Cyprus is the fifth country in the eurozone to be bailed-out.
We now know that not all euros are equal. Easy movement depends upon the location of your bank. Moreover, these latest events have at last stimulated discussions on the prospects for protection of bank deposits across the developed world. There are assumptions, but little clarity. Ought we to be surprised by the imprecisions? Not really. Your money in an account becomes an asset of the bank. Guarantees will always be a bit dodgy. They pass responsibility for failed banks from lenders to the sovereign state. Not a sound idea.
‘The customer is king’.
So urges a wise piece of managerial exhortation. But what sort of kings are they? Despotic, benign, consultative, arbitrary, fickle, loyal, egocentric … broke? The truth is that your customers are all of these things, and more. Also, they change character as your products and services change. How often do you probe the prevailing mood amongst your customers? Do your sales people listen, rather than talk? What about your systematic feedback? It can be done by hard work and is less expensive than some market research.
Much has been said and written about the nature of management.
Analyses, models, theories, cracker-barrel philosophies and empirical evidence are available to everyone. Managers are crucial, highly visible (they wear posh suits) and have had a spectacular rise in the past fifty years. They have journals, dedicated pages in ‘quality’ newspapers, degree courses, unique training schools and professional bodies. Managers are blamed, praised, researched and paid. But our industrial world is confusing to the newcomer. ‘Look before you leap’ or ‘Be an entrepreneur - he who hesitates is lost’. Sometimes a firm declares that it is the dynamic, young, forceful, aggressive person it is seeking. At other times, the future is held to be in co-operation and team spirit. ‘Too old at 40’ one week, pensions for patriarchs and all manner of fringe benefits the next. We demand initiative in an appraisal interview and when it is delivered, emphasise statesman-like restraint to the keen entrant.
One firm reduces product variety, another sees salvation in diversity. We manifest a vast fabric of contradiction. For every managerial proposition, there is another to deny it. We seem incapable of the declaration that there is nothing inherently mysterious about management – a stance which would remove a major industrial platform of the political left. The techniques used are simply those which try to detect patterns in events and to discern sensible choices of action so that judgements can be made, often in circumstances of intractable complexity.
Managers are at it again.
Their need for magic is in good shape. Listen to the buzzwords in conversations, speeches and chats over coffee. Observe the focus on holistic approaches to help us envision the ownership and journey of activities. In this way, their impact is cascaded in ways which empower the workforce. All this and more in the world of quick fixes, but keep your eye on margins.
From across the pond. ‘
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a moulder of consensus.’ Martin Luther King, quoted in the Montreal Gazette and The Week.