Management Thinking

Many commentators would have you believe that we are witnessing a new beginning, that change is happening all around us. Well, I'm sorry to disillusion you, but I can't see that any substantial has changed as a result of the turmoil of the past 12 months.

It may not be the most welcome indicator of returning economic health, but unsolicited takeover attempts are rising sharply - and executives need to ensure their company is not caught napping.

The decisions managers make over the next two years will govern both how quickly their organisations recover and how they perform over the next decade.

When a boy or girl scout demonstrates a new skill, they get a nice merit badge to prove to the world they know what they're doing. So wouldn't it be wonderful if, when we mastered and demonstrated a new management skill, we got a badge too?

It's not just your own organisation's survival you need to be worried about. With the recession stress-testing everyone, the risk is that if a supplier or partner fails, you could be brought down with it.

It may be a buyer's market now when it comes to hiring new talent, but the twin challenges of the ageing workforce and falling birth rates haven't gone away.

The recession we find ourselves in now was inevitable and it has been brewing for the last 15 years. Why? Because investing has been replaced by short-term trading and the interests of shareholders and staff have been placed above those of other stakeholders.

Winning public trust is a vitally important ingredient for success in business. So why do so few business leaders appear to make building and maintaining trust a priority?

The traditional slash and hack approach to surviving a recession is the perfect way to lose those talented employees who will be key to giving you a competitive edge when the upturn comes.

It is time to adopt an completley upside-down view of how organizations work. That means focusing resources on the front-line staff who deliver products and services to the customer, not on executives who primarily manage the spin among the investment community.

Technology is a means to better performance but, too often, laments IE Business School's Professor Oswaldo Lorenzo, it is regarded as the ends rather than means. Instead, he tells us, organisations need to look to the future rather than becoming fixated on the present.

There are signs that M&A activity may soon start to pick up again in Europe, which makes it even more worrying that eight out of 10 companies still fail to grasp the importance of managing the people side of mergers, acquisitions and integrations.

This recession has felt so bloody partly because our leaders have had to dismantle a business model focused on growth and adjust to a world of greater responsibility and state intervention. But without a new culture of transparency, business will struggle to regain its legitimacy.

The power of 'word of mouth' has always been strong. The power of 'word of mouse' has the potential to be considerably stronger - whatever business or sector you are in.

Why are so many employees disenchanted and disillusioned by their jobs? The answer isn't rocket science. In fcat there are four main areas that cause friction between employees and their bosses.

Innovation promises benefits without all of the costs. The aim is to have your cake and eat it – to deliver two benefits that contradict each other. But to come up with things that do this, you need to learn to think better.

Innovation promises benefits without all of the costs. The aim is to have your cake and eat it – to deliver two benefits that contradict each other. But to come up with things that do this, you need to learn to think better.

In a recession, you need to protect and nurture every advantage you have. So why then do so many managers say they are "too busy" to deal with threats to one of their most valuable assets - their organisation's brand?

Relationships with a new boss do not start with a blank slate. They are very much influenced by the quality of the relationship with the previous boss and employee expectations of the relationship they are likely to have with the new incumbent.

Just when we were beginning to hope the worst might be over, along comes swine flu. And just the fear of a pandemic, let alone the reality, could turn out to be a costly headache.

International assignments can make managers more creative as well as being a great way of grooming future leaders. So it's a shame then overseas postings are becoming a luxury more and more firms can't afford.

The great economic disaster rumbles on, but the 21st century economy will continue to thrive and grow in the astonishing environment of the Digital Revolution.

With the war for talent little more than a fond memory, it is the harsh realities of the global economic crisis that dominate the landscape for most senior management teams.

I can say, hand on heart, that there are few more unpleasant moments in one's career than having to wait out a company re-organization.

If we cast our minds back to the best managers we ever had, most of us will think about someone who helped propel our careers. But would our people put us in that lofty category? What are we doing for them?

Too many management teams have spent much of the past year in a desperate funk of knee-jerk reaction and economic fire-fighting, rather than stepping back and calmly thinking their way through this recession.

Trust is a critical resource at the moment. But it is all too easy to forget that while trust takes a long time to build, the balance can be quickly depleted with just one careless withdrawal.

Surviving the recession requires creativity, flexibility and making the most of the talent in your workplace. So it's a shame that so many managers prefer rules, bureaucracy and silo working.

It's a sad truth that you're more likely to get promoted if you're assertive, forceful and self-assured than you are if you're just good at your job. So is this another reason why things have gone so wrong economically?

Self-interest is a powerful engine of economic performance, but it is far from being the only one. Many other parts are necessary for the economic motor to run smoothly – like teamwork and delegation.

The excesses of executive pay that we have seen over the past few years were driven as much by shareholder expectation as by the need to attract top talent, a new study has suggested.

