Managermind

Our world knows many different branches and industry sectors. Generally, todays markets tend to become global, and therefore the national companies tend to meet global competitors in the future. Markets are full of products and services, so the customer has a good choice.

This leads to new strategies (of cause, they are not really new ) of competition. First, the enterprises tries to be first on market with their products. That leads to market dynamics, that described in my last post. But interesting for me are organisational issues, they are the subject of this post.

In the eighties the management was thinking, that solid company has to have many divisions with their own products and services in even completely different branches. That should ensure company’s revenue, even it looses positions in one of branch. Trend of the last years was an opposite to such, where concentration on core competence was in vogue again. That means that companies that are good in produce nails were no more interested to have cool IT division, that is just there to balance risk of “nail-branch”.

So the change in strategy was in saying: ok, we are good in producing nails, and that is what we can do better than maybe anyone else. And that is why from now on, we concentrate all resources of our enterprise to produce and sell nails. And we should (cause we can) have better nails, to secure our competitiveness on market. Maybe we have to develop our nails further and further, e.g. creating extra hard nails or even weak but pure gold nails, to be different. But we can do that better than anyone, cause we have enormous experience in producing them, selling them and we have the knowledge and experience in that market sector.

You maybe already notified that “nail” was not really good example ;). Nevertheless, building up new IT division in above example, just because nail market stagnates, possibly makes not much sense. That is what we notice in today business. Many companies have sources old core divisions out, by selling them, grounding child companies and bring them to the stock and so on. That process is still on going and allows companies that are innovative and qualitative to be competitive on global dynamic markets of today.

Post industrial economies have enormous dynamics. That dynamics leads to problems for slow-going and heavy-adaptive companies. The rapidity economy, or in a view of a particular company - dynamics of markets, demands new company organisation, new dynamic hierarchy, new leading styles, new staffing policy, new IT architectures and so on. Only dynamic companies that are able to adapt quickly to the market situations can be sustainable successful! Nearby every statistic will prove this statement.

The first question tearing me is, do CEOs understand such trends? Does science understand it?

The second question what the understanding of that lead to?

In my opinion, that subject is not actual for many CEOs and economists. This results from the lack of a clear solutions and methods. Awareness of dramatically economy dynamics can bring advantages in competition, especially for companies dealing with polypolistic markets.

That’s enough for the moment, the goal of this topic was only to raise you awareness of such development in economy and impact of that on modern enterprises.

As I already mentioned before it is important for every project to define whole business process early. Better say the main process of you new business has to be in your head (coarse-grained of course) before you begin with implementation of something. But when you begin with realisation, it is not bad idea to implement the whole process in its full length e.g. from the shipper to the customer. In most cases (of cause with exceptions, but which are not subject of this post) it is better not to try to make that process perfect form beginning on. Just make the prove of concept, get feedback. It makes easier the discovering of reasonable improvement potentials and detection of bottlenecks step by step. It is impossible to make huge process perfect out of the box. Many real world projects (in my oppinion also e.g. “cargolifter”) fail not least because such principles were not considered.

Interesting example of step by step improvements is given by Martin Fowler, the RollerSkateImplementation

This Savanna Video shows how natural is teamwork is. Very, very spectacular. See it till the end!

If people start new projects, and we are talking about software projects (e.g. you can imagine some Internet start-up), the final result and even success of one of such projects is often only hardly predictable or even not predictable at all. It means your project can satisfy you very soon or it can brings you only much headache. To avoid any headache it es very important to be clear abut the goals of you project in every stage.

I maybe appears as nothing new for you eyes, cause every project seems to have goals naturally. But is it so? I often meet people who say: “Let’s to this, or let’s do that”! But only few of them can clearly define the benefits and the goals they await from their ideas. Many people (including myself in the past) starts some project, but are not really sure about the goals of their projects. Such projects are often end with headache. That it the experience of humanity not only my.

From basics of business studies we know that goals should always be defined properly. Even more I say that every project manager or better every member of project, has to be concerned with goals of the project in every stage of that project. Than goals begin to serve us as references of project status. Every time you see what is already works fine, what part of project are good and which of parts have to be done next.

The are several kind of goals. The main goal of a project is often synonym for benefit. But people starting the project are often have only fussy idea about benefit they will have. Start every project with definition of the overall goal for project. You should like this goal. Having clear goal in mind provides long-range motivation!

As one big project has his sub-project and sub-tasks, so it is of course necessary to define clear goals of every sub-project and every sub-task. And if one project should be implemented by a team, it is very important that the whole team knows the goals at every stage! And even more, the team at it self should be able to define goals of sub-tasks, like every member of project have to define his personal goals by working on sub-tasks.

Also don’t forget that time is more than money! Time is life! So don’t waste your time and make sure that every goal definition has a time constraint! Ever!

But the most important thing on goals is, the ability to change them! Don’t cling to Goals you’re defined month ago. If after some progress you see new opportunities or impasses which makes the goals of yesterday looks silly. So don’t be like the average manager in a big company feel free to accommodate the goals for successes of tomorrow!

Here are some further reading on:

Feel free to comment!

This project was born physically two days ago by setting up the blog-engine and today i write my first post here. The idea of this blog was born earlier in my mind, already some week ago. The time span form the initial idea till the first result is also relatively short. OK, it could be even much shorter, but it is not bad if i consider the amount of things i have to deal with in current months.

Nevertheless the mentioned time span is very important, then so many projects often exists only in our minds and never leave it. They have an endless time span till thair begin or they even never get finished. One of my good friends (I maybe introduce him later) always says: “do it incremental”. I agree with him and think, that every (software) project should have short tame from idea to first results. Do prototypes, create even some first rudimentary results if dealing with big projects.

Seeing first results is very important, it gives you very much feedback, and feedback is what you always need. Feedback allows you to evolve your initial idea and vision rapidly. So maybe yo can earlier see the pitfalls and changes i could not see just having the project in your head. Also it disengages your mind so you don’t have to carry all that things, that are not ready yet with you. But many people do it contrariwise, they try to create an perfect thing out of the box so say in one step! I believe only perfect people can take a liberty doing so, but unfortunately no one is perfect.

So this is first what to say in this blog and I’m far not ready with all improvements this blog and I’m unsure about the style theme i will use for this blog. But you and i can see first results and get first feedback out of this, so that things could only get better. Reading this you maybe already understood the intention of this blog. Yes, we will deal with personal and of course with corporate management. How it will look like we precisely will see as it evolves, the is no five-year plan for this blog :).