Friday, May 25, 2007

Looking for Martial Arts Managers, Black Belts or more


I am looking for managers with a certain degree (preferably black belt or higher) in judo, jiu jitsu or other martial arts for an upcoming international management survey. Please use the comment buttons to contact me.
(pictured: judo: ippon seoi nage)



Thursday, May 24, 2007

High Performance Groups in the Organization

The Hudson Highland Center for High Performance performed research among 600 US and 2000 knowledge workers outside the USA and found that one of the biggest differentiators between high-performing and non-performing workgroups is that the leaders of the high performance groups protect their group from the larger company "so that we can do our work". (Annunzio, 2004)

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

New job ?

Thus far this was the strangest day of the year. I received independently two job offers today. The first job offer came remarkably enough through this blog. An intriguing Adsense ad-by-Google showed up on this blog last week. Normally you can not click on the ads on your own blog (Google might kick you out of the Adsense program you committed to). I switched to another server to be able to open and read the ad. Without telling too much (signed an nda), it involved blogging knowledge and a certain affinity with Europe. I was surprised (I am not a 'blog professional' so to speak) to be invited by the future employers and over an excellent swordfish lunch they explained me about their plans. All very, very interesting stuff.

When I came back to the office another department head of The Wall Street Journal had sent me a cryptic e-mail mentioning a 'possible opportunity' for me. We met, I received some more explanation, and again, without telling too much, it indeed could be a rare opportunity for me. If I would accept, my working life will completely change; I even would be working more in the environment of the content of this blog.

More about all this the coming days, I have a lot to think about.

Monday, May 21, 2007

55 Management Guru's

Author Carol Kennedy published her fifth edition of 'The Guide to Management Guru's" in January of this year. The book gives an excellent almost academic overview of the most important business minds of today. She listed the guru's alphabetically, which serves her purpose of portraying the playing field, although it is not as much fun as the Accenture management 'power list' :-)
Truth is, it is probably one of the better management books of 2007.

Here follows the list of what she considers the major management guru's of today:

  1. Adair John: Action-Centered Leadership: how task, team and individual overlap.
  2. Ansoff Igor H: The theory and practice of strategic planning.
  3. Argyris Chris: Developing individual potential within the organization: single and double-loop learning.
  4. Barnard Chester: Managing the values of the organization.
  5. Belbin Meredith: Complementary roles in team-building.
  6. Bennis Warren: "Managers do things right. Leaders do the right thing."
  7. De Bono Edward: Lateral thinking: "the generation of new ideas and the escape from old ones."
  8. Burns James McGregor: Leaders who transform and empower their followers.
  9. Chandler Alfred D: Structure follows strategy in organizations.
  10. Christensen Clayton M: The power of disruptive innovation
  11. Deming W. Edwards: The key to quality: reducing variation
  12. Drucker Peter: Originator of modern management thinking
  13. Fayol Henri: Five foundations stones of modern management
  14. Follett Mary Parker: 'Responsibility is the great developer'
  15. Gantt Henry: The key tool for managing projects
  16. Ghoshal Sumantra: Transnational management and the 'new moral contract'
  17. Gilbreth Frank and Lillian: Efficiency through studying time and motion
  18. Hamel Gary: Core competencies of business processes
  19. Hammer Michael: The radical redesign of business processes
  20. Handy Charles: The future of work and organizations
  21. Herzberg Frederick: Motivation and job enrichment
  22. Hofstede Geert: The causes of cultural diversity
  23. Humble John: Management by Objectives as a practical methodology
  24. Jaques Elliott: Psychological factors in group behaviour and the 'midlife crisis'
  25. Juran Joseph M: Company-wide quality cannot be delegated
  26. Kanter Rosabeth Moss: The 'post-entrepreneurial' corporation empowering individuals as a force of change
  27. Kaplan Robert S. and Norton David P: The balanced scorecard system of performance measurement
  28. de Vries Kets Manfred: Psychoanalysing the organization
  29. Kim Chan W. and Mauborgne Reneé: Value innovations and 'blue ocean' strategy
  30. Kotler Philip: Marketing as a management science
  31. Kotter John P: Leadership and organizational change
  32. Levitt Theodore: Understanding the true role of marketing
  33. Likert Rensis: How leadership styles link with business performance
  34. McGregor Douglas: Theory X and Theory Y: authoritarian vs participative management
  35. Maslow Abraham: The 'hierarchy of needs' in motivation
  36. May Elton W: Human relations in industry and respect for individuals
  37. Mintzberg Henry: How strategy is made and how managers use their time
  38. Ohmae Kenichi: Lessons from Japanese global business strategy
  39. Pascale Richard T: Continuous renewal in organizations
  40. Peters Tom and Waterman Robert H: The 'excellence' cult and prescriptions for managing chaotic change
  41. Pfeffer Jeffrey: Key success factors in managing people
  42. Porter Michael: Strategies for competitive advantage, both national and international
  43. Prahalad C. K: Finding rich markets by serving the world's poor
  44. Revans Reg: Managers educating each other through 'action learning'
  45. Schein Edgar H: The 'psychological contract' between employer and employee
  46. Schonberger Richard J: Each function in a business seen as a 'customer' of the next in the chain
  47. Schumacher E. F: 'Small is beautiful': the human scale against corporate 'giantism'
  48. Senge Peter M: Systems thinking and the learning organization
  49. Sloan Alfred P: Decentralizing big corporations
  50. Stephenson Karen: Mapping and managing human networks
  51. Taylor F. W: Scientific management and the 'one best way'
  52. Toffler Alvin: A world in flux and the rise of the 'prosumer'
  53. Trompenaars Fons: Managing cultural differences for business success
  54. Weber Max: How individuals respond to authority in organizations
  55. Welch Jack: 'Maximizing the intellect of the organization'

