|
ã
2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC
Note
re: links---certain hyperlinks assume that you are registered as a subscriber
to the site. If you are not a subscriber to certain sites, the links will fail.
If you register, the links should work. Also, certain hyperlinks expire and
may not be available when you try to go to the site.
Micromanaging
Some executives recognize that there is
no “back to school” season for them: learning has to go on all the time. In
recognizing September as a traditional time to focus on education, this issue
of Executive Times will offer one piece of
educational advice for executives: learn how to micromanage effectively. Over
the past twenty years or so, attention to detail by executives has been
discouraged by many advisors, giving way to extensive delegation to lower
level managers. Executives asking too many questions were viewed as meddlers
who were over-controlling operations. We think that’s rubbish. The best
executives know the details of what makes their organizations work
effectively. Attention to those details produces success. As you read some of
the stories we’ve noted about attention to details in this issue, think about
the questions you’ve not been asking of your direct reports, and think about
the degree to which you may need to reallocate your time to increase the time
you spend in some areas where your attention has been light. Examine the
holes in the data you gather to become well informed about your organization.
Establish your own learning plan for this school year in your workplace to
fill the gaps about details you’ve overlooked.
Fifteen new
books are rated in this issue, beginning on page 5. Eleven books are recommended
with three stars, two are mildly recommended with two stars, and two books
earned a single star rating. You can also visit our complete 2004 bookshelf
at http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/2004books.html
and see the rating table explained as well as explore links to all 2004 book
reviews. You can also check this same bookshelf to see what other books we’re
reading or considering. Forty five new books were added to the “shelf of
possibility” during August. If there’s something missing from the bookshelf
that you think we should be considering, or if there’s a book lingering on
the “shelf of possibility” that you think we should read and review, let us
know at books@hopkinsandcompany.com.
Hands-on
Bruce Tulgan and the folks at Rainmaker Thinking in New
Haven have conducted research concluding that there
is rampant undermanagement, according to the August
23 issue of Fortune (http://www.fortune.com/fortune/careers/articles/0,15114,676804,00.html.)
“In what Rainmaker defines as the five management basics—clear statements of
what's expected of each employee, explicit and measurable goals and
deadlines, detailed evaluation of each person's work, clear feedback, and
rewards fairly meted out—it seems hardly anyone is consistently stepping up
to the plate. Only 10% of managers provide their direct reports with all five
of the basics at least once a week. Only 25% do so at least once a month. And
about a third of managers, it seems, fail to get around to the basics even
once a year.
So what? Well,
without regular attention to these matters, things can go off the rails
pretty fast. ‘Neglecting the five management “musts” means you're not in a
position to anticipate problems, so you spend all your time putting out
fires,’ Tulgan says. ‘You can't delegate, so you
end up needlessly tangled in the details. This is why, when people tell me
they don't have time to cover all five basics consistently, I tell them they
don't have time not to.’” Employees want bosses to provide guidance and
direction. Hands-off bosses end up with results that represent surprises that
can often be career threatening for the executive. You can download Tulgan’s research at http://www.rainmakerthinking.com.
The remedy proposed to cure undermanagement? “A rigorous
fitness program for management exercise.” It’s time for managers to get back
to managing, according to Tulgan. nHHHHHH
Would your direct reports describe you
as being a hands-on manager? Would you describe yourself that way? How often
are you engaged with your direct reports on the five basics that Tulgan describes? Are the managers who report to you
engaged? What can you do to improve your management fitness and that of your
direct reports?
Rah
There’s an interesting
profile of Wells Fargo CEO Dick Kovacevich
as the cover story in the August 16 issue of Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2004/0816/090.html)
that provides insight into the importance of attention to detail, especially
choosing the right targets and the best way to achieve results. According to Forbes, efficiency analysts say that
Wells’ payroll of 146,000 people is too many based on the bank’s assets. “Kovacevich doesn’t listen to them or share their obsession
with cost ratios (overhead as a percent of revenue). He’s got his eyes fixed
firmly on the top line, not the cost line. He likes to sell.
