Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-24
- major major organizational change is coming to Wall St banks, not before time, but they are not ready #FT http://tinyurl.com/yadup4b #
- I just upgraded #Firefox to 3.6 – it seems a bit faster ttp://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html #
- the kind of payoff many would like -O'Brien gets $32m to leave NBC. Ridiculous, really. http://is.gd/6KFI4 #
- what us banks are donating to #haiti they will earn in about 11 minutes of trading – they have a duty to do more #
- interesting thoughts from an ex-cricketer on "professionalism" – can you be too professional? http://tinyurl.com/yhyrk8s #
- NYTimes will charge for web access – a very significant move, but will it work? http://s.nyt.com/u/rU_ #
- #glaxo (pharma) boss making interesting comments about social responsibility: profits vs. people's needs http://bit.ly/5I7PI3 #
- #Cadbury sold to #Kraft – probably going to be a clash of cultures, very difficult to manage. Many mergers/takeovers fail because of culture #
- A billion here, a bilion there – soon you're talking about real money… Kraft buys Cadbury for 12bn GBP http://tinyurl.com/ycvayqt #
- New York Times going to charge for online content?? Could change the industry. What should other papers do? http://tinyurl.com/yfh4sb2 #
- what's coming up in the world of business this week… http://tinyurl.com/24wpht #
Communicating and change management
‘Facetime’, ‘fokussieren’ and many more…
It’s normal that each area of life has its own specific terms. The Financial Times Deutschland collected some of the words and phrases that are less meaningful than others. They are the kind of words that you can use in meetings if you want to sound as if you know what you are talking about.
But beware – these particular words and phrases are empty of meaning!
More seriously, it has been shown that managers who rely too much on buzzwords like these are less well regarded than people who use clear and concise language.
It’s not only what you say, it’s the way you say it.
Pharma companies and Corporate Social Responsibility
One
of the main challenges for pharma companies is how to balance the needs of the various stakeholders involved. Employees, shareholders and patients all have different needs. A particularly tricky problem is pricing: what we in the rich countries can afford is very often too expensive for poorer countries.
I was interested to read what Andrew Witty, the boss of GlaxoSmithKline, says in the Guardian - Glaxo offers free access to potential malaria cures. His company is is putting 13,500 compounds that might cure malaria into the public domain.
According to the article,
Andrew Witty, the British boss of Glaxo-SmithKline, will say in a major speech that multinational drug companies have to balance social responsibility alongside the need to make profits for their shareholders. There is, he will say, an “imperative to earn the trust of society, not just by meeting expectations but by exceeding them”.
This is a very welcome move. Now, it’s to be hoped that other pharma companies will follow suit. It’s also to be hoped that GSK and the other companies do even more to benefit people in poorer countries who are suffering from other illnesses.
Theory and Organizational Change I
At various times I will be posting on some of theoretical issues related to organizational change because I believe that it is necessary to understand the way the concept ‘change’ has developed. Here I outline some of the earliest thinking on change, which still influences discussions about change today.
Among the concepts discussed by the philosophers of ancient Greece was the idea of change. Two schools of thought with respect to change existed among pre-Socratic thinkers, and the differences between them were significant. Parmenides (c. 515-445 BC) used an argument based on language and thought processes to claim that change was not possible: “[Reality] is uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable, and without end”. He stressed that reality is permanent and unchangeable, and change is illusory. Heraclitus (c. 544-483 BC), who was well known to Plato and Aristotle for his belief in universal change and his doctrine that everything is in a state of flux, took an opposing view: “You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you”. He argued that there is a continuous process of transformation, so things are in a constant state of becoming, and therefore the world changes and is changeable .
