RotatingFlux

Apple - Life after Jobs

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 04:16:11 -0700

Exploring life after Steve Jobs at Apple, INSEAD’s Prof Hal Gregersen writes:

Steve Jobs was a master at the five skills of disruptive innovators. He personally excelled at connecting the unconnected, or associational thinking. He was constantly on the hunt for new insights by observing the world through the eyes of an anthropologist. He regularly networked for new ideas with people who were 180 degrees different than himself. And he constantly experimented with different prototypes of every product and service Apple ever produced. At the very core, Jobs was exceptional at asking provocative questions, ones that challenged the status quo, inside Apple and out. Put simply, Jobs thinks different because he acts different — habitually.

Even more important, when Jobs returned to Apple in 1996 (after being kicked out in 1985 by less than creative senior executives), he not only leveraged again his disruptive skills as the new CEO, but he created a top team of people with strong innovation and execution skills. Some were quite like him, innovators like Jonathan Ive, and others not quite as much like him, executors like Tim Cook. Jobs also created a culture of innovation (though he likely called it a culture of excellence) with processes and philosophies that reinforced the power of not only getting great ideas but transforming them into world changing products.

As for the future Prof Gregersen predicts:

With Jobs now moving on of his own accord, we will see how well the people, philosophies and culture that he put into place during the past decade will leapfrog Apple employees past the question “What would Steve do?” to a much more productive one: “What should I do?” Moving ahead, some Apple employees should act different and think different to get surprising new ideas. Others should focus on delivery to make sure things not only get done, but get it done exceptionally well. Some should focus on both. If innovation and execution happen consistently enough across Apple in the months and years to come, I’m confident that the people, processes and philosophies that Steve Jobs put into place today will indeed keep the innovation engine humming at Apple Inc tomorrow.

The formula is simple – consistent innovation and execution with the right people, philosophies and culture. Whether Apple will continue produce more of “world changing” products only time will tell.

More here.

Source : INSEAD Knowledge

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Jeff Immelt's Mantra

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 04:49:15 -0700

Summarising GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt’s address at Singapore on growing and building sustainable business in these uncertain economic times, INSEAD Knowledge notes that :

successful business players need to have a corporate culture and strategic process that is flexible and can adapt quickly.
this recovery will likely look different and rely more on the principles of entrepreneurship.
countries around the world (notably the US) are moving into an era of activist government.

For me, Immelt’s commitment to GE’s core values shone through in this excerpt:

He stressed that ‘commitment to integrity’ comes first, noting that the company is more important than individuals and that everyone must embody the best practices around compliance. Second, a “commitment to performance” where high-performing people are focused on results. Finally, a “commitment to change” where “Knowledge has almost no shelf life,” according to Immelt. He says if you’re not reinventing yourself, or trying to do new things, you become static and are quickly beaten by the competition.

How September 11 Attacks Transformed FBI

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 04:34:00 -0700

In this address to the students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, FBI Director Robert Mueller, talks about how 11 September 2001 was a transformative event in the 100-year history of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

One of his biggest challenges was to change the culture of the venerable institution while trying to navigate the new demands being thrown at it. He explains, "After Sept. 11 one of the side effects was the understanding we could not let it happen again. If we had not had the catalyzing event we would not have made the strides to change the culture to understand the priorities and bring everyone in the bureau behind the concept that the American public expects us to stop [another] Sept. 11. We have to do it — even though more often than not it doesn’t result in slapping cuffs on somebody and putting him in jail."

Source : Stanford Graduate School of Business

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Of Structures , "Noise" and the Org Chart

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 05:01:06 -0700

A firm’s organisational chart can uncover important insights into its inner workings. Research by the Kellogg School of Management and the University of Essex finds that , “structure can also reveal much about the competencies and areas of competitive advantage within the organisation.”

Any student of organisational design can tell you that firms can structure along functional form, meaning that the firm organises itself by business functions such as marketing, research and development (R&D). On the other hand firms can alternatively organise themselves by, “product line, such as the models and vehicle types within an automotive company or the brands owned by a consumer packaged goods company.”

The research notes:

A key advantage of a product-line organisation is that it enables the firm to reward the employees’ efforts by using pay-for-performance mechanisms that involve less noise than those used in a functional organisation. This is because the contribution of a product line to firm’s profitability is typically easier to measure than the financial contribution of functions such as human resources or marketing.