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

The Wall Street Journal, night operations in Italy

16.00h (Mon 14-05-2007) : Italy, Milan station
The "Mandarin Duck", a Eurostar Train, will take me to Rome.

20.30h: Arrival Rome trainstation.
(Every big Italian railwaystation suffers from an explosion of flatscreens. There is no
flatscreen-free-pilar to be found anymore.)

Our new distribution team in Rome, Emilianpress, will take me to the printplant in Carsoli.
Second to the left, owner Daniele. Tonight I will accompany 'Goldy-Singh' (or Massimo for his friends), far left, on his distribution tour.

23.00h: printplant in Carsoli, 78 km from Rome:
waiting for "good copies" of The Wall Street Journal
to come from the press.

00. 20h: mailroom in the printplant:
IESE stickers are glued manually to the newspaper.
'Goldy-Singh' and I will leave printplant around 01.30AM.

01.55h: First stop: printplant Lito Sud.
The loading dock of Lito Sud is a connection point for dozens of drivers and different newspaper titles. Wall Street Journal copies are passed around to drivers from the TAV cooperative, who in the first place come to Lito Sud to collect one of the biggest local Roman newspapers, Il Messaggero.


02.25h: Second stop: HDR.
Certain copies for Fiumicino airport are dropped of.


02.55h: Third stop: Galetti:
Delivery of another batch of copies for Fiumicino airport.

03.00h: Fourth stop: IMC:
Delivery of a third batch of Wall Street journal copies for Fiumicino Airport.


04.30h: Rome Center: I will go to my hotel in the center of Rome,
but 'Goldie-Singh' still has some deliveries to attend to.
He will finish his tour around 10 AM.
(view from balcony of my hotelroom).


14.00h (Tuesday 15-05):
Taxi from Rome center to Fiumicino airport


17.30h: somewhere above the Alps: flying from Rome to Brussels

Monday, May 14, 2007

Following Wall Street Journal copies from Zurich to Milan

Wall Street Journal Europe has a new partner in Italy. My team is following up on the transition in the field. Most of our Italian copies however are printed in Zurich, Switzerland. I have the pleasure of driving from Zurich to Milan overnight with Sadat, a 26 year old driver, who left his job at DHL 1 month ago to come and join our Swiss distributor securing each night the 4 hour drive from Swiss to Italy. To illustrate that globalisation goes hand in hand with immigration, he explains that he originates from Macedonia, lives in Switzerland, speaks Swiss German with his young wife and child, but speaks Albanian with the rest of his family because that is actually his mother tongue. Even more in detail, his sister, Raimi, who got him his new job, working nights in our Swiss printplant as a mailroom responsible, now carries a Serbian name after marrying a Serbian man. And yes, he thinks Kosovo should be a state on his own.

To get to starting point in Zurich I have to fly from Brussels to Zurich, followed by a train from Zurich to Will, followed by a city taxi to the outskirts of Rickenbach.

Wall Street Journal and Barron's arriving at a retail depot in Milan at 4 AM after an exhausting 4 hour drive from Zurich.

Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Boomerang professionals

Nickname used to describe US managers of Indian origin who are asked to go back to India to work as an expat in their home country after having earned their stripes at a Western company.

It seems there is a hugh demand for ambitious global managers in India. Indian recruiters from prestigious search firms are looking for expatriate talent. A word of warning though: to flourish as a foreigner in India, "your really have to be psyched for it; it is a love-hate place," says a Goldman Sachs topmanager stationed in India.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Management Guru Listing: 50 Management Guru's

Below list was created by Accenture in 2003: Accenture used the term 'business intellectuals' for the following 50:

