Category: Management

The New York Times Bests the Wall Street Journal at Business

 

We had a major winter storm in Omaha on Thurs., March 1st.  Schools were closed on Thursday and again on Friday.  Throughout the storm, the Omaha World-Herald got a paper delivered every day. 

The New York Times missed Thurs. and Fri., (there is no Saturday delivery).  The Wall Street Journal missed Thurs., Fri., and Sat.

The main difference is that in the end, the New York Times made good on eventually delivering me all the papers that I had paid for.

After a half hour wait to get through to a customer service person, the Wall Street Journal told me that they could not get me copies of the Thursday and Saturday papers.  They were all out, and I "should go to the library."  (During the long wait, every couple of minutes, an automated voice would come on to tell me how important my call was to them—if the call is so important, why don’t they hire enough people so that customers don’t have to wait for a half hour?)

The weather problem was not a secret.  Wouldn’t a good business anticipate publicly known problems, and have a contingency plan for dealing with them?  Wouldn’t they increase their production in order to be able to make good on the papers their logistical operation was incompetent to deliver?  Even if they did not have a clue at the beginning of the storm, couldn’t they have acquired a clue by Saturday, three days into the storm?

If the Omaha World-Herald can deliver, and the New York Times can make good when it can’t deliver, then the Wall Street Journal should be able, at least, to do as well as the New York Times.  The Wall Street Journal insults its customers when it tells them to "go to the library." 

It’s no way for the nation’s leading business newspaper to run its own business.

 

“Market Research Rarely Reveals New Insights”

   Source of book image:   http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/1591396190.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

 

(p. 69)  Competition in an industry tends to converge not only on an accepted notion of the scope of its products and services but also on one of two possible bases of appeal.  Some industries compete (p. 70) principally on price and function largely on calculations of utility; their appeal is rational.  Other industries compete largely on feelings;  their appeal is emotional.

Yet the appeal of most products or services is rarely intrinsically one or the other.  Rather it is usually a result of the way companies have competed in the past, which has unconsciously educated consumers on what to expect.  Companies’ behavior affects buyers’ expectations in a reinforcing cycle.  Over time, functionally oriented industries become more functionally oriented; emotionally oriented industries become more emotionally oriented.  No wonder market research rarely reveals new insights into what attracts customers.  Industries have trained customers in what to expect.  When surveyed, they echo back:  more of the same for less.

 

Source:

Kim, W. Chan, and Renée Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2005.

 

 

 

“Good to Great” is Good, but Not Quite Great

  Source of book image:  http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/7770000/7775266.jpg

 

When Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts spoke to my Executive MBA class a few years ago, I mentioned to him that I had heard from Bob Slezak that Ricketts was a fan of Clayton Christensen’s The Innovator’s Dilemma.  Ricketts said that was true, but that the recent business book that he was most enthused about was Jim Collin’s Good to Great.

Ricketts is not alone.  Good to Great has become a business classic since it came out.  Recently I finally got around to reading it.

Well, I think it’s good, but not quite great.  I like the empirical, inductive methodology mapped out at the beginning.  And some of the conclusions ring true.  For example the importance of facing the "brutal facts."  And the importance of developing a thought-out "hedgehog" concept.  And the importance of getting the right people on the bus.  And the importance of slowly, consistently building momentum.

But I’ve got some big bones to pick, too. 

Maybe the biggest "bone" is Collins’ assumption that our goal should be the survival and greatness of a firm.  Instead of almost viewing firms as ends in themselves, why can’t we view firms as vehicles for getting great things done? 

Maybe great things can be done through firms that last and are lastingly great.  Or maybe great things can be done by shooting star firms, that are glorious while they last, but don’t last long.  Collins says it must be the former.  But either way works for me.

A smaller "bone" is the conclusion that "level 5" leaders tend to be modest.  Well maybe.  But some of that conclusion is derived from Collins’ defining "great" in terms of high growth of stock value.  A modest leader will be unappreciated by Wall Street, and her company’s stock value will show higher growth when she succeeds.  But has she thereby accomplished more than if she had built exactly the same company, but been more transparent and enthused about the company’s future prospects, and hence generated more realistic expectations from Wall Street?  Remember, the value of a stock grows, not by the company doing well, but by it doing better than investors expected.  (On this issue, Collins should read the first couple of chapters of Christensen and Raynor’s The Innovator’s Solution.)