In a functional organisation, although compensation can still be tied to product-line profitability, the link between the choices for which managers have responsibility and the performance metrics on which they are rewarded is weakened, injecting greater noise into their compensation.

A product-line organisation provides another benefit to firms in which cross-functional coordination is critical: by consolidating decision making for all functions within a single product unit, managers can better coordinate functional choices. In a functional organisation, coordination is attenuated because responsibility for functional choices is dispersed across functional units.

Imbalances between functions or in the function/product mix tend to favor a functional organisation. For example, when marketing competencies are far more critical to the firm’s success than any other function, the firm might benefit from a functional organisation with a central marketing group responsible for the marketing decisions for all of the firm’s product lines.

The significance of the research lies its usage of economic theory to isolate the economic and organisational fundamentals to eliminate “noise” in evaluating managerial performance and compensation.

Source : Kellogg Insight

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Oh for the days of the snail mail

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 03:24:00 -0700

Continuing on the always on 24/7 lifestyle, see my earlier post, research by Wharton Business School management professor Nancy Rothbard tries to answer the question - is anyone ever really "off duty”?

Prof Rothbard asks further, "There are huge etiquette issues around the new social media, especially the interactive type. What if your boss friends you on Facebook? That's a dilemma. How do you not accept that friend? What if you really are friends?"

Rothbard elaborates that new communications technology is eroding the boundaries between home and office, which creates a "double-edged sword" for companies.

The flexibility and reach of modern communication tools have created new problems. Rothbard continues, "On the one hand, it enables flexibility. In some ways, it makes you more effective. But it can also lead to a lot of burnout. In the long term, it may lead to conflict about how you feel towards your other life roles and your ability to be fully present in any one domain."

In related research Patricia Williams, Wharton marketing professor explains that for most of social networks users, "There is an understanding of the multiple roles we play. There is the self we are for our friends, a self for our family [and] a professional self. What's interesting is the degree to which we are comfortable playing all of those 'selves' at one time."

While research by Monica McGrath, a Wharton adjunct management professor, points out that some of the misunderstanding about social networking is generational. She notes, “Older workers and managers may have a Facebook page, but it is not essential to them. Younger workers now entering the corporate world rely heavily on Facebook, Twitter and other social media to communicate. Right now, there is tension between those two generational approaches."

So, are there any rules to prioritise messages? According to business consultant Terry Thompson, the general "pecking order" in the business community when it comes to responding to different forms of communication is : e-mail should be answered within 24 hours, a telephone call returned even sooner with social networking sites taking the lowest priority.

Confused? I am going offline- no more social networking for me. Oh for the days of the snail-mail.

Source: Knowledge@Wharton

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There are no B pluses in ethics- it's pass/fail

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 05:31:00 -0700

According to Lawrence Fish, Former CEO and Chairman of Citizens Financial Group, “ There are no B pluses in ethics. It’s pass/ fail.” In a lively and informative discussion with MIT Prof Simon Johnson , Fish explores the recent collapse of American financial institutions, its causes and possible fixes.

The discussion also looks at: the banks that did not fail, how Canadian, Australian and other countries' banking systems also did not fail, the political landscape of banking regulation, ethics, bonuses in the banking industry and the ethics oath signed by 50% of the students at the Harvard Business School.

A not to be missed video.

For bios click : Lawrence Fish, Simon Johnson.

Source : MIT World

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Inventions - Simple And Elegant

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 05:48:11 -0700

They are brilliant in their simplicity. In “Inventions Someone Could Have Thought Up Years Earlier” Alan S Brown writes :

There remain some inventions that seem so obvious—after they are invented— that they inspire us all to slap our foreheads and ask, "Why didn't I think of that?" They could have been invented years earlier, if only somebody had seen the problem differently—or even noticed the problem at all. The best of these innovations share all the hallmarks of good design. They are useful, intuitive, unobtrusive, durable, and affordable. They are also economical in the sense that they do a lot with a little.

Few of the favourites at ASME’s Mechanical Engineering :

Tilt-and-roll luggage - Today, tilt-and-roll suitcases are so common, we would be hard pressed to find a traveler without one. And certainly, there is nothing complex about attaching two wheels and a handle to a suitcase. It requires no more prior art than the knowledge of wheels and levers.

