A plain language account of strategic HRM for those thinking for the first time about designing a company-specific HRM system.
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Category: Business & Communities
Uni fees in UK have gone up – a lot
Next year, domestic student fees for undergraduates at UK universities will be £9 000 pounds per year. Some universities, though not many, will charge less and the fee is the same whether you do an expensive subject like Chemistry or a cheap subject like English or take a subject with with low staff-student ratios like Drama or one where students don’t know or need to meet a member of staff like Management and sign up in their hundreds.
On top of the £9000, students also have to pay for books, computers, stationery, accommodation, food, clothing, heating, clubs and extra activities and not least transport to get to uni and to move from where they live to lecture rooms and clubs and so on. It’s not cheap going to uni in the UK. It costs a lot more than many people earn per year.
Many people say they cannot afford to go. As I understand it, this is not true. They might not be afford to do A levels, but if they get good A levels and are accepted into a university, they can get a student loan which they start to pay back after their earning are well above a minimum wage job which they will get if they don’t go to uni or find a rarer-than-hen’s-teeth apprenticeship.
Look at what is being sold before you look at the price tag
Having taught in universities on three continents for three decades, there are universities and universities; and students find it hard to tell them apart. There are the well known ones to be sure – the Harvard’s, the Oxford’s. There are those well known to students because their friends have gone there and they anticipate the party scene with relish. Students pick their university by word-of-mouth. That’s what we all do when quality is hard to assess from the outside.
But why should fees change our attitude? Practically, nothing much has changed. Yes students will have to pay back their loans but 60K or whatever is not a lot for a life time’s investment. They will spend that much getting married and unmarried in their time. It is the price of a new kitchen if the shops on my high street are correct.
I thought it would be useful to write down three deep misunderstandings about universities. If you are serious about going ,and equally miffed at the price, then think about these three points and see if they help you choose the university that you want to go to.
As an accountant once wisely said to me, never look at the price ticket until you know what is for sale. What do you get from going to a university?
#1 University lecturers and professors spend more than half their time on research
A university teaches something quite different from school or a training course at work. The teachers in a university are “research active”. What that means is that they are in the business of making knowledge. That is a highly competitive business and they are only deemed to have made knowledge if there is ringing applause world-wide and gasps of “wish I had thought of that”!
It follows that lecturers and professors watch world knowledge, and the way it changes, like proverbial hawks. They are aware of the history of knowledge in their field and they are watching developments, hoping to pounce and work out the key bits to achieve glory in their subject area.
When you listen to them talk, you hear people who see and think about your subject as something that changes. And from listening to them, you learn not what is great today, but what is changing all the time.
It is true that you want to know what is great today, but what is great today will probably not be great even by the time you graduate. It certainly won’t be great for the 50 years of your working life. So learning about the way your subject morphs and develops is what is valuable.
Lesson 1a: Make sure you will be taught by people who are active in your subject matter. Turn down universities who use juniors or part-timers to teach you. Check and ruthlessly discard those that do. The teachers will not have the appreciation of change which is what you have come to learn.
Lesson 1b: Stop expecting someone to lead you by the hand. The lecturers’ job is to watch the world and to show you the world through their eyes. If the lecturers are playing coach and tutor to you, they are not doing their jobs and you will have nothing to learn from them. Do the work to catch up. Every student is in the same position. It is the very reason why you came to uni. To catch up with people who see world-knowledge as something on the march.
Lesson 1c: Choose a uni partly for the other students. Do the other students care about knowing about where the subject is going over the next 50 years and where it came from over the last 500 years. If not, move on. You will depend on the buzz of other students to catch up with the lecturers and if the other students don’t care, you will find it very difficult to master the steep learning curve. Look at what students talk about on the chat boards. If they don’t care, move on. 60K is a lot of money to pay for 3 years of bad parties.
#2 Universities are strict about referencing and plagiarism
The second thing you will notice when you get to university is that lecturers bang on about referencing your essays. And referencing is a pain to learn. It is bitty and fiddly and lecturers fail you outright when you get it wrong. What is all that about?
I said under the previous point that lecturers are not telling you about a subject, they are telling you about how a subject changes. So they are telling you about where an idea came from and who is talking about it. They think geographically with layers of history. Watch them read and you’ll seem them see a reference and then flick to the back to see the details of the publication.
