Communication Breakdown

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Does your organisation encourage communication up, down and across? Do senior managers have an open door policy -- that really works?

Is a bearer of bad news welcome in the executive sanctum sanctorum?

Would you like to be the firefighter who disturbed Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan at the cricket?

Getting Employees to Perform

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What do we know about motivating our employees? A good way to learn is to see what other organisations are doing. Let's look at two good examples from The West Australian of 20 Aug 2011:

• State power chiefs pick up $2m in bonus pay... Executives employed by Verve Energy, Horizon Power and Western Power received bonuses for meeting work targets.
  
• Buses 'forced to speed'... Public transport bus drivers who are running behind schedule are reprimanded and could lose their jobs.
  

Do these motivational techniques work? Apparently so... These are simply examples of common and commonly accepted practice. So why do they work?

First, executives and senior managers are employed and paid to simply turn up and sit at a desk. There is no expectation that they will do any work which will support their employer. If they are required to actually do work -- they must be paid a bonus.

At the lower end of the pay spectrum, bus drivers (in this example) are employed to do work. It is expected that they will do the work and that they will do it to targets set -- without consultation -- by the employer. There is no need to pay a bus driver more than the minimum allowable rate, to get that bus driver to do satisfactory work.

An executive is rather stupid.

Qantas CEO Missed Marketing 101

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Way, way back, Michael Porter identified three potentially successful strategies for marketing: Segmentation, Differentiation or Cost Leadership. That was in 1980. The three strategies are still mentioned -- and generally accepted -- in beginners' courses in business, marketing and strategy.

Why have Porter's strategic alternatives lasted so long? Because they are simple to state, reasonably easy to understand -- and they still seem to work.

I am refreshing my memory from -- of course -- Wikipedia. For those who dismiss Wikipedia as being of doubtful value, here is a summary:

• Segmentation involves a focus on selling to just one small section -- or segment -- of a market. Find out what just a few people want, give them exactly what they want, convince those few people that yours is the exact product or service that suits their exact requirements.
  
• A Differentiation strategy involves a focus on the ways in which your product is different from -- and therefore superior to -- competing products. Your customers are those who are willing -- or able to be convinced -- that your product offers worthwhile features that are not available from competing products.

Weak Laws Miss the Mark

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Kronic appeared and was quickly banned. Rather, certain substances within Kronic were banned. So what happened? Obviously...

Kronic manufacturers replaced banned substances with not-yet-banned substances.

Is this a surprise? Not really... As I wrote when Kronic first appeared: Laws Create Loopholes. That is, laws are not passed to stop something... Laws are passed in order to allow us to do anything at all which is not specifically banned.

We continue to pass laws which simply define how far we may go without being actually criminal. What we want to do -- I hope! -- is to protect people from harm which is caused by others. (And from

An-census-try

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Question 18 on the recent Australian Census is, "What is the person's ancestry?" Sounds simple?

The online help information explains:

For each person provide a maximum of two ancestries with which they most closely identify, if possible. Consider the origins of the person’s parents and grandparents for example. If the person is a Pacific Islander please report their ancestry as accurately as possible, for example, Samoan, Tongan or Cook Islander. If the person is a descendant of South Sea Islanders brought to Australia as indentured labourers at the turn of the twentieth century, please answer ‘Australian South Sea Islander’.

The key words here are, ancestries with which they most closely identify.

I considered several options...