  1. Michael E. Porter
  2. Tom Peters
  3. Robert Reich
  4. Peter Drucker
  5. Peter Senge
  6. Gary S. Becker
  7. Gary Hamel
  8. Alvin Toffler
  9. Hal Varian
  10. Daniel Goleman
  11. Rosabeth Moss Kanter
  12. Ronald Coase
  13. Lester Thurow
  14. Charles Handy
  15. Paul Romer
  16. Henry Mintzberg
  17. Michael Hammer
  18. Stephen Covey
  19. Warren Bennis
  20. Bill Gates
  21. Jeffrey Pfeffer
  22. Philip Kotler
  23. Robert C Merton
  24. C. K. Prahalad
  25. Thomas H. Davenport
  26. Don Tapscott
  27. Malcolm Gladwell
  28. John Seely Brown
  29. George Gilder
  30. Kevin Kelly
  31. Chris Argyris
  32. Robert Kaplan
  33. Esther Dyson
  34. Edward de Bono
  35. Jack Welch
  36. John Kotter
  37. Ken Blanchard
  38. Edward Tufte
  39. Kenichi Ohmae
  40. Alfred Chandler
  41. Janmes MacGregor Burns
  42. Sumantra Ghoshal
  43. Edgar Schein
  44. Myron S. Scholes
  45. James March
  46. Richard Branson
  47. Anthony Robbins
  48. Clayton Christensen
  49. Michael Dell
  50. John Naisbitt

Compared to the list of 2002 Accenture decided to drop David Teece (49) and Don Peppers (50) in favor of Paul Romer (the new number 15) and Malcolm Gladwell (the new number 27).

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Management Guru Listing: 50 Management Guru's

Below list was created by Accenture in 2002: Accenture used the term 'business intellectuals' for the following 50:

  1. Michael E. Porter
  2. Tom Peters
  3. Robert Reich
  4. Peter Drucker
  5. Peter Senge
  6. Gary S. Becker
  7. Gary Hamel
  8. Alvin Toffler
  9. Hal Varian
  10. Daniel Goleman
  11. Rosabeth Moss Kanter
  12. Ronald Coase
  13. Lester Thurow
  14. Charles Handy
  15. Henry Mintzberg
  16. Michael Hammer
  17. Stephen Covey
  18. Warren Bennis
  19. Bill Gates
  20. Jeffrey Pfeffer
  21. Philip Kotler
  22. Robert C Merton
  23. C. K. Prahalad
  24. Thomas H. Davenport
  25. Don Tapscott
  26. John Seely Brown
  27. George Gilder
  28. Kevin Kelly
  29. Chris Argyris
  30. Robert Kaplan
  31. Esther Dyson
  32. Edward de Bono
  33. Jack Welch
  34. John Kotter
  35. Ken Blanchard
  36. Edward Tufte
  37. Kenichi Ohmae
  38. Alfred Chandler
  39. Janmes MacGregor Burns
  40. Sumantra Ghoshal
  41. Edgar Schein
  42. Myron S. Scholes
  43. James March
  44. Richard Branson
  45. Anthony Robbins
  46. Clayton Christensen
  47. Michael Dell
  48. John Naisbitt
  49. David Teece
  50. Don Peppers



Tuesday, May 01, 2007

Selection criteria for a top managing editor

The Wall Street Journal, the second biggest newspaper in the US (after USA Today) has a new managing editor, Marcus Brauchli. Very openly, Gordon Crovitz, executive vice-president Dow Jones, laid out the criteria that were used to find the suitable candidate. Almost all the below criteria could be used in a search for any top manager, whether working in a newsdepartement or somewhere else.

1. Integrity is the first requirement and is non-negotiable. Marcus has complete personal integrity and is absolutely committed to the integrity of the Journal and our news operations.

2. Independence: As you know, there are frequent pressures put on the Journal; you should also know that only Paul Steiger knows about some of the pressures that are exerted and shields you from them. Our managing editor must be able to keep the Journal independent from pressured applied by CEOs, politicians, government officials and others. Likewise, the managing editor must ensure that we never follow accepted wisdom or are guided by the opinions of any "media class." In an era of pack journalism, this is a real challenge-and for the Journal this is a great opportunity even more to stand apart and often alone.

3. A managing editor must be a great journalist. You can catch up on Marcus's clips at your leisure, but let me highlight that being a great journalist now means not just the traditional standards for news excellence, but also how we tell the stories and give the news, analysis and interpretation to our readers however, whenever and wherever they want it. Just as none of you any longer is just a "newspaper" journalist, the next managing editor must lead the Journal in all its forms, print, online and through digital channels yet to be invented.

4. The managing editor must connect intimately with readers and online users. Marcus showed during Journal 3.0 that he truly understands how very different our readers' needs are today than even a few years ago. The print Journal must move to even more differentiated, "what does the news mean" and only-in-the-Journal coverage, while the Online Journal must become even more the place for what's happening right now.

5. The next managing editor must have effective newsroom leadership. Marcus has an excellent record as a change agent, whether Journal 3.0, the repositioning of the overseas Journal as compacts, the global news desk or the speedy system. In an era of change, we must embrace change; Marcus will be a change agent, as Paul was before him.

6. Finally, the next managing editor must interact well with other news departments and with other functions across the company. Marcus has worked at Newswires and at the Journal, in Europe, Asia and the U.S. He's also worked very productively with our advertising, circulation and other business departments, always protecting church and state.