Saturday 12 February 2011

The Responsible Manager

The Responsible Manager

(by Prof. C.K. Prahalad)*

Managers must remember that they are the custodians of society’s most powerful institutions. They must therefore hold themselves to a higher standard.

The global financial crisis of the past two years has triggered an unprecedented debate about managers’ roles. While discussions about managerial performance, CEO pay, and the role of boards have been fierce, scant attention has been paid to managers’ responsibilities.

For the past 33 years, I have ended all my MBA and executive education courses by sharing with participants my perspective on how they can become responsible managers. I acknowledge that they will be successful in terms of income, social status, and influence, but caution that managers must remember that they are the custodians of society’s most powerful institutions. They must therefore hold themselves to a higher standard. Managers must strive to achieve success with responsibility.

My remarks are intended to serve as a spur for people to re-examine their values before they plunge into their daily work routines.

Take a minute to study them:

Understand the importance of non-conformity. Leadership is about change, hope, and the future.

Leaders have to venture into unchartered territory, so they must be able to handle intellectual solitude and ambiguity.

Display a commitment to learning and developing yourself. Leaders must invest in themselves. If you aren’t educated, you can’t help the uneducated; if you are sick, you can’t minister the sick; if you are poor, you can’t help the poor.

Develop the ability to put personal performance in perspective. Over a long career, you will experience both success and failure. Humility in success and courage in failure are hallmarks of a good leader.

Be ready to invest in developing other people. Be unstinting in helping your colleagues realize their full potential.

Learn to relate to those who are less fortunate. Good leaders are inclusive, even though that isn’t easy. Most societies have dealt with differences by avoiding or eliminating them; few assimilate those who aren’t like them.

Be concerned about due process. People seek fairness – not favors. They want to be heard. They often don’t mind if decisions don’t go their way as long as the process is fair and transparent.

Realize the importance of loyalty to organization, profession, community, society, and, above all, family. Most of our achievements would be impossible without our families’ support.

Assume responsibility for outcomes as well as for the processes and people you work with. How you achieve results will shape the kind of person you become.

Remember that you are part of a privileged few. That’s your strength, but it’s also a cross you carry. Balance achievement with compassion and learning with understanding.

Expect to be judged by what you do and how well you do it – not by what you say you want to do. However, bias toward action must be balanced by empathy and caring for other people.

Be conscious of the part you play. Be concerned about the problems of the poor and the disabled, accept human weaknesses, laugh at yourself – and avoid the temptation to play God. Leadership is about self-awareness, recognizing your failings, and developing modesty, humility, and humanity.

Every year, I revisit my notes about the responsible manager, which i first jotted down in 1977. The world has changed a lot since then, but I haven’t found it necessary to change a word of my lecture. Indeed, the message is more relevant today than ever.

Prof C.K. Prahalad is the Paul & Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Source: Harvard Business review, Jan/Feb 2010, Vol. 88 Issue ½, p.36

Wednesday 9 February 2011

Kelahiran Anak Ke 3


Alhamdulilah, syukur kepada Allah yang memberikan banyak rahmat serta rezeki kepada kami. Isteriku, Sunarty telah selamat melahirkan cahaya mata kami yang ketiga pada 9hb. Febuari 2011 pukul 0407 pagi di Sabah Medical Center hari ini.

Kesemua anak kami lahir di Hospital ini.

Moga kelahiran anak ketiga terus membawa kebahagian kepada kami serta semua yang berada di sekeliling.

Harapan semoga anak yang lahir ini menjadi insan soleh, berguna kepada agama serta menjadi orang yang paling banyak memberi manfaat kepada semua insan.

Amin.

Saturday 5 February 2011

Aku menulis...

Meniti saat kehidupan harian berlalu pergi.
Memerhati perubahan dan malam.
Menyedari saat berlalu itu tidak akan kembali semula.
Meninggal jauh saat itu berlalu pergi, bermaksud
destinasi akhir akan semakin dekat.

Aku terus menghirup udara segar kurniaan Illahi,
Mengharapkan agar jalan - jalan di hadapan dapat kutempuhi
Dengan gagah, bijaksana serta pedoman
dan jua kompas Al Quran

Pelbagai perhentian kulalui
Perhentian yang kekadang membawa aku ke persimpangan
Jauh dari jalan yang lurus

Bumi ini terus kulalui
Kembara sebagai khalifah di muka bumi ini
Hingga sampai ke destinasi
yang ditujui..

Hati, Kebijaksanaan & Kebodohan


Sesungguhnya hati orang yang bodoh itu ada di mulutnya tetapi hati orang yang bijaksana ada di hatinya

Berhati Waja

Seseorang yang berperibadi kuat umpama besi waja semakin dibakar oleh keadaan semakin dititik olrh cabaran hidup semakin teguh dan waja untuk menhadapi hidup.

