Jake Nady's Blog

Advanced Change Theory (ACT)

Jake Nady — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 05:32:52 +0000

This article readily admitted that it was a hypothesis, and not arrived at via empirical study and observation. However, we all inherently know that change, especially at the organizational level is very difficult for everyone. This article, in its own lengthy and wordy way, spell out just how difficult this is. It’s focus is really more narrow than that even. It is trying to demonstrate that, like Gandhi, you gotta be the change you want to see in the world. It goes on in great length how very difficult it is to “surrender” yourself to the change, and dive in it and swim around for a while.
It really had what I would almost describe as religious overtones to it. It wasn’t the mention of Jesus or other religious figures, rather the use of the language seemed very familiar to a church. Only the message wasn’t that of ‘give me some money so I can buy bibles for these starving babies’ it was more like, here’s the only way to successfully implement a change plan. It really was ‘start with number one’. Be a role model, you gotta really believe in it yourself for others to buy into it.
Then it goes into some possible arguments against it for a tiny bit… this part is really all common sense, but as we know, that’s different for everyone. (get it?…) 

Sound of Silence

Jake Nady — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:39:29 +0000

This article is about the concept of “organizational silence”. To me, it is really a subdivision of groupthink. Dissenting opinions are fearful of the disdain that will ensue when any opposing viewpoint than that of the leaders is presented. The old fable of the Emperor wearing no clothes is used as a simile to emphasize the point. More specifically, the article goes about trying to determine the cause of “organizational silence” and how it presents itself. Borrowing from previously conducted studies in other disciplines, logical conclusions are drawn out as the hypotheses. The authors try to “connect the dots” as it were. I think their aim is high, and difficult to prove it existence by it very nature. Its hard to hear a lot with everyone being all… well silent. So its existence alone is hard to define. But like the Supreme Court said with obscenity, you may not be able to define it, but you’ll know it when you see it. Or something to that effect… Anyways. I know as well as anyone that this phenomenon exists between any two people. Its more likely when one of the parties has power over the other, but it happens. I would be hard pressed to prove my own anecdotal experiences with it, but I know that I have been a party to it, as will everyone else. However, I have trouble reconciling the lack or real data with the gut feeling I have that it does happen. I know the authors try to show that it does… but it doesn’t hold up in my humble opinion, as presented.

Treadway Tire Company

Jake Nady — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 03:33:08 +0000

The case of Treadway Tire, to me, has seemed the most straightforward of all the cases. The problems are clearly defined, and the environment for the “line foremen” is not a very appealing one. Ashley Wall was hired to come up with a plan to improve the output performance of the Lima plant which had recently invested in updating their plant with some state of the art production equipment and was now running 24 hours a day. Most notably, the turnover rate of the line foremen was perceived to be too high. Coupling this, the ones they were getting weren’t poised to move up the chain within Treadway. There didn’t appear to be any formalized training program, and the managers had no incentives to train given the emphasis on productivity. Many of the factors that impeded the output of the plant were not in the control of the line foremen yet they were evaluated almost solely upon this metric. The employees, both the unionized line workers and the salaried Line Foremen worked 12 hour shifts. This aspect alone caused numerous absenteeism issues among the workforce. Burnout among the hourly workers was just one of many systemic issues facing the line foremen. Another big factor was the perceived lack of formal authority to discipline the heavily unionized workforce. In reading the comments that were made, this made them feel powerless as they were not involved in the formal grievance process. In an industry so focused on efficiencies, this process is very counter-intuitive. Also the lack of a formalized training program to grow people from within showed the lack of operational understanding by the upper management at Treadway. All in all, I think she’s off to the right start, but I think there really needs to be a heavy dose of hard education by the top brass of what the issues are, and how they aren’t investing in their human capital as well as they have been in their new plants. However, it can be hard to quantify the impact of a more people oriented experience. The place just sounds like a miserable place to work, and I would say that old habits die hard. It may end up being market forces that teach them the hard lessons.