Color-coded connectors - To hook up a sophisticated stereo once required some knowledge of where to attach the phonograph, speakers, tape player, antenna, and ground. This sounds complex, but it was by no means as hard as putting together today's home theaters, which include all of those components plus televisions, cable or satellite receivers, DVD players, recorders, multiple speakers, and more recently, computers and home networks. Yet home theaters are far, far easier to hook together. Why? Because jacks and wires are color coded.

Two-sided keys - This was a slick invention for anyone who ever fumbled with a car key in a cold parking lot late at night. Instead of looking for the business end to align up or down, the two-sided key works no matter which way you insert it into the door lock.

Fat pens - Once upon a time, elegant pens were thin but they were hard to hold. Today, pens have grown fatter, with pliant plastic bulges and shapes that make them easier to get your fingers around. The same is true for tools and industrial products.

The list also includes squeeze bottles and the sports bra. Read about them here.

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Always-On 24/7 ?

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 03:50:00 -0700

SMS, email, voice-mail, Blackberry, Twitter, FaceBook, Linkedin- have any of these technological tethers that binds you to your work in an always-on 24/7 global economy disturbed your personal time ? If the answer is yes- you are not alone. And what will work be like in the future ?

In the September 2009 edition of the IEEE Spectrum , Susan Hassler explores this issue in the article "Working In an Always-On World". Big businesses, entertainment companies and even politicians are trying to work their strategies to counter as Hassler writes :

Entertainment and publishing giants like Walt Disney Co., Sony, and News Corp. are struggling to figure out how to make money in a world where people are served up an endless buffet of free news, information, and entertainment, anywhere, all the time. Public relations and marketing firms are scrambling to respond to the Twitter/Facebook effect, which lets companies talk directly to consumers and vice versa, 24 hours a day, without having to go through flacks and marketers.

Telecommunications and computer companies as always are striving to deliver the most flops or baud in the smallest, cheapest, cleverest appliances. But now they’re doing it in an environment in which anything less than a killer app has a shelf life of less than a year. Ouch.

Even politicians are chastened. Speaking at the meeting, former U.S. presidential candidate Howard Dean said that while President Obama’s use of new Web tools put him in the White House, these same tools have the potential to “put politicians out of business.” Citizens, Dean went on to say, may not need politicians to get things done anymore. They can organize for themselves, whenever and wherever they want to.

But what about the rest of us ? There are many schools of thought as Hassler further explains:

Some say it will be a lot like it is today, only more so. Organizational theorists like Thomas W. Malone, of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and author of The Future of Work, believes that any job that involves parsing or creating knowledge will be carried out by “e-lancers” who will rarely go to an office. No more sweating in traffic jams, but the already-shrinking divide between work and personal life will continue to disappear.

Others think offices will remain important, but that embedded sensors and intelligent agents, combined with high-powered search technologies, will make some kinds of knowledge work obsolete. Machines will research, collect, sort, update, and weight information. People will decide what to do with it next.

E-lancing- that would be a good career move, eh ?

More here.

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#GFC

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:26:00 -0700

If you are a tweep you would know the hashtag #GFC stands for the Global Financial Crisis. To keep abreast with the latest on the GFC I go to The Baseline Scenario , a blog by Peter Boone, Simon Johnson and James Kwak. The blogosphere is full of praise for its easy to understand style and incisive analysis. Highly recommended by the New York Times Op-ed columnist Paul Krugman- it is essential reading for anyone needing an authoritative reference to the current economic crisis.

Here's an excerpt from the section Financial Crisis for Beginners :

We believe that everyone should be able to understand how the financial crisis came about, what it means for all of us, and what our options are for getting out of it. Unfortunately, the vast majority of all writing about the crisis – including this blog – assumes some familiarity with the world of mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit default swaps, and so on. You’ve probably heard dozens of journalists use these terms without explaining what they mean. If you’re confused, this page is for you. Over time, we will be adding more explanations and more links to external sources, so check back for updates.

Go to The Baseline Scenario for more.

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Ballmer Peak - Remember Windows ME ?

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:52:00 -0700

Randall Munroe is a genius.

via xkcd.com

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Tools for Problem-Finders

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 05:53:00 -0700

In his new book What You Don't Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen, author Michael A. Roberto explains that the true problem-finders are characterised by three key skills- intellectual curiosity, systemic thinking and a healthy sense of paranoia.