In their minds they are thinking, hmm Harvard 1921 . . . who else was at Harvard then, what else did this person write, who over here in Europe would not have known because communications across the Atlantic were still slow then. When they read, they are mapping the changing of the idea so they can pounce and put in the missing step or the next step in the evolution of ideas.
And they are teaching you to do the same. Why? Because you have 50 years in the game and you want to be on top for 50 years, not on top for 1 and increasingly behind for the next 49.
Provenance, provenance, provenance. That’s what it is all about.
But you learn something more from this aspect of uni education that is not a prominent part of school or workplace training. When you track who thought of what, you understand that ideas develop because of the self-interest of the people involved. People at Harvard in 1921 would think up different things from people at Oxford in 1921 because they are surrounded by different people and face different issues.
From watching the provenance of ideas, we begin to appreciate diversity. We begin to understand the value of other people’s ideas. Their specific circumstances are different from ours and lead to different thought processes. The mark of the a university-trained man or woman is that their ears prick up when they realise someone comes from a different walk-of-life because they know that person is likely to think quite differently from us and their thoughts could be very valuable.
Lesson 2a: Spend your first year learning the reference system, though it is a pain, and get it right. It is the essential mechanic for building the geographical and historical map of change that you need to consistently be on top form for 50 years.
Lesson 2b: Start to appreciate how the circumstances of a person contribute to their thinking (and how your circumstances contribute to your thinking)
Lesson 2c: Go to a uni where the students differ a lot from each other. It is difficult when you first arrive because you don’t know how to get along socially. But you’ll learn and appreciating the value of differences will give you the grounding to become a world-class negotiator and keep you on top of your game for 50 years.
#3 University is hard
Yes, university is hard, meaning – it is very difficult to know if you are doing well or not. You can’t just ‘knock off the homework’. You can put 20 hours into something and find you are off the point. The feedback doesn’t always make sense. That’s what hard is. The task isn’t hard when you know how to do it; it’s bloody hard when you don’t and you can’t figure out what ou are supposed to do or what matters.
Well, that is also part of the design of university education. When we know how to do a piece of work, we can delegate it to someone who can’t untangle problems – a high school graduate in other words, or a computer, or an outsourcing company in outer space.
It is jobs where the goals aren’t even clear, let alone the steps, that require well trained minds. All good universities give you work that seems to have several layers of confusion and your job is to work out the layers and turn the confused mess into something orderly.
If you have been listening to how ideas change and where they come from, then you are more than half-way there because you start placing bits and pieces on your mental map and you can work out the story and see where it is going.
But there is another skill that you learn and that is keeping your temper. When things are hard, our blood pressure goes up and thinking goes down. To think straight, you have to get on top of your temper to think straight. And you will learn to get good at not reacting badly to the feeling of being confused.
You will also stop blaming people. At first, your thought is ‘bad teacher – teacher confused me.’ Soon you will realise you should be saying ‘thank you teacher, you got me there, I had to think a bit.’
Above all, a university man or woman can untangle the mess of all the different ideas that a crowd of people put on the table. And because you are calmly gathering all these emotionally charged ideas and sorting them out, even if you aren’t the smartest and most knowledgeable player in the room, you are welcome in the room for not just 50 years but probably your remaining 70.
A university should challenge you emotionally; if not, your money and most importantly your valuable three years of young adulthood are being wasted.
Lesson 3a: Expect instructions to be confused and untangle them calmly.
Lesson3b: React to your own indignation by realising your alarm is a signal that you haven’t finished the task.
Lesson3c: Look at student chat boards. Avoid universities where they are full of whining and complaining. Uni isn’t a cutprice airline. Find a university where students solve problems and take pride in their emotional aplomb.
Look at what is being sold before you look at the price tag
I hope these points help you think through why you might want to go to university and how to choose one that is worth 60K and more importantly, worth 3 of the most valuable years of your life. Choose well, and then get on the steepest learning curve you will ever face. You will be glad; but if you don’t want any of these things, then by all means go to the nearest and cheapest. Or consider whether you want to go to uni at all. You can get information you need off the internet and sometimes you can bypass uni and go straight to a Masters. Some people have to do it that way round because for one reason or another, they can’t go to uni when they are young.
But if you are going, remember to think like that accountant. Work out exactly what is for sale before you worry if the price tag is right.
