Tag Archives: Senior management

September 7, 2012 · 8:14 am

Doing Something

I had breakfast the other morning

Eggs

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

with a friend I’ve known and worked with for 20 years.  No, breakfast isn’t out Foodie Friday theme but something he said while we ate is.  We were talking about our work – what he does, what I do – and he was discussing a rather large deal of which he had been a part.  After describing his role he summed it up by saying “I didn’t really DO anything – I just helped things along and brought people together.”  My immediate reaction was that he sounded like a chef.

Chefs don’t create the raw materials of their work.  They don’t grow vegetables, catch fish, raise cattle, or mill flour.  Many of them don’t even cook any more once they’re figured out the recipes to be used in their kitchens.  They hire cooks to do that and after teaching them how they want things done they step back.  Once in a while they taste what’s leaving the kitchen for quality control but mostly they do what my friend did – they make connections.

I’ve been a facilitator for a few brainstorming sessions.  We’re always supposed to be content-neutral.  The idea is to help the group reach their goals without imposing our own positions on the ideas being discussed.  We help with structure and process but the participants do the heavy lifting.  It’s important that the group knows that the facilitator is in charge, but that authority is never supposed to be the focus of anything.  Frankly, it takes a bit of effort to get one’s ego out of the room, especially when you believe you can solve the problem.

The point is that my friend behaved like a great facilitator.  He brought people together around an idea and helped them bring that idea to fruition.  I think that’s doing quite a lot, just as it’s the big-name chefs who get the credit for the food, not the line cooks.  It’s what great managing is all about and it’s absolutely doing something!

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September 5, 2012 · 9:49 am

The One Man Band Battle

I got a note from a regular reader of the screed who was kind enough to send along today’s topic.  I’ll let him tee it up (not, it’s not golf) for you. He’s a smart developer who works solo, like so many of us do these days.  Here’s the situation:

I will be provided with an RFP shortly, along with 4 other entities. Although I think I have the inside track, I am battling the perception from the CEO that I am a one-man-band. My estimation is that the project is 4 man-months of work if I do it single-handedly but the CEO wants to go from RPF to implementation in 2 months.

To win this contract I must partner with others to combat the one-man-band perception and to get the project completed within the desired time-frame.

As a sage man of business, you could probably  give me some good advice on how to battle the negative perceptions so I can win this contract, which I would appreciate. I also think my predicament might serve as good subject matter for your blog.

Indeed it does!  My advice to him was to do a little sales jiu-jitsu – turn the negative into a positive.  In a time when it seems everyone I meet is either a consultant, a contract employee, or even a short-staffed manager, none of us are one man bands.  Everyone I know pulls in additional folks from time to time and I’m willing to bet the CEO (or his managers) do that as well.  A big advantage we independent folks have is that we’re no/low overhead operations.  You’re not paying for a nice building, multiple layers of staff, or large benefit programs.  Most of us are generally very senior and have been fully vetted and battle-tested.  There are no junior people on your account and it’s much easier for us to adjust to the right size team whilst people with entrenched staff can’t just up and hire and fire.

Another big advantage is the trust factor.  Those of us with lengthy high-level careers can generally be trusted to get the job done within the allocated time frame and budget and to let you know ahead of time if it’s going to be an issue.  If the CEO in question is dubious, build in some safeguards – penalties if the job isn’t done on time or additional fees if it’s done ahead of schedule or under budget.

Am I being self-serving here?  Maybe.   Then again, perhaps one can be right and self-serving at the same time.  Hit up the comments and let me know, and keep those topic suggestions coming.

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July 16, 2012 · 9:55 am

Why Is Wrong In Life OK In Business?

I had something else planned for today’s screed but after getting through the newspapers over the weekend I changed my mind. I don’t know if it’s struck you as it has me but I’m really surprised how many business stories are about willful acts of corruption and greed. One could, in fact, make the argument that much of the economic crisis in which nearly every country finds itself has at its root exactly that cause. Is there anyone left who thinks the housing bubble and mortgage crisis was an accident?

Let me give you a few examples, just from yesterday’s newspaper:

Goldman Sachs and the $580 Million Black Hole – a story of how Goldman may have negligently mismanaged a company’s sale and sold it to con men:

With Goldman Sachs on the job, the corporate takeover of Dragon Systems in an all-stock deal went terribly wrong. Goldman collected millions of dollars in fees — and the Bakers lost everything when Lernout & Hauspie was revealed to be a spectacular fraud.

Then there is the LIBOR case:

Authorities around the globe are examining whether financial firms manipulated interest rates before and after the financial crisis to improve their profits and deflect scrutiny about their health.

Big pharma?

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced a settlement with the pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. The company had, among a host of criminal actions, helped publish falsified data in a medical journal, failed to report the dangers of a drug and used “favors” like trips to Jamaica to persuade doctors to use its medications for unapproved — and unproven — purposes on children.

Think it’s only financial business that’s affected?

The head of Germany’s football league has called on Sepp Blatter to resign over the FIFA bribery scandal.  Reinhard Rauball told Germany’s Welt Online that Blatter should step down as soon as possible so that FIFA can make a fresh start.

Maybe I’m just an old hippie from a distant time, but this stuff is just wrong.  Simple, right?  You could explain right and wrong to a child fairly easily.  So why does that go out the window when there’s “business” involved?  What’s really scary to me is that no one has gone to jail for any of this stuff – companies have paid fines but no individual has been held accountable (and we all know it’s not just one person).

I’m willing to bet that no matter on which side of the political spectrum you fall we can agree that stealing, bribery, bid rigging, and selling drugs you know aren’t safe isn’t right.  What we can do about it is to call it what it is – bad, maybe criminal behavior – and not stand for it.  Don’t do business with people who permit individuals to behave this way.  I almost wrote companies” there but corporations are legal entities, not people.  It won’t get better until somebody is held accountable in a very public way and jailed.   We as a society and community of business people must demonstrate that competing hard and winning are OK, but not at any cost.  After all, every sport has a rulebook and certain actions will get you penalized or kicked out of the game.  Why not business?

Are you as frustrated as I am?

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