According to Roberto , a management professor at Bryant University at Rhode Island , US problem-finding requires a certain amount of intellectual curiosity. He argues, “You must have a restless mind, one that is never satisfied with its understanding of a topic -- no matter how much expertise and experience you have accumulated on the subject. You must have the instinct to explore puzzling questions that may challenge the conventional wisdom. You have to resist deferring to the experts who may feel that a particular matter is closed, that the knowledge base on that subject is complete and certain. Perhaps most importantly, you must be willing to question your own prior judgments and conclusions. “

Secondly, problem-finders Prof Roberto tells us should embrace systemic thinking. He says, “Successful problem-finders not only exhibit a curious mindset, but they also embrace systemic thinking. They recognize that small problems often do not occur due to the negligence or misconduct of an individual. Instead, small errors frequently serve as indicators of broader systemic issues in the organization. Effective problem-finders do not rush to find fault and assign blame when they spot a mistake being made. They step back and question why that error occurred. They ask whether more fundamental organizational problems have created the conditions that make that small error more likely to occur. Effective problem-finders recognize that you might fire the person who made an error on the front lines, but if you do not address the underlying systemic issues, the same errors will occur again and again. Firing someone who made a mistake without identifying the systemic problem does not constitute effective problem-finding; it simply means that you have found a convenient scapegoat.”

Finally, on having a sense of healthy paranoia, Prof Roberto elaborates, “Andy Grove, former Chairman and CEO of Intel, once wrote a book titled, Only the Paranoid Survive. In the preface, he described himself as quite a worrier. He said that he worried about everything from manufacturing problems to competitive threats to the failure to attract and retain the best talent. Many concerns kept him up at night. Grove argued that he believed fervently in the value of paranoia. He felt that leaders must never allow themselves to get comfortable, no matter how successful they had become. They had to devise ways of staying in touch with those in the organization who were willing to challenge the conventional wisdom, and who might alert them to bad news.”

So there you have it, add these skills to your management tool set - intellectual curiosity, systemic thinking and a healthy dose of paranoia - to successfully counter modern organisational challenges.

source: Knowledge@Wharton

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Safety lessons from NASA

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 01:06:00 -0700

For those working in high risk industries – transport, mining, chemical processing and construction among others - you know that sinking feeling when you get the call after an incident where something has gone awry and someone is badly injured or worse still there is a fatality. Your mind races back to the engineering designs, systems and procedures you had applied to mitigate every credible and imaginary risk you had anticipated. All the briefings and safety instructions you had drilled into your teams. And now this. What went wrong?

Writing about the lessons learned from the Columbia space shuttle accident Bryan O’Connor from NASA says that the proximate or technical causes can be easily fixed. But what about the other associated causes? O’Connor who is NASA’s Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance writes:

The proximate causes of an accident and the changes needed to avoid repetition are usually clearer and more readily dealt with than the associated root causes. As a team of engineers, we usually find a way to modify the design, change the software, or develop an operational workaround that adequately mitigates the proximate and near-proximate causes of our mishaps. But root causes are different kinds of problems.

Root causes tend to be related to the broader, sometimes squishier aspects of what we do: such things as the what-versus-how of our procedures and requirements and the appropriate volume and frequency of organizational communications up and down and left and right. Sometimes they involve organizational and authority relationships, the effectiveness of checks and balances, and other cultural aspects of program and operational management.

So what’s the recipe for Safety ? O’Connor’s ingredients are : shared values 1 part, organisational structure 1 part , requirements ( NASA speak for specifications) 1 part, risk management 2 parts and a pinch of luck.

I don’t agree with the luck bit, I believe a lucky organisation is one which consistently applies its systems and policies rigorously. Then you get lucky.

And on learning from the experiences, O’Connor explains:

No matter how dedicated we are to safety, accidents happen. When they do, they give us an opportunity—though often a painful one—for learning that can prevent problems in the future. We also need to be careful not to derive the wrong lessons from experience. Specifically, we don’t want to “learn” from a string of successes that a particular kind of mission is inherently safe and we no longer need to look so carefully at risks.

There are, broadly speaking, two modes of learning and behavior that help organizations prevent mishaps. One is incident recovery: the intense, focused period of analysis and action that follows an accident and takes steps to avoid a recurrence. The other is complacency avoidance: countering the tendency to assume that recent success promises future safety.

