To succeed in recruitment in 2019, make sure to consider these points when creating your recruitment strategy.

After the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Union in May last year, it's impossible to think of candidate (and employee) data without thinking of the protection of this data.

Whether companies like it or not, data security has now become a theme for every provider of recruitment technology that uses people's data.

Since a lot of providers (if not all of them) use data and analytics, this means that virtually everyone needs to have a system in place to protect candidate data.

Why is this still relevant in 2019 you wonder?

After all, companies had to be ready when the GDPR became effective last year.

This is true, of course, but the regulation does have implications for new features, technology, and solutions that are introduced to the market and that use data.

Which is why data security remains highly relevant this year.

On the other hand, there has been more and more attention to people's soft skills recently. It turns out, companies are often struggling to find talent with good soft skills (communication, listening, empathy, etc.).
Critical thinking, creativity and coordinating with others are gaining importance as the top skills of the future.
Soft skills are personality-driven and they are what makes the difference between a good and a great candidate. After all, hard (tangible and technical) skills usually can be taught, while teaching someone how to show empathy is almost impossible...

As developments in technology are changing many industries rapidly, the demand for people with transferable, future-proof (as much as possible) and soft skills will rise.

11. A shift from job description-based hiring to project-based hiring

This is a result of several of the trends we've seen above, like the growing gig economy and the shift from experience-based hiring to hiring based on transferable & soft skills for instance.

Both of these developments are likely to change the way organizations manage their projects.

In a time where finding good full-time employees is hard and turnover often is high, it could make more sense to start hiring in a different way.

Based on projects rather than job descriptions, for example.

This has, among other things, the advantage of gathering those people who are the best in their field for each project. Instead of buying labor, organizations will actually be buying (and thus recruiting for) results.

Wrapping up

Voila! There you have it, our selection of recruiting trends for 2019. Of course, everyone has a (slightly) different opinion when it comes to 'what's hot and what's not'.

So our list isn't exhaustive.

But it does give you a good overview of those parts of the recruitment landscape that you might want to keep a close eye on this year.

Whether we were right trying to look into our crystal ball - and if so, to what extent - we'll find out in the next 12 months. One thing's for sure, we'll be telling you all about it in next year's article!

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11 Hottest Recruiting Trends For 2019 - Harver

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Recruitment requires a lot of creativity these days. In a job market that is largely candidate-driven, recruiters need to be on it left, right, and center in order to find the talent their organization so desperately needs. That includes being aware of the current and rising trends in the recruitment land.

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This article shows the importance of maintaining a legal hiring process.

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How you handle the recruitment process reflects your company's ethics and standards. Maintaining a legal hiring process bring an additional benefit by making your company a magnet for talent.
By: Melanie Berkowitz, Esq.
If you're assuming that a tight job market means that an employer doesn't have to exert much effort to fill its open positions, think again.

Knowing how to "hire smart" is a must for any employer, no matter what the economy looks like. A company that does not think strategically about recruiting could miss out on the best candidates, fail to hire a diverse workforce or worse - expose itself to liability for discriminatory hiring practices.

Now is the time to take a critical look at your hiring process to make sure it is efficient and effective. Remember: A little bit of common sense goes a long way toward hiring the best employees.
What Do You Need in a New Employee?
The first step in your recruiting process should be to prepare a well thought-out job description that can be used for both hiring and employment purposes. When creating a job description, keep the following in mind:

DO list the duties and responsibilities of the job, moving from general to specific. Example: "Will assist marketing department in creating promotional materials for new line of spa products. Duties include editing copy, writing press releases and contacting industry experts and media."

DO state job qualifications and pre-requisites in an objective manner. Examples: "Must have bachelor's degree", "Must type 30 words per minute", "Must be proficient in PowerPoint and Quark."

DO include language indicating that you are an "Equal Opportunity Employer" and that nothing in the job posting or description should be construed as an offer or guarantee of employment.

DO NOT use language that states or suggests a preference for a particular gender, race, age or other such quality. Example: "Looking for a young, energetic team player." Both the words "young" and "energetic" suggest an age preference and is likely illegal. Better: "Looking for a hard-working team player."
Attract Diverse and Qualified Applicants
Great workers can be found from a variety of sources, and the savvy employer will look to a number of them for its hiring needs. For example, recruit at a broad range of colleges and technical schools, attend minority-sponsored job fairs, utilize Monster's Diversity Products, advertise in relevant community newspapers and if possible, seek partnerships with organizations that are a source of diverse employees.

As well, learn from companies that have a strong commitment to diversity. And keep in mind: unless your workforce is already diverse, relying heavily on recommendations from current employees will only maintain the status quo and will not help you increase diversity.
Avoid Application and Interviewing Pitfalls
Has your company reviewed its job application forms with human resources or a lawyer in the past two years? If your organization is a Federal contractor, does it conform to the latest OFCCP standards for accepting electronic job applications? Do you regularly train your managers about proper interviewing techniques?

While answering "no" or "I don't know" to any of these questions doesn't mean your company is violating the law, failing to recognize and address common recruiting mistakes can open your company up to liability down the road.

Just as you do with your advertisements and job descriptions, review all applications with an attorney to make certain they are objective and do not ask for inappropriate information. For example, some state laws prohibit employers from considering an applicant's arrest record when making employment decisions, so a question about prior arrests should not be on the job application. Here are some other issues to consider and discuss with experienced employment counsel:

Including a statement on the application that you are an "Equal Opportunity Employer"

Including a statement on the application that it does not constitute a promise or guarantee of employment

How to draft a separate document asking for approval to conduct a background check that conforms with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, if your company intends to perform such checks

How to conform to OFCCP hiring and recordkeeping guidelines, if your organization is a Federal contractor.

Personal interviews and employment applications are the most frequently used tools for selecting the best qualified candidates for employment. As with the application process, employers need to think critically about their interview procedure to make sure that every person involved in the process is familiar with the "do's and don'ts" of a legal and effective interview.

Remember, the law presumes that all questions asked on an employment application or in a personal interview will be used in the hiring decision. Therefore, it is important to limit interview topics to only those issues that are needed to evaluate an applicant's qualifications for the particular position. When training interviewers on proper techniques, include these suggestions:

Try to ask open ended questions that will require the candidate to discuss his or her qualifications. Questions that only require a "yes" or "no" answer are not nearly as useful.

Evaluate responses critically. Did the applicant answer the questions fully? Did he or she provide information to help evaluate his or her qualifications and experience?

Do not make any promises or guarantees with regard to the job or future employment. For example, avoid comments such as "As long as you do a good job, you will always have a position with the company," or "You are by far the strongest candidate I've interviewed."

The interviewer should take notes to help remember each applicant. The notes should be written on a piece of paper separate from the job application or resume and never indicate an applicant's race, age, national origin, gender, disability or other such identifier, either outright or by code. Such behavior can be discriminatory and illegal. It is essential to focus solely on whether the candidate meets the bona fide qualifications of the job.

If possible, have more than one person interview each candidate.

Regarding your employment applications - consider including EEO statement and a statement that the application is not an offer of employment or an employment contract.
Ask yourself this
No matter what industry you're in or what size business you run, your hiring practices must follow the law. If you're even the slightest bit uncertain as to where you stand, you need to reach out to a lawyer to make sure you're in good standing. Could you use more information about the do's and don'ts of hiring? Sign up for exclusive Monster Hiring advice and we'll send you the latest recruiting tips, hiring trends, management strategies, and even some awesome Monster deals. Don't go at it alone; w e've got the time-tested expertise that can help lead you to your next terrific hire.
Legal Disclaimer: None of the information provided herein constitutes legal advice on behalf of Monster.

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Think Before You Hire: Maintain a Legal Hiring Process - Monster Employer Resources

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How you handle the recruitment process reflects your company's ethics and standards. Maintaining a legal hiring process bring an additional benefit by making your company a magnet for talent. By: Melanie Berkowitz, Esq. If you're assuming that a tight job market means that an employer doesn't have to exert much effort to fill its open positions, think again.

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This article goes in depth about why the organizational structure is so important. It was an excellent article and I think organizational culture is going to become more and more important through the years.

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Corporate culture has arguably always been important, but it's only become a popular point of discussion in the past 20 years or so. To some, it's become a buzzword, losing some of its meaning due to the overabundance of content and discussions surrounding it. However, I'd argue that corporate culture was never really overblown, and is actually becoming even more important as the modern workplace continues to evolve.

Why do I say this?
The Benefits of Strong Culture
First, there are clear benefits to having a strong, unified company culture underlying your business's operations:

Identity. For starters, culture contributes to the identify and values of your company. For example, if your corporate culture is one that prioritizes setting and meeting goals, your individual workers will be more likely to set and meet goals of their own. It's a good way to set and maintain the direction of your employees, and without it, it's hard to keep your company's values coherent.

Retention. A strong company culture attracts better talent and, more importantly, retains that talent. When people feel like they belong to an organization, they're more likely to stick around for the long term. That means lower turnover, fewer new hires to deal with, and better chemistry among your team.

Image. Corporate culture also adds to your brand identity. If you treat your employees well and have a fun-loving corporate atmosphere, your customers will see you as a fun-loving, generous brand. Depending on your target demographics, that could be a major boon for sales and customer loyalty.

These are tenets of brand culture you're likely already familiar with. Culture overall is going to become more important, which means all these dimensions will increase in line with that expansion. So why is that importance beginning to increase?
Trends and Competition
One of the biggest motivating factors is the fact that corporate culture is becoming a more popular consideration and development. More companies are shifting their attention to creating more thorough brand cultures, and preserving them through ongoing development. Why? It's at least partially due to the fact that culture is talked about more frequently. Studies have indicated measurable increases in turnover for companies with poor or nonexistent culture, and conversationally, culture is mentioned more frequently between entrepreneurs.

You might think that this is a bandwagon scenario-that I'm encouraging you to focus on culture more simply because other companies are. But remember, these are the companies you're competing with, both in terms of hiring new people and in terms of appealing to customers. If you don't at least keep pace with a strong culture and find a way to differentiate yourself, you're going to fall behind.
Millennial Expectations
Like it or not, millennials are the generation driving the workplace changes of the near future. If you fail to attract millennial talent, your growth may be stagnated, and you could eventually hit a talent shortage.

That said, millennials desire a strong company culture (in one dimension or another) more than anything else when deciding who to work for. If you don't have a strong or appealing company culture, you're going to start losing the recruiting war-and fast.
The Startup Economy
It's also worth noting that the modern startup economy has added some interesting variables to the entrepreneurial community. Today's entrepreneurs have virtually unlimited digital resources to build companies-and those companies (especially in the tech sector) have the potential to take off or fail relatively quickly. This increases the need for differentiation in the market, especially in competitive industries, and forces entrepreneurs to find a sticking point for workers who may otherwise bounce after a short-term assignment.
Is It Time for a Culture Audit?
Once you understand that company culture is truly important to your business's future (and it's about to become even more important), you may want to perform a "culture audit." Essentially, this is a way to evaluate where your culture currently stands, see what (if anything) is missing, and establish a plan to make corrections.

Theory. How defined is your company culture? Where is it defined? How specifically is it defined, and are these plans available to your new hires?

Understanding. How would you gauge your employees' current understanding of your company culture? Take a poll of your workers. Do they have reasonable knowledge of your brand values?

Consistency. Even if your workers understand your culture, they may not enforce it or "live and breathe" it consistently. How often do you see your team leaders failing to adhere to your ideal culture? How about your workers?

There is no single rubric for a "correct" company culture-every business is different-but you will need a consistent and strong set of values if you want to remain competitive in the near future. It's only going to become more important from here.

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Why Corporate Culture Is Becoming Even More Important

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Corporate culture has arguably always been important, but it's only become a popular point of discussion in the past 20 years or so. To some, it's become a buzzword, losing some of its meaning due to the overabundance of content and discussions surrounding it.

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This is an excellent article on how to develop an organizational culture and also how to nurture and maintain it.

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The key to a successful organization is to have a culture based on a strongly held and widely shared set of beliefs that are supported by strategy and structure. When an organization has a strong culture, three things happen: Employees know how top management wants them to respond to any situation, employees believe that the expected response is the proper one, and employees know that they will be rewarded for demonstrating the organization's values.

HR has a vital role in perpetuating a strong culture, starting with recruiting and selecting applicants who will share the organization's beliefs and thrive in that culture. HR also develops orientation, training and performance management programs that outline and reinforce the organization's core values and ensures that appropriate rewards and recognition go to employees who truly embody the values.

This article covers the following topics:

The importance of having a strong organizational culture.

HR's role in fostering a high-performance culture.

Definitions of organizational culture.

Factors that shape an organization's culture.

Considerations in creating and managing organizational culture.

HR practices to ensure the continuity and success of an organization's culture.

Communications, metrics, legal, technology and global issues pertaining to organizational culture.

Background

An organization's culture defines the proper way to behave within the organization. This culture consists of shared beliefs and values established by leaders and then communicated and reinforced through various methods, ultimately shaping employee perceptions, behaviors and understanding. Organizational culture sets the context for everything an enterprise does. Because industries and situations vary significantly, there is not a one-size-fits-all culture template that meets the needs of all organizations.

A strong culture is a common denominator among the most successful companies. All have consensus at the top regarding cultural priorities, and those values focus not on individuals but on the organization and its goals. Leaders in successful companies live their cultures every day and go out of their way to communicate their cultural identities to employees as well as prospective new hires. They are clear about their values and how those values define their organizations and determine how the organizations run. See What does it mean to be a values-based organization?

Conversely, an ineffective culture can bring down the organization and its leadership. Disengaged employees, high turnover, poor customer relations and lower profits are examples of how the wrong culture can negatively impact the bottom line.

Mergers and acquisitions are fraught with culture issues. Even organizational cultures that have worked well may develop into a dysfunctional culture after a merger. Research has shown that two out of three mergers fail because of cultural problems. Blending and redefining the cultures, and reconciling the differences between them, build a common platform for the future. In recent years, the fast pace of mergers and acquisitions has changed the way businesses now meld. The focus in mergers has shifted away from blending cultures and has moved toward meeting specific business objectives. Some experts believe that if the right business plan and agenda are in place during a merger, a strong corporate culture will develop naturally. See Managing Organizational Change and Managing Human Resources in Mergers and Acquisitions.

Business Case

If an organization's culture is going to improve the organization's overall performance, the culture must provide a strategic competitive advantage, and beliefs and values must be widely shared and firmly upheld. A strong culture can bring benefits such as enhanced trust and cooperation, fewer disagreements and more-efficient decision-making. Culture also provides an informal control mechanism, a strong sense of identification with the organization and shared understanding among employees about what is important. Employees whose organizations have strongly defined cultures can also justify their behaviors at work because those behaviors fit the culture. See Toxic Workplace Cultures Hurt Workers and Company Profits.

Company leaders play an instrumental role in shaping and sustaining organizational culture. If the executives themselves do not fit into an organization's culture, they often fail in their jobs or quit due to poor fit. Consequently, when organizations hire C-suite executives, these individuals should have both the requisite skills and the ability to fit into the company culture. See HR Can't Change Company Culture by Itself.

Culture plays a vital role in an organization's success. Therefore, HR leaders and other members of the HR team should foster a high-performance organizational culture. See How to Practice HR on Purpose.

HR leaders are responsible for ensuring that culture management is a core focus of their organization's competitive efforts. For HR leaders to influence culture, they need to work with senior management to identify what the organizational culture should look like. Strategic thinking and planning must extend beyond merely meeting business goals and focus more intently on an organization's most valuable asset-its people.

HR has been described as the "caretaker" of organizational culture. In carrying out this essential role, all members of the HR team should help build and manage a strong culture by:

Being a role model for the organization's beliefs.

Reinforcing organizational values.

Ensuring that organizational ethics are defined, understood and practiced.

Enabling two-way communications and feedback channels.

Defining roles, responsibilities and accountabilities.

Providing continuous learning and training.

Sustaining reward and recognition systems.

Encouraging empowerment and teams.

Promoting a customer-supplier work environment.

Recognizing and solving individual and organizational problems and issues.

What Is Organizational Culture?

For HR professionals to have any impact on culture, they must first have a thorough understanding of what culture is in a general sense and what their organization's specific culture is. At the deepest level, an organization's culture is based on values derived from basic assumptions about the following:

Human nature. Are people inherently good or bad, mutable or immutable, proactive or reactive? These basic assumptions lead to beliefs about how employees, customers and suppliers should interact and how they should be managed.

The organization's relationship to its environment.How does the organization define its business and its constituencies?

Appropriate emotions. Which emotions should people be encouraged to express, and which ones should be suppressed?

Effectiveness. What metrics show whether the organization and its individual components are doing well? An organization will be effective only when the culture is supported by an appropriate business strategy and a structure that is appropriate for both the business and the desired culture.

Culture is a nebulous concept and is often an undefined aspect of an organization. Although extensive academic literature exists relating to the topic of organizational culture, there is no generally accepted definition of culture. Instead, the literature expresses many different views as to what organizational culture is.

