Business Management - All Posts - Ze'ev Ronen - Business Excellence

My young daughters, who will soon turn ten, often use a phone app called music.ly, filming themselves in a clip with a song in the background. When I asked them one day how they synchronize separate clips of each person onto the same screen, they looked at me in disdain – a look reserved for someone who is generations behind the technological times…

I often hear the claim that salary is the key to employee motivation. Every time, I ask whoever said it - what makes their work interesting? Why do they stay long hours after work even though they aren't getting paid for extra time? The answers are usually in the range of "my responsibility", "I'm significant", or "people listen to me". "And where is it expressed in your salary?" I ask. Here is where the conversation usually ends. I'm under no illusion that I've convinced my companion, although perhaps sometimes I have. Let's talk about the real factors that generate motivation and interest in work for everyone.

You know that saying that a lot of CEO's repeat, "My door is always open to my employees" ? When I was a CEO, I, too, thought my door was always open to my employees, but was that really true? Not necessarily.

Many companies I have encountered search for ways to save "in the spotlight", meaning areas where it is easy to see and to attribute to a particular focal point in pricing – for example, purchasing, defective product, work costs or logistics. And an action whose objective is to strengthen employee bonds falls under Welfare and is usually considered a luxury, ending up being the first thing to cut.

The product was highly profitable, but still, it seemed we might be able to shorten the process and make it more efficient. So, the course participants suggested a few significant improvements and elimination of some of the stages.

When the dilemma is personal, I recommend making your own decision in all cases. Remember that everyone, including those close to you, has personal agendas and interests in your decision. However objective the person you choose to advise you may be, they will be influenced by their own attitudes and perceptions of the matter. When the decision is an organizational one, the situation is different, and I'll expand on this later.

This month will see the publication of my first book will: Manage! Best Value Practices for Effective Management. To celebrate it, I would like to dedicate this weekly article to the role of the ideal manager. 

This is the first chapter from my new book: Manage! Best Value Practices for Effective Management. The purpose of this book is to provide a fresh look on how you can improve business results by making your company matter to your employees.

Brainstorming is one of the basic tools in the development of ideas, problem-solving, creative thinking or any other group endeavor. When we develop Fishbone with the objective of arriving at the root cause of a specific problem, brainstorming is the basic tool we should use.

At a major public company's plant, output was never measured. Production planning was performed on the basis of machine work hours for each product, and there was no control undertaken on this either. As the objective is to produce some kind of product, or to provide a service, we need to measure output and not the hours during which we have manufactured or planned production.

If we address the 20% of principal products manufactured (see example later on), we can attain a significant improvement in results (eg. profits). In this way, we can concentrate our efforts and resources and be decisive and efficient.

Once I came to a small company whose employee turnover was extremely high. Few employees would stay for more than a few weeks before leaving. The CEO would shout at his employees for any minor transgression. I asked him why, and he said they needed to learn (usually they learned that it would be best for them to leave).

Every morning, my dog, Merry, takes me for a walk. No, I'm not confused – Merry likes to go for a walk by herself as well, but in the morning, before I go to work, she likes us to go out together. She waits by the door until I attach each of us to one end of the leash and then, when we go out, she decides on the route and the amount of time.

About six months ago, we published an in-depth survey here on the traits required for successful management. We wanted to explore how the general public perceives the image of a successful manager, as related to the character traits and talents a manager requires.

Sometimes it seems to me that CEO's are afraid to confront management members who are not maintaining objectives. Instead of demanding a plan of action to attain the objective, the CEO herself explains to herself why they haven't attained their sales, production or other objectives.

The guiding principle behind our work leads a company to improvement and does not provide it with advice.  We work this way for several reasons: Firstly, we, as people, don't like to receive advice, and therefore, improvements in work methods that are obtained as external knowledge and not as a product of internal work, shall encounter opposition or will not be implemented in the long term.

Many companies wish to improve their performance and seek strategic advice as well as marketing or organizational development strategies, and when they receive advice, opposition emerges throughout the organization and ultimately this advice remains untouched in a book.

In one of the plants where I worked, when employees would approach the Team Manager with new ideas he'd say: "You be quiet, they brought me here to think and you to work".  This statement, which is definitely extreme, has resurfaced, turning up in various guises in many different places.

Thirteen important management principles to build a growing company and generate profit: A lecture in Prof. Dov Zohar’s seminar for MBA course at The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.