This is what a good university (or good university department) provides.
- A sense of how the world has changed and is changing and will continue changing for the next 50 years of your working life
- A sense of how the circumstances in which people live affect their thinking and how their perspectives enrich yours
- An ability to sort out confusion, including lots of emotionally-charged arguments, without getting upset yourself or blaming others.
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One CommentLadies and gentlemen, where are we are the path of psychological recovery after learning, not only that our country is not only flat broke, but that our prosperity in the last ten years was a house built on sand?
Denial?
Anger?
Depression?
Bargaining?
Adjustment?
Denial about the banking crisis is over
I believe we are out of denial. Do you agree? Not everyone understands the extent of our financial woes, or the rate that they are getting worse, but we have grasped that when we wake up in the morning, the problem will still be with us.
Anger about the banking crisis . . . still with us?
Much of the citizenry is still very angry about the financial crisis. We are still looking for someone to blame and somebody to hurt back in return for the hurt we have suffered?
Am I right so far?
Depression . . . the politicians are depressed about the crisis?
Politicians, to a man and woman, seem depressed about the crisis. They are busy having meetings and telephone conference calls. But by-and-large, they are being busy. Of course, they are busy. They are ‘shaking the tree’ or in the parlance of a domestic household, looking down the sofa for small change to pay the rent. That doesn’t put anyone in a good mood. But their gloom is the result of more than penny-pinching and cash flow management.
Do you think they are acting with a positive sense of the future or just getting-by?
Bargaining . . . what does bargaining look like?
What does bargaining look like anyway? I don’t really know.
In other countries and other crises, I have seen people protest a country’s position ‘between a rock and a hard place’ by going on ‘fasts’ (not, hunger strikes, ‘fasts’ or ‘pacts with God’). The country didn’t move forward very much but the fasters did get very slim and they learned to get up early in the morning. I can say that for their methods. Whether their lives improved in other ways, I doubt. Unsurprisingly, they did very little work. Their electronic diaries were pristine with the exception of their prayer schedules.
The secular equivalent of keeping one’s head down can be just as dangerous, by-the-way. It normally involves being very busy doing-the-boss’-bidding while he or she sits out of harm’s way- a bit as Carne Ross described in talk at LSE this week on life as British diplomat.
Does satire play the role of bargaining? Does laughing about ‘their idiocy’ without taking action not perform the same function of reducing emotional concerns without moving forward? Resignation rather than adjustment which is really a form of bargaining? If I laugh, then it will be alright?
Is writing this post a form of bargaining? I guess it is. I am being an observer of ‘them’.
Adjustment . . . is it possible? Can we just adjust and get on with it?
If I don’t really understand bargaining (as much because we think this stage of recovery is a delaying tactic rather than useful), I do know what adjustment is going to mean.
Adjustment is accepting that we were all part of the mess and are all part of the mess.
Adjustment rests on a foundation of “who we are”. Who are we loyal to? Who is ‘me and mine’? Until we really feel solidarity with each other and are willingly to form a new social compact based on that solidarity, then we aren’t going anywhere fast. We will ‘lurching from church to school’. I’ve no idea where the expression came from but it conveys the idea.
Our solutions will be in direct proportion to our solidarity. While we hate each other, our solutions will be correspondingly mean and inadequate.
Getting to adjustment in a country that is in trouble
Getting to ‘adjustment’ when a country is severe trouble is a tough one. The psychological key is our own good temper, or whatever kernel of good temper that we can find.
When we identify what we believe is good in Britain, when we can point to what is, rather than to what we want to be (usually through someone else’s efforts); until we believe the something is sufficiently good that we are willing to get out of bed to work on it, whether or not anyone else is working on it, we – I mean you, I mean me – are not going anywhere very fast.
The questions, to me, are three fold:
- What is, right now, is so good that it fills me with awe?
- What is, right now, that I can bounce out of bed to look after and nurture?
- What am I willing to do right now, whether or not you support me or not, but which can include you if you want to be included?
Keeping my good temper intact
So here I am writing a post ‘about’ Britain – and in a way about what is wrong with Britain. Here I am apparently procrastinating and avoiding doing some work which has shards of pleasure and the sharp edges of tedium.