Organizational culture can manifest itself in a variety of ways, including leadership behaviors, communication styles, internally distributed messages and corporate celebrations. Given that culture comprises so many elements, it is not surprising that terms for describing specific cultures vary widely. Some commonly used terms for describing cultures include aggressive, customer-focused, innovative, fun, ethical, research-driven, technology-driven, process-oriented, hierarchical, family-friendly and risk-taking.

Because culture is difficult to define, organizations may have trouble maintaining consistency in their messages about culture. Employees may also find it difficult to identify and communicate about perceived cultural inconsistencies. and See Defining Organizational Culture Culture Conversation Starters.

Factors That Shape an Organization's Culture

Organizational leaders often speak about the unusual natures of their company cultures, seeing their domains as special places to work. But organizations such as Disney and Nordstrom, which are well-known for their unique cultures, are rare. See Viewpoint: 3 Steps to Cultivating a Customized Culture.

Most company cultures are not that different from one another. Even organizations in disparate industries such as manufacturing and health care tend to share a common core of cultural values. For example, most private-sector companies want to grow and increase revenues. Most strive to be team-oriented and to demonstrate concern for others. Most are driven, rather than relaxed, because they are competing for dollars and market share. Some of the cultural characteristics that distinguish most organizations include the following.

Values

At the heart of organizations' cultures are commonly shared values. None is right or wrong, but organizations need to decide which values they will emphasize. These common values include:

Outcome orientation. Emphasizing achievements and results.

People orientation. Insisting on fairness, tolerance and respect for the individual.

Team orientation. Emphasizing and rewarding collaboration.

Attention to detail. Valuing precision and approaching situations and problems analytically.

Stability. Providing security and following a predictable course.

Innovation. Encouraging experimentation and risk-taking.

Aggressiveness. Stimulating a fiercely competitive spirit.

See Trust Engenders Trust: A Q&A with Paul J. Zak.

Degree of hierarchy

The degree of hierarchy is the extent to which the organization values traditional channels of authority. The three distinct levels of hierarchy are "high"-having a well-defined organizational structure and an expectation that people will work through official channels; "moderate"-having a defined structure but an acceptance that people often work outside formal channels; and "low" -having loosely defined job descriptions and accepting that people challenge authority.

An organization with a high level of hierarchy tends to be more formal and moves more slowly than an organization with a low level of hierarchy.

Degree of urgency

The degree of urgency defines how quickly the organization wants or needs to drive decision-making and innovation. Some organizations choose their degree of urgency, but others have it thrust on them by the marketplace.

A culture with high levels of urgency has a need to push projects through quickly and a high need to respond to a changing marketplace. A moderate level of urgency moves projects at a reasonable pace. A low level of urgency means people work slowly and consistently, valuing quality over efficiency. An organization with high urgency tends to be fast-paced and supports a decisive management style. An organization with low urgency tends to be more methodical and supports a more considered management style.

People orientation or task orientation

Organizations usually have a dominant way of valuing people and tasks. An organization with a strong people orientation tends to put people first when making decisions and believes that people drive the organization's performance and productivity. An organization with a strong task orientation tends to put tasks and processes first when making decisions and believes that efficiency and quality drive organization performance and productivity.

Some organizations may get to choose their people and task orientations. But others may have to fit their orientation to the nature of their industry, historical issues or operational processes.

Functional orientation

Every organization puts an emphasis on certain functional areas. Examples of functional orientations may include marketing, operations, research and development, engineering or service. For example, an innovative organization known for its research and development may have at its core a functional orientation toward R&D. A hospitality company may focus on operations or service, depending on its historical choices and its definition in the marketplace.

Employees from different functions in the company may think that their functional areas are the ones that drive the organization. Organizational leaders must understand what most employees perceive to be the company's functional orientation. See Building a Customer-Centric Culture: Five Lessons Learned.

Organizational subcultures

Any organization can have a mix of subcultures in addition to the dominant culture. Subcultures exist among groups or individuals who may have their own rituals and traditions that, although not shared by the rest of the organization, can deepen and underscore the organization's core values. Subcultures can also cause serious problems.

For example, regional cultures often differ from the overall culture that top leadership tries to instill. Perhaps aggressiveness that is common in one area may not mesh with a culture emphasizing team building. Or an organization with a culture built around equality may have trouble if the national culture emphasizes hierarchy and expects people to bow to authority. Managers and HR professionals must recognize those differences and address them directly.

Creating and Managing Organizational Culture

An organizational culture tends to emerge over time, shaped by the organization's leadership and by actions and values perceived to have contributed to earlier successes. A company culture can be managed through the cultural awareness of organizational leaders and HR professionals. Managing a culture takes focused efforts to sustain elements of the culture that support organizational effectiveness. See Addressing the Six Sources of Workplace Cultural Conflicts.

How culture develops

An organization's customs, traditions, rituals, behavioral norms, symbols and general way of doing things are the visible manifestation of its culture; they are what one sees when walking into the organization. The current organizational culture is usually due to factors that have worked well for the organization in the past. See How to Create a Culture of Civility.

Founders typically have a significant impact on an organization's early culture. Over time, behavioral norms develop that are consistent with the organization's values. For example, in some organizations, resolution of conflicts is hashed out openly and noisily to create widespread consensus, whereas in other places disputes are settled hierarchically and quietly behind closed doors.

Though culture emerges naturally in most organizations, strong cultures often begin with a process called "values blueprinting," which involves a candid conversation with leaders from across the organization. Once the culture is framed, an organization may establish a values committee that has a direct link to leadership. This group makes sure the desired culture is alive and well. For values blueprinting to work, organizations must first hire people who live the values and have the competency needed to perform the job.

Sustaining a culture

The management of organizational culture starts with identifying a company's organizational culture traits or "artifacts." Artifacts are the core business activities, processes and philosophies that characterize how an organization does business day-to-day.

Identifying these traits-and assessing their importance in light of current business objectives-is a way to start managing culture. Three broad concepts help identify the traits specific to a culture:

Social culture. This refers to group members' roles and responsibilities. It is the study of class distinctions and the distribution of power that exists in any group.

Material culture. This involves examining everything that people in a group make or achieve and the ways people work with and support one another in exchanging required goods and services.

Ideological culture. This is tied to a group's values, beliefs and ideals-the things people view as fundamental. It includes the emotional and intellectual guidelines that govern people's daily existence and interactions.

Leaders and HR professionals within an organization should approach culture management by initially gaining an understanding of the common traits found in all businesses. Then, they should take the following steps to manage their organization's culture:

Identify common artifacts or traits, including those from the standpoint of an organization's social, material and ideological culture.

Convene groups of employees-representatives from all levels, functions and locations of the organization-to assess the validity, significance and currency of key artifacts.

Subject those traits to a rigorous assessment of their underlying shared assumptions, values and beliefs.

Summarize findings and share them with all participants to solicit additional insights.

Create a culture management action plan. The plan should enhance traits that support corporate growth or organizational effectiveness and correct traits that might hinder a company's advancement.

Typically, shared assumptions and beliefs originate with an organization's founders and leaders. Because those beliefs proved successful (otherwise the company would not exist and the leaders would not be in their positions), often they go unchallenged; however, those assumptions and beliefs might be outdated and may hinder future success. See 6 Steps for Building an Inclusive Workplace.

HR Practices to Develop Culture

HR has a special role in ensuring that an organization's culture will continue and thrive. When an organization does a good job assessing its culture, it can then go on to establish HR policies, programs and strategies that support and strengthen its core purpose and values. In aligned organizations, the same core characteristics or beliefs motivate and unite everyone, cascading down from the C-suite to individual contributors.

HR professionals have many tools for developing and sustaining a high-performance organizational culture, including hiring practices, onboarding efforts, recognition programs and performance management programs. HR's biggest challenge is deciding how to use these tools and how to allocate resources appropriately. See Taming the Savage Culture: A Q&A with Tim Mulligan.

Hiring practices

The central role that HR plays in helping an organization capitalize on its culture is in hiring. HR has the opportunity to select people who fit the way the organization operates. Traditionally, hiring focuses primarily on an applicant's skills, but when a hire's personality also fits with the organization's culture, the employee will be more likely to deliver superior performance. See Finance Sector Needs New Focus on Culture to Attract Talent and Candidates Choose Jobs Because of Company Culture.

On the other hand, ill-fitting hires and subsequent rapid departures cost approximately 50 percent to 150 percent of the position's annual salary. Unfortunately, nearly one in three newly hired employees' leaves voluntarily or involuntarily within a year of hiring, and this number has been increasing steadily in recent years. See 5 Unique Interview Questions Every Recruiter Should Ask.

Some hiring practices to ensure cultural fit include these:

Looking at each piece of the organization's vision, mission and values statements. Interview questions should hone in on behaviors that complement these areas. For example, if the organization works with a lot of intensity, then job applicants should display that natural intensity to be considered for hire.

Conducting a cultural fit interview. Ask questions that elicit comments about organizational values such as honesty or integrity. If a candidate's description of the worst place he or she ever worked sounds just like the organization where he or she is interviewing, the candidate probably will not be successful.

Leaving discussion of company culture for later. Do not tell candidates about culture up front. First,listen to what they have to say about their experiences and beliefs. This tactic will reveal more candid responses to help determine whether they are a fit for the organization.

Making sure at least three people are involved in the hiring process. Different people will see and hear different things. These varied perspectives give a clearer understanding of the person being considered for hire.

Searching for employees who will fit in seamlessly can have drawbacks. The biggest mistake an organization can make is to paint an inaccurate picture of itself as it tries to attract candidates. If new hires discover they have been sold a bill of goods, they will not be happy; they will probably not stick around, and, while they are around, morale will decline.

Another possible drawback is that people are more reluctant to take negative actions against people like themselves. As a result, mediocre workers are more likely to stay employed if they share the cultural values. Similarly, although an organization's comfort level is palpable when the culture is aligned, experts say, too much comfort can result in groupthink and complacency.

Onboarding programs

HR plays a primary role in socializing new employees by designing and overseeing the onboarding process. Onboarding teaches newcomers the employer's value system, norms and desired organizational behaviors. HR professionals must help newcomers become part of social networks in the organization and make sure that they have early job experiences that reinforce the culture. See Managing the Employee Onboarding and Assimilation Process.

Reward and recognition programs

These programs are key mechanisms HR can use to motivate employees to act in accordance with the organization's culture and values. For example, if teamwork is a core value, bonuses should value teamwork and not be based on individual performance. HR should also put the spotlight on those who personify the company's values. See Who's at the CENTRE of your recognition program? and Employee Recognition Tech Must Align with Company Culture.

Performance management programs

Employees who share values and aspirations tend to outperform those in environments that lack cohesiveness and common purposes. Performance management programs can greatly affect corporate culture by clearly outlining what is expected from employees as well as by providing a feedback tool that informs employees about proper behavior. See Performance Management That Makes a Difference: An Evidence-Based Approach.

Communications

Conflicting messages regarding corporate culture may create distrust and cynicism, which can prompt, or help employees justify, actions as deleterious as embezzlement. Experts say that cultural inconsistencies may also cause workers to grow discouraged, to believe management is disingenuous, to doubt statements from higher-ups and to be less inclined to give their best effort.

Organizations may be investing significant time and money in creating a culture but may not be reaping the commensurate rewards-especially if executives, supervisors and rank-and-file employees have differing perceptions of the company's culture. HR professionals must therefore ensure that the organization clearly and consistently communicates its culture to all employees. See HR's Role in Creating a Culture of High Trust: Q&A with Richard Fagerlin.

Metrics

Assessing organizational culture is a crucial step in developing sound HR strategies that support enterprise objectives and goals. But how do you measure something as potentially tough to describe as culture? After identifying the key dimensions of culture such as values, degree of hierarchy, and people and task orientations, performing these next steps will help organizations assess culture:

Develop a cultural assessment instrument. This instrument should enable members of the organization to rate the organization on the key cultural dimensions, as well as on aspects of the organization not covered on the assessment.

Administer the assessment. Survey respondents should include individuals at all levels, functions, divisions and geographical units of the organization.

Analyze and communicate about assessment results. Leaders and HR executives should discuss areas of agreement and disagreement about the organization's culture.

Conduct employee focus groups. Just because top management leaders agree on organizational culture does not mean that all employees see things that way.

Discuss culture until consensus forms around key issues. Focus on "Who are we?" and "What makes us who we are?" Organizations that decide that where they are now is not where they want to be may need to look at moving the organization to embrace a different culture.

Cultural assessments, and other activities such as cultural audits and 360-degree feedback, may also help uncover cultural inconsistencies. Then leaders and HR professionals can eliminate the inconsistencies. For example, if customer service is a focus of the company's culture, evaluate how much time employees spend visiting customer sites, how much interaction they have with customers, what customer service training they receive and other indicators of a customer service focus. See The New Analytics of Workplace Culture

Legal Issues

Employers that emphasize cultural fit in their recruitment and selection process can be vulnerable to discrimination claims if they are not careful. HR professionals should ensure that hiring practices and selection decisions based on a cultural fit rationale do not result in discriminating against any applicants who may not be "just like" the selectors.

Employers should also be aware that certain types of organizational cultures (for example, cultures that are highly paternalistic or male-dominated) may tend to perpetuate disparities in promotions, compensation and other terms of employment. Those disparities may violate anti-discrimination laws. See In Focus: Latest Lawsuits Shine Light on Racist, Sexist Workplace Cultures and Address the Small Infractions to Create an Inclusive Culture.

Global Issues

Research suggests that national culture has a greater effect on employees than the culture of their organization. Organizational leaders and HR professionals should understand the national cultural values in the countries in which the organization operates to ensure that management and HR practices are appropriate and will be effective in operations in those countries. National cultural differences should be considered when implementing organizational culture management initiatives in global businesses.

Managers must be able to respond to nuances in communication styles, as well as deal with different expectations that employees have of their leaders across national cultures. Not meeting those expectations may doom the global organization's chance for success in particular countries.

These issues become even more complex in global business mergers. Success in international mergers depends on the merged organization's willingness to enable people with different cultural perspectives to engage in meaningful and valuable discussions about the new business.

See:
Helping Expatriate Employees Deal with Culture Shock 3 Steps in Aligning Culture Across the Globe

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The key to a successful organization is to have a culture based on a strongly held and widely shared set of beliefs that are supported by strategy and structure.

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Forbes is an excellent resource for many different business topics. I like this one on accountability and why it is so important.

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As mentioned in previous articles, I have been conducing interviews and performing research for my new book that focuses on culture and change managemen t. I have gathered so many interesting perspectives on leadership, the importance of culture for achieving better results and driving change that I feel compelled to share them.

It may seem obvious, but accountability is probably the single most important element fueling truly successful organizations. Why is this?

It's because accountability...
Strengthens the Culture
"Without accountability execution suffers; and a lack of accountability can have a snowball effect throughout the team. Accountability becomes embedded into corporate culture by making it everyone's responsibility, establishing meaningful goals and team buy-in, building trust through support and encouragement, empowering everyone on the team and celebrating successes together," says John Wright, Director and VP Marketing at MCGB Properties Ltd.
Breeds Excellence
Fabrizio Moreira, CEO of The Moreira Organization LLC shared, "The best way to encourage positive business outcomes and discourage unfavorable ones is to reward excellence, while correcting performance that doesn't live up to your expectations. I've found that in operating in this manner decision makers are able to achieve the greatest results."
Ensures Ownership
"Accountability is important since it results in a highly efficient and productive team. The key point is having each member take full responsibility on a given task or goal from A to Z, which eliminates confusion and saves a lot of time and resources," says John Brown, Chief Editor at PrettyMotors.com, which strives to sell the best automotive parts and accessories.
Builds Trust
Mike Scalin, CEO of Born to Sell, gave me his perspective. "Accountability breeds trust. Managers need to have open communication and stand by their decisions and actions, so that all members of the team know the rules, know they will be applied equally to all, and have transparency."
Sets Expectations
"In order for a team, particularly a team of highly competent professionals, to work at maximum capacity, each person must be held fully accountable for their assigned tasks. Competence and skill are only a fraction of the equation - in reality, responsibility, along with specificity of expectations and duties, are what allow for the collective success of an organization," said Ramzy Ladah, Owner & Personal Injury Lawyer at Ladah Law Firm, PLLC.
Achieves Common Goals
Rickard Bäcklin, CMO of Telia Carrier, said, "I'd define a high-performance team as a set of very diverse individuals all working towards a common goal or challenge. You will often find these teams in companies driven by a bigger purpose - and very common within successful start-ups. Accountability is therefore critical, with the certainty that each unique piece of the puzzle fits and fulfills the common purpose."
Helps Define the Mission
"Providing context to why a project is important and how it achieves business goals is critical to creating accountability and obtaining results. When team members understand why their role is meaningful, they are more likely to feel personal ownership," says Jacob Hagberg of Orange Fox.
Sets Performance Indicators
Graeme Donnelly, CEO of 1st Formations, the online company formation agents in the UK said, "Accountability is of utmost importance in a high-performance team. Clear expectations for everyone on the team coupled with an understanding of accountability for their performance are the key ingredients to improving confidence, morale and production within the team."
Defines Reality
"Intense accountability is an integral part of avoiding groupthink because it fosters constructive conflict within teams. Homogenous thinking in teams, after all, provides them a safe hiding place from the troubling realizations that challenge their convictions. Protected within the rigid walls of groupthink, teams remain oblivious to reality's unpleasant forecasts and vulnerable to their consequences." says Zain Dhanani, Founding Partner of Tinsli.
Empowers the Team
Eddie Madan, who runs a Toronto SEO Company told me, "Accountability is important to establish a great level of trust at the workplace. It also helps to empower employees and gives them a sense of leadership. We drive this value into the team by letting them be responsible decision makers which helps us unearth the next leader."

