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

A company gave its employees a quarterly bonus. The bonuses were granted to employees who met their personal targets, which were determined according to an agreed scale. The employees were used to receiving the quarterly bonus and eagerly anticipated it at the end of each quarter.

In one of the trainings sessions, I recently conducted for leading improvement teams, Tamir, one of the trainees, said that in his opinion, employees don’t leave the jobs, they leave their managers. In other words, they left their jobs because of their direct managers.  “That is the main reason employees leave or stay on in the job”, he claimed.

Do you remember the days when we worked six days a week? Has moving to five days had a bad effect on employers or employees? Has efficiency decreased? Have we been achieving less?

Assuming the company sells 20 products, the items are listed from the products generating the highest profit at the top of the list to the products generating the lowest profit at the bottom of the list. According to the Pareto principle, there is a good chance that the first four products on the list produce around 80% of the company’s revenues. If we focus on improving the profitability of these four products, we will achieve substantial improvement of the company’s profitability in an effective way.

A CEO I once met, who well understood the importance of measuring but could not maintain systematic, continuous measuring performance, excused himself by saying that he had strong intuition and knew his company well without measuring. Intuition and gut feelings are valuable and important when making decisions. However, they do not replace measuring.

Part VII is the last chapter in the series. It includes a short summary of the previous chapters.

The current series of articles focuses on the important KPIs every business must monitor. I have already written many articles regarding this very important issue. However, this article focuses on shortly presented Supply Chain KPIs.

The CEO of Leumi Bank, Mr. Hanan Freidman, has recently made a public announcement which revolutionizes the service the bank provides to its customers. Hanan committed to personally make sure that all customers’ requests are resolved within 24 hours and if not, customers are encouraged to communicate with him on his private WhatsApp. This, among other actions the bank is implementing,  will overturn the way customer service has been practiced in Israel for decades.

This article focuses on the principles of managing employees during wartime.

This article was written during wartime. Life continues and businesses continue to operate. I have recently been asked many important questions regarding the correct way to operate a business in the face of the current difficulties and obstacles.

Dan was rushing to a meeting. He could not find parking space in the car park of the tower building. Suddenly he spotted a free parking slot. He accelerated towards the slot only to realize that a female driver was maneuvering her car into that slot. She drove backwards and forwards trying to steer her way between the lines. That was all Dan needed. He quickly pushed in front and parked his car, leaving the lady driver bewildered.

A management board of a retail chain outlets decided to set a prize-winning competition between the outlets. The competition aimed at providing an incentive to increase sales. The prize was a medal for the winning team and an invitation for two to a fancy dinner for the team members.

Does everyone know what other people earn in your company? If the answer is “yes”, is it official information or is it spread by word of mouth? What effect does knowing what other people earn have on gender pay? How does it affect employee’s motivation?

A few days ago, I went shopping at a D.I.Y store Upon entering, I was directed to the department I was looking for, but no staff member was present. It took me a few minutes to locate someone who was able to tell me the name of the employee responsible and a few more minutes to find the employee who answered my questions about the product I wanted to buy.

This article is about the challenges managers face when trying to implement decisions and assignments reached during these meetings.

Today I present five CEO’s excellent decisions that led them to great achievements. Some of those decisions were taken at a moment of crisis and turned things around. Others were taken by intuition and led the way to success. Making these decisions required courage and determination.

This article is not about momentary misjudgments or wrong decisions made on the spur of the moment. It is about mistakes which are made by CEOs who are driven by approaches that, in my opinion, are incorrect and can cause substantial negative impact on business results.

For the last eight years I have been publishing articles dedicated to International Women’s Day, which falls on March 8th. Why publish an article dedicated to International Women’s Day? Is it an admission that my other articles do not address women on all other days of the year? No, not at all. All my articles address both men and women, but the articles written specially for International Women’s Day examine the unique aspects related to women in business.

A separation won’t stop a couple from thinking about each other. In the same way, termination of employment doesn't stop employers and fired employees from talking about one another. Managers and employees continue to mention previous employees’ names, and dismissed individuals continue to talk about their former place of work.

Every year, CofaceBDI conducts a survey in collaboration with The Marker magazine, on the question "Who are the 100 companies that are most worth working for in Israel?" The survey was conducted among about 300,000 employees and is also based on internal surveys of the companies.

Someone once called me for advice. He told me he was self-employed and asked if I could help him collect money his customers owed him. The amount of the debt was about 1 million NIS. He worked for two years without receiving payment.

At one of the NGOs I am a member of, there is a mentoring program. The graduates mentor younger peers. The mentoring last for six months, for a few dozen participants. The mentoring is voluntarily, and each year we have more mentors than we require. The organization has other social activities, involving young adults who live in Israel's periphery, and we don't lack volunteers.

While bike riding with a group of friends, A. and H. began a heated argument. As I got closer to them I heard it was about a bike riding event that took place many years ago, and they each had a different memory of. Each was convinced their memory was more accurate, and as often happens in such cases, they only listened to each other in order to quickly contradict each other. This wasn’t a dialogue, but two monologues.

Work meetings take up time, and it's often wasted time. But there are also efficient meetings, that give a sense of purpose and a drive for change. I assume many of you are among those whose experience with meetings is that they're a waste of time. You leave every meeting frustrated, and have learned to stay quiet to make the meeting go faster.

I once met with a CEO of a big organization we very much wanted to work with. From the beginning I looked at him with an encouraging smile. He answered in the same optimistic spirit. We grabbed a cup of coffee and settled in the meeting room, opening with some small talk. He mentioned he likes to listen to a certain radio program, of which I am also a frequent listener, and shared his opinions of it, with which I agreed.

If you have a convenience store at a gas station, you need to stock a number of essential items customers might suddenly need, or buy impulsively when they stop to fill up. Nobody does their weekly grocery shop at a gas station.

One of the questions I routinely ask managers is, how much of their time they spend doing their employees’ jobs (putting out fires, problem solving, answering questions). Most, almost all, say they spend 70% to 95% of their time at the operational level. A level which includes mostly activities which could be delegated, or have officially been delegated.

One of the first stages of personal coaching is identifying personal goals. Not defining, but identifying. We don’t choose pretty words and decide those are our values only because they look good. Personal values are an inherent part of us.

I don’t know about your specific company, but usually the first step is layoffs. Most often, labor costs aren’t the biggest expense, but it always seems simplest, fastest, and easiest to fire employees - and if and when sales are back up, recruit new ones. Furthermore, we know there is always latent redundancy, so we assume any reduction in the workforce will lead to greater efficiency.

At 6:15 I started riding my bicycle towards Ramat Ha'Nadiv and we started making our way up to Mansur el-Aqeb. We were supposed to meet Uri there. When we reached the top, there was no sign of Uri. We waited. Uri didn’t arrive, nor call. We tried calling him, and there was no answer. After about fifteen minutes, we started riding again, heading north. A short while later, Uri came riding towards us, smiling.