Am I being a hypocrite? Or am I saying that I like to process the news and know what I think and feel? Am I saying that I like to read between the lines and see the big events that might be affecting us all (the government is looking for small change down the sofa)? Am I saying that I like to use the heuristics I have gathered over the years to think economically? Am I saying that I think people like Carne Ross (apostate diplomat) are right? Change in UK will not start in Whitehall. It will start at street-level with small matters, with whatever we care about executed, not an angry, contested manner (even when that is concealed under do-goodery), but in a respectful, collaborative manner that demonstrates democracy in the minute detail? Am I saying that I like Web2.0 (blogs etc) because they minimally give me a neat place to store my thoughts and writings and a place where others can read them if they choose?
And having cleared my mind, I can get back to work, because work is like hoovering the carpet – it’s not much fun but the results are pleasant.
And for every moment I spend doing work that matters, I might be building a foundation for future solidarity. And from there we might find solutions to build a Britain fit for the next 50 years.
So here ends my thoughts on where we are psychologically in making sense of the financial crisis using the well known heuristic of the grief cycle – denial/not us,anger/blame, depression/loss of direction, bargaining/magical thinking, action/affection. The kernel of your good temper is Britain’s future.
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Leave a CommentBe the change you want in the world . . . but be worldly too
Self-improvement experts will tell you that “you must be the change you see in the world”. They are right. But there is another view too.
Developed economies are so complicated that you cannot get anything done unless something else happens, often one or two steps away.
Some people shrug and go into a tail spin of mild depression. Others set about organising their “supply networks” or “collaborative supply chains”. They not only take responsibility for what they do themselves; they hold up a market opportunity for all to see and help a network of actors to understand all the points where they need to cooperate.
- They hold up a real and significant market opportunity.
- They shine a spotlight on the critical junction points in the supply network.
Farmers in the tippy-top of Scotland go upmarket and boost their local economy by quarter of a million
In this post, I’m going to summarize the triumph of Scottish beef and sheep farmers from the very tip of Scotland who, in one year of enhanced cooperation, gained an extra 10p or kilo or £37 per cow and £3 per lamb more than their peers serving the standard market and brought in an extra quarter of million additional pounds to the remote rural economy.
This is the story of Northern Highland Products, beef and lamb farmers in Caithness in Scotland and an Irish butcher who came to join them in bid to deliver premium meat to the British supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.
- Northern Highland Products only wholesales quality products within 100 miles of the Castle of Mey. Beef and lamb are their core lines and they also carry fish, honey, jam, cheese and pork.
- The Northern Highlands has a strong history of livestock production on small farms.
- The initial funding for setting up the Northern Highlands Products project in 2005 was a £71 000 grant from the Scottish Executive under its Marketing Development Scheme, some contributions by an initial group of farmers, an on-going levy on producers, and contributions from Caithness Enterprises and the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency.
- Information from farmers is combined to forecast and manage supply and demand.
- Delivery and price information is also pooled so farmers can benchmark their output against the average.
- Mey Selections only buys livestock reared on Caithness grass and does not buy bulls. Prices vary by quality of the carcass and track the general market but above the average.
- Farmers have access to information (including organized training) about the whole supply chain so they understand how and why carcass classification ripples through to costs in processing.
- Mey Selections sponsors a Producers’ Club to help producers share information among themselves.
- Animals are slaughtered at one of three abattoirs to minimize travel and stress to live animals.
- Mey Selections offer training to Sainsbury’s staff.
General principles about collaborative supply chains and supply networks
I could draw out some general principles about collaborative supply chains and supply networks but in business, general principles often feel like the “tail wagging the dog.”
Business is not a spectator sport and we have to deal with the real and immediate in the same way as shepherd still has to traipse the hills to find a lost lamb in inclement weather. Do it now, or not at all.
Supply chains work when we have real opportunities that we want to exploit and sufficient knowledge of our industry to see what has to happen. Then we can exercise the leadership to shine a light on
- The opportunity
- The critical linkages.
Until we have that real-world knowledge and business-in-action, then we are simply apprentices in our trade and we should do what needs doing now – which is get some hands-on experience.
This post summarizes the information on the supply chain of Caithness farmers in the northern tip of Scotland and how improved collaboration and disciplined attention to what they do well locally led, in a single year, to an increase of a quarter of a million pounds into their combined businesses.
