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2013-12-27 01:50:34
Sydney Finkelstein
When management goes wrong, what does it mean?
Business school professor and expert on executive failures, Sydney Finkelstein
weighs in every-other-week on management and leadership issues.
Among the topics he s covered for BBC Capital in 2013: How managers waste time
and sacrifice success by committing meeting malpractice , why micromanagement
might not be so bad after all, how Apple as we know it could be history, why
managers must guard against big data drowning out genius, and more.
The end of Apple as we know it?
When Apple introduced a lower-priced iPhone, many investors, managers,
competitors and observers were focused on how this would boost Apple s market
share, especially in emerging markets.
Perhaps of even greater interest, however, are what it meant for Apple as a
company, and more generally, whether corporate cultures are fluid enough to
accommodate abrupt shifts in strategy.
Apple has been a modern marvel. Starting with the revolutionary iPod, the
company s former chief executive officer Steve Jobs spearheaded an attack on
the established order in consumer electronic devices. A company that breaks the
rules, changes the world, and does it all with panache and coolness is a tough
act to beat. That is, until it starts cutting prices.
It s that new strategy that may signal not just a different way of doing
business that changes Apple at its core, but also a culture shift at the
company.
Rescuing victims of meeting malpractice
Are endless, pointless meetings a cruel fate all office dwellers must endure?
The answer is, perhaps surprisingly, no! So many people are subject to meeting
malpractice that it s a wonder the trial lawyers haven t caught onto this one
yet. The good news is that somewhere out there there are some savvy managers
who refuse to play along, instead holding on to the quaint belief that meetings
are opportunities for smart people to learn, debate and discuss and for
accountability to be assigned for actions and results.
So what is meeting malpractice? And what can managers and leaders do about it?
In praise of the much-maligned micromanager
Many leadership experts have listed micromanagement as Public Enemy No 1 when
it comes to running a successful company. But, when strategically applied, it
can be a powerful tool not only to get things done, but to develop talent as
well.
Builders of giant brands, from Apple to J Crew, to Amazon were not only wildly
successful, but Steve Jobs, Mickey Drexler, and Jeff Bezos all have something
else in common, and it is directly related to their success each is (or was)
an unmitigated, unapologetic, micromanager!
So when, exactly, does micromanagement serve a company and a leader well? When
a leader has a vision for what the business should look like and is prepared to
back up that vision with action.
Not convinced? See what Syd Finkelstein has to say about why some micromanagers
deserve our praise not our scorn.
Five chief executives who didn't make the grade
The end of the year is a time to take stock of what has happened, what we
learned and what we shouldn t forget. One way Finkelstein does this: a
compilation of the worst CEOs of 2013.
To compile the ranking, questions are considered that eliminate the weight of
big failures that were mostly beyond the control of the CEO, or bad performance
that was due to industry-wide factors.
So who made the list in 2013? You might be surprised by at least one name
from the outgoing CEO at a computer software giant to a hedge fund guru whose
retail prowess leaves a lot to be desired, Sydney Finkelstein s Worst CEOs of
2013.
Our fatal flaw in choosing the right leaders
Why is it that we from boards of directors to hiring managers to nominating
committees to voters and more don t seem to get it right when it comes to
choosing the right leaders? After all, the person at the top can make all the
difference in the world, for better or for worse.
Maybe it s not as simple as the mistakes we know we often make, from preferring
people who look and act like us to believing that we can size someone up from
an interview. The single biggest problem the fatal flaw in choosing
presidents, school board leaders, or sports team coaches might be that we
believe we can predict the future rather than looking for a leader who can
quickly adapt to whatever the unpredictable future holds.
So, what are the best practices we could use for choosing our leaders? More
importantly, what should we really be considering in order to get it right?
Don't let big data drown out the genius of ideas
The power of big data goes far beyond figuring out what we might want to know.
Big data helps pharmaceutical companies identify the attributes of their best
sales people, so they can hire, and train, more effectively. Big data can also
help predict what songs are likely to be hits, which wine vintages will taste
better and whether chubby baseball pitchers have the right stuff.
But big data should not be confused with big ideas. It is in those ideas the
ones that make us conjure up the image of Albert Einstein that lead to
breakthroughs.
Companies, like civilisations, advance by leaps and bounds when genius is let
loose, not when genius is locked away and deemed too out of the mainstream of
data-driven knowledge. That s why it s important for leaders to find a balance
between numbers and thinking to keep data from drowning out genius.