So how can company's build accountability into the culture so much so that it becomes the core driver for achieving results beyond what the leadership team could imagine? Its not an easy process and requires a consistent and diligent effort starting at the top. Senior leaders must create cultural experiences that support the necessary beliefs required for the team to take proactive action to get results.

This is easier said than done of course. If leaders aspire to improve the company culture, especially to ingrain accountability, they must first gather data. A "culture diagnostic" can be very helpful to understand where the company stands. All company cultures will have both good and bad elements. Analyzing what's working and what needs to be improved upon is a good building block for developing a culture-improvement initiative.

Once the plan is in place, take action, get feedback along the way, follow-through and measure the outcomes.

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Why Accountability Is Critical For Achieving Winning Results

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As mentioned in previous articles, I have been conducing interviews and performing research for my new book that focuses on culture and change managemen t. I have gathered so many interesting perspectives on leadership, the importance of culture for achieving better results and driving change that I feel compelled to share them.

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This article is about the process of delegating and sharing authority with subordinates. It can be a tricky process, but I really like how the author explained it.

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Introduction

One of the greatest challenges to managers in contemporary organizations is how to structure resources for the most effective and efficient accomplishment of organizational objectives. Organizations, if they are to successfully overcome that challenge, must establish and maintain meaningful relationships between and among all resources, especially human resources. These human relationships are reflected, in part, by the organization's formal authority, responsibility and accountability patterns. These patterns are established through the delegation process involving a sharing of authority. These relationships are primarily the traditional and vertical superior-subordinate relationships, but in project management, and especially the matrix organization, they also include horizontal and diagonal relationships which add complexity to the delegation process.

This article discusses the nature of the delegation process in project organizations and the necessity of a sharing of authority within and outside the project organization. Effective delegation and the sharing of authority are vital prerequisites to the successful management of a project. Without them, the project manager will not be seen by others as a manager, but most likely will be considered the main technician on the project. The project manager should always strive to be primarily a manager and only secondarily a technical expert. In addition, for project managers who fail to effectively delegate and share authority there is a high probability that the project will fail to achieve its objectives. If delegation and a sharing of authority are so critical to project success, why is it often not effectively accomplished by project managers? The factors contributing to this failure are thoroughly discussed and guides to being an effective delegator are presented.

The authors propose that project managers who become effective delegators will be seen by others, within and outside the project organization, primarily as managers rather than as project technicians. Effective delegation is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for project success. The total success of a project is contingent upon the interpersonal skills of the project manager. It is imperative for him to establish, through effective delegation, and then to maintain, a mutuality of commitment to the project by all parties and organizational elements. The primary orientation of all parties should be achievement of organizational objectives first, and then achievement of project and functional objectives secondarily. This process and orientation provides the framework to achieve the mutuality of commitment by both project and functional personnel which is so essential for project success and the accomplishment of both project and functional objectives. These are major factors contributing to the success of the project as well as to the success of the organization and its functional elements. Management is the key to success and the delegation process enables the project manager to be seen and to operate as a manager rather than as a technical expert.

Project Management and Delegation

In order to better understand the implications and the complexity of the delegation process in the project management environment, the basic concepts inherent in the design and operation of project organizations must be considered. Delegation is a critical aspect of the management function of organizing; organizing involves establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships between and among all personnel working on common tasks, regardless of their assigned department or functional speciality. For the purpose of this paper, a project is a common task involving people and resources from many differentiated segments of the organization. Integral to organizing is delegation, "delegation of authority from superior to subordinate" [8, p.235].Without delegation there is no organization. Delegation is a complex process in the traditionally designed vertical organization with its functional departmentation, but it becomes infinitely more complex in the projectized matrix organization. Because of this increased complexity, it is often not considered, or considered only superficially, as having potential impact on the success of a project. The above concepts are defined and discussed in subsequent sections to insure a mutual understanding of them as they relate to the delegation process.

Project Management in Contemporary Organizations

The rapidly changing technological environment in which most organizations operate today has required many of them to adopt the project management concept with the matrix organizational design. This has created a new and unique relationship between the traditional functional line managers and the project manager. Authority is a critical element in this relationship. The successful completion of a project in terms of time, cost and performance objectives is contingent upon the mutual understanding and acceptance of these authority patterns by all those with whom a project manager must work. Delegation and a sharing of project authority involve a reciprocal interdependency which is unique to the project matrix organization design; however, it is not understood. In addition, sharing of authority between project and functional managers has an inherent potential for conflict unless this reciprocal relationship is mutually understood and accepted. The mutual acceptance of this relationship and minimization of potential conflict is discussed in a subsequent section which discusses the systems approach.

The Matrix Organizational Design

The matrix organization is the primary focus of this article because it is within this organizational design that the most complex delegation problems exist in project management. Delegation is a complex process in most organizations, but the authors propose that this complexity reaches its height in the matrix organization. In the early phases of project management, many of the organizational structures were separate and autonomous divisions which were allocated all the resources required for successful project completion. If a project is sufficiently large and can efficiently utilize all allocated resources over its life cycle, this structure may still be a viable alternative for project management. Delegation problems are also encountered in this structure, but their complexity is not as great as that in a matrix organization. The nature of the delegation process is discussed in general for all organizational situations and then specifically for the matrix organization in the section on delegation.

When organizations find themselves involved simultaneously in several projects, with each having different technological requirements and schedules and with each competing for limited organizational resources, the matrix organization design is used for project management; it has become the more common organizational design in project management. The matrix organization is an objective-oriented organizational component for the management of projects with specified time, cost, and performance objectives. It is a horizontal overlay on the traditional departmental functional organization and the result is the creation of a new and unique relationship between two organizational managers, the functional manager and the project manager. ²

Not all projects, tasks or organizational efforts qualify for project management, and it would be an error to employ this management concept for them.

The following conditions should be present [2, pp. 198-201]:

* There must be a single, identifiable, overall task

* The task must be complex

* It must be interdisciplinary

* It must have a finite termination date

If a task has the above characteristics and an organization has several tasks of this nature, the matrix organization should be adopted. A matrix organization is, "...any organization that employs a multiple command system that includes not only a multiple command structure but also related support mechanisms and an associated organizational culture and behavior pattern [3, pp. 11-18]. The matrix structure violates the traditional management principles of unity of command and equality of authority with responsibility, established many years ago by Fayol and followed by organizational designers and managers for many decades [4, pp. 192-194]. It is this violation which makes delegation in matrix organizations infinitely more complex and yet at the same time more essential. The interdisciplinary nature of projects in the multiple command structure of the matrix organization requires delegation by the project manager to others in the organization not under his direct line supervision, i.e., there are two or more managers making decisions on a project, one from the project perspective and one from the functional perspective.

Although the matrix organizational structure is one of the most adaptive, flexible, and preferred structures for organzations with multiple projects of varying scope and duration, Davis and Lawrence state that the following three conditions are prerequisites to its adoption [3, pp. 11-18]:

* Environmental pressures for a dual focus on

a. functional specialization and division of labor

b. goal accomplishment in terms of tasks, service or product-markets, or physical locations

* Internal pressures for high information processing capacity (generated by environmental uncertainty and organizational complexity).

* Pressures for shared resources.

The effective operation of a matrix organization is conditioned by the above factors and these factors become critical elements in the delegation process between project and functional managers.

The Role Of The Project Manager

In its most general sense, a project manager is an individual who is appointed to accomplish the task of integrating functional and extraorganizational efforts for the achievement of predetermined project objectives [2, p. 18]. As stated previously, the project manager achieves project objectives by a sharing of authority in a multiple command (authority) system with functional managers. A functional manager is that individual who is responsible for the achievement of objectives for an organizational component which is structured on the basis of function or process such as engineering, production, finance, marketing, etc.

Another approach to understanding the role of the project manager and the critical nature of delegation is to separate and analyze the term by dividing it into its two basic components: project and manager. For the purpose of this article and the analysis of the role of the project manager, a project is defined as a complex, identifiable task which is interdisciplinary (interfunctional) in nature and has specific objectives established for the parameters of time, cost, and performance. Thus, we can conclude that a project manager is an individual who manages a project. But, what is a manager? There are many possible definitions of a manager, but the following one illustrates the essential nature of this role in contemporary organizations:

A manager is the person responsible for

* "the coordination of all resources

* through the process of planning, organizing, directing and controlling

* in order to attain stated objectives" [8, p.9].

Therefore, a project manager is that designated individual who coordinates all resources required to achieve project objectives by planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. This primary responsibility of a project manager is clearly stated and, it is thought, easily understood. However, in the operations of a project there are many technical activities which must also be performed. A project has the following major activities:

* management activities

* technical activities

Both of these must be effectively performed to achieve success. As an individual, the project manager engages in both of these activities; the proportion of time allocated to each will vary by the nature and scope of the project. The project manager should spend a much larger proportion of his time performing management activities on projects with a large scope and a lesser amount of time if the scope is smaller. But all projects require management, and it was for this reason project managers were appointed to give each individual project the required management attention. Management is and should always be their primary responsibility. However, many project managers face a dilemma between the performance of technical versus management activities in any given period of time. Most newly appointed project managers are selected on the basis of their technical expertise in a given field (e.g., engineering) and it is probably this discipline which is most critical to the success of the project. Then, when the project manager is faced with a situation in which he should perform technical and management activities, he will probably select technical activities because of the human fallacy of omnipotence. This is known as the "I can do it better myself" fallacy [6, p. 135]; that is, others just cannot do the task quite so effectively as I. In most projects of moderate to large scope, the project manager cannot afford to become involved in the technical activities on a continuous basis; he requires most of his time for management activities. To be able to perform his managerial role, he must delegate to others the responsibility for subtask completion with the requisite authority to make decisions pertaining thereto. Delegation enables the project manager to establish relationships with others for task and project completion. Through delegation he becomes a manager and not the chief technician on a project.

Another perspective of management is that it is getting things done through people. The authors focus on this perspective because delegation involves a person-to-person relationship, the relationship between the project manager and those with whom he must coordinate to manage the project. To be an effective manager, the project manager must establish and maintain meaningful relationships between all individuals with whom he must work to achieve project objectives. These individuals, most of whom are not under his direct line of supervision, are part of the project team discussed in the next section.

One of the primary means of establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships is through the formally established patterns of authority, responsibility, and accountability which are reflected in the hierarchy of positions and ranks in the organization and policies relating thereto. These are the formally designated relationships and provide the baseline configuration from which a manager proceeds in the dynamics of organizational life. Changing roles and relationships are a normal aspect of contemporary organizations, but for projects it is much more rapid and exists in a greater environment of uncertainty, i.e., the management of a project is a fluid phenomenon requiring adjustments in relationships on a continuous basis. The authors propose that it is a primary responsibility of the project manager to make these mutually accepted adjustments in relationships with functional managers and their personnel. The delegation process is the mechanism and unless the project manager uses it, there will be a strong propensity for him to be the focal point for all decisions, technical and managerial, on a project. In most projects of any significant size, the project manager cannot afford the luxury of becoming intimately involved in the technical aspects of the project; he must delegate.

The Project Team

A factor critical to the success of matrix project management is the ability of the project manager to develop a cohesive project team. To do this, he must maintain viable relationships with functional managers and their personnel with whom he must work in order to achieve project objectives. In most matrix project organizations there are three classes of project personnel:

* personnel assigned directly to the project office in a line relationship (superior/subordinate) to the project manager

* personnel from functional departments who are assigned by a functional manager to work on the project and are co-located with the project manager

* personnel from functional departments who are assigned by a functional manager to work on the project but are not co-located with the project manager; they remain physically located in their functional departments

The project manager's delegation process involves all these personnel, although delegation is traditionally considered a line relationship between a superior and a subordinate. In project management there is also delegation to those not under the direct line of supervision of the project manager; these delegations are just as critical, if not more so, than the traditional ones.

The matrix project organization creates a new and unique relationship which does not exist in the traditional departmental organization; this relationship involves the project manager/functional manager interface. This new relationship is superimposed upon the traditional line and functional relationships, and the clarity of these roles is still evolving today as further experience is gained in the functioning of the matrix organization. Delegation is the process by which this new relationship can be clarified in an operational sense but, unlike delegations in the traditional line relationship, they must be flexible and adaptive to the situation over the project life cycle. A viable project/functional manager relationship requires a mutually accepted sharing of authority and, because of the dynamic nature of projects, provisions must be made for change. At the beginning of the project the areas of responsibility and authority for both the project and functional manager should be established through mutual agreement in project documentation such as the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The project manager is primarily responsible for determining the project activities, schedules, and financial plan, while the functional manager is responsible for determining the degree of technical expertise required and available, the skills and individuals who will work on the project, and for establishing a status reporting procedure to the project manager [2, p. 246]. The project and functional managers negotiate the above until there is mutual agreement and acceptance. At this point the responsibility and authority for the respective tasks within the project are specified; each manager shares his authority with the other. In most project management activities there is a high degree of reciprocal interdependence between the project and functional managers, i.e., what each functional manager does affects the management of the project and as the project manager adapts to these changes there will be reciprocal impacts on the functional managers. Delegations should be as explicit as possible, with provisions for change.

This section and its subsections have identified the nature of the environment within which the project manager operates and the complexity of the roles and relationships which influence the delegation process. Authority and its delegation should reflect the nature of the organizational environment. The concepts identified above are discussed in the next section.

Authority And The Delegation Process

Many individuals in contemproary organizations feel that authority is essential to organizational operations and managerial success. Organizations reflect this premise by giving certain individuals areas of authority which it hopes will assure an integrative functioning of the organization. It is assumed that this prescribed structure reflects the legitimate allocation of responsibility and authority among the specialized functions and levels within the organizational hierarchy. Individuals have developed a framework of thinking in these terms, and this has a strong influence upon their behavioral patterns and organizational relationships [7, p. 158].

Authority is a deceivingly simple concept; however, in reality it is very complex and highly controversial as evidenced by its many theories. Everyone seems to understand the nature of authority because it is an inherent aspect of our cultural environment with our first exposure to it being parental authority; authority is pervasive in our lives. A complete discussion of authority is beyond the scope of this paper, but it will be discussed in sufficient detail to enable the reader to grasp the role of authority in organizational operations and its relationship to project management and the delegation process.

Authority

It is difficult for two writers to agree on a single all-inclusive definition of authority. The authority of one person over another is a complex phenomenon and ultimately rests on the manner in which one individual perceives another individual in the organization. In essence, authority can be considered a mutually accepted relationship between two or more individuals. However, in a managerial sense, authority can be defined as, "the right to act or to direct the action of others in the attainment of organizational goals" [8, p. 213]. This definition is generally used to explain the right of a superior to direct the activities of others in the organization who are subordinate to him, i.e., line authority. Based upon this definition, project authority is defined as the right of the project manager to act or to direct the action of others in the attainment of the proper objectives. However, in the project environment the project manager is often directing the activities of others who do not report to him in a line or superior-subordinate relationship, but he must nevertheless find a way to give this direction. This is accomplished through the three critical steps of the delegation process discussed in the next subsection.

Cleland and King have stated that, "Authority is a conceptual framework and, at the same time, an enigma in the study of organizations... Early theories of management regarded authority more or less as a gravitational force that flowed from the top down. Recent theories view authority more as a force which is to be accepted voluntarily and which moves both vertically and horizontally" [2, p. 300]. The voluntary acceptance of a project manager's authority by functional managers and their personnel is a vital element in the management of a project. For over a decade the management literature has commented on the ambiguous nature of the project manager's authority, and how he has to rely more on his interpersonal influence with others than on his formally designated authority: his de facto (actual) vs. his de jure (formal) authority [2, p. 319]. The authors propose that the baseline configuration of the project manager's authority should be reflected in the project documentation and implementation policies and procedures; these provide the basis for effective delegation.

Project management itself is an example of delegation from the chief executive officer of an organization to a project manager. Since a project manager's authority is interfunctional in nature, he is in a position similar to that of top management and is often referred to as "an extension" of the chief executive. A chief executive cannot effectively cope with the requirements for the management of multiple projects and, therefore, he appoints a project manager to perform this responsibility [9, p. 295]. The appointment of the project manager represents a delegation of authority to the project manager from the chief executive.