The key to
profitability in retail banking is selling a panoply of products to the
customers you already have. At Wells that requires sifting through data on
some 23 million current customers to find thousands of the best prospects,
then lashing together hundreds of products and prodding tens of thousands of
employees in rival tribes from past takeovers to share customers, commissions
and the credit.” One of the ways Kovacevich helps
prod those salespeople is by spending time with them, helping them have fun,
and letting them see him as one of them. “… he
rallies the staff with trips to Las Vegas and Hawaii for the best
performers and with parties where branches compete for ‘best team spirit.’ At
his annual four-day sales conference in Orlando
recently, his 1,250 best cross-sellers were treated to the spectacle of the
boss lip-synching to the Beatles in a mop-top wig. It was apropos of nothing.
The crowd howled and cheered anyway. ‘I hate doing it, but I know it
influences my company more than sitting in my office thinking of the next big
idea.’” Think for a minute about the CEOs of the five largest American banks.
Can you picture any of the others paying this kind of attention to the hokey
details that produce outstanding results? As Forbes reports, Wells has the highest return on assets of this
top five, and the fattest interest margin. Maybe it’s the mop-top wig.
What is
that you hate to do, but know has a big influence on your organization? Do
observers of your organization get obsessed with some comparative measures
that you are consider less significant? How do you respond? How well do you
understand what drives revenue growth in your organization? What do you do
personally to influence that growth? If hokey works, are you willing to be
hokey?
Vulnerability
Another detail that
has the significant attention of many executives involves security, or more
accurately, vulnerability. Increases in global terrorism places workers and
physical assets at higher levels of risk, which requires executives to spend
more time and attention to some of the details of security that have in the
past been left to others. The minimum wage workers who check ID badges are a
modest way to reduce vulnerability to security risks. We read a great quote
in Forbes (9/6) (http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2004/0906/064.html),
“Companies want brain stems on their security people, not walking
refrigerators.” The quote is from Nirmalya Bhomick, a
Thai kickboxing champion who has headed security details for senior Microsoft executives on overseas
trips, and who has started a school, the California
University for Protection and Intelligence Management. Expect to see
graduates from that program as the finest bodyguards in the business. One
detail for many executives to examine should involve the way security
employees think and are prepared to act. Another preventive approach toward
reducing vulnerability appeared in Fortune
(8/23) (http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,678530,00.html).
More companies are spending more money on private intelligence gathering to
assess risks from terrorism and organized crime. “Many of these private
intelligence analysts were trained by the CIA, the FBI, or the military or in
spy organizations in Russia,
Israel,
and other foreign lands. One of Stratfor's top
analysts, for example, is a former Soviet army colonel who, as a military
intelligence officer in Afghanistan,
got to study Osama bin Laden's tactics firsthand.
But the analysts are equally likely to be bright young scholars or tweedy
librarians who sift vast amounts of public data, mixed with reports from
human operatives around the globe, to find information crucial to a decision,
say, to build a new plant in a country whose name ends with "stan" or to evacuate employees from the Middle East.
Jane's Information Group helps clients assess geopolitical risks from
terrorism to organized crime, as well as security for buildings, pipelines,
and ‘offices and subsidiaries in places that are sensitive or difficult,’
says Alfred Rolington, the group's CEO.” Some reports from Jane’s are available
for a few hundred dollars, and might be well worth an executive’s attention.
How vulnerable do you and your employees feel you are to security
threats? How much time have you spent examining security issues in recent
months, and what improvements have you made? What conversations have you had
with your direct reports to gather their thoughts on improving security in
your workplace?
