Abstract

Today’s communication and information devices now give us the ability to connect instantly to our ERP and CRM business management systems. Anything we can do in the office we can do anywhere else using any web enabled phone, pad or home computer. Instant connectivity. That’s what we need or at least that’s what everyone seems to be saying. There’s another term for this: micromanagement. Maybe we are trying to do too much? Business conditions do not change on an hourly basis nor does any business need to be adjusted instantly. That’s just an indication that our business plans and actions are not organized for success.

Is Micromanagement Necessary?

The latest TV ads for 4G phones seem to be trying to convince us that getting calls, e-mails and other communications 30 seconds sooner is absolutely necessary. I would expand that question much further. Is it really necessary that we stay in touch constantly (or instantly) with our co-workers and business management system? The necessity for instant reaction to changing business conditions is a sign of weakness, not strength. If we have to micromanage our business, all we have done is make ourselves indispensable and that’s a very poor business habit.

Notice that I have not said anything about instant connectivity to prospects and clients. That’s a slightly different situation, but still with some similarities. We do want our prospects and clients to be able to connect with us quickly. We want to be able to show them by our actions that serving customers is job one. This doesn’t mean that we have to call them back in 30 seconds or less, but it does mean that we will connect with them within a reasonable length of time. That’s the key. Our reaction needs to be reasonable and our customers’ expectations need to be reasonable. Connectivity though is very important. We need to be able to access information that is important to our customers and in many cases this means having a reliable connectivity link.

Instant Connectivity is Disruptive to Business Excellence

Unless there is some form of unforeseen catastrophe, any business should be able to operate smoothly with little or no adjustments on a daily, weekly or even a monthly basis. Rather than having to react instantly to issues, the business should be structured so that serious issues are avoided or at least reduced. That’s why we need to practice what I call Business Excellence.

Excellent companies start with excellent owners and senior executives who create a people oriented management philosophy. They in turn recruit excellent line managers and supervisors. That’s the basic foundation, but it’s the regular people, the staff and line employees who will really make a difference. Regular everyday employees will make or break your organization. I know that seems contrary to the popular notion that excellence lies in technology and the management of the firm, but maybe I like to take a contrary viewpoint sometimes just to make a point. In this case I am speaking from the heart. Business Excellence is all about people. Business Excellence starts with the assumption that all people have the capacity to contribute to the success of the organization. Give people the tools they need to do their jobs well. Give them the encouragement to do their best. Give them a physical environment that supports efficiency. Give them a psychological environment which supports effectiveness. Give of yourself to each person in your organization and you stand a very good chance of becoming successful.

Having created an effective employee oriented structure, business managers need to then create an effective reporting system. Effective business decisions drive business profitability. These decisions need to be rooted in facts that can be brought to light instantaneously. People do not have the time to guess. They need to know where to place their attention. They also need to know whether the decisions they make are having the desired effect. If there is too much data, the underlying issues may remain clouded. If there is no way to compare actual results against targets, how can you ever know if you are where you want to be or need to be? Finally, people need to identify those Profit Drivers that have the most significant impact on their organization or on their specific area of responsibility. Adopt a proactive system that helps you track not just where you have been or where you are today, but where you could be tomorrow.

Having created a basic reporting system that gives people the information they need to make sound business decisions, you now need to give people snapshots that give them the ability to identify where their attention needs to be devoted. Truly effective business metrics give you a basis for comparison that either tells you where you are going and whether you are above or below expectations. 

I cringe every time I see bar charts and pie charts as representative of what information users can extract from an ERP system and display on their “dashboard”.  While these charts certainly look pleasant (particularly when displayed in color), in the end they are nothing more than status reports and as such do not (or should not) drive business decision making.  Why? Bar charts and pie charts do not (and never will) lead to any form of decision or action.  A pie chart that displays the percentage of revenue generated by a firm’s top ten customers tells you nothing.  There is no basis for comparison to tell whether this is good or bad.  It looks pretty, but it leads to nothing.

Now we finally reach the point where people can truly react to changing business conditions, but do so within a controlled environment that allows people to be proactive rather than reactive. Having to stay in constant contact with the business management system or co-workers is a reactive business methodology. The options listed above proactive. If you identify key business drivers and create an operational plan that maximizes the potential for these key business drivers, you don’t have to spend all of your time micromanaging your business. Now you can take this time and apply it to business process improvement, thus reducing the need to micromanage.

