Avoiding Company Decline

It all starts with good, actionable metrics

In one section of the January 25, 2012, Wall Street Journal, several articles pointed to an underlying dysfunction in companies from diverse industries. Although they offered different products and services, they all had one thing in common: Employees may have been working their hardest, but their management systems weren’t doing their jobs.

Here are the articles:

• At Yahoo, the Ad Decline Continues
• J&J Net Slumps on Charges
• AMD Posts Loss After Write-Downs, Says Sales Will Decline This Quarter
• Quiznos Slices Debt in Restructuring
• Sony in Talks to Invest in Olympus

…

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Comments

Looking forward to your tips

My thoughts on three elements of management systems:

* Baldrige Criteria -- A stretch but every organization should read this and make attempts to apply the criteria (requires committment)

* Human Resource Management -- Checks and Balances can be done by adequate employee assessments. OR is it about how much do I make?

* Culture -- Work environment plays a big role in keeping everyone motiviated in the right direction, and not just the ones with access to golf clubs, premium seats at events, or corporate jets.

Incorporating three elements of management systems

Your three management system thoughts should be considered within the creation of a business system. The question is how can policies and measurements be created and defined so that they lead to healthy behaviors that positively impact the enterprise as a whole. Relative to the metric aspect, we need to address not only what we measure but how we report the information so that the most appropriate behaviors result. I will be sharing my methodologies for addressing these aspects in future articles, which challenges many of traditional approaches such as stoplight scorecards.

Statistical Thinking and Scorecards

The key is getting upper-level managers to understand special vs. common causes. Incorparating staistical thinking with performance measurements such as balance scorecards is the only way to break free of traditional and misguilded thinking at all levels.

RDeRoeck