“Social Intelligence and the Biology of Leadership”
Harvard Business Review
September 2008, pp. 74-81
(Also available from the Business Source Complete\EBSCOHost database)
This article goes beyond the scope of the popular Emotional Intelligence concept to explore what has been termed "Social Intelligence". Citing research that seems to indicate that certain neurons of followers resonate with the social behavior of their leaders, the authors identify seven different social intelligence qualities:
- Empathy—the degree to which a leader is sensitive to the needs of others and understands what motivates diverse people from different backgrounds
- Attunement—this includes the ability to listen attentively, to think about how others feel, and to perceive the mood of others
- Organizational Awareness—this includes appreciation of the culture and values of the organization, as well as an understanding of social networks
- Influence—this includes persuading others by engaging them and appealing to their self interests, as well as knowing how to get support from key people
- Developing Others—this includes personally mentoring others and providing useful feedback
- Inspiration—key aspects here are the ability to bring out the best in people, the articulation of a compelling vision, building group pride, and creating a positive emotional tone
- Teamwork—here the focus is on seeking input from all members of the team, providing team support, and encouraging cooperation
The authors report that their research has found that leader social intelligence scores predict yearly performance appraisal scores. Another study of Canadian healthcare workers has found that employees with a socially intelligent boss reported better emotional health and better ability to care for their patients, even under otherwise stressful conditions, as compared to employees that had bosses lower on social intelligence. Social Intelligence is measured in these studies through a 360-degree evaluation instrument given to a variety of individuals who interface with the leader.
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“Greg St. John's 12 Steps for Reducing Inventory”
Material Handling Management
August 2008, pp. 26-27
(Also available from the ABI/INFORM[ProQuest] database)
This simple but useful list helps focus on some of the most important inventory reduction strategies. A link is also provided for a more complete discussion of the tips. The list includes:
- Reduce Demand Variability—Work with customers to understand their planning and ordering processes, and don’t over-promise.
- Improve Forecasting—Get close to the source with regular sales-force input and customer forecasts or sales data.
- Reexamine Service Levels—Additional inventory may be required in order to assure meeting service-level targets.
- Address Capacity Issues—Add capacity at the constraint, whether it is in the supply base or manufacturing equipment.
- Reduce Order Sizes—Smaller, more frequent orders are likely to reduce inventory.
- Reduce Manufacturing Lot Sizes—Reducing changeover makes it possible to reduce lot sizes.
- Reduce Supplier Lead Times—"Make lead times a key criterion in purchase decisions, share planning information with suppliers and indemnify suppliers for inventory at risk."
- Reduce Manufacturing Lead Times—Cellular manufacturing can streamline layouts and reduce queues between operations.
- Improve Supply Reliability—If supply processes are reliable, safety stock can be reduced.
- Reconfigure the Supply Chain—Store earlier in the supply chain through things like assembling to order and developing more responsive transportation.
- Reduce the Number of Items—Use modular designs, use common components, and drop unprofitable products and customers.
- Questionable Practices—Be careful with consigned inventory and don’t stock quantities by "rule of thumb".
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“Managing Collaboration: Improving Team Effectiveness Through a Network Perspective”
California Management Review
Summer 2008, pp. 74-98
(Also available from the Business Source Complete\EBSCOHost database and the
ABI/INFORM [ProQuest] database)
The authors of this article state that: "…A core problem is emerging that advice on team effectiveness comes from an era where people could commit substantial time and focused effort to one team…Yet as this reality has passed, the utility of these ideas has fallen off. Teams today are frequently formed and disbanded rapidly, distributed across multiple sites, and composed of members simultaneously working on myriad projects, with different bosses competing for their attention. Further, these teams' work increasingly demands substantial coordination and integration of specialized expertise within and outside the teams."
Given these circumstances, the authors argue that Network Analysis is likely to be a better way to now understand and influence the work that goes on in teams. Six key questions are identified that can help modern teams improve effectiveness:
- Are the right voices influencing team trajectory?—Expertise is now the crucial factor in decision making and direction setting. The team will need to set the climate for shifts in responsibility.
- Is the team "appropriately" connected for the task at hand?—Teams have to be careful that they are not overly-connected (which takes time away) or that the connection is too ad hoc. The ideal network for the point in the team’s life cycle needs to be identified. Then the team needs to make the needed shifts to be closer to the ideal network.
- Has the team cultivated important external relationships?—This is important to ensure that the best expertise is available, that coordination occurs well, and that knowledge transfer occurs from similar projects.
- Are value-added collaborations occurring in the team network?—Both performance aspects and emotional aspects of the team network need to be assessed for their value-add. Enthusiasm is an important output of collaboration.
- Do underlying relationship qualities yield effective collaboration at the point of need?—Team members need to develop an awareness of their team members’ expertise in order to effectively choose collaborators for solving problems. Development of trust in teammates’ abilities is also important to ensure effective collaboration.
- Does organizational context support collaboration and momentum?—Four key elements of organizational context are the formal structure, work processes, development activities, and culture.
Case studies are included to illustrate the application of Network Analysis to Sales teams, Innovation teams, and Execution teams. In addition, four steps (with sub-components) are described for how to conduct a Network Analysis:
- Determine the key strategic issues and identify the audience
- Construct survey and administer assessment
- Foster and improve communication in maintenance business
- Analyze and interpret the data
- Create recommendations for remedial action
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“The Lean Journey”
Logistics Management
April 2008, pp. 35-38
(Also available from the Business Source Complete\EBSCOHost data base and the ABI/INFORM [ProQuest] data base)
A study conducted with American Production and Inventory Control (APICS) members identified six key attributes that are important to building and maintaining a lean supply chain:
- Improved demand management—"In its purest form, this would be developed using data from the point of sale and conveyed upstream to all members of the supply chain from point to point without a change in volume."
- Waste and cost reduction—"To achieve a lean supply chain, partners have to work together to eliminate wasteful processes and excess inventory across the channel."
- Process standardization—"A thorough understanding of the processes involved through the supply chain will help partners to work towards standardizing important processes and shifting work to the most efficient point in the chain."
- Industry standards adoption—This streamlines product development.
- Cultural change agent—Organizations must develop change leaders and develop a culture of continuous improvement.
- Cross enterprise collaboration—"Added services, regardless of the perceived value of the supply chain partners, are only of true value if they are understood and desired by the customer. This is most effectively accomplished through the use of cross enterprise teams."
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“The Lean Journey/ Part II: Putting Lean to Work”
Logistics Management
August 2008, pp. 71-74
(Also available from the Business Source Complete\EBSCOHost data base and the ABI/INFORM [ProQuest] data base)
In this follow-up to their earlier article, the authors report that over the last 3 years there have been significant increases in the numbers of organizations adopting elements of lean supply chain management.
Four other general findings from follow-up interviews to the initial study were:
- Lean is seen as a cultural change agent, and it needs to be extended outside of manufacturing
- There is a willingness on the part of participants to adopt industry standards
- Process standardization is early in its journey but is getting most traction
- Real gains will only be made if the demand signal is managed across the supply chain and there is more emphasis on cross-company collaboration
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Waste and Constraints and Transactions
GP Operational Excellence Group
Greg St. John's list of inventory reduction steps includes addressing "capacity at the constraint." This terminology comes from the Theory of Constraints developed by Goldratt and popularized in his book The Goal. Meanwhile Manrodt et al call for "improved demand management conveyed to all members of the supply chain." This terminology comes from the Lean canon. Many of the core concepts of Lean and ToC are close in this way, but seldom joined, as each field has its own partisan adherents. We find each useful at the right time but we find that both have struggled to make their approaches clear outside of manufacturing. In fact most published examples of both Lean and ToC illustrate continuous discrete manufacturing methods.
However a little thought, focus and adaptation can provide us with powerful tools in transactional environments.
First a reminder of the basic tools of Lean and ToC.
Lean seeks relentless improvement by driving out waste. As such, it drives improvement in costs where the demand for goods or services is given for now. The first step in lean is to specify customer value to set the true north of filling a specific customer need. Next comes identifying the steps in the value stream and any waste in the current state. With the low hanging waste eliminated, attention is turned to making the process flow, unencumbered by distance and functional boundaries. The workplace is organized using the Five S’s. The next step is to drive out inventory by producing only upon a specific pull of customer demand along the value stream. Finally we drive for perfection through continuous improvement. To help in Lean improvement efforts, practitioners deploy tools such as Kanban, SMED and Value Stream Mapping.
The Theory of Constraints meanwhile seeks to improve throughput by eliminating constraints on performance. As such, it drives growth where demand for goods and services is not limited for now. The five focusing steps in ToC are identify the system’s constraint, decide how to exploit the system’s constraint, subordinate everything else to the above decisions, elevate the system’s constraint and finally, not to allow inertia to become the system’s constraint. To help in ToC improvement efforts, practitioners deploy tools such as Drum (the heartbeat of the constraint)-Buffer-Rope. To help decide on what to change in a system, the future state and how to change, Goldratt has created a visual aid to decision-making called the Thinking Processes.
Doing repeatedly is sadly the only way we poor humans learn, and following the examples of others is a way to avoid making all their prior mistakes over again. In the absence of a rich body of examples in Lean and ToC for transactional work, a useful approach is to use simplified or partial methods that map easily to the examples from the physical-product world. Simple things are easier to do repeatedly. Another approach is to borrow non-physical workflow examples from the edges of the manufacturing world and extend or flip them into soft or support areas. Simple or partial approaches for Lean include conducting the Five S’s on pure information workflow and on work layout including files stored on computers. One step further is to make the inventories of information visible on information boards and live displays then drive lean processes against these now-visible value streams. Good work has already been widely done in maintenance and new product development and opportunities are rife in customer-request tracking and customer servicing.
In ToC, the "buffer" in drum-buffer-rope refers to strategic buffers set in front of the constraint and before the customer to account for variability in upstream processes and customer demand. The drum is the capacity beat of the constraint and the rope pulls the beginning of the value stream from the constraint. A simplified approach has the drum be firm customer orders with the rope still pulling the beginning of the value stream and only one buffer in place, just before the customer. This simplified version has a major downside in that it loses the critical focus on the constraint which remains a relatively constant and tractable problem to solve, but it provides a mental bridge from the current worldview in most transactional processes.
A further exercise in transactional ToC is to participate heavily in the development of information, measurement and accounting systems that drive a shift from "cost world thinking" to "throughput world thinking."
Another activity in both Lean and ToC is to create transactional simulations and experiment there instead of with real customers. Simulations are easy to create in Microsoft Excel and have a great side benefit in confirming and exposing the structure and metrics of the current state.
If you carry out these steps you will be able to make dramatic improvements in transactional performance, integrate Lean and ToC thinking, and learn to do so with a minimum of mistakes. If your focus is the transactional rather than the manufacturing world, we have sets of examples available from Lean and ToC: drop us a line.
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