Seseorang yang berperibadi lemah laksana tanah apabila diketuk oleh cabaran hidup ia akan berkecai

Ilmuan, Agama & Dunia


Apabila engkau melihat orang yang berilmu mencintai dunia, maka curigailah ia mengenai agamanya, kerana orang yang mencintai sesuatu ia akan menyibukkan diri dengan apa yang dicintainya itu

Kemewahan

Kalau kita bermewah-mewah di dunia akan kurang ganjarannya di akhirat

Syak


Barangsiapa menempatkan dirinya di tempat yg menimbulkan persangkaan maka janganlah menyesal kalau orang menyangka buruk padanya

Jemaah, Pemimpin dan Taat

Tidak ada ertinya Islam tanpa jemaah dan tidak ada ertinya jemaah tanpa pemimpin dan tidak ada ertinya pemimpin tanpa ketaatan

Kebajikan yang ringan


Kebajikan yang ringan adalah menunjukkan muka berseri-seri menunjukkan kata-kata lemah lembut

Sejarah

Kata George Santayana, seorang ahli pemikir Amerika,

"Mereka yang lupa akan sejarah akan didera dengan mengulangi kesilapan mereka berkali-kali"

Self-Actualization

The drive to become what one is capable of becoming.

Team Building

Activities :-
  1. Goal and priority setting.
  2. Developing interpersonal relations.
  3. Role analysis to each member's role and responsibilities.
  4. Team process analysis.

Organizational Development

Values :-
  1. Respect for people
  2. Trust and support
  3. Power equalization
  4. Confrontation
  5. Participation
a collective of planned interventions, built on humanistic-democratic values, that seeks to improve organizational effectiveness and employee well-being.

Lewin's Three Step Change Model

Unfreezing ; change efforts to overcome the pressures

Refreezing ; Stabilizing a change intervention by balancing restraining forces.

Overcoming Resistance to Cange

Tactics for dealing with resistance to change:

Education and communication
Participation
Facilitation and support
Negotiation
Manipulation and cooperation
Coercion/force/bullying

Thursday 3 February 2011

Organizational resistance to change

Individual resistance to change

Five Steps of Organizing Process

Fundamentals of organizing

Fayol's Guidelines :


1. Judiciously prepare and execute the operating plan

2. Organize the human and material facets

3. Establish a single competent, energetic guiding authority

4. Coordinate all activities and efforts

5. Formulate clear, distinct, and precise decisions

6. Arrange for efficient selection

7. Define duties

8. Encourage initiative and responsibility

9. Offer fair and suitable rewards for services rendered

10. Make use of sanctions against faults and errors

11. Maintain discipline

12. Ensure individual interests are consistent with organization’s general interests

13. Recognize the unity of command

14. Promote both material and human coordination

15. Institute and effect controls

16. Avoid regulations, red tape, and paperwork

Training

  • Determine training needs
  • Designing the training needs
  • Administering the training program
  • Evaluating the training program.

Training topics :
Organization theory
Leadership
Media relations
Problem solving
Decision making
Time management
Stress management
Ethics and integrity
Effective communication
Hiring practices
Training process
Measuring productivity
Employee Evaluation
Discipline
Legal aspects of discipline and termination
Motivation
Contingency Planning

Managing Human Resources

Steps
1. Recruitment
2. Selection
3. Training
4. Performance Appraisal

Job Analysis
1. Job Description

  • Job title
  • Location
  • Job summary
  • Duties
  • Machines, tools, equipment
  • Material and forms used
  • Supervision given or received
  • Working condition
  • Hazards

2. Job Specification
  • Education
  • Experience
  • Training
  • Judgement
  • Initiative
  • Physical effort
  • Physical skills
  • Responsibilities
  • Communication skills
  • Emotional characteristics
  • Unusual sensory demands such as sight, smell, hearing

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Situational Approach to Leadership

formula

SL = f(L,F,S)

Success leadership = leader, follower, situation.

1. The Tannenbaum & Schmidt Leadership Continuum

The Trait Approach to Leadership

the research assumed a good leader is born, not made.

The successful leaders tend to posses the following characteristics :-

  1. Intelligence, including judgment and verbal ability.
  2. Past achievement.
  3. Emotional maturity and stability.
  4. Dependability, persistence and drive for continuing achievement.
  5. The skills to participate socially and adapt to various group.
  6. A desire for status and socioeconomic position.

Leadership

the process of directing the behavior of the others toward the accomplishments of some objectives.

