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Our efforts to market our film seem to be working! 1184 hits on YouTube less than 24 hours after it was uploaded, that must be worth something. And 15 top ratings already! Calle, really impressive that you managed to make our film the very top post on www.videofeber.se. I will keep on working on getting more hits through my secret communication channel…
If you have not seen the film yet, check it out at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIdZrA4Fdxg
/Sofia
Individual Assignment II by Sofia Strandell
During the 1980’s, Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras asked themselves the questions: “What makes truly exceptional companies different from the other companies?” and “How were these companies originally built to be able to last for a long time?” Their research began in 1988 and it was not until six years later that they could publish their book “Built to Last – Successful Habits of Visionary Companies”. In the book, Collins and Porras investigate 18 truly visionary companies; companies that are premier in their respective industry and have a long successful history. The authors evaluate these visionary companies with respect to 18 comparison companies; companies that have a similar background, but never managed to reach the same status. In “Built to Last”, the following conclusions about the features which made the visionary companies more successful than the comparison companies are made:
– Visionary companies are devoted to clock building – and not time telling; in other words, they focus on building long-lasting corporations and not as much on current operations. According to this conclusion, having charismatic leaders and great initial products and ideas are not necessarily important for building great companies.
– Visionary companies embrace the Genius of the AND; for example, they think long-term AND short-term, they preserve core values AND make bold moves to stimulate progress.
– Establishing and maintaining core ideologies is essential; visionary companies preserve core values and purpose, and they keep everything else changeable.
– Having Big Hairy Audacious Goals, or goals that seem extremely hard to reach, are often used with positive effects; it keeps the employees motivated and enthusiastic.
– Building a cult-like corporate culture makes the employees devoted to the company.
– Visionary companies often try a lot of stuff and keep what works; they take risks and do not fear mistakes.
– Visionary companies use home-grown management; they recruit top managers from within the corporation.
– Finally, visionary companies always strive to perform better.
This report will discuss whether these results are useful or not in the information society of today. In other words, this report will analyse if the book and its conclusions really were built to last, or if their significance has diminished during the 14 years that have passed since the book was published.
“Built to Last” was written a short time before the growth of the internet exploded in the middle of the 1990’s, a phenomenon that gave the word “information society” its true meaning. Certainly, this fact has caused enormous changes in the business world; millions of new internet and/or computer based corporations have been established ever since, and large companies that initially were not connected to the world of internet are definitely connected today. However, “Built to Last” only covered the fundamental management principles, and the use of the internet should not have changed them, according to the authors’ claim of finding the timeless standards of successful companies. 14 years have passed since this statement was made, and it turns out that a few, minor adjustments, mainly regarding marketing management, may need to be made to the management principles due to the rise of the information society.
The internet has enabled rapid distribution of an enormous amount of information about companies. Information is passed on instantly to people all around the world, and therefore internet is an important factor of globalization. Globalization, in turn, has large impacts on marketing matters; since humans are receiving more information from numerous different sources during a short period of time through the internet, marketers have to find new ways to catch people’s attention in order to create public interest. Nowadays, an increased focus on marketing management has been observed; marketing is becoming a more and more important part of the strategy within all companies, something that is stressed by marketing management guru Philip Kotler (2007). Corporations that embrace innovative, internet based marketing methods benefit from the information society, while companies that do not make efforts to keep up with the internet era tend to be forgotten about. Therefore, the conclusion that the expansion within the marketing business has been enormous during the past 14 years due to the rise of the internet can be made. Additionally, different methods of marketing have turned out to be important tools in building successful company strategies, and it is likely that among all new companies that are established today, those that have successful marketing strategies from the beginning will outlast those without.
In “Built to Last”, one of the most controversial statements is made in an early chapter; having great initial ideas and products and charismatic leaders are not necessarily important for building a visionary company. Instead, it is the company itself that is the ultimate creation. This conclusion is somewhat problematic; certainly, emphasizing the company itself is essential, as the company is meant to outlive the CEO as well as the products. However, great initial ideas and products, and charismatic leaders, yield enormous marketing advantages toward other companies, a fact that has become clearer since the information society was established. For example, information is nowadays spread via blogs, word-by-mouth, advertising and other means of communication on the internet, and if a great product is introduced on the market, geographical distance will not stop people from buying it online. Furthermore, the internet enables marketing methods that make people become interested in new companies before they are even announced. An example of this is the newly introduced Swedish company Spotify which spread its concept “A World of Music” through channels such as blogs and word-by-mouth before it was announced to the public. Such marketing methods demand great initial ideas and/or products. Finally, managers that have charismatic leadership styles tend to be looked upon as heroes, as defined by Weber (1947). Such managers are used by the marketing business to promote companies; nowadays leaders such as Jack Welch (former CEO, GE) and Steve Ballmer (CEO, Microsoft) become celebrities and video clips of their speeches are spread online, thus creating a public interest for the company.