A project organization is basically an objectiveoriented work allocation structure where the primary organizational lines are horizontal and integrative across the functional structure. Project authority is essentially an integrative relationship involving the sharing of authority and influence between the project and functional managers as they interact. The various situations in which the project manager finds himself interacting with functional managers should be considered as the primary points of reference, with project documentation providing basic guidance. The project manager will have varying degrees of authority where the forces of time, function, technical task, and organizational environment become prime determinants of his actual authority. These forces are all in constant interaction with each other during the life of the project. Thus, project authority must be viewed as dynamic, not static, and it evolves over the life of the project.

The Delegation Process

It is through delegation that a manager becomes a manager in reality rather than in title only. In a previous section, management was defined as getting things done through people. A manager is not necessarily a doer but obtains results through the efforts of others and this allows the manager to concentrate on his managerial activities rather than being immersed in technical activities. Therefore, delegation can be defined as "giving people things to do" and, by definition, management and delegation become inextricably interwoven [6, p. 122]. Many management writers and scholars, such as Peter Drucker, have stated that delegation is the essence of good management because if a person cannot delegate he cannot manage.

Almost all managers recognize the necessity of delegation, but it is one of the most difficult tasks to perform. It does not come naturally or occur easily; every manager needs to develop the skill to delegate, and it is often one of the most difficult skills to develop. Most organizational achievers develop a reputation by being doers and are rewarded by being promoted to managerial rank. In this new role there is usually insufficient time, especially in the higher levels of management, to be both a doer and a manager. Many attempt to be both with resulting frustrations and failures.

A more precise definition of delegation includes the recognition that it is authority to make decisions that is delegated from superiors to subordinates in the traditional organizational sense. "Delegation of authority is an organizational process that permits the transfer of authority from superior to subordinate" [8, p. 235]. In the project matrix organization, delegation of authority reflects the transfer of authority to make decisions affecting the project from the project manager to others upon whom the project is dependent for successful completion: the doers of the project. The results of this process become a mutual sharing of authority on project matters, with the project manager being predominately the manager, and the functional managers and their people being primarily the doers. Being managers in their own right, functional managers in turn delegate their authority to people within their departments when they are assigned responsibility for a specified project.

One of the major misconceptions about delegation is that when you delegate you do not have to be concerned about the task or that you are relieved of responsibility. Nothing could be further from the truth; delegation does not relieve one of responsibility; a manager's responsibility cannot be delegated away. Therefore, in any organizational situation involving delegation, provision must be made for evaluation and control.

The process of delegation consists of three distinct although interrelated steps:

1. The assignment of responsibity

2. The delegation of authority

3. The creation of accountability [8, p. 235]

These three distinct steps must be included in all delegations to insure they are effective; they provide the framework for the delegation process.

Responsibility

This refers to the assignment of duties that must be performed, milestones that must be reached, or tasks that must be completed in order to successfully complete the project. These elements should be explicitly stated in the project's documentation like the Work Breakdown Structures (WBS), Network Plans (CPM and PERT), etc. These planning documents require negotiation and mutual acceptance between project and functional managers. They should not be unilateral directives from project to functional managers or vice versa.

Authority

Through formally accepted project documentation, the project manager empowers the functional managers and their personnel to act for him on project matters as specified. They have the right to make the required decisions to accomplish the responsibility mentioned above.

Accountability

This aspect of delegation is often overlooked by the new and inexperienced manager. Steps 1 and 2 above create an obligation to perform the assigned work, and the functional managers become accountable to the project manager for the "proper exercise of authority and performance of assigned responsibilities" contained in the project documentation [8, p. 236]. The project documentation should reflect the above three factors and, as experience is gained during the life cycle of the project, policies can be used to further clarify the reciprocal roles and relationships between the project and functional managers and the responsibilities and authorities related thereto. At the inception of the project, provisions must be made for establishing accountability which is operationalized through project evaluation and control procedures; the timely processing of vital information and its evaluation by the project manager and his team is critical to the successful management of any project. These procedures should be part of the mutual agreements reached between the project and functional managers and contain provisions for modifications as project requirements change.

Benefits from Delegating

The importance and critical nature of delegation to project success has been stressed in the previous sections of this paper. The following are some of the direct and indirect benefits that managers and their organizations can obtain from effective use of the delegation process [6, p. 123].

* Extends results from what a manager can do himself to what he can control (accountability)

* Provides time for the manager to engage in management activities (their primary responsibility) rather than being involved in technical activities

* Provides opportunity for the development of subordinates, increasing their skill, knowledge, and competency

* Provides internal task-oriented motivation for personnel working on the project

* Places responsibility for decisions at the proper level in the organization where the relevant information and competency is located

Barriers to Effective Delegation [6, pp. 133-134]

The following are some of the major causes of ineffective delegation, and these causes lie with the delegator, the delegatee, and/or the situation (organizational environment).

Barriers in the Delegator

* Preference for operating

* Demand that everyone "know all the details"

* "I can do it better myself" fallacy

* Lack of experience on the job or in delegating

* Insecurity

* Fear of being disliked

* Refusal to allow mistakes

* Lack of confidence in subordinates

* Perfectionism, leading to overcontrol

* Lack of organizational skill in balancing workloads

* Failure to delegate authority commensurate with responsibility

* Uncertainty over tasks and inability to explain

* Disinclination to develop subordinates

* Failure to establish effective controls and to follow up

Barriers in the Delegatee

* Lack of experience

* Lack of competence

* Avoidance of responsibility

* Overdependence on the boss

* Disorganization

* Overload of work

* Immersion in trivia

Barriers in the Situation

* One-man-show policy

* No toleration of mistakes

* Critical nature of decisions

* Urgency, leaving no time to explain (crisis management)

* Confusion in responsibilities and authority

* Understaffing

Reverse Delegation

This presents a rather interesting, although not uncommon, situation; it is when the delegatee delegates back to the delegator. The following are several causes which should be understood to better cope with this potential situation

* The subordinate wishes to avoid risk

* The subordinate is afraid of criticism

* The subordinate lacks confidence

* The subordinate lacks the necessary information and resources to accomplish the job successfully

* The boss wants to "be needed"

* The boss is unable to say no to requests for help

As stated previously, delegation does not occur naturally or, for most people, easily. Managers must first recognize the importance of delegation and then develop the necessary interpersonal skills to accomplish it. If an individual desires to be a manager, then he must become an effective delegator because delegation is the essence of good management.

Summary

Project authority is the formal (legal) and personal influence of the project manager over his project [2, p. 319]. It flows vertically from the chief executive and horizontally and diagonally to the functional managers and their personnel through the delegation process. Project authority is pervasive throughout the organization and should be shared with all organizational elements which support the project for achievement of its objectives. It should be used to facilitate a congruency of both project and functional objectives in terms of overall organizational objectives.

Organization & Delegation - A Systems Approach

The project manager-functional manager relationship is relatively unique in contemporary organizations and can best be understood in terms of mutually accepted project and functional authority, responsibility, and accountability relationships which are reciprocally interdependent. Above-average skill by the project manager in interpersonal relations is required to achieve and maintain this state of mutual acceptance. ³ The project manager must be able to demonstrate to functional managers that achievement of project objectives will also aid them in accomplishing their functional objectives; realization of both project and functional objectives is necessary for the achievement of overall organizational (system) objectives. The authors propose that it is the systems perspective which facilitates the establishment and maintenance of effective authority, responsibility, and accountability relationships which facilitate realization of organizational objectives and, in turn, project and functional objectives.

The Systems Concept ⁴

There are many different meanings to the concept "systems." It has different meanings in different contexts and different meanings to different individuals in the same context. For the purpose of this discussion the systems concept provides the basic framework for establishing meaningful relationships within the organization. It is a "way of thinking" about authority and the sharing of authority through the delegation process.

The following factors are essential in applying the systems concept to project and functional management and the sharing of authority through the delegation process:

* Determination of the organization's (system's) objectives

* Determination of the strategies or courses of action it will pursue in achieving its objectives

* Allocation and configuration of resources in terms of organizational design to implement its strategies and achieve its objectives - this would include the decision to implement project management with the matrix organization [1, p. 1].

This approach to organizing requires that the organization be analyzed from the perspective of its being a system with subsystems. In its most general sense, a system can be defined as "an organized or complex whole; an assemblage or combination of things or parts forming a complex or unitary whole." However, the following is a more meaningful definition.

A system is:

* an array of parts or components configured in a certain way,

* which functions according to a plan or set of rules,

* to accomplish a particular objective [5, p. 117].

In organizational analysis, the total organization must be considered first and then, in relation to this perspective, the parts (functional and project) should be considered, i.e, the relationship of each part to the whole and to each other. The basic guides in this analysis are the organizational objectives which reflect the reason for the organization's existence.

Master And Derivative Objectives

Organizations are created to accomplish objectives. Since contemporary organizations have multiple objectives these should be explicitly stated, assigned priorities by top management, and communicated to managers at all levels in the organization. This normative prescription, unfortunately, is not completely followed in practice. The objective is an integral part of the systems definition in the previous section. After objectives are determined, the course or courses of action for the total organization are determined. This is termed strategy, a plan of action, an operating plan, etc., depending upon the relevant time period. It is the way the top management of the organization decides that the organization can best achieve its objectives, considering the opportunities and threats in its environment and its own strengths (capabilities) and weaknesses. The results of this process are referred to as the plan or set of rules in the above system definition.

After the master objectives and plan of action for the organization have been established, derivative or subsystem objectives for parts of the organization should be determined. For the purpose of this article, the authors assume that the decision has been made to adopt project management with the matrix organizational structure. A discussion of the reasons why an organization should adopt project management is beyond the scope of this article and is contained in other articles and papers [10, pp. 105-113].

Figure 1
System and Subsystem Objectives

Figure 1 illustrates the relationship between system and subsystem objectives. With the implementation of the matrix organization, the authors propose that two primary subsystems are created:

* A subsystem for managing its multiple projects, products, product lines on an interfunctional basis; this is the project subsystem;

* A subsystem for its technical functions and activities, such as engineering, manufacturing, marketing, finance, etc.; this is the functional subsystem.

In the current technological environment, organizations must perform very well in both their project/product and their specialized functional activities in order to compete effectively and to survive. Each of the above subsystems should have its own derivative objectives which are supportive of the organizational objectives and not in conflict with each other. The objectives in Figure 1 are stated in general terms for illustration purposes only but, in actual practice, they would be quantified to the maximum extent possible with specific time frames.

Congruency of system and subsystem objectives is the key to organizational, project, and functional success. Without the congruency of all objectives, there is a high probability of conflict within and between the parts of the organization making it difficult, if not impossible, to establish and maintain meaningful authority, responsibility, and accountability relationships between the project and functional subsystems. Congruency of objectives or goals is not easily obtained, but if top management and their subsystem managers approach the process from the system perspective, they have a viable frame of reference which facilitates the realization of goal congruency.

Subsystem Relationships

The matrix organization has two major subsystems, project and functional. As stated above, each subsystem should have explicit objectives that support, on an integrated basis, the achievement of organizational (system) objectives. The interrelationships of the objectives are depicted in Figure 1. The purposes of these subsystems are:

Figure 2
Project/Product Subsystem and Functional Subsystem Relationships ⁵

* To manage the organization's multiple products, product lines, and/or projects on an interfunctional basis-a project management approach for its outputs. This enables the organization to plan, control, and coordinate the diverse organizational activities in terms of each of its products or projects.

* To maintain and develop specialized functional expertise. This enables the organization to obtain maximum use of special technical knowledge and to obtain the most efficient utilization of its facilities, machinery, equipment, etc., because all products/projects will be supported by these resources unless otherwise specified in the organization design decision.

Figure 2 is not an organizational chart, but a model that illustrates the basic interfaces between the project and functional subsystems. It provides a frame of reference for these two major subsystems.

Within the guidelines established for all organizational projects, each project manager must identify and, through mutually accepted project documentation, establish the nature of the interface with each functional activity which supports the project. These points of interface are the authority, responsibility, and accountability relationships required for the successful management of projects and specialized activities. This is where delegation and a sharing of authority occur. This is a primary responsibility of the project manager and should not be avoided or dealt with informally. These interfaces will change over the life of a project, but a baseline reference should be initially established so there will be a reference point for the analysis and acceptance of the inevitable changes.

Summary and Conclusions

One of the greatest challenges to contemporary organizations has been how to establish and maintain meaningful relationships between and among all its resources, especially human resources.

These human relationships are reflected, in a formal sense, by the organization's authority, responsibility, and accountability patterns. Because of the rapidly changing technological environment in which many organizations operate today, the project management concept has been adopted with the matrix organizational structure. This structure has created a new and complex organizational relationship. That relationship is the project-functional manager interface, which requires a sharing of authority for project activities with the project manager being ultimately responsible for the achievement of project objectives, i.e., he is the manager of the project.

The delegation process is the mechanism by which authority is shared with others who must furnish support for the successful completion of the project. Delegation of authority does not come naturally or easily. Its importance must be understood and the causes of ineffective delegation recognized. If a project manager desires to be a manager rather than a project technician, he must develop the skill of delegation. Delegation has been referred to as the "essence of good management," and it is proposed that it is a vital prerequisite to the effective management of a project. The project manager must delegate his authority to others throughout the organization to achieve project objectives. It must be emphasized that project planning documentation and effective control and evaluation procedures are essential to delegation. Since a project is not static but dynamic, provisions must be made for changes in the authority, responsibility, and accountability relationships between project and functional managers and their people. Consequently, periodic reviews of the understandings between the project and the various functional managers should be conducted to assure that they are current in the light of changing conditions.

The following systems perspectives are presented as a guide for developing and maintaining relationships between the project and functional activities of an organization.

* The organization must be viewed as a system with mutual understanding and acceptance of system objectives by all managers throughout the organization.

* The organizational system has two major subsystems, each of which has objectives supportive of system objectives and compatible with each other. These subsystems are the project/product and the functional subsystems.

* The nature and the reciprocal interdependence of the authority, responsibility, and accountability relationships between each subsystem must be recognized and mutually accepted through effective delegation and sharing of authority.

The dynamics of contemporary organizational life, with its resulting reciprocal interdependencies between organizational activities, project and functional, are so complex that a systems perspective is imperative. This perspective provides a framework for establishing and maintaining viable authority, responsibility, and accountability relationships through effective delegations. These delegations should be supported by organizational and project documentation and evaluation and control processes.

¹This article was previously published in the 1978 Proceedings of the Project Management Institute, 10th Annual Seminar/Symposium, Los Angeles, California.

²For a more thorough discussion of the matrix organization and the functional/project manager relationship, the reader is referred to Cleland, D.I. & King, W.R. Systems Analysis and Project Management. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1975, pp. 183-202 and 241-265.

³For a comprehensive analysis of the interpersonal skills of project managers, the reader is referred to F.A. Stickney and W.R. Johnston, "Identification and Development of Individuals for Project Management Positions," 1977Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Seminar Symposium, Drexel Hill, Pa.: Project Management Institute, 1977, pp. 416-424.

⁴The basic concepts discussed in this section were also included in "Organization Design: A Critical Factor in the Management of Resources," 1975 Proceedings of the Seventh Annual Seminar/Symposium, Drexel Hill, Pa.: Project Management Institute, 1975, pp. 105-113.

⁵Adapted from D.I. Cleland and W.R. King, Systems Analysis and Project Management, New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968, p. 177.

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Delegation and sharing of authority by the project manager

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To achieve success as a project manager, one must understand the process and the purpose of delegating authority. This article examines the nature and the process of delegating authority.

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This is a very informative article about how to be both a horizontal and a vertical leader. They both share some common ground and I found the article to be interesting.

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Do you find leading your organization to be a constant balancing act? Sometimes you're giving people flexibility to link up and learn, to "be their best"- but then you're pushing them to the limit, demanding results. You want to be interconnected, horizontal, and coolly supportive of people far and wide - a true "network leader" - but you also want discipline and vertical respect. Old-fashioned hierarchy can still have its place.

Tired of balancing "command" versus "community?" Maybe it's time to get off the horizontal/vertical see-saw and think differently about your organization.
Getting To Both/And
So argues Chris Fussell's new book, One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams. Fussell(assisted by C.W. Goodyear) sketches a compelling "both/and" approach, exhorting leaders to build "hybrid organizations" that blend networks and hierarchy in the same enterprise. The former Navy SEAL and now McChrystal Group business consultant writes that network-hierarchy fusion is not only doable, but even critical. And why not? Today's global economy forces every leader to master the cognitive dissonance of granting freedom all around, while also continually seeking higher performance. One Mission is a blueprint for building a winning hybrid organization to support your business strategy.
Beyond A Team of Teams
A decade ago, Fussell was aide-de-camp to Stan McChrystal who was leading a global Counterterrorism Task Force in the Middle East. The two worked together, developing what McChrystal described in his own book as a " team of teams " - a high performance intelligence and commando operation across the region to meet the then unprecedented network terrorism of Al Qaeda.