But don’t get me wrong:  this is a very good book.  Those interested in how the capitalist system works, should read it, as should those who want to manage well.

 

The book is:

Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap. And Others Don’t. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 2001.

 

New Book on Wiki (Quick) Process

   Source of book image:  http://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/1591841380.01._SS500_SCLZZZZZZZ_V37439749_.jpg

 

A new book is out on the wiki ("quick") phenomenon.  Chris Anderson has some stimulating comments on this phenomenon in his The Long Tail.  The Wikinomics book appears to be less profound, but may still be of interest.  (It appears to be a quick-read, management guru-jargon type book.)

The wiki issue that interests me is how wiki collaboration processes might substitute for rigorous editing and peer-review, as a way to get a lot of high-quality information out there fast.  (This is what Anderson claims, and the more I use the Wikipedia, the more plausible I find the claim.)

 

The reference to the book is:

Tapscott, Don, and Anthony D. Williams. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Portfolio, 2006.

 

“The Referee Should Not Be Too Quick With His Whistle”

I found the following wise comments while reading a short review of an old book by Edgar Monsanto Queeny, who followed his father as CEO of the Monsanto corporation, and who wrote a book called The Spirit of Enterprise which Schumpeter praised in a letter to Queeny.

(The abbreviation T.N.E.C. stands for the Temporary National Economic Committee, which I believe was an ad hoc congressional committee during part of F.D.R.’s presidency.)

Mr. Queeny does not give us a satisfactory analysis of the T.N.E.C. reports but his observations are always commonsensical and suggestive.  What emerges, and what is important, is that the positive Liberal State should not aim at too subtle a plan for freedom.  The referee should not be too quick with his whistle nor too ready to order players off the field.  The rules of the game may well allow for a little hurly-burly.  Economists like Professor Hutt, who are working out the rules of the game of free enterprise, deserve the highest praise.  But they should realize that refinement has its price as well as simplicity, and of the two simplicity costs the less.

Shenfield, A. A. "Review of the Spirit of Enterprise by Edgar M. Queeny." Economica 12, no. 48 (November 1945): 264.

 

The reference to Queeny’s book is:

Queeny, Edgar M. The Spirit of Enterprise. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943.

 

Microsoft’s VX-6000 LifeCam Really Stinks

  Microsoft’s VX-6000 LifeCam.  Source of image:  http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/gallery/hardware/WC6_Angle_Silver_lg.jpg

 

I posted this to Amazon.com, late on Thurs., Nov. 30, 2006:

I have spent a frustrating afternoon and evening trying to install the VX-6000 on a fully updated MS XP pro system. The install took forever, because every couple of minutes the install program couldn’t find a needed file (if they need it, why not put it on the install CD?). So I had to browse my system and point them to where the file was (why couldn’t they design the install program to search for the file instead of making me do it?). Finally I got a successful install, and then I was informed there was an updated version, and I needed to install that. So I went through the whole time-consuming process all over again, including the schtick about searching for the location of several files. Finally it again said I had installed the program successfully. So I rebooted my PC, and clicked on the Microsoft LifeCam icon. After cranking for awhile I get "initialization error". I try rebooting again—same error. So I type in "initialization error" in the search bar of the "help" section, and I get back "no topics found." So they sell me an expensive camera, run me ragged installing it, send me a repeated error message, and provide me no clue on what to do about it. (I guess now that Bill Gates is saving the world through philanthropy, nobody’s left minding the shop?)

 

The final comment is probably a bit too snide or harsh.  Microsoft has always had the deserved reputation of letting some products out the door before they are ready.  E.g., the first couple of versions of Windows paled in comparison to the graphical-user-interface operating system that Apple was offering at the time.  And the CD that accompanied Bill Gates’ The Road Ahead would not work on what was then Microsoft’s premier operating system:  Windows NT.

Maybe these kind of glitches result from a conscious operating strategy that gives employees a lot of freedom to make their own decisions.  The upside can be speedy decisions, and creativity.  The downside can be glitches such as the VX-6000 LifeCam.  Taking the broad, professorial view, maybe overall, the upside justifies the downside.  Tom Peters endorses companies accepting this trade-off rather than adopting layered, rule-bound, slow, bureaucratic decision-making.  (See his:  Re-imagine!)