It is difficult to criticize the principles that were established by Collins and Porras as their book is still considered to be important within the business literature, and their findings are widely accepted in the world of management. Their results are logical and reasonable; many of their guidelines have been used in other business literature, implying that their findings are significant. For example, one of the final conclusions is that visionary companies strive towards continuous improvement; a principle which is denoted as the Japanese Kaizen philosophy in many other business books and first became famous through Imai (1986). However, business and management has changed considerably since 1994 when the book was written, and even more since 1897, when the average visionary company was founded. The information society has changed how humans perceive and experience companies. Therefore, other principles may be of equal importance compared to those defined in “Built to Last”. One such principle is marketing, and it is likely that the new companies that will be defined as visionary in the future are those companies that succeed the best with their marketing strategies today. Hence, the conclusion is that “Built to Last” indeed is built to last, but a few alterations may need to be made to the set of management principles in order to adapt to the information society of today.
References:
Imai, M. (1986) Kaizen: the key to Japan’s competitive success, McGraw-Hill
Kotler, P. (2007) A Framework for Marketing Management, Prentice-Hall
Weber, M. (1947) Model of Transaction and Transformation Leadership
… but it is still related to this course. During the past few days, especially while reading “Built to Last” by Collins and Porras (a book that discusses the history of a number of visionary companies), I have been doing some thinking on the difference between me and my dear group members. You are all men - and I am not. The physical differences are obvious and I will not discuss it, nor any psychological dissimilarities between genders. However, I find the topic “women and management” really interesting – since there are not many women to be find here. There are basically no female authors that write about management, there are few female top managers/CEO’s/powerful politicians, and there are extremely few women mentioned in the history of management (for example, not a single female manager was mentioned in “Built to Last”). I will not spend time on complaining about this fact, but there is an obvious lack of female role models within the world of management, and I just wanted you guys to think about it. Anyhow, I am glad this situation is changing now (slowly, but still).
See you all tomorrow!
/Sofia
I have never really considered the bad parts about our high tech society before – for example, I have always viewed the internet as a consistently positive channel for information and communication. When I have been doing research for the making of our film, however, it has been more and more clear to me that there are obvious downsides with this new era. I could go on and on about which possibilities the government and companies have when it comes to monitoring of individuals, I will just emphasize one issue though; the enormous supply of corporations that make money on implementing systems for computer surveillance. Just google “surveillance +employees” and you will find a number of companies that sell programs which copies every e-mail you send/receive, displays all the web pages you visit and the time you spend on these sites, and tracks down all user ID’s and passwords you ever enter.
This fact scares me - which manager will actually be able to keep away from these kinds of programs in the future, especially when more and more corporations will use them? Will surveillance of employees become a standard method for keeping the loyalty within an organization? If so, the ethics of management will certainly become more questionable.
Anyway, this subject is huge and it will be difficult to include all aspects of management by surveillance in our film, but I am wondering if we should include something about ethics in it? I guess we will discuss it tomorrow.
/Sofia
The financial business is an extremely current topic; we can all feel the worries of the bank industry (and secondary – the rest of the industries). Just think about Volvo, which is one of our largest and most beloved corporations, and the fact that they had to lay off more than 6000 people last week. I will not make this post as extensive as the last one, but it struck me that being a manager of one of the unsecure businesses of today cannot be a very positive experience. I am quite confident that many managers today are worried due to at least one reason; either that they themselves turn up being redundant and have to leave their jobs, or that they are forced into a situation in which they have to let their employees go. I am certainly not envious of those managers that are facing this stressful situation.