McChrystal's strategy-cum-memoir of 2015 painted an inspiring picture of transforming the bureaucratic dinosaur of allied military intelligence units into a nimble and deadly effective network too, dramatically increasing successful strikes against insurgents. McChrystal's story highlighted a new organization model that combined "shared consciousness" among networked but still hierarchically-organized units with "empowered execution" by front-line soldiers. The book insisted it was a formula that could also benefit commercial organizations competing in today's interconnected and volatile world.

Business leaders rallied to McChrystal's New York Times bestseller, but for many, the book lacked how-to, non-military detail. Fussell's successor volume, crafted with two subsequent years of business applications, redresses the gap. One Mission serves up valuable under-the-hood analysis of what McChrystal first pioneered - making the team-of-teams vision that much more actionable for businesses today.
The High Performing Hybrid Organization
One Mission now explains why "team of teams" worked so well in war, and more important, how its hybrid organizational model is now delivering higher performance in business. Fussell explains that the magic is created by leveraging the strengths of each organizational approach and in tandem offsetting the negatives. The big idea is that savvy hybrid leaders leaven the structure of vertical bureaucracy with a more respectful and empowering culture of horizontal networks.

This is not the first call for bringing network and hierarchy together in one enterprise. As Fussell notes, "academics have been writing about this for years," and of course the infamous matrix organization model is a living museum of corporations trying to achieve the both/and of org-chart structure and team-based flexibility. More recent experiments to note might also include Nonaka's " hypertext organization," networked community platform businesses (e.g. Uber, Task Rabbit, Airbnb), Red Hat's "open-ish organization," Zappo's holacracy, and others.

But there's something new and valuable in Fussell's book. One Mission goes beyond the original McChrystal team-of-teams story, now providing a more detailed discussion of what it takes to actually build the hybrid. As Fussell explained, "Structure is important, but this hybrid only works with the right kind of leader, constantly setting an operating context for people to work together across silos and boundaries."

So how does a leader create that context?
Understanding Organizational Dynamics
"It begins," Chris Fussell elaborated, "by understanding the positives and negatives of both parts of the potential hybrid. You have to get beyond the traditional framing of either/or."

"You can't throw away what works in a bureaucracy - optimization of assets, accountability, long- term planning and development of talent, certain linear decision-making processes. But we also know bureaucracies can be rigid, slow and risk-averse."

"Teams and small units, by contrast, are unmatched for their spirit and agility of performance; also their ability to make non-linear decisions and innovate on the fly. But they have disadvantages too: they get dug in with their own micro-cultures, creating parochial echo chambers, and then they won't collaborate with other units"

"Sometimes a small team will connect with other people - which is human - and form networks, which is good. But then another negative: there's no real plan or accountability when they do. Flash mobs or loose communities will arise, but they don't get anything done long term. Just remember, for example, Occupy Wall Street: lots of engagement, but no lasting change."

"After working with several business clients, we realized that capturing the right strengths of both hierarchy and networks is partly design but mostly about leadership - showcasing expected behavior, setting context, and encouraging ongoing experimentation - building a culture that honors and signals the need for both structure and freedom at the same time. The leader of a hybrid organization has to let go of control, but also not let go too much."
Four Imperatives
So how to do that? Fussell's book offers four imperatives for leaders, each framed under a "one mission" culture: many small teams operating as a structured but flexible community, freely operating but engaging and accountable to another; guided to keep learning and take action towards a shared performance goal.

The four imperatives each demonstrate a synthesis of horizontal freedom and vertical structure that shapes the performance of a "networked hierarchy."

1.Create an "aligning narrative."

The all-dominant performance mission begins with leaders creating an "aligning narrative." This first step is a bonding story of community and duty that cuts across "tribal prejudices," aimed at building shared commitment among all. The narrative appeals to both reason and emotions to focus everyone on the same meaningful outcome - a classic tool of hierarchical alignment. But the storytelling must also still respect the frequent need for individual units to go their own way to meet the challenges of shared mission - thus swinging the pendulum towards network freedom and flexibility.

As Fussell commented, "the leader must weave stories in a way that each of the "tribal units" sees threats and opportunities beyond their own smaller perspectives - and come to the realization that only by working together can they ever reach the desired performance."
2. Foster "interconnection."
Small teams and "tribal units" create their own realities that silently block listening to others, retarding collaborative innovation (endemic to a hierarchy) - so the leader must work tirelessly to foster communication and learning among all, going beyond formal structures (facilitating open, organization-wide exchange; cross-team problem-solving and reflection to form social networks, and vice versa). S/he must also accelerate cross-boundary communication, by judicious "embedding" of key influencers across and even beyond the organization. These "planted advocates" tap into knowledge and trade problem-solving insights with sympathetic partners.

In the Middle East military theater, McChrystal achieved "interconnection" by hosting and moderating community-wide open intelligence briefings, and also placing knowledgeable allies in contributing civilian organizations (e.g. the CIA). Fussell has now been profitably applying the same approach in commercial organizations, for example, by creating multi-unit briefings and network formation among historically adversarial groups working on one company's technology service programs.

"The key," Fussell noted, "is for leaders to facilitate the information sharing, encouraging people to start 'thinking out loud together'. A good leader will pull the right values and ideas out of a community, by challenging people to reflect on the bigger issues that the leader himself or herself is facing. That raises the level of thinking and helps build the aligning narrative."
3. Shape the hybrid organization's "operating rhythm."
A hierarchical organization moves slowly but acts deliberately and hedges risk. Networks can be fast and fluid, but also volatile, or sometimes ephemeral. At its best, a hybrid organization will not just balance deliberation and execution but actually create a self-reinforcing cycle of both.

"The leader's challenge," Fussell explained, "is to help the broader organization find the right cadence to meet the pace of external threats and competition. The leader has to help the widely- distributed teams to develop a sense when to fall back-and listen and learn from others - and when to turn those lessons into action."

In fighting Al Qaeda, McChrystal wanted to ensure field operatives were continuously sharing intelligence across the entire network - and then at suitable moments converting that knowledge into living strategy, using new, superior insights about the enemy to beat terrorists at their own game.

Fussell highlighted a similar tempo he helped establish between group learning and front- line action, in a major sportswear manufacturer plagued by supply chain issues. "Over time the company evolved an effective rhythm of continuous improvement, with different units learning how to problem-solve together: first understanding what was causing delivery failures; then moving rapidly to implement fixes; and then falling back to analyze the next and higher level of issues, then to collaborate on solutions again, and so on."
4. Reinforce "decision spaces" for front-line operating units.
"Better to ask forgiveness than seek permission" goes the old cliché - and a liberating cry for anyone frustrated in a bureaucracy. But too much "permission-free" action can literally bring down a company - yet not enough innovating freedom can also spell doom, if competitors are moving faster than you. Which they always seem to do.

Thus another hybrid organizational solution, again reflecting "both/and" - define specific boundaries (as a hierarchy), for when permission-free action is not only allowed but encouraged (as a network). It's the job of the leader to unleash and also leash: delineate well-defined decision-spaces that clarify when acting on your own might risk the success of the entire mission, but at the same time, within "the red lines," also encourage rapid entrepreneurial action when need or opportunity arises.

As Fussell recalled: "McChrystal's development of decision spaces across the Counterterrorism Task Force was a major breakthrough, enabling the collected operational units to up significantly their strikes against the enemy. In businesses, we're seeing the same liberating power of decision spaces, leaders intentionally framing front-line empowerment, so they can act more quickly and confidently than before."
Becoming A Hybrid Leader
One Mission is rich with technical insights and examples that bring to life building an effective hybrid organization. But as I questioned Chris Fussell, he kept returning to leadership itself.

He concluded our conversation with quiet reflection about the man at whose side he had learned so much - and then went on to extend his comments in more impersonal terms.

"McChrystal always says how building a 'team of teams' forever changed his assumptions about being a leader. He had to begin by transforming himself, shifting his own identity to someone who doesn't command so much as instead creating context for others to be successful."

"Good leaders, including now many of our commercial clients, become humble. They don't abandon control but use it to create structure for continuous development of a performance community. And instead of focusing on themselves, they devote their efforts to building the capabilities of others, giving them the knowledge and freedom to act whenever mission demands. That allows them to achieve things far greater than any one person or team could ever produce."

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How To Be A Horizontal And Vertical Leader At The Same Time

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Do you find leading your organization to be a constant balancing act? Sometimes you're giving people flexibility to link up and learn, to "be their best"- but then you're pushing them to the limit, demanding results. You want to be interconnected, horizontal, and coolly supportive of people far and wide - a true "network leader" - but you also want discipline and vertical respect.

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Defining a problem can be difficult. It is important for managers to solve the correct problem which is why it is so important to think about the best way to define the problem.

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The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems and identifying which ones are crucial to their strategies.

They may even be trying to solve the wrong problems-missing opportunities and wasting resources in the process. The key is to ask the right questions.

The author describes a process that his firm, InnoCentive, has used to help clients define and articulate business, technical, social, and policy challenges and then present them to an online community of more than 250,000 solvers. The four-step process consists of asking a series of questions and using the answers to create a problem statement that will elicit novel ideas from an array of experts.

Establish the need for a solution. What is the basic need? Who will benefit from a solution?

Justify the need. Why should your organization attempt to solve this problem? Is it aligned with your strategy? If a solution is found, who will implement it?

Contextualize the problem. What have you and others already tried? Are there internal and external constraints to implementing a solution?

Write the problem statement. What requirements must a solution meet? What language should you use to describe the problem? How will you evaluate solutions and measure success?

EnterpriseWorks/VITA, a nonprofit organization, used this process to find a low-cost, lightweight, and convenient product that expands access to clean drinking water in the developing world.

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Reprint: R1209F The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems and identifying which ones are crucial to their strategies. They may even be trying to solve the wrong problems-missing opportunities and wasting resources in the process.

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This is the article I used to help write my SWOT analysis. This is an important tool to help with decision making.  It shows you the strengths and weaknesses of the decision as well as any opportunities or threats.

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What Is a SWOT Analysis and How to Do it Right in 2021 (With Examples)

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A SWOT Analysis is a simple, powerful tool to define your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. Here’s how to use SWOT correctly.

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This article shows the many different tools a manager can use to help with decision-making.

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Credit:

Viorel Sima | Shutterstock

Running a business requires the ability to make good decisions. One wrong choice can affect the entire company. It is crucial for business owners to understanding the weight behind each decision they make, and to continually improve their decision-making skills.

The University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth outlines seven basic steps in effective decision-making:

1. Identify the decision to be made

2. Gather relevant information

3. Identify alternatives

4. Weigh evidence

5. Choose among alternatives

6. Take action

7. Review decision and consequences

While the basic principles might be the same, there are dozens of different techniques and tools that can be used when trying to make a decision. Here are some of the more popular options, many of which use graphs, models or charts. You may want to use a combination of these techniques to arrive at your final decisions.

Decision matrix: A decision matrix is used to evaluate all the options of a decision. When using the matrix, create a table with all of the options in the first column and all of the factors that affect the decision in the first row. Users then score each option and weigh which factors are of more importance. A final score is then tallied to reveal which option is the best.

T-Chart: This chart is used when weighing the plusses and minuses of the options. It ensures that all the positives and negatives are taken into consideration when making a decision.

Decision tree: This is a graph or model that involves contemplating each option and the outcomes of each. Statistical analysis is also conducted with this technique.

Multivoting: This is used when multiple people are involved in making a decision. It helps whittle down a large list options to a smaller one to the eventual final decision.

Pareto analysis: This is a technique used when a large number of decisions need to be made. This helps in prioritizing which ones should be made first by determining which decisions will have the greatest overall impact.

Cost-benefit analysis: This technique is used when weighing the financial ramifications of each possible alternative as a way to come to a final decision that makes the most sense from an economic perspective.

Conjoint analysis: This is a method used by business leaders to determine consumer preferences when making decisions.

SWOT Analysis: SWOT stands for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, which is exactly what this planning tool assesses.

PEST Analysis: An acronym for political, economic, social and technological, PEST can improve decision-making and timing by analyzing external factors. This method considers present trends to help predict the future ones.

There are a few common mistakes people make during the decision-making process that could result in a poor choice. Jeff Miller, the director of corporate training and development for human resources and business performance solutions provider Insperity, said that leaders often either rush decisions or procrastinate on making them.

"As well as being uncomfortable or time-consuming, avoiding decisions can also hurt your reputation," Miller wrote on the Insperity website. "Your staff may perceive it as a lack of care for their well-being, which can create a lack of respect."

Another mistake is not trusting your own gut feelings when trying to make a decision. Business leaders often both over and underestimate the value of the information they receive from others. Instead of letting others sway your belief one way or another, the U.S. Small Business Administration advised leaders to keep the opinions of others in perspective.

"Our society teaches us to ignore [our gut] feelings, but by tuning into your intuition, you will find that you will make much better decisions in the long run," the SBA writes on its website.

While you can and should consult expert advice on particularly difficult decisions, the SBA advises leaders not to rely too heavily on those opinions when evaluating their choices.

"Oftentimes, people have a tendency to place too much emphasis on what experts say," said the SBA article. "Remember, experts are only human and have their own set of biases and prejudices just like the rest of us."
Additional reporting by Chad Brooks.

Sammi Caramela

Sammi Caramela is a recent graduate of Rowan University, where she majored in writing arts and minored in journalism. She currently works as a Purch B2B staff writer while working on her first novel in her free time. Reach her by email, or check out her blog at sammisays.org.

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Techniques and Tools to Help You Make Business Decisions

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Running a business requires the ability to make good decisions. One wrong choice can affect the entire company. It is crucial for business owners to understanding the weight behind each decision they make, and to continually improve their decision-making skills.

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Delegating is an important task for any manager. This article breaks down the benefits, some of which I never thought of.

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Delegation requires time management, thereby increasing your effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. When you are strong in time management, you are exercising conscious control of making choices about what you do, when you do it and how well you do it. But even if you excel in time management, what prevents you from taking the next step and delegating work to others?

When you delegate, you are entrusting another person, usually one less senior than yourself. Delegating requires trust and faith in the other person. There are three actions included in the act of delegating:

* Making decisions

* Giving authority to someone else

* Turning over authority
Benefits Of Delegation
Delegating has several benefits that need to be considered:

* It gives you more time to focus on higher-level tasks

* It gives you more time for things that matter to you

* It gives others opportunities to develop new skills

* It allows others to develop themselves and grow

* It allows you to develop trust

* It introduces you to new ways of doing tasks

Even though there are several advantages to delegating, the main reason it does not happen is because delegating requires setting up a system and structure, which takes effort to implement. Very few individuals that I coach have set up a system to delegate their work, which often prevents them from moving up in the organization.
What's Holding Us Back?
The common excuses I hear time and again for not delegating are, "It's easier and quicker if I do it myself" and "No one else can do it as well as I can." These justifications are a ruse. The question you need to ask yourself is, "Are you staying busy doing tasks that another person could or should do?"

An additional trap you can fall into is doing menial tasks that take up your time, yet do not require applying yourself. This puts you in the realm of cognitive ease, also known as busy work. These tasks can be assigned and may, for the person you can delegate that work to, be a challenge until they have developed the skill and expertise. This is a common diversion from work that requires your cognitive strain and can verge on the heels of procrastination. If you fall into this category, your time management may not be executed effectively.

Delegation and development go hand in hand. Questions to consider when you delegate are:

* Do you know and can you rely on the skills and abilities of those you delegate to?

* Are the performance standards and expectations clear and obvious?

* Are there rules/guidelines to be followed to entrust someone with a task or responsibility?

* Is there too much authority given or not enough for the task to be sufficiently completed?
Guidelines For Delegating
1. When building an atmosphere to delegate, there need to be clear objectives for the person taking on the additional responsibility.

2. You need to establish an understanding of the task assigned.

3. Be clear on the objectives and outcomes.

4. Ask for any concerns they may have and their suggestions and ideas.

5. Have an understanding of the goal.

6. Clarify the what, when and why.

7. Establish the major do's and don'ts.

8. Be clear about the amount of time and/or money to spend.

9. Afterward, review and assess the outcome. This process builds a consensus and trust.
Understanding The Process
Once the procedure and objectives have been discussed, have the person reflect back on what you are trying to accomplish and what they understand to be the key goals or deliverables. And make sure to check on their progress.

Focused updates enhance the quality of work and the likelihood of the deadline being met. If the person you are delegating to is learning a new task, they are in cognitive strain, which means the task will take more time. Your expectations need to be realistic and not measured by how quickly you can accomplish the task. Be sensitive to the learning curve timeframe.

One of the goals of effective delegation is to help someone develop new skills. During this process, they need to be able to tackle unseen problems on their own before coming to you. Once they have explored all their resources and still cannot solve the issues, it is time for you to step in. Let them know it is okay to make a mistake, as a mistake is a teachable moment and we usually learn more from making a mistake than from arriving at the correct answer.

Earlier, I mentioned the need to review and assess the process and outcome. Debriefing is important. You gain a greater understanding of the other person's thought process, how they arrived at and made decisions, and how they approach problem-solving. Each of these areas is crucial to building trust so that you can feel comfortable in delegating more.

