Ian Mann is a business consultant. He provides insights from the latest business books for his clients
Professor Jeffrey Pfeffer explains that the title What were they thinking? comes from his response to what he reads almost daily about the actions of leaders and organisations. They seem like “something drawn from a Dilbert cartoon”.
Now, these are not stupid people. For the most part they are hard-working, serious people, often expending enormous amounts of time and effort trying to do a good job. And the book is not focused on why they do so many things that are incorrect, but rather describes their decisions in a way that makes the errors crystal clear, which saves you the bother of making the same mistakes yourself.
There are 28 short chapters filled with examples that will alert you to errors you could make, or ones that make you squirm because you have already made them.
The range is broad and I cannot think of anyone who won’t find the majority of the examples very relevant to their work.
Consider CRM, the technology that tracks customer activity and tailors marketing pitches accordingly. The CRM software market is substantial at 76-billion in 2005 and growing, and it has become the dominant software investment.
But here lies the problem: before you can manage a customer relationship, you first have to build or create the relationship — and that is not done by fancy data-mining and the analysis of people’s behaviour. Relationships begin when a customer comes into contact with your organisation. Hint: most people (94%) hate the automated telephone answering system which is their gateway to your company; they want to speak to a person. Really. What was the budget committee thinking?
Isn’t it interesting that Southwest Airlines has their phones answered by live humans? They are one of the few airlines which do, but then they are also one of the few airlines that have been profitable for more than 30 years.
Isn’t it amazing how companies who have fallen on hard times turn first to their middle and lower level staff for help in overcoming their problems? They are the ones who are asked to take the pay cuts and reductions in benefits. Did they think that cutting workers’ pay would actually make them more profitable?
Japan runs a trade surplus with China, as do other countries with high labour costs such as Canada, Germany and Italy. How?
Labour costs depend on two things: the rate of pay and, more importantly, employee productivity.
Alienating staff rarely achieves increases in productivity. What were they thinking?
Many companies make long hours a type of loyalty test — leave on time and you are not committed; leave late, now that’s what we respect. Hours worked equals work output may make sense when the work is agricultural labour and factory-based, but the equation doesn’t work when it comes to innovation and creative work. The fact is that the stress caused by excessive work takes a physical toll, which might explain why hard-working America ranks 24th in terms of life expectancy.
Then factor in the cost to family and social life. If you are still unconvinced, you could consider diminished focus and concentration, and the cost of the mistakes fatigue causes. SAS Institute, the producer of complex software products, has a 35-hour work week so that no one programmes when they are exhausted, and they employ a third fewer “checkers” than Microsoft. Makes you think. .. if you are not too fatigued.
In case you haven’t noticed, airline employees seem to be constantly apologising for the decisions made by their higher-ups — awful food, little legroom, the strangest choice of movies and poor scheduling. And the help desk is making excuses for the bug-infested software, and the nurses for the hospital’s unfriendly visitor policy and the. .. (you fill in the blank). It is almost taken for granted today that status is measured by how far you are from the actual work of an organisation.
This leaves executives hopelessly out of touch and unable to empathise or even understand the situation faced by frontline staff. And no, having the execs walk about the floor glad-handing the staff is not the remedy. At Men’s Warehouse, regional managers and senior executives are encouraged to visit stores regularly and serve customers themselves.
DaVita, the huge American kidney dialysis service, has a programme called Reality 101 in which newly hired or newly promoted executives spend a week interacting with patients and staff. They get to see what it is like to be up at 4am to be at the centre by 5am to be ready to insert needles (themselves) into patients at 6am, and then to fill out patient-treatment records.
The book is full of great insights and, if forewarned is forearmed, it should be at your bedside.