Most ERP systems can identify exceptions that should be brought to the attention of named users.  That’s what alert systems are all about.  If a tracked metric is above or below a specified target value, an alert is either posted on a user’s home page or sent to the user’s e-mail address.  Unfortunately that’s about as far as most systems have developed the concept in spite of the fact that Exception Management as a business methodology has been around for almost 30 years.  The user is notified, but all of their activities after that are for the most part manual exercises.

A fully proactive Exception Management system is not a Workflow Manager nor is it just a series of e-mails relating to a specific topic.  It is in fact a framework by which sound business decisions can be made.  While the ERP system would be the primary vehicle by which exceptions are identified (operating the same way present alert systems do), users would also have the ability to open their own exception topics. Once open, multiple users could be given access to the exception file.

Let the Business Run Without You

If someone needs to be in touch constantly and react instantly to what’s happening within their business unit, something’s wrong. There is no person within any organization who is that important. In fact the business should be structured so that it can run without the constant manipulation of any one person. Create an organization that gives people the atmosphere and the tools that foster success. Identify the profit drivers that need to be monitored and optimized. Give people the ability to communicate with each other and jointly address key issues. Structure your business for long term success and you won’t have to worry about staying connected 24/7.

The power of technology has had little effect upon long term profitability because that potential cannot be released without the assistance of people, and people have not generally been included in the design, selection, installation, implementation and use of ERP and business management systems.

Whenever you start dealing with people oriented issues, things start to get complicated. Maybe that’s why you see so many efficiency projects that seem to ignore people. Just organize the workflow and the technology and everything will be fine! Well, you can’t ignore people. People are customers, suppliers, employees, supervisors, managers, and business owners. At its most basic core, business is all about one individual working with another individual toward some common goal. If you want to achieve what I call Business Excellence, then you are going to have to admit that people matter, particularly your employees.

Excellent companies start with excellent owners and senior executives. They in turn recruit excellent line managers and supervisors. That’s the basic foundation, but it’s the regular people, the staff and line employees who will really make a difference. Regular everyday employees will make or break your organization. I know that seems contrary to the popular notion that excellence lies in technology and the management of the firm, but maybe I like to take a contrary viewpoint sometimes just to make a point. In this case I am speaking from the heart. Business Excellence is all about people. Business Excellence starts with the assumption that all people have the capacity to contribute to the success of the organization. Give people the tools they need to do their jobs well. Give them the encouragement to do their best. Give them a physical environment that supports efficiency. Give them a psychological environment which supports effectiveness. Give of yourself to each person in your organization and you stand a very good chance of becoming successful.

Maybe achieving Business Excellence starts with something as simple as remembering each person’s name. Maybe it starts by showing people that there is nothing to fear from change. Maybe all you have to do is to encourage people to let the excellence which has always been locked up inside them to come out. Maybe Business Excellence isn’t as difficult as you might otherwise think. All you have to do is give people just the smallest shove in the right direction and let them take it from there.

Business Excellence starts with people and never really leaves people. It starts with the recognition that people matter; not just in your mind, but in your actions. It has got to start at the top of the organization and move from one level to the next. You can’t have excellent employees unless you have excellent managers. You can’t have excellent managers if you don’t have excellent executives. It really isn’t’ that difficult as long as you realize that the power of the organization can be released only if each person has the same goal, and that goal is excellence through mutual dependency. Organizations don’t achieve excellence if they rely upon a few stars. Each person must be willing to contribute according to their ability and share equally in the rewards. Business Excellence isn’t about a few benefiting at the expense of the many.

Certainly there are any number of techniques for maximizing the contributions of each member of the organization. Teams seem to help a group of people focus their individual expertise into something more powerful. Incentive systems share the wealth people help to create. Becoming a learning organization recognizes the power which lies inside the minds of each employee. All of these techniques help, but the single most powerful tool you can bring to bear is your concern for each person.

People work more effectively with other people whom they admire or feel some form of friendship, even if it’s only a business friendship. That’s really the core philosophy which supports Business Excellence; people caring for other people. It really is that simple. No one person has the ability to carry other people on their back for very long, nor does any one group of people have the ability to carry a privileged few on their back for very long. All it takes is the recognition that every person has the ability to contribute something of value to the organization. All it takes is someone taking the time to treat other people as if they would want to be treated if they were in the same position. It really is that simple. Give of yourself because the people who work with you really do matter.

