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Credit management - The way to the Top
The key to survival for any business is efficient credit
management and debt recovery.
In dealings between businesses, a supplier is expected to allow
a customer time to pay for the goods or services provided, but
if the customer pays later...
Developing your management style
One thing a lot of us don't do in sales is take time out to analyse things. How are we doing it? Why are we doing it? Can we do it better? Taking time out to assess your management style is one of the most fundemental tasks a person can do. We...
Leadership or Management?
Leadership or Management? by Arthur Cooper (c) Copyright 2005 http://www.arthurcooper.com/
If you are a good manager, does that make you a good leader?
If you are a good leader, does that make you a good manager?
Does being good at...
Money management guide
When the prices of commodities are booming and expenditure is increasing in every manner, it becomes essential to make some planning for your income.
* The best way to take care of your money is to plan a budget. A budget should keep a track of...
Using PMS – The Productivity Management System™ to Discover What You Want in Business and in Life
“When I dream big, I see the possible, I discover potential, and realize that almost anything is within my reach. – Heidi Richards "The purpose of setting goals is to help us to focus our attention. The mind will not reach toward achievement until...
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The Myth of the Management Team
Every business has problems. That is why the average life span of a large industrial company is 40 years. Some are learning disabilities where companies are not prepared to learn from their mistakes. They insist on doing the same thing every time. Even when problems occur no one examines the cause of the problem. The problem is an embarrassment that should be swept under the rug and forgotten rather than be used as an opportunity to learn. Handling these dilemmas and disabilities is the Management Team. Below is a quote from Peter Senge’s book “The Fifth Discipline – the Art & Practice of the Learning Organization.” Does this sound like your company? If it does start worrying!
The Myth of the Management Team
Standing forward to do battle with these dilemmas and disabilities is “the management team,” the collection of savvy, experienced managers who represent the organization’s different functions and areas of expertise. Together, they are supposed to sort out the complex cross-functional issues that are critical to the organization. What confidence do we have, really, that typical management teams can surmount these learning disabilities?
All too often, teams in business tend to spend their time fighting for turf, avoiding anything that will make them look bad personally, and pretending that everyone is behind the team’s collective strategy – maintaining the appearance of a cohesive team. To keep up the image, they seek to squelch disagreement; people with serious reservations avoid stating them publicly, and joint decisions are watered-down compromises reflecting what everyone can live with, or else reflecting one person’s view foisted on the group. If there is disagreement, it’s usually expressed in a manner that lays blame, polarizes opinion, and fails to reveal the underlying differences in assumptions and experience in a way that the team as a whole could learn.
“Most management teams break down under pressure,” writes Harvard’s Chris Argyris – a long time student of learning in management teams. “The team may function quite well with routine issues. But when they confront complex issues that may be embarrassing or threatening, the ‘teamness’ seems to go to pot.”
Argyris argues that most managers find
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collective inquiry inherently threatening. School trains us never to admit that we do not know the answer, and most corporations reinforce that lesson by rewarding the people who excel in advocating their views, not inquiring into complex issues. (When was the last time someone was rewarded in your organization for raising difficult questions about the company’s current policies rather than solving urgent problems?) Even if we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understandings which might threaten us. The consequence is what Argyris calls “skilled incompetence” – teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.
So how does your company stack up? If your company is what Senge describes as a ‘Learning Organization’ then there is no need to protect your turf, no need to accept compromise, no need for management to know everything. In a Learning Organization the knowledge that employees have is used and each member of the management team is there to support the other. They realize that everyone wins if the team does well and they also know that a failure is just another term for a learning opportunity.
Wouldn’t you like to work in an organization where your opinion counts and where you CAN make a difference in the companies success? Where you don’t have to pretend to be busy, or pretend to know everything. So how do you create a learning organization? It starts with creating learning individuals in learning teams which then cascade into a learning organization.
The only process that we know of that comes close to achieving the goal of a learning team is the Best Year Yet system (http://www.arcturusadvisors.com/partners.htm). Through this facilitated process team members learn to work collaboratively, learn from their mistakes and continually challenge their assumptions about reality. Above all they work together as a team to solve problems and improve results.
A Learning Organization is possible!
About the Author
Graeme has worked on four continents, over the past 20 years, with large global companies and small enterprises that want to improve their businesses.
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