Management Innovations from the Fringe..!!!!

Most companies rely on management practices dating from the Industrial Revolution, but there are vanguards that have developed new models.

What are the new practices that companies are using to take management beyond the Industrial Age?

Key Points

• Creative innovation across a company at all levels is vital, and can best be achieved by ensuring collaboration among all employees, enabling them to stand on each other’s shoulders
• Employees are the greatest asset a company has and their concerns must come first, even ahead of those of customers and shareholders
• Management has to be turned upside down, and chief executives can no longer be the great deciders, but have to become stage managers or facilitators
• Companies must reverse accountability and break the traditional hierarchical system by making managers responsible to employees
• Peer review, rather than money, is the greatest driver of motivation; employees made responsible to each other are more productive and successful
• Use of social networking techniques within an organization produces wider understanding among managers and employees

Synopsis
Achieving collaboration across the range of employees and product teams – sometimes not just across local or national units but also across continents – is one of the toughest challenges a company faces, but is essential for innovation in terms of product creation that any organization needs in an age of intense business competition. This can be achieved by establishing means – like internal electronic networking – that enable employees to exchange ideas and seek out others with whom they wish to cooperate on product development.

Employees are the greatest asset any company has, and they have to be motivated to keep coming to work and create day after day. This can be achieved by shaping an environment that helps employees balance work and private life. One company – whose local units are widely recognized in many countries as the best employer – provides comprehensive social insurance schemes, daycare facilities for children, gyms and similar amenities, seminars on subjects like taxation and parenting, and offers help in finding retirement homes for ageing parents.

Employees’ interests have to come before the interests of customers and shareholders, but if employees are happy, they will keep customers happy and that, in turn, will convert into the results that keep shareholders happy. However, product innovation is also encouraged by listening to customers, who should be encouraged to come to companies and talk to employees in production teams rather than just to management.

Management has to abandon the hierarchical system that has predominated since the Industrial Revolution; it is no longer relevant in the age of the knowledge economy. Around the world, surveys have shown that even people happy with the job they do leave because of problems with management or managers. Micromanaging from the top is self-defeating. A CEO cannot only be the great decider, but should also be a stage manager or facilitator, making sure that everything possible is done to ensure that employees make the best use of their skills and brainpower.

Management should be responsible to employees, and employees responsible to each other. Reviews of manager performance, including that of CEOs, should be open and available to all. Peer review among employees, rather than money, is the greatest driver of motivation. People have to justify themselves to their peers rather than to the bosses, and fellow workers can be tougher judges of performance than management, and are quicker to spot where a colleague is not up to the job.

Social networking techniques within a company help produce wider understanding of both purpose and methods among and between management and employees. Successful firms with high levels of success have created systems of open blogs, interactive sites on company issues, and special “ticketing” where employees can make known their problems with non-production arms of the company – human resources, finance departments and general management – which the latter have to answer.

Happy Reading..!!!!