Don’t wait. Be the change you want to see in the world. But be worldly and organize what is already working and do it better by focusing on real opportunities and real tasks that need doing!
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Leave a CommentWe want to work
Undoubtedly, UK is in a financial jam; and undoubtedly, deservedly so. But talking about what is wrong with Britain is a way of life for the chattering classes.
A business in a jam; the business of jam
This is a story about another kind of jam – one which you may not even buy anymore – though this story will have you looking at your supermarket shelf with more curiosity.
This is the story of McKays – an industrial jam-maker founded in 1938, in the berry-growing, marmalade-making east of Scotland around Dundee – perhaps better known for being home to several games-producers. Paul Grant bought McKays from global giant, United Biscuits, in 1995. In the following 12 years, the throughput of fruit and jam multiplied 10 fold.
So in the time that Sergei met Larry, founded Google, and took us to Google Street Maps and the Royal Channel on You Tube, a jam-maker in Scotland bloomed. This post is about what we can learn from Mackays. Their transformation is as modern as Google and is a practical working example of a idea that is often talked about abstractly.
MacKays worked on their whole supply chain but rather than trying to manage the whole chain and offload risk to suppliers, Mackays reformed the chain to manage variability. Because they can tolerate variability, they are able to up volumes, and of course grow at the phenomenal rate they did.
The market for jam
In 1997, Scottish jam-makers, MacKays, processed 30 tonnes of fruit into jam and marmalade which they sold to supermarkets as “commodities” – that is, they competed on price.
In 2007, they processed 350 tonnes and they had repositioned the MacKays brand as premium and sold a parallel line, Mrs Bridges, through independent retailers such as garden centres and hamper companies.
Premium jams
Premium jams depend upon “things staying the same”, or as we say in management-speak “taking the past into the future.” We move in the opposite direction to the box-ticking, target-setting fiends, and concentrate on what is good and true.
- McKays retained its traditional taste by retaining its traditional production of jam with a slow roiling boil in copper-bottom pans
- They used Scottish fruit allowing them to extend the recognisable and valued Scottish brand.
- They used local produce which allowed them to coordinate more closely and manage variability that comes with agricultural produce.
Government help
MacKays did receive a government grant that gave their bankers the commercial security to lend them the capital to expand.
Supply chain
There were four key issues to reforming the supply chain and increasing upstream demand for fruit by 1000%.
- MacKays had sufficient belief in their product and consumers to envision both repositioning as a premium product and multiplying their volumes, not by a few percent, by multiples of 100%.
- MacKays had sufficient belief in their suppliers to negotiate the delivery of clean, fresh, full flavoured fruit suitable for bottling rather than the fresh produce markets.
- MacKays invested sufficiently in relationships to welcome farmers in the factory and to be welcome on their farms.
- Because they had good relationships, it was easier to work through the inevitable variability that comes with agricultural produce. MacKays retained a consultant as their agent for this work.
Learning from the jam business
These key five points translate to other businesses.
- What is good and true? What is the equivalent of jam made with artisan manufacturing with fresh local produce?
- What is better and possible? What is the equivalent of consumers who want a good quality jam?
- Who can we depend upon and what do they need? Who are the equivalent of farmers who need clear signals about how our needs differ from needs of their other customers?
- Who will work more easily with us if they have a sound understanding of how we work and if we have a sound understanding of how they work? What do our suppliers not understand about us and what do we not understand about them?
- And most importantly of all, where is there natural variability in the system and where we need to be available, pay attention, and work together to keep our business relationship intact and prosperous on both sides? What is the equivalent of strawberries that are better some years than others and what does it mean in our business to adjust to variability in someone else’s part of the supply chain?
In this story, the slightly-new notions are that huge gains come, not out of investment or control or competition, but from
I hope this practical example shows you how networked supply chains work in ordinary, down-to-earth businesses but do remember that the details are different for every business. And that business is not a spectator sport. Talking about business does not make it grow. We need to be doing something. Now.
Reference: This cases study is part of a wider series of case studies on collaborative supply chains in agriculture in Scotland.
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Leave a CommentSleepwalking through life?
Today the GSCE results came out in the UK. For American readers, GSCE is like graduating from high school though you can stay and spend an extra two years working on A levels for university entrance.
Huff Post interviewed 4 boys from just north of London. I was immediately struck by two observations. The richer the boy, the more disorientated he was. And how all the boys expected a vague ill-defined authority to sort out their career for them.