There is no doubt about which of these two arguments is the more influential. Heraclitus is referred to by writers on organizational change as writers on strategy refer to Sun-Tzu. For example, Beer and Nohria (2000) write: “As Heraclitus noted 2,500 years ago: ‘All is flux, nothing stays still.’ Sadly, this is as true today as it was then”.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-01-17
- paul krugman – always a good read – on bankers without a clue. http://tinyurl.com/yhwtl2g #
- german investors to vote on exevitive pay http://tinyurl.com/yc4p723. how much is an executive worth? #
- is any banker using their bonus to help the poor people of #haiti? #
- apple's reluctance to open up its hardware and software to 3rd parties will prove to be a mistake http://tinyurl.com/yekxv5j #
- wall street bonuses – a PR nightmare. #FT. http://tinyurl.com/yka7rx5 #
- Too much Excel leads to bad business decisions. not everything can be quantified http://tinyurl.com/y8uuvdl #
- google not being evil in China! excellent marketing move. http://bit.ly/5BhKgc #
- change management conference. only $2300!! http://tinyurl.com/y9366ev #
- would angela merkel be a good company head? she has a hands-off leadership style – too much so perhaps #FT http://tinyurl.com/ydupsv6 #
Paul Krugman on bankers
As a change management consultant, I see the effects on business of what bankers did – the meltdown they caused. Paul Krugman won a Nobel prize for economics. He knows what he’s talking about. In this article in the New York Times – Bankers Without a Clue – he makes some very critical comments about bankers. I agree with what he says….
Consider what has happened so far: The U.S. economy is still grappling with the consequences of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression…. And this disaster was entirely self-inflicted. This isn’t like the stagflation of the 1970s, which had a lot to do with soaring oil prices, which were, in turn, the result of political instability in the Middle East. This time we’re in trouble entirely thanks to the dysfunctional nature of our own financial system. Everyone understands this — everyone, it seems, except the financiers themselves.
There were two moments in Wednesday’s (Congressional) hearing that stood out. One was when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase declared that a financial crisis is something that “happens every five to seven years. We shouldn’t be surprised.” In short, stuff happens, and that’s just part of life. (…)
As an aside, it was also startling to hear Mr. Dimon admit that his bank never even considered the possibility of a large decline in home prices, despite widespread warnings that we were in the midst of a monstrous housing bubble.
Still, Mr. Dimon’s cluelessness paled beside that of Goldman Sachs’s Lloyd Blankfein, who compared the financial crisis to a hurricane nobody could have predicted. Phil Angelides, the commission’s chairman, was not amused: The financial crisis, he declared, wasn’t an act of God; it resulted from “acts of men and women.”
One thing that this makes clear is that predicting the future is very hard, yet that is something all businesses must try to do. We need to have an idea about what the economy will be like, what people will be interested in, and so on, and plan accordingly.
But when we realize we have got it wrong, we need to react quickly.
Responding to catastrophe
We have all seen the tragic consequences of the earthquake in Haiti. The people there are suffering. My question is: how should multi-nationals (MNOs) respond to such events?
Certainly, if the catastrophe takes place in the home country of the organization, one expects that they will do something – allow employees to go and help, offer resources, money, etc. But what if it is not the home country? What should those businesses that make money in Haiti or through operations in Haiti do?
Of course, the managers of MNOs with operations in Haiti should be asking themselves if they are paying the people there a living wage. But in any case, they should be sending as much help as possible. It’s all part of Corporate Social Responsibility.
On a related note, I wonder if the bankers who are pocketing huge bonuses are going to contribute to the relief efforts instead of buying themselves a new Ferrari…
Organizational Change and Football
Football is a business, but different from other businesses in that the heart can play more of a role than the head. Mike Ashley, the chairman of Newcastle United is a successful businessman. But he made many mistakes when he bought the club.
Ashley would never have expanded his Sports Direct empire without exerting due diligence on a takeover, yet he bought Newcastle without properly studying it, only to be shocked by the masses of debt. He would never have installed executives that were incompatible, but this is what he did by employing an old-fashioned manager and then grafting on a continental technical structure, with third parties in charge of development and scouting.
The result? Relegation last season.
What we can learn form this is that when there is a takeover, the resulting organizational change must be carefully and thoughtfully planned.
