Category Archives: Functional Skills

Putting these off definitely makes things worse

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Performance reviews are one of those tasks that managers and organizations struggle with. Even companies that have well-developed performance review and development processes have difficulty getting managers to complete them on time and in good faith. Sluggish performance in human resource management is a leading indicator of current or near at hand organizational troubles.

It all starts at the top. The leader of the organization must make personnel selection and appraisal of job performance a central personal task. Timeliness at this level will trickle down quite quickly.

One simple method of demonstrating a commitment to timely performance reviews is to tie each manager’s own performance appraisal and all pay changes and other pay-for-performance compensation to the timeliness of performance reviews for their subordinates. If they are late with subordinates’ reviews, then their review and potential compensation changes will be delayed by the cumulative tardiness. Include the CEO and COB in this policy.

Organizations with a real commitment to great personnel make this work.

This Will happen Again!

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Change, it is happening now or just around the corner. And, the pace of change is not decreasing.

In recent work, I dealt with a client firm undergoing one of the ultimate set pieces of change in the life of a business, the sale of the company. The impending sale sent the predominantly young staff into a frenzy of fear, uncertainty, paranoia, and flight.

One step that proved useful was a series of meetings entitled, “This Will Happen Again” which focused on the facts of business life and how one might react. The initial concept named, “Its Not About You”, speaks to the external forces driving change in the business world. This closes on the simple note that each of us will experience large scale change in work life every couple of years regardless of where we land in the economy. This is now a permanent feature of our work lives.

The meetings then went on to address how people might react to all this change. First, one must acknowledge the change and the accompanying emotional turmoil. Second, change is frequently opportunity dressed in different clothes. Work patterns shift. Reporting relationships change. Fixed methods of work open for examination and improvement in ways that would be surprising under the old regime. Managers who perform well during periods of change shine and are remembered later. All of these and more are reasons for managers to think to their advantage during periods of corporate change.

Finally, these meetings closed on the note that one of the best ways to weather troubled waters to is to refocus on the work at hand, to pay even more attention to making customers happy. A day filled with work is always better than a day occupied with the latest gossip about what might be happening in the executive suite.

Book Review: Customer Advisory Boards by Tony Carter

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As a bit of preface to these remarks, I approach customer advisory boards (CABs) from earlier experiences with supplier advisory boards and customer participation in product development. This may variously prejudice or inform here.012506_book-714720.jpg

Customer Advisory Boards are powerful tools for engaging with customers in a variety of dimensions. Companies are using them to interactively work with their customers on developing new products and services, to keep them abreast of changes in their customers’ perceptions of the changing landscape of their business world, and more. CABs provide a platform to share and develop in an environment where the customer is present and participating. CABs are used by big and small firms, They are relatively inexpensive and potentially very high in rewards. Given this, it is of immediate interest to read a book on this topic.Customer Advisory Boards: a strategic tool for customer relationship building by Tony Carter (Binghampton, NY: Best Business Books Haworth Press, Inc. 2003)The tagline for this book, “a strategic tool for customer relationship building” only hints at the confusion of ideas within its covers. 45% of the book, “Section I:Customer Relationship Building”, is taken up with a discursive sampling of theory and practice in relationship selling, customer-centered value, and the ‘nature of relationships” (this includes a side venture into leadership and emotional intelligence theories). Many of these discussions are interesting, even provocative in themselves. Unfortunately, Carter makes no organized effort to map these onto the actual topic at hand, CABs. Further, Carter mixes in discussion of Advisory Boards for start-up firms with applications more typical for mature firms.The balance of the book, “Section II: Building Customer Advisory Boards” and “Section III: Strategic Uses and Effective Management” will not reward senior managers or consultants with much of practical value. The view of strategic value is limited to customer acquisition and customer retention. There is no useful discussion of how meetings are actually conducted, how participants interact, what values they might gain,or how the meeting facilitation role is accomplished. In the end much of these sections of the book are taken up with cases studies that seem only peripherally to shed light on CABs.For a book that pops up very high on a Google search for “customer advisory boards”, this is a disappointment.