The two poorer boys were infinitely better off in my view. Both had had an objective or some time. Both had responded to events, which might have been crushingly disapppointing, but were brushed off by simply finding another path to the same goal. But both, of course, exited the school system – not surprising if you know anything about the rigidity of class in the UK.
Where is the vocation?
But I am not here to lament class – well not today anyway. I was struck that ‘careers advice’ was simply functional. Sign on here. Do this. Do that. I would like to see young people getting ‘to the heart’ of what interests them and defining their economic relationship with the world through a lens of their abiding interests.
Where is the abiding preoccupation?
In business, we might talk in terms of ‘vision’ and ‘mission’. But look at the way the manufacturing giant Danone puts it:
If associating health benefits with the pleasure of eating is our permanent preoccupation, ensuring that products are made available to the greatest number of people is now the Danone’s new endeavour.
First, let’s ask ~ what is our permanent preoccupaton? What do we return to time-and-time again because it is so important to us? What do we hold so dear that it puzzles us that others don’t? What are we always willing to work on, no matter the time of day or night?
And then, what is our priority right now? What is the endeavour or practical project that is needed at this moment?
Vision and mission. Preoccupation and endeavour. I like the second set of words a lot more. Don’t you?
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Leave a CommentEconomists will tell you when lots of us are competing for a customer’s dollar, the price will fall. In this post, I am going to give you a counter example from Scotland. I am going to show you how we can make jobs and raise wages by co-operating with each other.
The situation
Let’s set the stage. Twenty-seven dairy farms who together produced 17 million litres of organic milk a year thought their industry was overcrowded. Prices were falling and it seemed fewer and fewer farmers could make a decent living.
Luckily for them they have good extension services in Scotland and they got some help re-organizing. This is what they did.
Mission
To sell their milk only into the organic market where they get higher prices.
Execution
- Acknowledged that to deliver fresh milk, end-to-end temperature control and hygiene in a milk supply chain is important and players have to co-operate in a process of give-and-take.
- Noted that like consumers all over the world, Scottish consumers want Scottish milk simply because we all like to know where our food comes from.
- Identified a mid-sized but Scottish dairy, Graham’s who already market organic milk and butter to supermarkets Sainsbury’s Tesco, Waitrose and coffee chain, Starbucks through an organization of 280 full time staff and a fleet of 100 refrigerated vehicles.
- Arranged to supply Graham’s in return for milk pick-ups and level, consistent of supply which was achieved with seasonal pricing.
- Provided dependable support so that Graham’s could develop a branded label to compete with supermarket ‘own labels’.
Results
- In two years, the original 27 farmers achieved a price increase of 20% with a combined value of £7m (USD12m+).
- Demand for organic milk increased possibly due to other factors but partly because it was available consistently and its source was pleasing to consumers.
- The original goal of selling organic milk as organic milk helped achieve consistently higher prices.
- Because Grahams could rely on dependable supply, they were able to take advantage of new opportunities that presented themselves downstream, particularly demand from upscale supermarket Waitrose, and pass the demand back upstream to the farmers.
- Because the farmers, Grahams and the extension advisers had a track record of working together, issues which used to be subject of competitive bargaining could be addressed constructively and creatively.
The super-result: more jobs and a stronger economy
- Consumers have more access to high quality food from a food chain they trust.
- In exchange for being dependable and responsive, the current farmers have moved from believing their livelihoods were risky to better prices and consistent custom.
- The producer has expanded their market and product range and know they could expand again if demand arose.
- The farmers are able to welcome new organic dairy farmers to join the system.
Expand the economy one community at a time
What are the lessons to be learned from Scottish organic milk producers?
If you want to get your part of economy moving again, and I am sure you do, then:
#1 Don’t just think price and simple competition. Think supply chain which means lots of suppliers working with lots of producers and lots of retailers.
#2 Look for junctions where our naïve competition is creating silly inefficiencies.
#3 Use specialists in industry (as opposed to business) management to collect data from the supply chain and balance feedback and confidentiality.
If you mean to be in your business, then be in it. Love it. Shape it. Don’t just try to reap a profit, but work to create the economy that allows us to reap a profit.
One supply chain at a time, at home in our own communities and ‘without waiting for no one.’