Dismounting
At this
moment in your career, if you haven’t yet concluded that success is a
function of being both good and lucky, and that errors
can help or hurt you and competitors, examine the strange events at the
Summer Olympics and the men’s gymnastics all-around. Many of us will long
remember watching Paul Hamm’s fall
on his vault dismount and roll into the judge’s table. Hamm’s recovery from 12th place
to 1st place was, according to Sports Illustrated (8/18) (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2004/olympics/2004/gymnastics/08/18/hamm.gold.ap/),
“… one of the most amazing comebacks in Olympic history. Hamm performed the two most spectacular
routines of his career Wednesday to win the gold medal by the closest margin
ever in the event.” Then, we learned the judges made an error and the gold
medal should have gone to Korea’s
Yang Tae-young. Three judges were
suspended by the International
Gymnastics Federation (FIG). Because the Korean Olympic Committee protested too late under FIG rules, the
results stand. In an 8/27 letter, FIG President Bruno Grandi leaves the choice to Paul
Hamm to give his medal to Yang in fair play.
How do you deal with the
inevitable ups and downs in your life and work? When errors by others impact
your results, how do you respond? What does fair play mean in your
organization? Would you give back rewards?
Follow-up
Here are
selected updates on stories covered in prior issues of Executive
Times:
Ø
In
the Legacy column of the February 2004
issue of Executive Times, we
called attention to the accomplishments of the late Reginald Jones, former CEO of General Electric Company. When we read Testosterone,
Inc. recently (see summary review below), we found what author Christopher Byron called Jones’ dying
words, how he wanted to be remembered: “Leadership requires ethics, morals,
and values.”
Ø
The
merger of Compaq into Hewlett-Packard received coverage in
the December
2001 and February 2002
issues of Executive Times.
According to Business Week (8/13) (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/aug2004/tc20040813_4553_tc120.htm),
the departure of Compaq talent because of H-P culture misfit has produced
sub-par business results.
Legacy
Ideals
Executives searching
for a role model can find much to emulate from the life of someone whose
achievements aren’t as well-known as the malfeasance of some more prominent
contemporary CEOs. J. Irwin Miller
was born into a family of bankers in small town Columbus, Indiana
in 1909. He majored in Greek and Latin at Yale, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1931. Following a masters degree from Oxford,
he became a manager at hometown Cummins
Engine Company in 1934, a company with 100 employees. By the time he
became chairman emeritus in 1977, his family owned a third of the company,
which generated $1 billion in annual revenue at that time. He also spent
twenty years leading Irwin Financial
Corporation. For both enterprises, his business acumen and leadership
provided shareholders with outstanding performance. Miller’s leadership went
further and deeper. As the largest employer in Columbus, Miller looked for ways to improve
the community. With a lifelong passion for good architecture, Miller saw a
way that civic pride and community vitality could increase in a setting with
finely designed buildings. Through the Cummins
Engine Foundation, Miller agreed to pay the design fees for Columbus buildings,
provided the architect was chosen from a list provided by the Foundation. As
a result of this incentive, the foundation has paid almost $14 million in
architect fees for 42 buildings, including work by Eero and Eliel
Saarinen, Harry Weese, I. M. Pei, Robert Venturi, Richard Meier, Edward Larrabee
Barnes, William Rawn, Gunnar
Birkerts, Edward Charles Bassett, Eliot Noyes, Romaldo Giurgola and Hardy Holzman
Pfeiffer. Thanks to Miller, the citizens of Columbus find beauty in their lives every
day, in the form of some of the world’s finest buildings, almost everywhere
they look in their home town. That physical legacy can and will be seen for
many years. Some of Miller’s actions as a business leader need also be
remembered. While he led the National
Council of Churches in the early 1960s, he co-sponsored Martin Luther King’s march on Washington, and urged
the churches to fight segregation and help the poor. He pushed Presidents Kennedy and Johnson to support civil rights legislation. As a protest
against apartheid, Miller closed a Cummins factory in South Africa.
Here’s one quote from Miller about work: “Work very hard to learn. Never play
it safe. Take the big risk. Failure is not the worst of things … And always be ashamed, in a world which God loves, to be bored.” The
ideals he learned growing up in Columbus,
and the ones he learned from the classics at Yale, influenced his business
actions, to the benefit of us all.
