Copy Righted Articles

Leslie Kossoff is a management consultant and author with an outstanding reputation as an invited speaker at professional and educational conferences. Her second management book, “Executive Thinking: The Dream, The Vision, The Mission Achieved”, was selected as one of the Top Ten Books of 1999 by Tom Brown’s Management General, the “New Ideas” Webzine.

Tom (MG) and I (MGT) spoke with Leslie (LK) about her book and how it can change your company, your outlook, and your life.

MGT Leslie, why this topic? What message did you want to get out?

LK As you may know, I started in the world of Total Quality - before it had that name. For all the successes - and failures - I saw, there always seemed to be something missing. Even when I worked and spoke with Deming, we were always looking for that secret key that somehow kept eluding everyone. Eventually, I realized that it was the executive thinking part of it.

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What is management? What do managers do? How do I manage?

These are standard questions that most of us in the management profession have been asked more than once. And questions we asked once in our careers too. Here, then, is a basic look at management, a primer, Management 101 from my perspective.

Art and Science
Management is both art and science. It is the art of making people more effective than they would have been without you. The science is in how you do that. There are four basic pillars: plan, organize, direct, and monitor.

Make Them More Effective
Four workers can make 6 units in an eight-hour shift without a manager. If I hire you to manage them and they still make 6 units a day, what is the benefit to my business of having hired you? On the other hand, if they now make 8 units per day, you, the manager, have value.

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Pay for Performance
According to Business Week, the average CEO of a major corporation made 42 times the average hourly worker’s pay in 1980. By 1990 that had almost doubled to 85 times. In 2000, the average CEO salary reached an unbelievable 531 times that of the average hourly worker.

“Pay for performance”, tying executive compensation to the financial success of their company, has become very popular in the past decade. In the face of the largest bull market ever, that isn’t surprising. It also isn’t realistic. What CEO honestly believes that all or most of the appreciation in value of their company is due to their own talent?

ZD Net’s Total Compensation Vs. Total Return To Shareholders chart (no longer online), shows that total return to shareholders was higher for many companies whose CEO compensation was under $500,000 than for companies who paid their CEOs multi-million dollar compensation.

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Recently, I was speaking with a System Architect friend who expressed frustration with her current project. “The Project Manager is not using the (people) resources well,” summarized this former manager’s complaint.

Manager’s Perspective
What manager hasn’t struggled with the problem of not having enough of a key resource needed to do the job? You shuffle people, juggle tasks and priorities, and plead for more resources. You cross-train where you can, contract specialists if you can, and work far too much overtime. You know how much it is taking out of you over time, but what about the people you supervise. What is it doing to them?

What About Your People?
The key people on your team like being busy and feeling needed. Yet they can easily burn out and begin to resent the demands you place on their skills. Others on the team are bored with being underutilized or unhappy being cross-trained to help in areas they lack skill or interest.

“Think of all the hours lost,” the system architect told me “by people doing jobs they aren’t suited for or excited about.”

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Sure, when I play basketball against my brother I keep score. But what my score is at the end of the game doesn’t matter unless it’s bigger than his.

The same is true in business. Many business keep score, but that isn’t enough. You have to manage the actions that will make that score bigger.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)
Many business have certain metrics that they use to track their performance against company goals and Key Performance Indicators (KPI). It is important to note, however, that keeping score isn’t enough. These metrics are only a guide to tell you how you are doing. You still have to manage the underlying activities that contribute to the numbers.These are essential management tools and even if your company doesn’t have them, you should establish and monitor KPI for your group.

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We all get complacent sometimes. We have comfort zones. We do the things we enjoy, that feel good, that come easily. That’s why many people surround themselves with people who agree with them, think like them, and support them. The CEO of a large company does not have that luxury.

In return for the outlandish compensation being heaped on them by the shareholders, the CEO must immerse himself or herself in the uncomfortable, the unfamiliar, the different opinion. Only in that way can they keep the company strong and growing. Only then can they earn what they are being paid. Only then can they, and their shareholders, avoid a debacle like Enron.

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You will often find that many people confuse marketing with advertising or vice versa. While both components are important they are very different. Knowing the difference and doing your market research can put your company on the path to substantial growth.

Let’s start off by reviewing the formal definitions of each and then I’ll go into the explanation of how marketing and advertising differ from one another:

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Companies hear a lot about public relations; often times PR is the popular buzzword in marketing and advertising. Although most know it’s important the benefits are not always understood, so I want to share with you the true benefits of public relations and why it should be important to you.

Public relations seems so glamorous, after all what company doesn’t want to say we just hired a PR firm? Public relations if done right can reach a large audience without the expensive cost of traditional advertising and marketing.

A few of the significant public relations benefits include:

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Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus ?
A (John Mueller): That’s generally ok. I would still make sure that the pages are obviously well-targeted for those audiences. It wouldn’t make sense to send users from specific areas to one general page. In that case, I would use a single page without geotargeting.

Q: Hi Maile - thought you might be here - remember playing pool against me at the SEOmoz party and getting your ass whooped?!
A (Maile Ohye): The sun was in my eye.

Q: what’s the time now at your location ?
A (Matt Cutts): I have 2:01 p.m. Pacific time, Moh Design

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Are you operating a small or medium-sized online retail store? Have your ecommerce efforts been thwarted by a big online retailer? If so, take heart! Things aren’t as bad as they might seem. In fact, instead of being intimidated by the big online retailers – you should welcome the opportunity to compete with them! Here are some things that they won’t tell you that could give you a real advantage when trying to gain more ecommerce customers at their expense.

Here are some of the things that the big online retailers don’t want smaller competitors to know that they’re saying behind your back:

“We’re concerned that you can look just as big as us online”

Think about it – for all the time, money, resources, and energies that go into the website of a large online retailing operation – they still have most of their traffic landing on their home page. It’s the same with you, the small online retailer. When a potential online buyer looks at your home page, they can easily think that you are much larger than you really are. How do you tell the difference between a one-person operation, a ten-person operation, or a large retail site? It’s hard – even for professionals. One key point here: make sure that your home page design and layout measure up to the current standards of professionalism in the industry today.

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