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Leave a CommentSupply chains & networks: How do they fit together?
Collaborative supply chain, distributed supply chain, supply network . . . business has long stopped thinking about business as discrete entities. When Toyota developed long-term, stable relationships with suppliers to allow it to have shorter, quicker, more responsive relationships with its customers, business was changed forever.
Hi speed computers provide us with the tools to take the idea of a collaborative supply chain and turn it into a supply network. We have to think differently though and many of us ask, is it worth it?
What is the payoff for thinking about our supply chain as a collaborative network?
These are the FIVE benefits that we hope to gain.
- Be alerted to opportunities more often
- Get an appropriate team together much faster to respond to opportunities
- Produce better products and services more profitably and at a lower price
- Provide the critical mass for genuine innovation (rather than mimicry and spin)
- Develop skills as a team that can only be developed when a team works together for a while
And isn’t this just talk? How do we measure these benefits and show ROI?
Metrics can be developed for each of the FIVE benefits. An industry association might ask its members, for example
- How many interesting leads did you receive this month?
- How many leads did you leave on the table because you lacked the resources to respond and how many consortia did you form or were invited to join?
- Of the consortia whom are working, how many believe they will be able to improve quality, margins and price?
- How many consortia believe they have the critical mass of skills and resources to work innovatively at the forefront of their field?
- Does the consortium compete against other named consortia and when do they go head-to-head?
And how does this talk of networks affect HR – not the form-filling bit of HR – but the organisational design and management?
Equally, somebody say in HR who is working on collaborative supply chains would ask similar questions.
- What is our supply chain at the moment?
- What line of sight do we have of the supply chain upstream and downstream and can we document our understanding of the supply chain the way we document a job in-house?
- When do we receive incoming messages about leads?
- When do we receive data that allows us to investigate our position in the supply chain?
- What projects have we going on that focus on improving our position in the supply chain?
- What projects are put aside because ‘we aren’t big enough or good enough to do them’?
- What holds people up and if we changed the question to what do we do well, what opportunities emerge?
- Who does our supply chain compete with and how do we monitor them?
That’s enough for going along with. From these lists, you should be able to see how other people manage their supply chains; what industry associations can and should be doing to raise the profitability of the entire industry; and what HR should and could be doing to upgrade HR to the contemporary networked world.
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Leave a CommentIn my last two posts, I encouraged you to read Zizek in the original and gave you my take on the curious impotent rage that we are seeing all over Europe.
I am arguing that we are all up-to-our-eyeballs in the mess we rail about and that we got into the mess because we abdicated responsibility for our lives and our tantrums are signs of more abdication.
Simply, to adapt Zizek words, we will start to feel good about things when we are able to put on a list what “no one else will do it for [us], that [I] have to be the change [I] want to see.”
The tricks of a psychologist
As a psychologist, I always listen for the ”I” and the “we”.
- What is the person in front of me actually going to do?
- Who are they doing it with or for?
- Of all the things they talked about, which brought a light to their eyes?
Zizek moments and psychology
We are in a Zizek moment when we retort that we are unable to do anything because the system makes us impotent.
We are focused, in short, on the ‘not living’ rather than the ‘living’.
These moments aren’t fun and this is the psychology of getting our attention back on the ‘living’.
A small example of giving to Caesar. . .
To take a simple example, I lock my car when I leave it at Milton Keynes Railway Station. Don’t you?
I accept that there is plenty of nonsense in the world but I act sensibly.
I don’t devote a lot of time to thinking about security at Milton Keynes Railway Station but I don’t take it for granted either. Most of all I vote for people who treat the security people around the station fairly and I pay my rates so they can. Don’t you?
Do you abdicate the responsibility for the conditions under which we live?
Read what Zizek says about Greece:
“When the protesters started to debate what to do next, how to move beyond mere protest, the majority consensus was that what was needed was not a new party or a direct attempt to take state power, but a movement whose aim is to exert pressure on political parties.”
Why do we abdicate to others?
Of course, we delegate to others, yes. If there is a security person at Milton Keynes Station, I don’t interfere while they are doing their job.
But abdicate, no. I can’t say “There is no security at the station. You must fix it.” I can’t bluster and stamp my feet and say “There is no security. I am your employer as a taxpayer. You must fix it.”