Latest Books Read and Reviewed:
(Note: readers of the web version of Executive Times
can click on the book covers to order copies directly from amazon.com. When you order through these links, Hopkins
& Company receives a small payment from amazon.com. Click on the title to read the review or
visit our 2004 bookshelf at http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/2004books.html).
|
Title (Link to
Review)
|
Author
|
Rating
|
Review Summary
|
Purchase
|
|
Pull Me
Up: A Memoir
|
Barry,
Dan
|
•••
|
Struggle. Lyrical,
finely-written memoir tells a story well of a journey from a 1960’s Long
Island childhood to writing for The New
York Times, while cancer surviving author and family struggle with
life’s challenges.
|
|
|
That
Distant Land: The Collected Stories
|
Berry,
Wendell
|
•••
|
Community. 23 short
stories arranged chronologically. Superb writing that captures human nature
and community life in all its complexity.
|
|
|
Testosterone,
Inc.: Tales of CEOs Gone Wild
|
Byron,
Christopher
|
••
|
Stampede. Sensational revelations
about the character and integrity of Jack Welch, Ron Perelman, Al Dunlap
and Dennis Kozlowski, all of whom author posits are driven by overdoses of
testosterone. Some chuckles, nothing insightful.
|
|
|
1912
|
Chace,
James
|
•••
|
Quartet. Escape from the
2004 presidential election to the one in 1912 when four viable candidates
vied for office. Agree or disagree with author’s premise that 1912 changed
the country, but enjoy his telling of the story and the issues.
|
|
|
A
Chance Meeting
|
Cohen,
Rachel
|
•••
|
Networking. 36
imaginative essays on how 30 writers and artists “probably” interacted
based on extensive research. General readers will enjoy how well Cohen
portrays artistic connections and interactions.
|
|
|
Olivia
Joules and the Overactive Imagination
|
Fielding,
Helen
|
•••
|
Romp. Light reading,
presenting new and witty 007 bumping into Osama bin Laden look-alike and
conducting comic international espionage. If you’re ready to laugh about Al
Queda this is the novel for you.
|
|
|
To
Have and To Hold
|
Green,
Jane
|
•••
|
Reality. Well-developed,
complex and interesting characters figure out what they want in life and
from each other and act to achieve what they want through commitment, infidelity
and manipulation.
|
|
|
The
Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
|
Greene,
Brian
|
•••
|
Weavings. Gifted teacher
presents readable understanding of the issues explored in modern Physics,
including string theory, the uncertainty principle and evolutionary
cosmology.
|
|
|
Catch
and Release: Trout Fishing and the Meaning of Life
|
Kingwell,
Mark
|
•••
|
Thinking. University of Toronto philosophy professor focuses
on what makes trout fishing so great: the ability to spend a lot of time
just thinking. Engaging family stories and plenty of philosophizing.
|
|
|
Goat: A Memoir
|
Land, Brad
|
••
|
Pledge. Troubling memoir
of fraternity hazing, violence, coming of age relationships and the alienation
and isolation that can be part of adolescents searching for identity.
|
|
|
The
Debriefing
|
Littell,
Robert
|
•••
|
Indistinguishable.
Reprinting of well-crafted cold war era espionage novel that displays few
differences in behavior between the good guys and the bad guys when it
comes to deceit and using power.
|
|
|
The Codex
|
Preston,
Douglas J.
|
•
|
Reunion. Too much bad writing, even for what
should have been a perfect beach novel. Weak dialogue, erratic
character development, predictable plot patterns, and too many clichés.
|
|
|
The
Radioactive Boy Scout: The True Story of a Boy and His Backyard Nuclear
Reactor
|
Silverstein,
Ken
|
•••
|
Neighborly. A Michigan teenager
learned enough from many sources to build a nuclear reactor. Makes one
wonder what our own kids and neighbors might be doing.
|
|
|
The
Naked Corporation
|
Tapscott,
Don and David Ticoll
|
•••
|
Barely. Timely topic with
some interesting examples and models, but mostly repetitious and aggregated
snippets from recent business books.
|
|
|
Greed
|
Tickle,
Phyllis A.
|
•
|
Imagistic. Using artwork to
illustrate how the portrayal of greed has evolved over 2,000 years should
have made it easier to understand the author’s premises.
|
|
|