What are the next steps? Set up a system beginning with what work you can and should be delegating. This requires understanding and assessing the task. Write out specific and clear objectives. Think about who can learn to undertake this task and address their concerns. Make sure they are clear about the goal. Stay involved, and when the task is completed, review the process.

The more you develop others, the more you are able to move up, taking on more challenges and opportunities in the organization to develop yourself.

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Guidelines On How To Delegate Effectively

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Delegation requires time management, thereby increasing your effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. When you are strong in time management, you are exercising conscious control of making choices about what you do, when you do it and how well you do it.

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This is a step-by-step process for managers to use so we can prioritize tasks as needed. This is the hardest thing for me. I have diagnosed ADHD which messes with my executive functioning.

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5 Secrets of Priority Management | Workfront

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Every January, nearly everyone resolves to get more organized and more productive-to make a concerted effort to focus on what's most important, both personally and professionally. But if you're a manager who would like to take advantage of the new year momentum with your team, this can be tricky.

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This explains the problem solving techniques used in the book. I really like how the article broke it down into smaller parts.

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I really enjoyed how this article showed the growth of Marroitt. I know we used it in our discussion post, but I found it very enjoyable.

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I recently had the pleasure of speaking to J. W. Marriott Jr., who is the Chairman of Marriott International, Inc., one of the world's largest lodging companies. His leadership spans more than 50 years, and he has taken Marriott from a family restaurant business to a global lodging company with more than 3,700 properties in over 73 countries and territories. Known throughout the industry for his hands-on management style, Mr. Marriott has built a highly regarded culture that emphasizes the importance of Marriott's people and recognizes the value they bring to the organization. Today, approximately 300,000 people wearing Marriott International name badges are serving guests in Marriott managed and franchised properties throughout the world.

His new book is called Without Reservations: How a Family Root Beer Stand Grew Into a Global Hotel Company. In this interview, he talks about how he grew his family business, the obstacles he encountered, the five rules that led to his success, his best career advice and more.
Why did you decide to write this book right now? What do you think makes your story relevant in today's world?
After working for Marriott for over 50 years, I decided to step down from the CEO position and hand the reigns over to Arne Sorenson. With such a significant change in our leadership taking place, now seemed like the appropriate time to write. I am so very proud of the company that my parents started as a root beer stand in 1927, which grew over the past 85 years into a global success comprised of over 3,700 hotels in 74 countries.

Companies are under an ever-sharp magnifying glass. The values that have served as Marriott's guiding principles over the past eight decades transcend the hotel business. I think they are valuable for other companies to consider.
As you grew your business, what obstacles did you encounter, how did you overcome them and what were the major milestones?
One of the largest obstacles was when we had to deal with the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and the unknown effects it would have on the travel industry. Not to mention the changes it would impose on our global expansion and the recovery of all the Marriott associates and guests impacted that day.

More recently, the global economic downturn that began in 2008 and the previous similar experience of the early 1990s were also significant obstacles to overcome. We drew upon the previous 1990s layoffs to handle the human side of the equation again in 2008. Some were inevitable, but we were able to temper the pain by keeping many people on board at reduced hours but with full health benefits.

Some of the largest milestones were when we expanded globally. Our first hotel built outside the United States was in Mexico in 1969. The first Marriott located in Europe was built in Amsterdam. The first in the Middle East was the Riyadh Marriott Hotel in Saudi Arabia in 1980. In Africa, our first hotel was the Cairo Marriott in 1981. In Asia, it was Hong Kong in 1989.
In your book, you mention five rules that led to Marriott's success. What are they and how did you originally come up with them?
First and foremost, we put people first. Then we pursue excellence, act with integrity, embrace change, and serve our world.

The first item of the five has been our company credo since my parents' era. "Take care of your employees, and they'll take care of your customers" was the daily mantra that my brother, Dick, and I heard from our father while we were growing up.

The other four values stretch back in time to the earliest days of the company, 30 years before we ever thought about building our first hotel, to our popular Hot Shoppes restaurants. Customers could count on spotless dishes and shiny floors ("Pursue excellence"), an ever-growing menu ("Embrace change"), honest value for their money ("Act with integrity") and a true sense of community second to none ("Serve our world").

Marriott has come a long, long way from the days of being known as a regional family restaurant chain, but our values haven't budged an inch. In fact, they've deepened over time into a commitment to do what great companies should do: make a lasting, positive difference in the world.
What do you think led to the success of Marriott when other chains have failed?
Well my father used to say take good care of the employees, and they will in turn take good care of the customers who will return again and again. That's putting people first! And of course it leads to profit and market share gains and ultimately a successful business.

I believe you succeed in business by being true to purpose beyond profits. From the very beginning of Marriott we believed in opening the doors to a world of opportunities for our associates.
What are your top three pieces of career advice?
1. I believe that you have to challenge yourself personally - constantly strive to improve and we believe at Marriott that success is never final.

2. We need to continue to reinvent ourselves and embrace change because our environment is constantly changing and our customers are always looking for the new big thing.

3. We need to build stronger communities and serve our world. As we do so, we create the conditions for business and personal success as well as a successful future. When the 7.0 earthquake hit Haiti in January 2010, we did not have any properties in the country. Like many other companies and communities in the days immediately following the quake, we answered the call for supplies and contributions. But it didn't feel like enough - particularly considering how incredibly loyal our Haitian associates are. So we started thinking about what else we could do that would make a difference - a tangible long-term difference - to the island's recovery. Our answer? Help development a Marriott hotel to provide jobs and signal to the world that Haiti is "open for business." Our hotel project will have a multiplier effect as we attract investors to Haiti to do business.
Dan Schawbel is the author of the upcoming book, Promote Yourself: The New Art of Getting Ahead (St. Martin's Press, Sept 3rd). Listen to his Promote Yourself Podcast on iTunes for more interviews and career advice.

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J. W. Marriott Jr: From Root Beer Stand to Global Hotel Company

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J. W. Marriott Jr. I recently had the pleasure of speaking to J. W. Marriott Jr., who is the Chairman of Marriott International, Inc., one of the world's largest lodging companies. His leadership spans more than 50 years, and he has taken Marriott from a family restaurant business to a global lodging company [...]

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This is an article about the potential risks businesses face in international finance. I really enjoy finance and thought this article was informative.

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When an organization decides to engage in international financing activities, it takes on additional risk along with the opportunities. The main risks that are associated with businesses engaging in international finance include foreign exchange risk and political risk. These risks may sometimes make it difficult to maintain constant and reliable revenue.

What Is Foreign Exchange Risk?

Foreign exchange risk occurs when the value of an investment fluctuates due to changes in a currency's exchange rate. When a domestic currency appreciates against a foreign currency, profit or returns earned in the foreign country will decrease after being exchanged back to the domestic currency. Due to the somewhat volatile nature of the exchange rate, it can be quite difficult to protect against this kind of risk, which can harm sales and revenues.

For example, assume a U.S. car company receives a majority of its business in Japan. If the Japanese yen depreciates against the U.S. dollar, any yen-denominated profits the company receives from its Japanese operations will yield fewer U.S. dollars compared to before the yen's depreciation.

Foreign exchange risk typically affects businesses that export and/or import their products, services and supplies.

What Is Political Risk?

Political risk transpires when a country's government unexpectedly changes its policies, which now negatively affect the foreign company. These policy changes can include such things as trade barriers, which serve to limit or prevent international trade. Some governments will request additional funds or tariffs in exchange for the right to export items into their country. Tariffs and quotas are used to protect domestic producers from foreign competition. This also can have a huge effect on the profits of an organization because it either cuts revenues from the result of a tax on exports or restricts the amount of revenues that can be earned.

Although the amount of trade barriers have diminished due to free-trade agreements and other similar measures, the everyday differences in the laws of foreign countries can influence the profits and overall success of a company doing business transactions abroad.

In general, organizations engaging in international finance activities can experience much greater uncertainty in their revenues. An unsteady and unpredictable stream of revenue can make it hard to operate a business effectively. Despite these negative exposures, international business can open up opportunities for reduced resource costs and larger lucrative markets. There are also ways in which a company can overcome some of these risk exposures.

For example, a business may attempt to hedge some of its foreign-exchange risk by buying futures, forwards or options on the currency market. They also may decide to acquire political risk insurance in order to protect their equity investments and loans from specific government actions. What a company must decide is whether the pros outweigh the cons when deciding to venture into the international market.

For further reading, see Forces Behind Exchange Rates and Investing Beyond Your Borders.

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The risks businesses face in international finance

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When an organization decides to engage in international financing activities, it takes on additional risk along with the opportunities. The main risks that are associated with businesses engaging in international finance include foreign exchange risk and political risk. These risks may sometimes make it difficult to maintain constant and reliable revenue.

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This is an inspiring quote I found as I was studying.

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This is a good image to show the managerial process.  It has helped me study and understand how the process flows.

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This an excellent article from the Harvard Review Board on the aspects of global companies and what makes them different.

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The Myth of the Global Corporation

Paul N. Doremus, William W. Keller, Louis W. Pauly, and Simon Reich

Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998

The current worldwide economic crisis is showing in dramatic fashion just how global the economy has become. What began as movements of capital out of a few developing countries has become a full-blown Asian recession that threatens to engulf the West as well. Financial and product markets are far more interconnected than ever before. Even in the early part of the twentieth century, a supposed heyday of globalization, only a small number of countries handled most of the currencies and goods being traded. As we enter the next century, it is fair to say that nearly all countries are navigating a single economic sea.

It is one thing to say that the markets of the world are coming together. But are global markets creating globally minded companies? Are we seeing the emergence of rootless corporations guided only by market opportunities, not by allegiance to their home countries? As managers look for growth outside their home regions, are they shaking off traditional operating rules in favor of supposed global ideals of behavior? Are company practices matching the grand rhetoric of globalization? In the political realm, are global companies overwhelming the efforts of nations to preserve their distinctive identities?

For the authors of The Myth of the Global Corporation, the clear answer to those questions is no. They see enormous differences among multinational companies, which they trace to the unique political and economic characteristics of their home countries. When it comes to corporate behavior, the authors show convincingly that nationality is destiny.

National Destinies

This is a timely and brave book, given the widespread view that globalization means convergence among nations and companies toward common ways of doing things. Two of the authors are academics, and the other two are analysts at the U.S. Department of Commerce. The book has inspired passages such as this one: "However lustily they sing from the same hymnbook when they gather together in Davos or Aspen, the leaders of the world's great business enterprises continue to differ in their most fundamental strategic behavior and objectives." But most of it consists of factual analysis.

The first half examines national differences among multinational companies based in Germany, Japan, and the United States; multinationals in France and Britain show up only briefly. Differences in corporate governance, especially ownership patterns, get most of the attention. The authors make the usual arguments about the strong role of banks in Japan and Germany, which invest for the long term. German managers have a great deal of autonomy except in crises, while their Japanese counterparts are often constrained by obligations arising from the corporate networks overseen by the banks. By contrast, the stock of U.S. companies is traded in blocks by short-term-oriented pension, insurance, and mutual funds. Although U.S. managers rarely face direct supervision, they are heavily influenced by movements in their company's stock price.

Investments in R&D also reveal national differences. U.S. companies often aim for breakthroughs in science-based industries, whereas their German and Japanese counterparts prefer incremental, process-based advances in "medium-technology" industries such as automobiles. Moreover, U.S. managers typically use R&D to achieve specific goals for their own company. R&D in Germany is highly cooperative across companies and aims to diffuse innovation throughout the economy. Japanese companies are also oriented toward diffusion, but the national government often steps in to promote specific objectives for innovation in various industries.

All of these differences, the authors explain, make sense in light of how each country developed. Americans have traditionally distrusted concentrated power, so individual banks never achieved the great influence they enjoy elsewhere. In Germany and Japan, which industrialized after the United States, a few large banks helped to speed up the process by filling the crucial role of channeling savings into capital-poor corporations. Even today, these companies rely more on banks for their capital than on broader financial markets. Their cautious, cooperative approach to innovation probably reflects similar national goals of stability and control. By contrast, U.S. companies have emphasized fundamental technological advances ever since the great successes of World War II, which initiated a government-led push for basic scientific research.

These national traits, say the authors, work to discourage multinational companies from adopting a truly global perspective. In the second half of the book, the authors focus on what companies are doing with their investments in other countries. Are they accessing the sort of global technology base that proponents of globalization have predicted? Or are they sticking to what the authors call their "national systems of innovation"?

For evidence, the authors rely heavily on surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, which asked multinational companies about their foreign investments. The results of the surveys give only a crude picture of corporate activity, but they do indicate overall trends. It is true that foreign affiliates of multinationals are taking on a greater share of R&D. But the vast majority of such work still takes place in the home country. And the affiliates tend to concentrate on adapting the original product to local needs. Except in a few highly technical industries such as pharmaceuticals, the technology flows from parents to affiliates; the parents usually aren't trying to tap into global sources of innovation.

Is the book on target? The central thesis, that multinational corporations bear the imprint of their national origins, is correct in general terms. The only "anational" organizations of any kind are likely to be international agencies populated by polyglot employees. Every company carries the baggage of its home environment as it expands internationally.

If anything, the authors understate the institutional differences across countries. In addition to corporate governance and innovation, national regulations on employment also affect corporate strategies. Take the United States' continued emphasis on science-based R&D. If U.S. companies are driven to short-term goals by myopic financial markets, how do they have the patience to invest in risky scientific enterprises that promise only distant rewards? Part of the answer may lie in the unique characteristics of the U.S. labor market. Because the U.S. labor force is largely unregulated, managers have a great deal of flexibility in bringing people together in response to market opportunities. People are willing to work on risky ventures because they can receive large rewards if the venture is successful or they can move easily to other companies if the venture fails. The German workforce, by contrast, is highly organized and protected by both unions and the government. Japanese workers have fewer external protections, but their companies are committed to keeping employment stable.

National Companies, Global Reach

The difficulties of adapting to national differences are likely to discourage many companies from relying heavily on foreign affiliates for basic innovation. But that doesn't mean businesses are necessarily shrinking from global opportunities. Companies can be integrated into worldwide markets without conforming to a single, global ideal of behavior. Nor do they need to have dynamic affiliates all over the world. The free movement of trade and people allows companies to compete on a global basis without straying far from headquarters.

The book does not address in detail what national differences mean for corporate competitiveness, but they're worth examining closely. This is where the debate on the global economy and the nation state becomes fascinating. As we know from the theory of comparative advantage, when countries open up to international trade and investment, their companies tend to specialize in whatever the country of operation does best. As long as the global economy remains relatively open, nations will increasingly consist of highly specialized activities in a worldwide production chain. Countries tend to foster competencies in their companies and public institutions that favor particular kinds of products and ways of doing things.

Take the Japanese focus on medium-technology industries such as automobiles. Success in this industry requires a disciplined and stable labor force willing to invest in learning the skills required to achieve world-class performance. Profitability depends on incremental innovation and close coordination with fellow employees, suppliers, and markets. Japanese companies have fine-tuned these capabilities to the point that their cars are in demand almost everywhere.

Countries that allow the easy migration of skilled labor can specialize all the more. U.S. companies have benefited enormously from this movement. When people come to the United States to work, they usually adapt to U.S. institutions while still maintaining personal and professional links to their home country. As a result, U.S. companies are able to take advantage of global labor markets without altering their institutional foundations.

We can best see the global division of knowledge work in the computer industry. Each year, thousands of well-educated engineers graduate from India's institutes of technology: some migrate to Silicon Valley, others go to Bangalore, India's high-tech capital, and others move back and forth between the two. Those transplanted to Silicon Valley work in circumstances remarkably different from those in their home country. Engineers regularly move between companies, and their high salaries are closely tied to the demands of this dynamic and fluid external labor market. Knowledge flows freely within and across companies, and job titles and other accoutrements often mean little. (At Intel, Andrew Grove actually sits in a cubicle, just as his employees do.) And companies can start up and close down rapidly. If the company is in a downward spiral, the human capital walks out the door in no time at all; yet the departing workers-and their knowledge-stay in the region. These flexible arrangements promote a highly innovative working environment.

Bangalore, by contrast, has a different sort of comparative advantage. Many of its companies are working on the Year 2000 problem and other labor-intensive software challenges. Their physical capital is much weaker-most companies rely on batteries to back up the faulty electrical supply. And even though wages are rising rapidly, there's still abundant and cheap labor for doing lower-order activities on a highly competitive basis. To manage this labor, companies in Bangalore rely much more on supervision than do their equivalents in Silicon Valley.

For the authors of The Myth of the Global Corporation, these differences might be evidence that U.S. and Indian companies are shying away from global integration. But even though Microsoft may have only a small office of its own in Bangalore, it still relies heavily on its Indian counterparts to do work on the global software value chain. These companies continue to reflect their national origins, but they have learned to manage resources and divide responsibilities on a global basis.