Leader Vs Manager

Managing consist of
rational assessment of a situation and systematic selection goals and purposes,
systematic development of strategics to achieve these goals,
the marshalling of the required resources,
the rational design,
organization, direction and control of the activities required to attain the selected purposes and
finally the motivating and rewarding of people to do the work.

Leader is

one of the influencing function, subset of management.
mainly behavioral issues.

A manager make sure that a job gets done and
leader cares about and focuses on the people who do the job.

Managerial Motivation Strategies

1. Managerial communication
Basic needs of human as recognition, a sense of belonging and a security.


2. Theory X - Theory Y

X
which has been proven counter-effective in most modern practice, management assumes employees are inherently lazy and will avoid work if they can and that they inherently dislike work.

The Theory X manager tends to believe that everything must end in blaming someone

Y

In this theory, management assumes employees may be ambitious and self-motivated and exercise self-control. It is believed that employees enjoy their mental and physical work duties


theory Y managers believe that employees will learn to seek out and accept responsibility and to exercise self-control and self-direction in accomplishing objectives to which they are committed. A Theory Y manager believes that, given the right conditions, most people will want to do well at work

a positive set of beliefs about workers

3. Job design


Designing a jobs that organization members can perform.

4. Behavior modification

5. Likert's management systems

6. Monetary incentives

7. Non monetary incentives

Important of Motivation Organization Members

Successful managers minimize inappropriate behavior

and

maximize appropriate behavior among subordinates,

thus

raising the probability that productivity will increase and

lowering the productivity decrease.

McClelland's Acquired Needs Theory

Needs for :-
1. Achievement - desire to make something better and more efficiently than it has ever done before.
2. Power - to control, influence or be responsible for others.
3. Affiliation - to maintain close, friendly, personal relationships.

Argyris's Maturity - Immaturity Continum

  1. From passivity as an infant to increasing activity as an adult.
  2. Dependence to independence as an adult.
  3. A few ways to many different ways.
  4. From casual to more lasting interests.
  5. Short time to much longer time perceptive.
  6. Subordinate to an equal or superordinate position.
  7. Lack of self-awareness to control over self as an adult.

Alderer's ERG theory

Existance needs
Relatedness needs
Growth needs

Alderfer also proposed a regression theory to go along with the ERG theory. He said that when needs in a higher category are not met then individuals redouble the efforts invested in a lower category need. For example if self actualization or self esteem is not met then individuals will invest more effort in the relatedness category in the hopes of achieving the higher need.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs

1. Maslow's hierarchy
2. Alderer's ERG theory
3. Argyris's maturity-immaturity continum
4. McClelland's acquired need theory

man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities


The Porter-Lawler Theory of Motivation

 Motivational Force (MF) = Expectancy x Instrumentality x Valence 

Three components of Expectancy theory: Expectancy, Instrumentality, and Valence

1. Expectancy: Effort → Performance (E→P)
2. Instrumentality: Performance → Outcome (P→O)
3. Valence- V(R)




Equity Theory


Equity Theory attempts to explain relational satisfaction in terms of perceptions of fair/unfair distributions of resources within interpersonal relationships.

Equity theory is considered as one of the justice theories.

1963 byJohn Stacey Adams

input


Output

The Vroom expectancy Theory of Motivation

This theory emphasizes the needs for organizations to relate rewards directly to performance and to ensure that the rewards provided are those rewards deserved and wanted by the recipients.

Expectancy Theory proposes that a person will decide to behave or act in a certain way because they are motivated to select a specific behavior over other behaviors due to what they expect the result of that selected behavior will be.

Victor H. Vroom (1964) defines motivation as a process governing choices among alternative forms of voluntary activities, a process controlled by the individual. The individual makes choices based on estimates of how well the expected results of a given behavior are going to match up with or eventually lead to the desired results. Motivation is a product of the individual’s expectancy that a certain effort will lead to the intended performance, the instrumentality of this performance to achieving a certain result, and the desirability of this result for the individual, known as valence. (S.E. Condrey, 2005, p. 482)

Motivation

Motivation is the driving force which causes us to achieve goals

Need theories


Need hierarchy theory

Main article: Maslow's hierarchy of needs

Abraham Maslow's theory is one of the most widely discussed theories of motivation.

The theory can be summarized as follows:

  • Human beings have wants and desires which influence their behavior. Only unsatisfied needs influence behavior, satisfied needs do not.
  • Since needs are many, they are arranged in order of importance, from the basic to the complex.
  • The person advances to the next level of needs only after the lower level need is at least minimally satisfied.
  • The further the progress up the hierarchy, the more individuality, humanness and psychological health a person will show.

The needs, listed from basic (lowest-earliest) to most complex (highest-latest) are as follows: