Game-time Thoughts on Management

As I take my daily blind walk through the world of management, I can only hope that I can learn from my own experiences. Here is a living, evolving journal of my thoughts along the way:
-- 10/17/04 -- Among executives, one of the rarest commodities is the ability to make good, accurate, and workable decisions in the least amount of time, with the least amount of information.
-- 10/17/04 -- If there's a commodity rarer than decision-making, it's the ability to carry out your decisions, even in the face of tremendous adversity and discord. This is non-political leadership, and it is rarer than diamonds.
-- 10/17/04 -- Political leadership is being able to understand the opinions of one's constituents (customers, bosses, employees, whatever) and either taking ownership of or redirecting that collective opinion. It is often valuable, and as such MUST be in the toolkit of a good executive/manager. It builds collegiality, but not necessarily a following. A manager who uses exclusively this type of leadership doesn't really need to understand the topic of discussion, just the people. Thus, such a manager has an achilles heel: if the entire group has the wrong opinion, so will the manager. Should a non-political leader come along and see what has happened, he/she will have no trouble making a fool of the political leader as he draws everyone's attention to the fact that there is no factual or analytical support for the political leader's decision. How can a whole group be wrong? Small groups. Unempowered groups. Uninformed groups. Disinterested groups. Or, most dangerously, groups of political leaders. It's a wonder the Congress ever gets anything right!
-- 10/17/04 -- Managers are responsible for maximizing the productivity of their staff. To be productive, staff need to be motivated. Money is, of course, THE motivator, but others can factor in, such as confidence, as in confidence that their management supports them. Without this, they are afraid to take bold action. Lack of action is, by definition, detrimental to productivity.
-- 6/5/04 -- Good ideas are the most valuable form of capital
-- 6/5/04 -- It isn't the role of management to come up with all the ideas, it is their role to be good critics. No one has a monopoly on ideas. In fact, the most valuable ideas are those which are new and different. Often, these come not from the ensconced management but from those elsewhere (inside and outside the firm) with a different perspective. All ideas should be accepted equally and critiqued equally by management. Those which pass management's filter should be considered fit for implementation.
-- 6/1/04 -- Managers don't need to be good at doing (or even really know how to do) their subordinates' jobs. Rather, management is a skillset entirely independent of that held by subordinates. This may give us insight into why many successful people who are promoted into positions of management perform abysmally. It also reminds us that the review of a manager's performance needs to be based on this separate "management" skillset. A manager's products are not the goods and services his team produces. HIS products are his people. Thus, his unique skillset is primarily composed of people skills (a motivator, a coach, a conductor, a negotiator, a teacher, and perhaps most importantly, a communicator -- both in terms of convincingly conveying his own messages and in terms of detecting and understanding those of others). Secondarily, his skillset includes more inwardly-focused skills like decisiveness, acumen, entrepreneurship, and a critical mind.

FOLLOW UP: What Tomorrow will Bring . . .

REAGAN ON THE TWENTY
. . . Now that he has passed, it's time. I never really liked Andy Jackson anyway. If he's there because of the War of 1812, then what about the World War presidents? If, instead, it was imposition of federal rights over those of states, then he's nothing unusual. If it's his war on the Bank of the US, hey, that was just a power play, and in the end, the Fed turned out to be the same thing.

Reagan on the twenty, baby!!!

FOLLOW UP: You've heard of the Illuminati, right?

The illuminati I described last year know that they are most effective when they are anonymous. Unfortunately, sometimes some curious spelunker shines the spotlight on them. If you watched closely this week, you saw the roaches scurry. One name I didn't mention last year was one of the most frequently heard American names among the congnac-swillers.

Greenberg.

As in 'Ace' Greenberg, head of AIG, who has successfully placed his sons atop two other top insurance companies. Ace Greenberg who probably influences the management of more assets than anyone else in the world. Ace Greenberg who made the front page of the FT and WSJ this week for giving brokers kick-backs to the expense and detriment of his customers.

Do I think he was wrong? Yes. Private price negotiations are detrimental to my ideal of perfect capitalism. Am I against the illuminati or their big companies? No way. Size alone is no cause for concern. These guys have been consistently successful for decades and centuries. Assuming they did it legally, they deserve to enjoy the spoils.

All in all, not bad at all . . .

Quite simply: thank you, Gip, for putting us back on course.
We miss you already!

What Tomorrow will Bring . . .

Hey, they may have rejected my application to join the Psychic Network, but it doesn't take a psychic or tea leaves to figure out what's a few steps down the road. Here are a few hot upcoming trends:

FEMINIZATION
. . . of society. And before I get in trouble for saying
that, let me say that I use the term hyperbolically and
nonjudgementally. Metrosexuals unite!
DESIGN
. . . is overtaking functionality as the driving factor
in consumers' choices. Roaring Twenties, here we come!
DNA and STEM CELL BASED CURES
. . . will supply us with 100 years of breakneck medical
advances. Buy biotech, if you dare!

Security

I'm no fan of fear, but I am very willing to accept some if they reward is compensatory.

As Ben Franklin said "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

I can only hope that President Bush and his team keep this in mind when they consider whether they should continue to pro-actively chase terrorism and tyranny around the globe or whether they should shift to a strategy of appeasement in an attempt to reduce the number of bodybags arriving at Dover AFB. Clearly, the fine-feathered Spanish and the rest of the continentals did not. They want to run and hide. Trade freedom for security. Trade creativeness that spawns from diversity for xenophobia, trade liberty for constricting government interference, trade the pursuit of happiness for the shackles of fear.

Fighting isn't always the answer, they say. Surrender is never the answer say I. I've been developing a theory about those who favor appeasement. It goes something like this: they've not faced a tragedy like 9/11 in their own backyards, so they aren't willing to accept the high immediate costs of fighting against those who would perpetrate it. Talk is cheaper, so they stick to that. Once they come around to the realization that they are at as great a risk as the US is, they'll also come around to the realization that we all must act, and forcefully so. A few years from now, the UN should be the most belligerent club in NYC.

The problem with this theory is that they have faced tragedies like 9/11. Some have faced much worse. Muslim states have faced the utmost tragedy as a result of militant radical terrorists. Why aren't they ahead of the US in their desire to exercise this tumor from corpus humanitarius?

It's because they don't think they can win. Or at least, they don't think they can win within the limits of their attention span. Americans disagree. This isn't just wishful thinking. In the US, the future has always turned out to be brighter than the past. It has instilled an optimistic spirit which has been beaten out of most the rest of the world. We are willing to incur harsh immediate pain because we believe that it will be better on the other side and history hasn't let us down yet. We don't attribute this to luck; we see our history as proof that we have the ability to create our own destiny. We have the money. We have the minds. We have the might. Harsh but true, we are also successful at recruiting the best minds money and might from the rest of the world, leaving them with little hope of matching our success. Impotence raises fear. Fear breeds caution. Caution leads to paralysis. Paralysis causes atrophy. Atrophy feeds apathy. They've already lost the war.

The only way I can think of pulling them out of their downward spiral is to turn "them" into "us." If they begin to realize that we are all one people, living in a global society, enjoying common gains and suffering common losses, then they will begin to feel that we share common power.