Globalization, however, does not always work so smoothly. The trouble occurs when a company's ambition goes up against rigid national institutions that do not easily adapt. Take the computer division of Siemens, the big German electronics group. It has heroically tried to make itself more innovative in the face of global competition. Should Siemens adopt the flat internal organization of Silicon Valley? Even if the government allowed the change, it could be a disastrous mistake. The German labor market is based on the assumption that workers build their skills in return for gradual increases in pay within companies. Without this guaranteed link between skill and reward, the labor force might lose the skills that have given the country its competitive advantage in slower-moving industries such as automobiles. Individual German companies cannot simply change their organization and their competencies if the country's labor markets do not support their efforts. As worldwide competition in high technology intensifies, German companies may not be able to keep up without shifting R&D to environments that are more flexible.

The message is simple: what managers can do strategically depends on where they are located. The authors are right to highlight the national influences on multinational companies-they do limit corporate behavior in important ways. But supposedly parochial policies can actually make companies more competitive on a global scale, not less.

National Workers, Global Companies

If companies like Siemens decide to shift some activities to surroundings more conducive to innovation, the easiest path is through an acquisition or merger. But what happens when a company from one national environment has to manage operations in another? The Myth of the Global Corporation suggests that companies cannot escape their national traits, making international mergers difficult. And there certainly is evidence for such pessimism. A fine example is the investment banking industry, in which the so-called Anglo-Saxon system appears to excel. In the early 1990s, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank purchased several British investment firms, only to find that the high-stakes, high-incentive pay of the City could not be easily integrated with traditional German compensation practices. No amount of learning could resolve the conflict of employee incentives that were irrevocably locked into the respective national systems.

But that's not true for all mergers. Consider the case of Chrysler and Daimler-Benz. These two companies carry out almost all of their manufacturing at home, and they are marked by very different management styles and capabilities. Chrysler demonstrates typical American strengths in managing new product development, whereas Daimler-Benz exhibits the usual German strengths in production engineering. Still, there's no reason why the combined companies cannot continue to operate on largely national lines and take advantage of each partner's strengths.

Observers have pointed to the enormous disparities in compensation at the top of the two companies, and there's no doubt that the high-paid American executives will be under some uncomfortable scrutiny. But problems at this level can be outweighed by the advantages of the merger if the combined company maintains continuity at the operational level, where the work actually gets done. As long as the company preserves the appropriate institutional framework for its operations in each country, it can expect to benefit from what each country has to offer.

Indeed, for all the talk about compensation disparities, few observers have called for Daimler's workers to accept a smaller benefits package. Despite the fact that Germany is the most expensive location in the world for labor and despite the differences in corporate governance, U.S. companies in a number of industries already invest a good deal in Germany. They do so because their success depends on local skills, and Germany's productivity and quality more than make up for the higher costs.

By focusing on how companies are the products of their national systems, the authors discount the opportunities for multinational corporations to prosper in a world balanced by global and local influences. In cases where the incentives for managers and workers do not conflict, international mergers can help companies exploit national advantages.

Indeed, globalization can actually strengthen national differences, not erode them. DaimlerChrysler presumably will shift some of its product development to Detroit, further encouraging the U.S. penchant for rapid innovation. Stuttgart, for its part, will take on more responsibility for engineering and the design of high-performance systems, further boosting Germany's elaborate institutions of vocational training. Multinational companies will be eager to support national practices that promote global competitiveness.

We can already see this integration gaining momentum with global alliances. The authors point out that most technological alliances still take place among companies from the same nation. But the situation is not so simple. A study I carried out with two colleagues found that large companies in the biotechnology and semiconductor industries act as bridges across countries and large regions. Small companies from different countries rarely form alliances with one another; it takes big enterprises like Novartis and Motorola to make such connections. From space, the world might appear to be broken up into concentrated regions of entrepreneurial activity. But between these regions lie the superhighways of multinational corporations, bringing the world together.

National Debates, Global Ideas

If the global economy is going to arrange itself around national comparative advantage, then managers face a special challenge-one that isn't addressed specifically in this book. Although the current financial crisis may be reviving some doubts about globalization, there is still enormous cultural momentum for economic convergence. In the 1980s, political critics wanted every country to imitate Japan. Now, the thriving United States has become the standard-bearer of the increasingly pervasive global economy. The authors of The Myth of the Global Corporation are skeptical that this kind of cultural momentum will make economic institutions bend in times of crisis. But as the world comes to believe in globalization, politicians may come under intense ideological pressure to change these fundamental institutions.

The question now is how to react to the momentum for institutional convergence. Certainly, managers should welcome a degree of convergence at a minimum level of good policy. Already Japan and other Asian countries are likely to adopt a degree of U.S.-style regulatory policy for banks as the countries emerge from recession. But if Germany deregulates its labor markets to imitate the high-flying United States, it may endanger the skills that make it such an attractive place for investment. How can countries change their institutions to boost global competitiveness without losing the advantages they already have? The answers are far from clear.

The national debates over globalization now taking place, from the streets of France to the villages of Indonesia, should not be dismissed. They raise not only powerful concerns over the survival of national cultures and the unfairness of rapid change but also complex questions about the sources of a nation's advantages. Globalization is a powerful force not just because influential political and economic interest groups, frustrated with national institutions, have made it their war cry. Globalization is powerful because it is an idea that has seeped into the imagination of ambitious individuals in all corners of the world, even though many find the concept alarming. Trying to create the right balance between the national policies that undergird competitiveness and the aspirations of a globally conscious world citizenry is a major challenge for managers and their companies.

A version of this article appeared in the January-February 1999 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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The Myth of the Global Corporation Paul N. Doremus, William W. Keller, Louis W. Pauly, and Simon Reich Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998 The current worldwide economic crisis is showing in dramatic fashion just how global the economy has become.

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These are good tips for an intro on global management. It is a good preliminary read before getting into deeper topics on the subject.

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Let's talk about this. A global manager is defined by the work he or she is doing, frequently within a company with global presence or operations. A global manager is responsible for managing teams of employees or business operations across diverse cultures and time zones, which calls for new skill sets and capabilities.

And, the new global manager is almost everyone working as a manager today.

Whether you're working for a local, national or international company, you're working across cultures, languages, regions or countries. You have to be savvy at quickly assessing needs, reading others and ensuring interactions are successful to meet deliverables and accomplish your goals.
There is a New Global Environment!
Business today is conducted in an almost borderless, boundary-free marketplace, made of multiple countries, cultures, languages, ethnicities and time zones. The number of companies with international offices and plants continues to grow as people from a broad range of countries move and settle in new locations.

Technology connects all of us 24/7 to geographic locations about which we've only just begun to learn. In truth, you've probably already noticed that the number of people you work with or come in contact with on a daily basis, has changed. Your employees and co-workers may well have backgrounds that are very different from your own.

There are three significant reasons for this.

Let's start with the most obvious. The first: An increasing number of U.S.-based companies are doing business internationally. For example, more than sixty-eight percent of the top 250 U.S. retailers have foreign operations, according to a report published by Deloitte. And, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO), global trade growth is projected to stay above-trend. This growth in international operations is expected to continue.

Finally, the third reason for the new global environment is that more American managers work for companies that are headquartered outside the United States. Companies like Burger King, Budweiser, Medtronic, Purina, McDermott, Seagate Technology, Good Humor, Frigidaire, and Actavis/Allergan are among the iconic U.S, company names that have moved headquarters from the United States to other countries in the past few years, according to a report by CNBC.

In the new global environment, managers work with teams of people from different cultural backgrounds, locations, and levels of experience. This rapidly changing global environment, with diverse customer demands, new markets, and digitalization means managers need to react quickly in situations of extreme complexity and ambiguity.
Mastering the Art of the New Global Manager: OAR and 4DCulture Tools
As I explain in my new book, The New Global Manager, to be a successful New Global Manager, you'll need to incorporate a combination of skills and new tools--like the OAR process. Use the three following steps, Observe/Ask/React, to quickly assess any situation more accurately.

The basic rule for OAR is that when someone behaves unexpectedly, instead of responding immediately you stop, and Observe. What did they do or not do that surprised you? When another person's behavior doesn't match your expectations, it's time for the second part of OAR. It's time to Ask Questions. Once you've gathered more information, then React.

Another tool New Global Managers are employing is called 4DCulture. When you know you're going to be in a situation with someone whose culture is different from your own, you should do some homework. The 4DCulture tool will help you analyze the cultural forces that may be in play. The tool gives you a way to make your first determination about how you're going to act and then to ask the questions and analyze the situation so that you do better.
The New Global Environment is all around us.
Suffice it to say, immigration and globalization trends will not reverse any time soon. They will drive the environment you work in every day. Advances in technology further stir the pot, making it more likely that you will have frequent contact with people with diverse norms, perceptions, and values. You will, of necessity, need to develop a global mindset and perfect your global management skills. This is an exciting and challenging time for all of us.
Ten Never Fail Strategies for The New Global Manager:

1. Check your assumptions at the door

2. Slow down, speak clearly, and use slang sparingly and carefully

3. Add 'in country X' to indicate you are thinking globally

4. Memorize five facts about another country or culture

5. Act like an anthropologist: Observe and listen

6. Seek out global news sources

7. Travel adventurously, but take precautions

8. Ensure everyone contributes in meetings

9. Give constructive feedback but consider the receiver

10. Alternate meeting times to accommodate time zones.

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New Global Managers: Tools and Tips You'll Need to Be Successful

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Let's talk about this. A global manager is defined by the work he or she is doing, frequently within a company with global presence or operations. A global manager is responsible for managing teams of employees or business operations across diverse cultures and time zones, which calls for new skill sets and capabilities.

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This is a list of 2018's most ethical companies to work for. It is good to have for potential future employment.

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Ethisphere® Institute | Good. Smart. Business. Profit.®

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New York, NY-February 12, 2018-The Ethisphere Institute, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, today announced 135 companies spanning 23 countries and 57 industries as the 2018 World's Most Ethical Companies®.

Since 2007, Ethisphere has honored those companies who recognize their critical role to influence and drive positive change in the business community and societies around the world and work to maximize their impact wherever possible. In 2017, we saw a profound change in the discourse around the world, but as part of that disruption we also saw global companies emerge as society's leading voice to advance the human condition.

Values-based leadership leaped to the forefront of business strategy, and companies increasingly discussed their purpose in broad, community-focused terms. Diversity and inclusion, investment and long-term commitment, and constructive use of a company's voice are now the hallmarks of what stakeholders are expecting and investors are rewarding.

The 2018 World's Most Ethical Companies responded to this opportunity with alacrity. Record metrics of community support and innovative ways to engage and inspire employees, customers and stakeholders typified this year's honoree.

"Over the last 12 years, we have repeatedly seen that those companies who focus on transparency and authenticity are rewarded with the trust of their employees, their customers and their investors. While negative headlines might grab attention, the companies who support the rule of law and operate with decency and fair play around the globe will always succeed in the long term," explained Ethisphere CEO, Timothy Erblich. "Congratulations to all of the 2018 honorees."

Ethisphere's notion that financial value and ethics are inexorably tied together has been borne out through long-term tracking of how the stock prices of publicly traded honorees compare to the U.S. Large Cap Index. The research found that listed World's Most Ethical Companies outperformed the large cap sector over five years by 10.72 percent and over three years by 4.88 percent. Ethisphere refers to this as the Ethics Premium.

"We are honored to be listed among the World's Most Ethical Companies for the fifth consecutive year," said Dell Technologies Chairman and CEO, Michael Dell. "Ethics and integrity matter at Dell. We work hard to earn our customers' trust, improve our communities and inspire our team members through sound, ethical decision-making. Because at Dell, how we do our work is just as important as the results we achieve."

"Responsible business is a fundamental part of Volvo Cars' culture and way of operating, and something we continuously promote internally as well as with our business partners," said Volvo Cars President and CEO, Håkan Samuelsson. "An ethical approach to business is not only the right thing to do, but also brings financial value and helps attract and retain the best talent. We are proud that we have been recognised as one of the World's Most Ethical Companies for the second consecutive year."

"Integrity should not only be understood as compliance with the law, rules and procedures; it goes beyond that-it is part of the culture. Ethics is good for business, as it strengthens morale, improves efficiency and sustains the most important asset for any market: trust," said Grupo Bimbo CEO, Daniel Servitje.

"At Microsoft, trust and integrity are core to our values and critical to our success. We're passionate about applying the power of technology to improve our world, and that starts with doing business in a way that builds and maintains trust with our customers," said Microsoft President, Brad Smith. "Microsoft is honored to be named once again to the World's Most Ethical Companies by Ethisphere because it reflects our passion to make a lasting impact on the world around us."
Celebratory Gala Dinner
PepsiCo Chairperson and CEO, Indra Nooyi will deliver the Keynote Address at the 2018 World's Most Ethical Companies Gala on March 13 at Cipriani 42nd Street ®. Nooyi, CEO since 2006, is the chief architect of Performance with Purpose, PepsiCo's pledge to do what is right for the business by being responsive to the needs of the world. To learn more or register for the Gala, please .

MethodologyThe World's Most Ethical Companies assessment is based upon the Ethisphere Institute's Ethics Quotient® (EQ) framework, which offers a quantitative way to assess a company's performance in an objective, consistent and standardized manner. The information collected provides a comprehensive sampling of definitive criteria of core competencies rather than all aspects of corporate governance, risk, sustainability, compliance and ethics.

Scores are generated in five key categories: ethics and compliance program (35 percent), corporate citizenship and responsibility (20 percent), culture of ethics (20 percent), governance (15 percent), and leadership, innovation and reputation (10 percent). All companies who participate in the assessment process receive their scores, providing them with valuable insights into how they stack up against leading organizations.

About Ethisphere
The Ethisphere ® Institute is the global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character, marketplace trust and business success. Ethisphere has deep expertise in measuring and defining core ethics standards using data-driven insights from our Ethics Quotient, and works with the world's largest companies to enhance culture capital with the insights from our culture assessment data set, which is grounded in our 8 Pillars of Ethical Culture. Ethisphere honors superior achievement through its World's Most Ethical Companies recognition program and provides a community of industry experts with the Business Ethics Leadership Alliance (BELA). More information about Ethisphere can be found at https://ethisphere.com.

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Media Contact
Clea Nabozny
(480) 397-2658
clea.nabozny@ethisphere.com
Twitter: @Ethisphere

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Ethisphere Institute Announces 135 Companies Honored as World's Most Ethical Companies

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For the 12th year, honorees expand their positive impact on global society and see increased performance results New York, NY-February 12, 2018-The Ethisphere Institute, a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices, today announced 135 companies spanning 23 countries and 57 industries as the 2018 World's Most Ethical Companies

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Being a woman, trying to break into management is scary. I would like to work in finance, with can be male dominated. Articles like this give me hope that things are still changing for the better.

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In the final months of 2016, the vision for 2017 looked quite different - many anticipating it would be the year of the woman, as would-be President Hillary Clinton would shatter the ultimate glass ceiling into a million pieces, and those pieces would sprinkle down like revolution-causing magical dust that would bring gender parity and allow women to soar to new heights of equality and success.

Didn't happen.

Indeed, we may have witnessed the start of that anticipated shift in gender dynamics and disparity, but under different circumstances.

As we look toward the future (perhaps 2018 will be the official year of the woman), it is critically important to track the changes, rely on the research and listen to the amplified voices of women in the workplace. Fairygodboss, a women's career and community site, has access to that unique perspective. Through various touch points, including job reviews, panel surveys, discussion board posts and in-person events, Fairygodboss collects data to discover trends, summarize and share through an annual report. With a reach of 750,000 women every month, their second annual report, published earlier this month and titled " " uncovers new truths about what it means to be a woman working in today's world. The ​State ​of ​Gender Equality ​In ​The Workplace,

This year's report reflects a changing landscape, with three new sections that explore sexual harassment, intersectionality, and employee resource groups. Some of the findings are surprising, while others are confirming.
1. Women's Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are still powerful and effective.
In July, Deloitte announced that they are phasing out workplace affinity groups for women and minorities, and replacing this long-standing approach with "inclusion councils" that bring white men into the conversation. With an aim to bring more voices into the conversation, cultivate and harness allies and drive change, Deloitte dismantled their 24-year old women's initiative called WIN, and other groups built around race and sexual orientation are facing a similar fate in the upcoming months. This shift away from the traditional was partially driven by new research findings that highlighted that millennials, who make-up the majority (57%) of Deloitte's employee base, don't like being clustered or grouped by demographics.

Deloitte's statement and move away from a decades-old approach to diversity, sparked a much broader debate about the role and effectiveness of ERGs. The amount of attention this announcement garnered and continues to receive isn't surprising - affinity and network groups are foundational to the corporate diversity and inclusion efforts that have spanned decades, starting in 1970 when Xerox launched the first ERG . Other large corporations have since followed suit with ERGs established for women, employees of color, LGBTQ employees, etc. The original goals are focused on engagement, inclusion, confidence-building and support in corporate cultures commonly dominated by straight white men, but some view ERGs as relics of the past. However, with Deloitte's announcement, the focal question became: Are ERGs still relevant in the ever-evolving and amplifying efforts to drive diversity and inclusion in the workplace?

While the Fairygodboss report findings don't explore the effectiveness of all ERGs, the research clearly indicates that women's ERGs are still successful. They are prevalent, highly subscribed, and effective at advancing careers and changing policy and workplace culture.