The Men’s Warehouse – Stanford Case

Jake Nady — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:23:59 +0000

George Zimmer, founder and chairman of The Men’s Warehouse, a men’s clothing store that sells primarily tailored suits, was a product of the sixties, or so he says. The company has proven successful in what he has called a “stagnant market” of men’s clothing stores; even men’s wear clothing departments within large retailers was shrinking. It was a market with few barriers to entry, and was well saturated with many different players, each with its own unique offerings to the customer. Zimmer recognized that he wasn’t going to “increase the aggregate amount of customers” by opening his stores, rather his focus was on how he could do it better than the existing players.
His view was to really treat the customer well, and by customer he also included employees. The line “how can I expect the sales associates to treat the customer right if we don’t treat him right?” or something to that basic effect was said in the piece. This is all so very familiar to hear now. From the Harrah’s case, to the Indian consulting firm, this point is really being driven home. I did really enjoy the part about how they’d fire top sales people if they were known poachers of potential clients. One thing not noted is the economic climate in which all of this occurs. The years 1991 – 1996 might well be the best cherry picked dates to show growth for any company (other than the competitors in the men’s clothing stores). There was mention that The Men’s Warehouse sold its suits at a discount from what other retailers in the business did, perhaps that was the cause of the success, and not the attention starved chairman Zimmer and his new approach.
The indoctrination of the sales force, and the “promoting from within” policy is also a sign of weird things to me. We keep hearing about how outside perspectives are valuable. The lessons really seem top down, although the message they’re sending is almost the exact opposite. It felt a tad bit hypocritical in this respect. Like, “This guy who knows everything, the self professed hippie, says to act like him. Now go be excellent to each other.” Even within the lectures that MW gives… “Really listen to your people, your customers”… Their primary goal, promote self-respect etc. MW would do well to figure this out.

The Layoff

Jake Nady — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 20:21:09 +0000

Robin Astrigo was the CEO of a home improvement store that had fallen upon harder times than wall street had estimated it to be. He really wanted to have the company meet the expectation of the analysts and there was a recent trend involving a decline in revenue and he felt the company had expanded too fast. In his head he determined that he needed to cut 10% of the workforce to get the company back in line from a profit or EPS perspective. So his focus is on the cost side, this is more of a “management” approach and not a leadership one. The piece doesn’t really mention the overall well being of the company or the impact of simply reducing costs without any revenue changes. The reader is left to assume that any old 10% of the workforce is sufficient to cut. Perhaps this 10% is measured in dollars, because otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. Or perhaps the added costs of the severance packages offset the savings of implementing the LIFO approach. (All of the approaches the article offers reminded me of inventory costing methods by the way.)
Various experts were able to offer their own two cents worth, qualifying why they believed such as they did. If I had to choose from all of their terrible blanket approaches, I’d probably end up agreeing most with the crank and yank. However, I wouldn’t let the news trickle out slowly, and I’d go big and slash 15% for good measure. These estimates are usually biased and additional rounds of layoffs are needed in future periods. As this bad news is delivered slowly, morale and opinion of the management team is dwindled and the reign won’t last. There was a part in The Prince that offered the best advice in my eyes. “Violence must be inflicted once for all; people will then forget what it tastes like and so be less resentful. Benefits must be conferred gradually; and in that way they will taste better.” – Machiavelli

The End of Management

Jake Nady — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 04:10:43 +0000

This article, short and sweet as it is, is trying to foresee the future and how management roles will fit into it. The author claims that management as we know it will be drastically different than we know it today. In today’s world large inflexible companies who manage well in an environment of little change can’t keep pace with the companies that don’t have the bureaucratic issues. Its like mini governments trying to get into new fields full bore. The dilemmas that arise as a result from the inability to adjust to the environment around you can lead to less than stellar performance. Larger companies collapse under their own weight. Even Jack Welsh at GE who is considered the last of the last great managers of the modern age made his mark by eliminating unnecessary red tape. I agree to an extent with the author’s position, but I see this really being forced upon the workforce as large companies will tend to underperform, and the diversity of the workforce.