(But did I mention that the VX-6000 LifeCam really stinks?) 

 

The reference to the Peters book is:

Peters, Tom. Re-Imagine! London: DK, 2003.

 

Without Incentives, the Energetic become Lazy


Wise words from Frederick W. Taylor, who is known as the father of scientific management:


(p. B1) "When a naturally energetic man works for a few days beside a lazy one," Mr. Taylor wrote, "the logic of the situation is unanswerable.  ‘Why should I work hard when that lazy fellow gets the same pay I do and does only half the work?’ "



As quoted in: 

CYNTHIA CROSSEN.  "DEJA VU; Early Industry Expert Soon Realized a Staff Has Its Own Efficiency."  Wall Street Journal  (Mon., November 6, 2006):  B1.


Examine Your Assets and See If, and Where, They Can Add Value

In Gerstner’s book, there is an intriguing passage in which he defends turning IBM into an integrated services firm.  As an aside, he says that it might not now have made sense to build up IBM’s diverse assets, but now, having them in existence, it made sense to use them.  And he points out that even in the age of modularity, many customers needed, and were willing to pay for, a company that was able and willing to put everything together for them.

At first glance, this comment might seem at odds with the economist’s dictum that "sunk costs are sunk."  But Gerstner was not advocating the integration of IBM services because IBM had historically invested a lot in building up the parts of the organization.  He was pointing out that diverse parts, if properly integrated, would provide substantial added-value to an important sub-group of customers.

 

Here is the relevant passage from Gerstner:

(p. 61)  Unfortunately, in 1993 IBM was rocketing down a path that would have made it a virtual mirror image of the rest of the industry.  The company was being splintered—you could say it was being destroyed.

Now, I must tell you, I am not sure that in 1993 I or anyone else would have started out to create an IBM.  But, given IBM’s scale and broad-based capabilities, and the trajectories of the information technology industry, it would have been insane to destroy its unique competitive advantage and turn IBM into a group of individual component suppliers—more minnows in an ocean. 

 

The reference to the book, is:

Gerstner, Louis V., Jr. Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change. New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Good Management Takes Guts and Time

Gerstner recognizes that decentralization is sometimes a good thing, but thinks in some ways the trend has gone to far in business—some business functions may be efficient to centralize: 

 

(p. 246)  I’m thinking here of common customer databases, common fulfillment systems, common parts numbering systems, and common customer relationship management systems that permit your customer-service people to provide integrated information about everything a customer does with our company.

On the surface it would seem that these are logical and powerful things to do in an enterprise.  Nevertheless, they usually require profit-center managers to do something very hard—relinquish some of the control they have over how they run their business.  Staff executives, consultants, or reengineering teams cannot do this without active line management involvement.  The CEO and top management have got to be deeply involved, reach tough-minded conclusions, then ensure that those decisions are enforced and executed across the enterprise.  It takes guts, it takes time, and it takes superb execution.

 

Reference to the book:

Gerstner, Louis V., Jr.  Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change.  New York:  HarperCollins, 2002.

For Major Changes, CEOs Need to Change Who “Calls the Shots”


Some of the best advice in Gerstner’s book concern ‘execution’ issues of rewards, incentives, and who has the power to make which decisions.  Consider:

(p. 249)  If a CEO thinks he or she is redirecting or reintegrating an enterprise but doesn’t distribute the basic levels of power (in effect, redefining who "calls the shots"), the CEO is trying to push string up a hill.  (p. 250)  The media companies are a good example.  If a CEO wants to build a truly integrated platform for digital services in the home, he or she cannot let the music division or movie division cling to its existing technology or industry structure—despite the fact that these traditional approaches maximize short-term profits.

. . .

I knew we could not get the integration we needed at IBM without introducing massive changes to the measurement and compensation system.  I’ve already explained that the group executives who ran IBM’s operating businesses were not paid bonuses based on the unit’s performance.  All their pay was derived from IBM’s total results.

When a CEO tells me that he or she is considering a major reintegration of his or her company, I try to say, politely, "If you are not pre-(p. 251)pared to manage your compensation this way, you probably should not proceed."

 

The reference for the book is:

Gerstner, Louis V., Jr.  Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change.  New York:  HarperCollins, 2002.

(Note:  ellipsis added.)