On the website of Harvard Business School Publishing one can find a number of articles on the subject “Downtown 2008: A Manager’s Survival Guide”. I read a number of them when I was looking for inspiration for our film, and I find them interesting since they deliver advice to managers and thus it gives the reader perspective on how many managers feel and act. Here is the link:
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/downturn/
One of the more interesting posts is written by Tammy Erickson, and it delivers guidelines on how managers can cope with a recession. It is mainly directed towards younger people who might not have experienced a serious recession before. I would say that the article’s main point is to think long-term during times of uncertainty – to plan well and not to make quick decisions. The advice may seem obvious, but still, I like the article:
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/erickson/2007/10/dear_gen_y_heres_how_to_weathe.html
/Sofia
I reread some of David’s entries on the M3T-blog today, and it struck me that I never wrote anything about fashion and management on this blog. The word “fashion” is probably first associated with the clothing industry for most people. Fashion does affect basically everything in our lives, though; from what we wear and how we decorate our interiors to what we eat and which words we use when we speak to our friends. We change how we act after certain trends and norms that arise, and this behavior has an impact on most of our everyday life decisions.
Fashion in general is extremely difficult to understand. We tend to care about being fashionable to a great extent, even though it costs us a lot of money and despite the fact that it in reality is a superficial and redundant business. I will not try to discuss why we do care so much – but I do know that if I would stop caring about fashion, I would definitely have some money left in my pocket each month. My point is that when it comes to following trends, people are willing to pay a lot of money for it. Fashion is, despite its somewhat meaningless features, an industry with an enormous amount of power and financial assets. Perhaps more importantly, fashion has a strange ability; it can make us do things we were not prepared to do some time ago. For management corporations, the situation is exactly the same as for conventional fashion companies; trends within the management business may result in huge financial profits from for example a well written book, and it might help implementing large changes in how people think. The latter fact may result in even larger financial profits on a long-term basis – the only problem is to be the first company to realize these new trends and to market them appropriately. Therefore, I believe that the steady stream of new management books, magazines, lectures and movies which present new “revolutionary” ways of acting and thinking, is completely logical and that the business will keep on developing as long as the demand still exists. The person or company that succeeds in delivering the next large trend will benefit from it, just as within the traditional clothing industry.
I would also like to say a few words about the so called management gurus. I have seen clips from a few of their lectures and read some of their texts, and I must say that many of them tend to discuss the same issues and emphasize the same trends, although they use their own words to describe these matters. I am still not sure whether the trends set by management gurus really can bring any radical changes into organizations or not, but most of them are certainly charismatic and interesting to read and listen to, which in fact is enough to make people pay for their products.
/Sofia
I must say that I have been blogging really badly lately. I blame it on my lack of time and that I am definately not used to the concept of ”continuous work” (which in itself is one of the main purposes of this blog). Eversince I started at KTH some three years ago, the workload has always divided itself naturally somehow. Studying several courses at the same time have of course been hard, and we have all managed it by studying one of the subjects fully during one week and letting all other courses suffer – and the next week is dedicated to one of the other courses. My experience tells me that this is how most students manage their time. So, instead of learning a small part of each subject every day, we learn it all during the exam weeks. At the moment, I am in the middle of one of those irregular weeks during which most of my focus is directed toward another course, and thus the time spent on studying management has been reduced compared to earlier weeks.
This management course feels quite different from earlier courses I have studied, mainly since there will be no exam for which we have to learn a certain amount of information. There cannot be any last minute studying; in contrast, a huge part of the learning process is thinking and reflecting continuously about managerial issues. I am positive that this process will continue after the course is finished - especially in a year or two when we all will start working for real. Furthermore, I think it is an interesting approach to our education to add a course with the aim to develop the students’ knowledge in a way which is more related to how things work in real life outside KTH; a world in which one is not necessarily able to solve problems by calculations and laborations, but rather by more long-term reflections and discussions. Anyhow, what I am trying to explain is that even though my blogging has been insufficient, I have been working on the subject and I will show it better from now on.
Finally, I would just like to say that I completely agree with Jakob – the lecture by Luc de Brabandère from the Boston Consulting Group was really interesting, and I found him to be a very fascinating man. I had not thought about the fact that we cannot think in terms of complete realities and that we automatically organize everything into different kinds of systems, but it definately makes sense. The part on “thinking in new boxes” was a bit confusing though; it felt like it was just another expression for “thinking outside the box” since the conclusion was the same – to think in new terms and not to fear innovative ideas. Nevertheless, I believe that the lecture as such was excellent, however, I might not read the book we received until the exam period is over…
/Sofia
I think I will read “Business Feel” by Steven Segal (not the actor Seagal, this is actually an author/lecturer) for the second individual assignment. It is about having that certain feeling for business rather than knowing theoretically how to run a business. I think it will be interesting since we discussed this subject in our first group assignment.