Joe D. Dowdy

Jake Nady — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 03:29:57 +0000

This article was to me a sob story about the misfortune of Marine Col. Joe Dowdy and his being stripped of his command, which is a super big deal to have happen. This is supposedly unprecedented to do if no direct orders are disobeyed or he’s not being a complete jerk. He accomplished his mission even. He didn’t do it as fast as the General Mattis would have liked. He met some additional resistance along the way and Dowdy supposedly took so long because he was busy shooting Iraqis back. Its really tough to gauge what really happened, but some think it was because Dowdy fell asleep while on command or because he went over his authority. But much like the WWII story of the guy who fed the concentration camp survivor, he let his conscience be his guide, only this time it cost the guy his job. The general seems to be flexing his might, and few will question his judgment. But the moral of the story is that sometimes doing what you think is the right thing will have negative personal consequences, especially when going in direct opposition to a popular and sensitive leader.

Lt. John Withers

Jake Nady — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 23:22:33 +0000

I think that the most pertinent issue with this WSJ article relates to the leadership decision that was made early on in the reading. Lt. Withers disobeyed rules by allowing some concentration camp refugees stay with his troop amid concerns of disease. His underlings were the first to ascribe primary care to the otherwise emaciated Pee-Wee and his buddy Solomon. Lt. Withers ended up letting them stay on and work for the American soldiers during their time there. He “didn’t want to lose face” by going against what his troops had already decided and amid this feel good story he felt that he had to follow his conscience no matter what his orders were. Thank god that pee-wee had no diseases. But it turns out to be a happy tale in the end with the two men reuniting etc. As a leader, he made a decision and stuck to it… he sided with his people as well. I’m sure this increased his popularity, especially in light of the fact no disease was spread as a result of his actions. Well at least that we know of.

level 5 leadership

Jake Nady — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:20:15 +0000

The article goes over Jim Collins’s idea of “Level 5 leadership” where he constructs a pyramid of effectiveness to compare what he sees as good leaders against what he sees as great leaders. It all seems very familiar as a few weeks back we went over a review of a book that went over this concept and tore up the methodology of his research. The ideas might make sense, but there in no evidence other than circumstantial, to support the causal relationship between any of his attributes. The article became very hard to read with this built in bias… all the while knowing that it was only what existed in one man’s imagination. He could be right, but his methods leave us with a lot of doubt.
This is especially hard for me to read right after the election season and how just about every politician in every ad blamed all the ills of the world on his or her opponent using this same methodology. But he said that basically you’re either born with the personality to be a great leader or you’re not. You should be humble and a hedgehog. A hedgehog does one thing well. That seems pretty bogus to me, and I should probably write a book about it.

Dean’s Disease

Jake Nady — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:49:02 +0000

This paper deals with the changes that a leader, in this case the college dean, goes through after they are granted formal authority. It discusses how they are rarely aware of the phenomenon occurring and how politics help encourage this transformation. It is explained by how the dean will react favorably to those who echo his opinions, agree with him nearly always. They call these people in the dean’s inner circle doppelgangers because they really are just clones of the dean. The dean then begins to believe the make believe world he has created for himself and groupthink sets in. The priority becomes maintaining and expanding the power once it’s been tasted. Power is in a sense, a powerful drug.
The article then moves to the ideas of how to best prevent the ‘Dean’s Disease’ from occurring, namely do a better job of screening. It also gives some tips and tricks of how to prevent it after the selection phase of the process. Many of the prescriptions offered in the article reminded me of the same ones used to help prevent groupthink from occurring. This is true because Dean’s Disease to me is really a perpetual groupthink mentality, which can really go on unchecked when there are few ways to really measure the performance of that dean. I know the topic has moved on to leadership, but the group dynamic influences the leader and his level of ineffectiveness so much that the two are really inseparable. The idea of the leader surrounding himself with those who feel comfortable enough to disagree and challenge the leader being paramount to his or her effectiveness is best typified by Abe Lincolns cabinet of dissenters in where he surrounded himself with rivals and would be naysayers. This gave him the reflection on his own conclusions and decisions and effectively filled the role of the devil’s advocate which is very important.