I must act definitively. “We have seen this pattern of events. Please tell us what action you will take to change the pattern and suggest a date that we can meet to review whether the actions have been effective.”
And I must be clear what I am going to do if I am still not satisfied. What is the point of stamping my foot?
“To riot [even if it is a middle-class tantrum] is to make a subjective statement, implicitly to declare how one relates to one’s objective conditions.”
Tantrums not only accept our position of powerlessness. Tantrums say we are OK with our position of powerlessness. Don’t come to me later complaining. I will only ask you: Well what do you want to do about it?”
I can never be too enthusiastic about
“impotent rage and despair masked as a display of force; it is envy masked as triumphant carnival.”
It’s like over imbibing. You will regret it in the morning.
So what do psychologists suggest when you are feeling impotent? Indeed when you are overwhelmed with indignation at your impotence?
#1 Let’s stop thinking that this is a first in history. We are not alone in this. Read the old works and read the new like Zizek .
#2 Think back to Jesus Christ saying to his followers: Give unto Ceasar . . . Get involved in as much nonsense as you have to . . . but keep it on the periphery of your existence in the way you lock your car at the station. . . it is not your life.
#3 Learn from feminist Germaine Greer who wrote short chapters that women could read on the loo – the only place where they have peace and quiet. Find five minutes every day to be quiet. A park is nice. But be effective on this at least. If it the loo is the only place possible, then the loo, it is.
#4 Think back over the last 24 hours about what is ‘good, true, better and possible’, and do more of it. Sounds naff? Try it. When you are more purposive about what you want and take active steps toward it, it tends to move toward you. When it happens, your main reaction is going to be, “Eh? This easy?” Yes, it is normal to be suspicious but when you move toward something, it comes to you. On the other hand, if you are faking it, it will blow you a raspberry. I repeat, what you move towards will move towards you.
#5 Where you have a choice between two good things, do the one that’s better for other people too.
That’s it. Shit will continue to happen but you won’t be so directly implicated and you won’t be sitting around thinking that some vague person in some vague office should be sorting it out. That is no way to live. Your life is going to amount to what you are willing to be responsible for.
To find out what you are willing to do, because it is your choice, not mine – find five minutes to review each 24 hours. Celebrate the good, the true, the better and the possible, however small, particularly the small . . . and do more of it.
And then you will be like Zizek – watching the Zizek moments with Zen-like calm, waiting for more people to catch on. Then sociological conditions will change and we will have a new sociologist to read. Enjoy.
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Leave a CommentZizek and the politics of our age
Zizek, one of the most important thinkers of our age, tells us that much of the time, we cheerfully go along with nonsense like – derivative trading – telling ourselves all sorts of ‘porkies’ [for non-British readers that is Cockney slang for a self-serving deceit].
We reassure ourselves (rather greedily) that we will not be the victim when the ‘house of cards’ collapses. Not for us ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee’. Oh no, somehow it is OK to go along with what we know is wrong.
A Zizek moment
And when it does go wrong, when quite inevitably the scam is revealed in all its shocking-ness, we express indignation in a useless tantrum.
We tell the ‘authorities’, we tell some nameless, faceless people over whom we have no power or influence even if we did know who they are, to sort it out, or “we will be cross”.
Having abdicated our future when we joined the scam, we abdicate again by claiming that ‘someone else must sort out the mess.
Writing of the current Spanish demonstrations, Zizek comments “the indignados do not (yet) claim that no one else will do it for them, that they themselves have to be the change they want to see”.
A British example of a Zizek moment
Let’s take a British example. The News of the World tapped phone messages.
But who did not know that before this year? Pleassse.
And who did not encourage them? At least 3 million people gave them money every week. I’ve be known to read The Times when it popped up on my screen.
But what is with the outrage characteristic of a Zizek moment?
We are outraged because we knew what was going on all the time and if we didn’t actively take part, we encouraged it or condoned it.
We are outraged because we are caught out in the lies we tell, chiefly to ourselves.
And we are outraged because like an emperor with no clothes, we are caught with no life plan accept bouncing from one scandalous scheme to another.
If you like being outraged, then, please, carry on. If you don’t, psychologists have do-it-home advice
In the next post, I’ll lay out the do-it-at-home tips for you. There is no need to spend oodles of money. Indeed I wouldn’t take your money because unless you do get started at home, not even millions of dollars of professional help will get you going.