Learning from Incident Recovery

A serious mishap galvanizes an organization. Experts minutely study the evidence to uncover the proximate causes of the accident. This type of work, though reactive, is engineering in every sense of the word. NASA engineers know how to investigate failures and, in the wake of a major mishap, motivating them to do it well is not an issue. If anything, we have to tell our investigators to back off and take a breath once in a while.

Fighting Complacency

After the mishap investigation and the return to flight, the team focuses again on the mission, and the challenge for the leadership team shifts from recovery to fighting complacency. Countering complacency is arguably harder than recover ing from a mishap. We have to find creative ways to counteract the common psychological tendency to assume that a string of successes means that we have somehow reached a state of engineering and operational perfection—and, therefore, immunity from failure. One way I have found useful to get our team back to the proper state of humility and respect for risk is to occasionally revisit accident case studies. This does two things. It reminds us that other people who thought they were paying sufficient attention to safety have been surprised by failure; the case study serves as a vivid reminder of the fact that most past accidents almost always happened during a period of complacency. It also gives them a challenging and—we hope—relevant technical problem-solving session.

These two things can go a long way toward reviving the critical recovery mind-set. They, along with the safety factors I mentioned above—shared values of teamwork, integrity, and commitment to safety, and requirements that make clear why they are important—are crucial weapons in our fight against complacency.

Coming from the Chief of Safety at NASA- that’s some lesson.

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Risk Assessments - No fancy models !

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 04:28:00 -0700

Risk assessments. You are very well versed with the drill. Risk matrices, consequences , impacts , likelihoods and probabilities, Throw in Monte- Carlo simulations and Bayesian statistics and the only things at risk is your ever diminishing project budget and the looming deadline. Sounds familiar?

Research by INSEAD Prof Anil Gaba has found that when it comes to risk management- simple methods are at-least as good as the complicated models when predicting uncertainties.

“If you give a very complicated formula to a practitioner, it’s almost like a black box to them. They tend to avoid using it. And that’s not surprising, as sometimes they don’t understand the mechanics of the formula. Sometimes they don’t use it because they don’t have enough information to use the formula.”

Even worse, complicated complex models don’t actually predict real-life events very well, according to research by one of Gaba’s colleagues at INSEAD, Spyros Makridakis. “[He’s] spent his entire career looking at forecasting.” Gaba says. “And the main result of his work has been basically that simple methods do at least as well as some of most complicated methods”— a very disappointing result for people who spend a lot of time developing complicated models.

“But at the same time it’s very good news for practitioners because it’s easier for them to use the simpler models.”

Take a common task, Gaba says. As a manager, you need to take a stand on what will happen to a particular market—how much will demand grow or shrink next year.

“There are five people in the management team. Each one has an opinion. These opinions might be different. The question is how do you combine these opinions?

“You can use an extremely complicated model—Bayesian statistics, different weights for different experts, you revise it, and so on. But research suggests the most effective solution might be far simpler.”

“Simple averaging of subjective opinions can at times do at least as well as some of the most sophisticated normative models we've come up with over the past two hundred years.”

“So taking four or five opinions and taking an average is a very parsimonious way of dealing with the problem.”

Now you know, don't be fooled by complicated models. For practical risk assessments- simpler the better.

source : INSEAD

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Footprints on the sands of time

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 04:45:00 -0700

Bless my English teacher's soul, I can still remember the words from Longfellow's poem - A Psalm of Life. I hope my digital footprints here will inform and provoke those who chance to pass by.

Why RotatingFlux ? The electrical engineer in me couldn't resist throwing in the term . In simple words rotating magnetic field or flux is the phenomenon by which electrical motors convert electrical energy to mechanical energy. Obviously for electrical generators it's the opposite.

And why - real, imaginary and complex ? This comes from the realm of mathematics. A complex number has two parts- a real part and an imaginary part. Hence real, imaginary and complex- much like the modern world , if you get the drift.

Don't stop reading and click that mouse yet. I will not talk about electrical engineering or mathematics. Here I will talk about the other things that I am passionate about - management, economics, technology and media. As an ardent student of management and as a practicing project manager the organisational world never ceases to amaze me. I'll trawl the net and bring back my findings. Hope you will like my discoveries. Stay tuned.

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