/Sofia
I chose to analyze one of my favorite TV series; the brilliant British show called “The Office”, produced by BBC. The show was first aired in 2001 and twelve episodes ran for two series, and two Christmas special episodes were also produced. “The Office” is filmed from a perspective which differs from other shows; the camera flickers and the characters speak directly to the camera, which makes it feel like a documentary show. The series has been copied and remade; American, French, German, Canadian and Chilean versions of the same show were produced. I, however, have not watched any of the other versions since I am convinced that none of them beats the original UK version.
“The Office” revolves around David Brent, a manager of a small paper company. The company is set to be a stereotypical small town corporation, and the atmosphere feels very tedious with dull colors and indifferent employees. The other main characters include Tim, Gareth and the receptionist Dawn; and internal conflicts between them and their manager David is certainly one of the main themes in the series.
David Brent is a unique character and his management style is very odd. He does not seem to know very much about the corporation he is working for, and he tends to ignore difficulties and disagreements that occur. He even lies and makes promises that he cannot keep, just to make himself look better. David’s statements are often politically incorrect, and he often talks about uncomfortable subjects with his staff. One of the recurring problems with David’s managerial technique is his tendency to act non-seriously. He makes jokes about practically everything, and he is incapable of resolving conflicts that arise among his staff since he makes jokes in order to make the argument disappear. I believe his main issue is that he is afraid that anybody would dislike him, and his defense mechanism is to adapt a comical approach instead of acting as a professional manager. Primarily, David’s desire is to make friends with each employee, or as he expresses it in the first episode: “I’m a friend first, and a boss second, probably an entertainer third”. However, he does not succeed in making friends with the staff; the situation is in reality the contrary in which the employees seem to disrespect him. One good example is from the very first episode when he is about to make a practical joke and dismisses the receptionist Dawn for stealing post-it notes. David thinks that everybody will appreciate the joke, but instead Dawn starts crying and the other present employee feels very uncomfortable. Many of the managerial concerns caused by David could be solved by an uncomplicated method – he could learn how to think before he speaks.
One of the central management issues of most corporations involves the issue discussed above; how should a manager relate to his/her staff? Whether the supervisor should keep the relationship with the employees strictly formal or if he/she should make friends with them is clearly dependent upon the situation. I believe that one important underlying question in these kinds of situations is: what motives do the employees have for working at this workplace? If the job itself is interesting and motivating, or if the salary is high enough, then the manager might not need to make friends with the employees since they will keep on working nevertheless. On the other hand, if the job itself is uniform and will not keep the staff motivated, then it can be very effective to establish a good relationship between manager and employees in order to give them a reason for staying at their place of work. I believe that in “The Office”, there is an evident lack of work motivation among the employees due to their unvarying tasks and poor management. Furthermore, their manager David Brent has not succeeded in creating a good relationship with them. According to me, the management is therefore unsuccessful; the employees are neither productive nor satisfied with their situation.
The management in “The Office” is based upon an apparent structural hierarchy, something that seems to be of great importance for the show. There is a top manager, Jennifer, who seems to scare her subordinates. Beneath her is the middle manager David, and at the bottom one can find Gareth, who has a highly informal authority. ”The Office” is built upon an assumption that management is a tedious necessity for each corporation, and that managers often are lazy and incompetent people who use their title to receive benefits. If one analyzes David Brent personality and capabilities, it is impossible to realize how he has succeeded in being upgraded to a managerial position. The producers of the series are thereby forwarding their reflections about managers in general; that they are persons who necessarily are not more competent than the rest of the staff – they are rather obligatory accessories of each corporation. Furthermore, the series’ plot suggests that managers are indeed needed to monitor the staff; without a superior present they would probably work even more inefficiently.
Another underlying assumption I can identify in the series is that tiresome jobs attract incompetent and uninspired people. This statement may seem harsh, but the employees at “The Office” were either bored or unskilled, or they had recently been hired, in which case they had not yet realized what their duties would be. I can sense that the producers of the show criticize the management of many corporations; it forces competent people to leave their jobs for more exciting careers. If managers could succeed in motivating such skilled people, they might stay within the corporation for a longer time and thus bringing more competence into the organization.
/Sofia Strandell
I have found the perfect weekend activity – to watch the Office from the very first episode (the UK version of course). I really like the show, and the first individual assignment gives me a great reason to watch it all over again. Could a manager be any scarier than David Brent?
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