If there's one lesson that we need to learn from the current recession, it is that in the long run, trust pays dividends. That means businesses choosing to operate with integrity - not just as a marketing tactic, but as a value that attracts and retains the best people.

The lessons we learned in childhood shaped who we are and created the values that guide us through life. But they may limit our success if followed too closely. Real world experience has other lesson to offer, many of which fly in the face of traditional parental guidance.

A new economic world order led by high-tech, knowledge-based industries will emerge from the flames of the banking crisis, two UK think-tanks have predicted.

The current economic turmoil will have far-reaching impacts – not the least of which will be irrevocable and fundamental changes to our workforces and the way we work. And that in turn demands a fundamentally different type of management.

A strange phenomenon has arisen as a result of the recession. Because it's the most successful companies which seem to be the ones needing to make the most radical changes in their thinking in order to weather the storm.

Agile project management is fast becoming the next big thing. The more I learn about it, the more I'm convinced that while there are extremely valuable lessons to be learned, there are also some warnings to be heeded as well.

Hindsight is always a wonderful thing, but for those of us looking at the banking community and wondering, "how could they have been so stupid?", a new book may help provide some of the answers.

During this, the second-worst of all modern economic disasters, if a company announces lay-offs and closures, much of the blame is automatically attached to the downturn. However, a measure of blame has to be attached to management itself.

If senior managers think their years of experience have given them the skills they need to ride out the recession, they need to think again. Too often when the chips are down, they simply fail to give clear leadership.

The idea of being permanently employed by a single organisation is still at the heart of the modern workplace. But as the recession bites, employers are questioning whether they can afford the "luxury" of a full-time workforce.

The idea that organisations can boost productivity by measuring time is a hangover from a bygone age. What matters isn't time, but creativity, output, outcomes and productivity. So for those organisations still clinging onto the vestiges of a time-based culture, the message is that it's time for a change.

The financial crisis is bad enough in itself. But we are also seeing a complete collapse in the confidence and trust Americans have in the country's financial leaders and its key institutions.

As excuses for failure go, "it wasn't me, it's genetic" probably won't get the world's bankers very far, such is the rage felt towards them right now. But there may be an element of truth in it.

The current recession offers a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shift the dynamic of the workplace from one that is inherently masculine to one where there is a more balanced collaboration of the masculine and the feminine within us all.

There's no mystery or silver bullet to assessing the value and potential of your organisation's human assets. It's simply a case of how interested you are to find out and how much you care.

The key to handling redundancy well is recognising that the effect of losing a job or a trusted colleague is similar to the grief of losing a loved one. So what can you do to mitigate the cycle of grief?

Cutting staff numbers may seem like a way to trim costs in a recession. But it can often backfire, leading to a much greater exodus than you intended and a collapse in morale and performance.

Employers often lament that Millennials don't work hard, lack commitment, are devoid of loyalty, indulged and require excessive praise. But they're mistaken. Employers just need to change their mindsets.

Have we reached a point at which the total cost of industrial capitalism has outweighed its benefits? In the first in a series of podcasts, Dawna Jones talks to Jay Bragdon, investment advisor, author and an evangelist for a very different way of doing business.

Many senior managers have little confidence in the contingency plans their CEOs have devised to ride out the economic storm. Even worse, many of the CEOs don't either.

With its call for a new era of responsibility, President Obama's inauguration address contained important messages for managers, employers and workers alike.

Here's a brilliant idea for a TV recession reality show from sardonic Financial Times columnist, Lucy Kellaway.

The sight of America's Big Three car bosses going cap-in-hand to Congress for a bailout encapsulates some harsh truths about America's industrial decline. Colossally overpaid, professionally incompetent and hugely conceited, they aren't fit to run a company, still less the world's economy.

In a decade's time your workplace will be wherever you power up your laptop, your colleagues will be scattered around the world and consensus, not command, will underpin management philosophy.

As the recession bites, thousands of companies will go to the wall unnecessarily, killed by the absurd, MBA-inspired pretence that a company consists of little more than costs and resources - that people and skills represent the 'soft stuff'.

The focus may still be on ensuring their businesses are financially watertight, but a growing number of CFOs are recognising that the downturn need not be all doom and gloom.

The current crisis of confidence in the business world demonstrates not just a problem with the financial underpinning of economies, but also the limitations of the Anglo-American model of how business should be managed.

Right now, you need to be thinking about how you will emerge and thrive from the recession ahead of your competition. But how? To point you in the right direction, here's Max McKeown's advice on dealing with the financial crisis.

As recent events have demonstrated, waves are bigger than any individual, company, or nation. To survive them, you need to learn to read the signs and then ride the surf all the way to shore.