Prevalent: 90% of Fortune 500 companies have at least one ERG.

Highly subscribed: According to Fairygodboss, 65% of women will join a women's ERG, if one is offered by their employer.

Effective: The Fairygodboss report showed that participation in an ERG results in career advancement and changes to policy and workplace culture. Nearly 70% of survey respondents and community members stated that their women's ERG impacted change at their workplace, and 87% believed that their ERG had personally benefited them or their career. ERGs also improved policy, with 55% of respondents reporting an improvement in parental leave benefits and 53% reporting more flexible work schedules due to ERG influence.

While the jury is still out on the effectiveness of inclusion councils, only time will tell if this new approach is more effective than the current model. The Fairygodboss report shows that women's ERGs are making a difference in the workplace and helping move the dial toward gender parity.
2. The majority of sexual harassment perpetrators are colleagues, rather than bosses.
Fairygodboss reports that nearly 43% of women have experienced some type of harassment in the workplace. Similarly high numbers have been reported for years, but the report also captures new details that are more surprising. This year's headlines and front-page stories have showcased powerful, older men being removed from power and post on a near daily basis. Mary Pharris, Director of Business Development and Partnerships at Fairygodboss shares:

"We would have been remiss to not discuss sexual harassment in the workplace given everything that happened this year. We really wanted to engage with our community to see what they are experiencing, especially what is happening to women in the workplace who aren't dealing with high profile people."

The toxic power-gender dynamic dominates the public discourse, but as Fairygodboss data highlights, the majority of workplace sexual harassment is perpetrated by a colleague (57%), rather than a boss (36%) or manager (25%).

While older, more senior male figures -- the giants of industry -- are being removed from their positions, Fairygodboss found that the majority of women (72%) reported that their harasser was 40 or under. This paints a very different picture than the one in the headlines, and also highlights the vast scope of workplace sexual harassment and assault in this country. Contrary to one line of pervasive thought, this epidemic will not be phased out of the workplace as the next generations retire, and it is clear that stronger, immediate policies and methods of reporting, education and awareness are necessary.
3. Women of color have a drastically different experience in the workplace than Caucasian women.
Fairygodboss found that appearance-based bias impacted hiring decisions, and that women of color were less likely to be hired by Caucasian hiring managers and recruiters than by other hiring managers and recruiters of color. Moreover, hiring managers are more likely to associate leadership potential among women of their same race.

As the research shows, one woman's experience isn't the same as another's. Preventing discrimination and mitigating costly and damaging bias requires a holistic approach. Intersectional practices result in a better workplace for all, and the inclusion of intersectionality in this year's Fairygodboss report is an important contribution to the ever-expanding work in this area.
Progress has been made, but there is still a lot of work to be done.
To advance workplace gender diversity, we must first capture, track, share and discuss our experiences. Our collective knowledge and wisdom can then be harnessed to implement policies that push toward a more equitable workplace. Here's looking to 2018 - the year of the woman.

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How Workplace Gender Diversity Continued To Evolve In 2017, According To A New Report

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In the final months of 2016, the vision for 2017 looked quite different - many anticipating it would be the year of the woman, as would-be President Hillary Clinton would shatter the ultimate glass ceiling into a million pieces, and those pieces would sprinkle down like revolution-causing magical dust that would bring gender parity and allow women to soar to new heights of equality and success.

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Social responsibility is very important to me. I am very passionate about the environment and my community.

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Quality Glossary Definition: Social responsibility
Social responsibility is a means of achieving sustainability. Adopting key social responsibility principles, such as accountability and transparency, can help ensure the long-term viability and success of any organization or system.

In 2010, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published an international standard, ISO 26000, to help organizations assess and address their social responsibilities. ISO 26000-2010: Guidance on Social Responsibility defines social responsibility as:

The responsibility of an organization for the impacts of its decisions and activities on society and the environment, through transparent and ethical behavior that:

Contributes to sustainable development, including health and the welfare of society

Takes into account the expectations of stakeholders

Is in compliance with applicable laws and consistent with international norms of behavior

Is integrated throughout the organization and practiced in its relationships

Organizations can achieve sustainability by paying careful attention to their impact on society and the environment. Behaving in a transparent, ethical manner ensures an approach that helps protect the long-term success of society and the environment.

Another tenet of social responsibility is the triple bottom line, also known as "people, planet, and profit." This is the belief that achieving profit does not require harm to the planet or the exploitation of people. Organizations can profit while also taking care of the planet and people.
The Business Case for Social Responsibility and Quality
Core Subjects and Key Principles of Social Responsibility

ISO 26000-2010: Guidance on Social Responsibility identifies seven core social responsibility subjects:

1. Organizational governance

2. Human rights

3. Labor practices

4. Environment

5. Fair operating practices

6. Consumer issues

7. Community involvement and development

In addition to the core subjects, ISO 26000 also defines seven key principles of socially responsible behavior:

1. Accountability

2. Transparency

3. Ethical behavior

4. Respect for stakeholder interests

5. Respect for the rule of law

6. Respect for international norms of behavior

7. Respect for human rights

Learn more about social responsibility, its aspects, and its applications:

Social Responsibility Case Studies

See how organizations around the word are managing their social responsibility efforts and using the ISO 26000 guidance standard on social responsibility. The following resources provide case studies that offer a closer look at just some of the results organizations are achieving.

Pathways to Social Responsibility: Successful Practices for Sustaining the Future-2014 (PDF)
See a preview of ASQ's SR Integration Guide, along with organizational profiles of 3M Company, Kaiser Aluminum, Microsoft Corporation, Turkish Airlines, Westpac Banking Corporation, New Media Group, and more.

Pathways to Social Responsibility-2013 (PDF)
The 2013 issue focuses on global responsibility, the sustainability value chain, connections between the ISO 14001 and ISO 26000 standards, and the Spencer Hutchens Jr. Medal. Organizational profiles include GE Healthcare, The Ritz-Carlton, and Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority.

Pathways to Social Responsibility-2012 (PDF)
The companies and organizations profiled in this report have embarked on their own paths to social responsibility, providing a broad spectrum of engagement and business success. Featured organizations include Campbell Soup Company, Ford Motor Co., and Henry Ford Health System.

Pathways to Social Responsibility-2011 (PDF)
Case studies in this issue focusing on community involvement and development, organizational governance, and the environment include Alcoa, Kohler, UnitedHealth Group, Tata Group, and Booz Allen Hamilton.

Pathways to Social Responsibility-2010 (PDF)
This edition focuses on three of the seven core subjects of the ISO 26000 guidance standard on social responsibility: community involvement and development, organizational governance, and environment. Organizations profiled include Abbott, Berea College, Boeing, Cisco, IBM, and McDonald's.

Pathways to Social Responsibility-2009 (PDF)
The inaugural issue of this publication includes case studies from MillerCoors, Johnson Controls, Baxter, and Intel.

ISM Makes the Business Case for Social Responsibility (PDF)
The Institute for Supply Management TM (ISM) shares research and tools to educate supply professionals about the social, financial, and ethical benefits of socially responsible behavior.

Quality and Social Responsibility: A Key Business Strategy for Enhancing Competitive Position (PDF)
Conducted by ASQ and IBM, this study of successful social responsibility programs demonstrates the business case for integrating quality and social responsibility.

CSR and Quality: A Powerful and Untapped Connection (PDF)
As it explores the intersection of quality and corporate social responsibility (CSR), this executive brief suggests actions for CSR leaders using quality as a model, as well as ways CSR can advance quality.

What is Social Responsibility in Business?

Social responsibility in business, also known as corporate social responsibility (CSR), pertains to people and organizations behaving and conducting business ethically and with sensitivity towards social, cultural, economic, and environmental issues. Striving for social responsibility helps individuals, organizations, and governments have a positive impact on development, business, and society.

Benefits of Corporate Social Responsibility

Smart business decisions are not just a matter of counting short-term dollars and cents. Wise decision makers consider the future impact of today's choices on people, on the community, and on customers and their opinions.

While business results, investment, free enterprise, and other traditional economic forces continue to drive industry, organizations' reputations and their ability to compete effectively around the world depend on them integrating social responsibility efforts into decision making and performance improvement.

ASQ's Commitment to Social Responsibility

ASQ's mission is "to increase the use and impact of quality in response to the diverse needs of the world." Increasingly, accountability and social responsibility are the expectation of consumers around the globe. To help meet the emerging needs for a sophisticated SR approach, ASQ is committed to delivering the following:

Providing a contemporary view and understanding of quality

Identifying new career paths for quality professionals

Providing methodology to enhance SR professionals' efforts

Growing the community of quality stakeholders through SR practitioners

Helping to communicate the value of SR

Read more about ASQ's integration of quality and social responsibility for business success:
Seeking Sustainable Success: ASQ Integrates Quality and Social Responsibility (PDF)
Embracing quality as essential to best practices can enhance efforts to promote mission fulfillment, socially responsible profitability, and economic growth that contributes to global competitiveness.

Integrating Social Responsibility With Business Strategy: A Guide for Quality Professional (PDF)
This guide introduces a step-by-step approach for applying quality skills to the SR needs of organizations. It defines integrated SR, provides talking points and case studies, and maps out a process for using quality to integrate SR into organizational strategy and daily operations.

What is the History of Social Responsibility?

In a modern context, the history of social responsibility can be traced to a now infamous article by Milton Friedman published in 1970. In the New York Times, this Nobel-Prize-winning economist wrote that social responsibility is a "fundamentally subversive doctrine in a free society." He believed that the only responsibility that a corporation has is to the shareholder.

A counterpoint to Friedman's perspective comes from John Elkington in Cannibals with Forks in 1999. Elkington introduced the concept of the "triple bottom line," making the case that concern for society and the environment can coexist with an ambition for profits.

W. Edwards Deming also contributed to the progress of social responsibility. At least two of his famous 14 Points on Quality Management speak directly to social responsibility theory:

1. End the practice of awarding business on price alone

2. Drive out fear

Since these early debates and transformative moments, social responsibility has gained traction and credibility. Trends have moved from corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs, to sustainable development, to sustainability, to social responsibility (SR).

The Connection Between Social Responsibility and Quality

It is important for quality professionals to understand the history of social responsibility; there are many similarities to the quality movement.

In the early days of quality there were debates about quality costs and everyone's responsibility to quality as opposed to end-of-the-line inspection. The social responsibility movement started with debates about a corporation having any responsibility to society. It is now recognized that people, planet, and profit are mutually inclusive. Just as quality leads to profit, responsibility leads to sustainable profit.

Quality ideals such as those promoted by W. Edwards Deming in his 14 Points and Genichi Taguchi's quality loss function apply to social responsibility. Sustainability is an ideal state, as is quality an ideal state. The aims and ideals of social responsibility, as a path to sustainability, make SR a natural and progressive extension of the quality practitioner's professional competency.

Corporate Social Responsibility ( Quality Progress) An exploration of CSR, quality's foundation in ethics, and how CSR can be advanced more rapidly if it is incorporated into established quality management models and methodologies.

Living Responsibly-A Quality Role Model (PDF) This article defines and celebrates Spencer Hutchens' contribution to the operational definition of a theory for social responsibility, demonstrating how he had consciously put his theory into practice.

"A Friedman doctrine: The Social responsibility of business is to increase its profits" (Milton Friedman, The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970)

"Historical Background of Corporate Social Responsibility" (Rosamaria C. Moura‐Leite and Robert C. Padgett, Social Responsibility Journal, Vol. 7, issue 4) In order to understand CSR's impact on organization behavior, it is necessary to comprehend its progression. This paper traces the conceptual evolution of CSR.

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What is Social Responsibility (SR)? | ASQ

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Quality Glossary Definition: Social responsibility Social responsibility is a means of achieving sustainability. Adopting key social responsibility principles, such as accountability and transparency, can help ensure the long-term viability and success of any organization or system. In 2010, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published an international standard, ISO 26000, to help organizations assess and address their social responsibilities.

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This showed a few basic concepts I found interesting.

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I recently outed five management concepts that, while popular, are a waste of mental energy. As a result, several readers challenged me to provide some management concepts that actually DO work.

I hesitated at first, because there's no idea so excellent that it can't be transformed into crap by a bad manager. However, just as there there are some concepts (like treating downsizing as a strategy) that tend to create jackass behavior, there are other concepts that tend to create better behavior.

That's what this post is about.

I've selected five management concepts, each of which replaces a common, but dysfunctional, way of thinking. These concepts, which are based upon 20 years of close observance of a myriad of corporate cultures, cover the five most important elements of management:

What is business all about?

What is a corporation all about?

What is management all about?

What is an employee suppose to be?

What is the best use of technology?

Managers who get these five elements straight tend to be successful and have successful teams.
Click for the first management concept that really works
RELATED POSTS:

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Five Management Concepts that Really Work

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I recently outed five management concepts that, while popular, are a waste of mental energy. As a result, several readers challenged me to provide some management concepts that actually DO work. I hesitated at first, because there's no idea so excellent that it can't be transformed into crap by a bad manager.

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This is a great article that goes over the basics of organizational ethics.

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Aspects of organizational ethics include fair and uniform treatment, valuing social responsibility and more.

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Female managers are underrepresented. I found this to encourage me on my journey.

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Management functions are important. I really liked learning about the planning stage.

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I found this article interesting in regards to understanding management

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A manager is a person who is responsible for a part of a company, i.e., they ' manage ' the company. Managers may be in charge of a department and the people who work in it. In some cases, the manager is in charge of the whole business. For example, a 'restaurant manager' is in charge of the whole restaurant.

A manager is a person who exercises managerial functions primarily. They should have the power to hire, fire, discipline, do performance appraisals, and monitor attendance. They should also have the power to approve overtime, and authorize vacations. He or she is the boss.

The Manager's duties also include managing employees or a section of the company on a day-to-day basis.

Different types of managers

There are many different types of managers across the whole spectrum of a company's or entity's hierarchy.
Levels of management spread from right at the top of a company down to supervisors of small teams.

Top Managers are in charge of a company's strategy. In other words, they are the stewards of an organization's vision and mission.

Functional Managers are responsible for the effectiveness and efficiency of specific areas of a company, such as marketing. They are also in charge of personnel and accounts.

Team Managers or Supervisory Managers are in charge of subgroups of a particular function. They may also be in charge of a group of members from different parts of the company.

Line Managers are in charge of the output of certain products or services. They hold authority in a vertical chain of command, or over a particular product line.

In this article, when I use the word 'company,' I am also including 'organization.'

For example, in a vehicle-making company, the Line Manager might be in charge of the 'small cars' or 'light truck' division. Also, even more specifically, they may be in charge of the 'small cars marketing line.'

General Managers

General Managers are responsible for managing a revenue-producing unit, such as a product line, business unit, or a store.

The General manager has to make decisions across different functions within that unit. General managers typically get a bonus or commission when the unit does well.

General Managers report to their top executives and take directions from them. The top executives explain what the company's overall plan is. The General Manager subsequently sets specific goals for the unit to fit in with the plan.

Senior management refers to the top managers of a company, i.e., its directors. If I say, Harvard Business Review is widely read by senior management, I mean company directors.

Qualities of a good manager

Accountability

Character

Cultural affinity

Prioritization

Warmth

Patience

Honesty

Decisiveness

Empathy

Positive attitude

Competence

Flexibility

According to the Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), a good manager should have the following qualities:

Product Managers vs. Brand Managers

Product Managers in for example technology companies are typically the CEO of a product. They are also responsible for its strategy, roadmap, and everything regarding its production. Storage and sales are also the General Manager's responsibility.

The position usually includes marketing, forecasting, and profit and loss responsibilities.

Brand Managers focus on the perception and maintenance of a particular brand. They are different from Product Managers.

The Brand Manager's job is often strategic, involving high-level curation of both the firm's image and the practical steps to maintain that image.

The Brand Manager aims to enhance, maintain, and encourage interest in the brand. There is a strong emphasis on marketing and the company's overall image. Brand managers inspire feeling, reactions, and loyalty.

Brand management is common in consumer product companies. Product management, on the other hand, is common in software firms.

This is because consumer product businesses need a top-of-the-mind recall of their products and brands because they mass market them.

According to Management Study Guide:

"Brand management is associated with consumer product companies whereas product management is associated with software companies. This is because consumer product companies need a top of the mind recall for their products and brands since they mass market them."

Etymology of manager

The noun 'manager' comes from the verb 'to manage,' which came to the UK around 1560. It came from Italian maneggiare 'to handle' or 'to control a horse.' The Italian word came from the Latin noun manus 'hand.' The English word was also influenced by French manège 'horsemanship.'

The Online Etymology Dictionary makes the following comment regarding the origin of the English word 'manager':

"1580s, 'one who manages,' agent noun from manage. Specific sense of 'one who conducts a house of business or public institution' is from 1705."

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What is a manager? Definition and meaning - Market Business News

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A manager is a person who is responsible for a part of a company, i.e., they ' manage ' the company. Managers may be in charge of a department and the people who work in it. In some cases, the manager is in charge of the whole business.