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• When things don’t work, and all your efforts do not produce the results you expected, then there is a flaw in the thinking – we are missing something and it is probably in our faces!
“What is needed is just the courage to face inconsistencies and to avoid running from them just because “that’s the way it was always done”.… We simply need to look at reality and think logically and precisely about what we see. The key ingredient is to have the courage to face inconsistencies between what we see and deduce and the way things are done. The challenging of basic assumptions is essential to breakthroughs”.
• “The closer you are to a balanced capacity chain, the closer you are to bankruptcy”
• “If a company tell me they have moving bottlenecks, my response is: You have NO bottlenecks and most of your resources have at least 30% spare capacity”
• “If you want to make money, most of your resources must be idle from time to time”
Measurement takes what's inherently interdependent, shaped by patterns of mutual causality in nature, and turns it into something that's inherently independent and shaped by patterns of lineal causality. In creating systems whose operation can be described with quantity, we create what is mechanical and mechanizing is diametrically opposed to the natural.
So, we've destroyed the natural in our organizations, and we're very comfortable that way. I spoke earlier of Toyota. Finally, after years and years of walking the floors in that company and, on a few occasions, working on the line, I came to this simple idea. The means are the ends in the making. That's all there is. Get the means right and the ends will take care of themselves.
– Tom JohnsonAuthor of: Relevance lost: The rise and fall of Management Accounting
and “Reflections of a Recovering Management Accountant”
Marcus WallenbergOne of the great leaders of the family in the post-World War II period, Marcus
Wallenberg, was very close to his companies. He regularly would go visit all the companies. He was not a person who sat above the clouds and studied his companies by looking at spreadsheets. He went down to the companies,
like Scania, and when he did he invariably visited the shop floor.
“If I want to know how a company is doing, I do not look at data sheets. I go into the shop, because
that’s where what matters take place. And when I go there I listen for the music. And when I hear the music, I know everything is all right. But if I
don’t hear it, then we go to work”
– Marcus WallenbergOwner of INVESTOR, Family company holding major share blocks in Saab, ABB, Ericsson, Atlas
ExecutionLeaders fail due to an inability to reflect on reality. “The main requirement is that you as a leader have to be deeply and passionately engaged in your organisation and honest about its realities with others and yourself.” We need a process of robust dialogue to achieve this.
“Too many leaders fool themselves into thinking their companies are well run.”
“Most fundamentally, the three core processes (People, Strategy, Operations) were disconnected from the everyday realities of the business, and from each other. Leading these processes is the real job of running a business.”
“The operating plan is strictly a numbers exercise, with little attention paid to action plans for growth, markets, productivity or quality. People were holding the same jobs too long, and many plants were run by accountants instead of production people.”
-Larry Bossidy & Ram CharanExecution. The discipline of getting things done.
“Companies die because their managers focus on the economic activity of producing goods and services, and they forget that their organisations’ true nature is that of a community of humans.”
Living companies have the abilities to:– Learn and adapt
– Build a community and persona for itself
– Build constructive relationships with other entities, within and outside itself
• Complex adaptive systems have their internal feedback loops that are extremely powerful and therefore you must adapt the culture towards increase and support the system rather than dictate it.
• It is largely self organising and self learning and will settle on certain levels of performance in certain locations, but it has the inherent ability to evolve to much higher levels than any linear system can ever achieve.
• Characteristics of CAS:– The CAS is a network of many “agents” acting in parallel.
– The CAS has many levels of organization, with agents at any level serving as the building blocks for agents at a higher level.
– All CAS anticipates and predicts the future.
– CAS have many niches, each one of which can be exploited by an agent adapted to fill that niche.
• People are not "things" to be manipulated, labeled, boxed, bought, and sold. Above all else, they are not "human resources." They are entire human beings, containing the whole of the evolving universe, limitless until we start limiting them. We must examine the concept of leading and following with new eyes. We must examine the concept of superior and subordinate with increasing skepticism. We must examine the concept of management and labor with new beliefs. And we must examine the nature of organizations that demand such distinctions with an entirely different consciousness.
• It is true leadership; leadership by everyone; leadership in, up, around, and down this world so badly needs, and dominator management it so sadly gets.
• Here is the very heart and soul of the matter. If you look to lead, invest at least 40% of your time managing yourself --your ethics, character, principles, purpose, motivation, and conduct. Invest at least 30% managing those with authority over you, and 15% managing your peers. Use the remainder to induce those you "work for" to understand and practice the theory. I use the terms "work for" advisedly, for if you don't understand that you should be working for your mislabeled "subordinates," you haven't understood anything. Lead yourself, lead your superiors, lead your peers, and free your people to do the same. All else is trivia.
• Money motivates neither the best people, nor the best in people. It can move the body and influence the mind, but it cannot touch the heart or move the spirit; that is reserved for belief, principle, and morality. As Napoleon observed, "No amount of money will induce someone to lay down their life, but they will gladly do so for a bit of yellow ribbon."
• Hire and promote first on the basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding; fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity, understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put to good use by people with all the other qualities.
Employing Yourself:
• Never hire or promote in your own image. It is foolish to replicate your strength. It is idiotic to replicate your weakness. It is essential to employ, trust, and reward those whose perspective, ability, and judgment are radically different from yours. It is also rare, for it requires uncommon humility, tolerance, and wisdom.
• The governing structure must not be a chain of command, but rather a framework for dialogue, deliberation, and coordination among equals.– Authority, in other words, comes from the bottom up, not
the top down. The U. S. federal system is designed so authority rises from the people to local, state, and federal governments; in Visa, which contains elements of the federal system, the member banks send representatives to a system of national, regional, and international boards. While the system appears to be hierarchical, the Visa hierarchy is not a chain of command. Instead, each board is supposed to serve as a forum for members to raise common issues, debate them, and reach some kind of consensus and resolution.