Here is another article by David Dierke, president of AccountMate Software. AccountMate (www.accountmate.com) is an excellent middle-market product that offers users four different versions (SQL, LAN, Express and SaaS) as well as source code, thus enabling firms to select exactly the environment they require and then tools to give then exactly the functionality they require.

The fundamental attributes that define a successful business leader have not really changed in thousands of years when they were first recognized. The prominent attributes were defined at that time as individuals who possessed an understanding of fair ethics and personal integrity–two incredibly simple concepts, yet as vitally important today as they were then.

In 1954, Raymond Cattell, a pioneer in the field of personality assessment, built upon these attributes and developed the Leadership Potential Equation. It is still used today to determine the traits which characterize an effective leader. They are:

• Emotional stability: Good leaders must be able to tolerate frustration and stress. Overall, they must be well-adjusted and have the psychological maturity to deal with anything they are required to face.  
• Dominance: Leaders are often competitive, decisive and usually enjoy overcoming obstacles. They are assertive in their thinking style as well as their attitude in dealing with others.  
• Enthusiasm: Leaders are usually seen as active, expressive and energetic. They are often very optimistic and open to change. They are generally quick and alert and tend to be uninhibited.  
• Conscientiousness: Leaders are often dominated by a sense of duty and tend to be very exacting in character. They usually have a very high standard of excellence and an inward desire to do their best. They also have a need for order and tend to be very self-disciplined.  
• Social boldness: Leaders tend to be spontaneous risk-takers. They are usually socially aggressive and generally thick-skinned. They are responsive to others and tend to be high in emotional stamina.  
• Self-assurance: Self-confidence and resiliency are common traits among leaders. They tend to be free of guilt and have little or no need for approval. They are generally unaffected by prior mistakes or failures.  
• Compulsiveness: Leaders are controlled and very precise in their social interactions. They are very protective of their integrity and reputation and consequently tended to be socially aware and careful, abundant in foresight, and very careful when making decisions or determining specific actions.  
• Intuitiveness: Rapid changes in the world today, combined with information overload result in an inability to know everything. In other words, reasoning and logic will not get you through all situations. In fact, more and more leaders are learning the value of using their intuition and trusting their gut when making decisions.  
• Empathy: Being able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes is a key trait of leaders today. Without empathy, you can’t build trust; without trust, you will never be able to get the best effort from your employees.  
• Charisma: People usually perceive leaders as larger than life. Charisma plays a large part in this perception. Leaders who have charisma are able to arouse strong emotions in their employees by defining a vision which unites and captivates them. Using this vision, leaders motivate employees to reach toward a future goal by tying the goal to substantial personal rewards and values.

I believe leaders are rarely (if ever) born. Circumstances and persistence are major components in the developmental process of any leader.

Why do people seem to spend their entire work day in a series of meetings?  I am not a big fan of meetings. I think they waste our time and time is our most precious resource.  Think about it for a moment. Only one person can speak at a time while everyone else must be silent.  Hopefully we are listening intently and learning, but to be honest it’s way too easy to think about other things that are more pressing.  Maybe the meeting is for update purposes only.  If that’s the case, then my time is being completely wasted.  Now sum all of the time people spend in such meetings and they might become the most significant non-productive cost in virtually any organization.

Meetings are for making decisions, not reviewing information or discussing options or being updated.  All of those knowledge acquisition activities can and should be completed prior to the actual decision.  I don’t need to attend a meeting to acquire knowledge.  I can and should do that at a time that is convenient to me.  Maybe the problem is that prior to the past 10 years formal meetings were the only way people can participate in the decision making process.  We are so used to the concept of personally attended meetings that we cannot see that there is a better and certainly more productive way.

The keys to effective meetings are collaboration and structure.  Rather than “listening” to individual people present information that we may or may not need, we should be able to access that same information electronically, study it at our leisure and respond appropriately.  In this case the meeting moderator makes sure the process moves forward and people respond no later than agreed upon dates.  All meetings require a moderator or project manager and all “attendees” need to follow guidelines and timetables set by the moderator.

OK, if the concept of meetings needs to be changed, how can we acquire knowledge and make decisions?  Since this is a blog post and not a formal article, let’s just summarize the key points.

• All meetings need to deal with a single specific issue.
• The moderator needs to define precisely the purpose of the meeting.  If a decision is to be made, the issue itself needs to be defined precisely.  If the meeting is just for update purposes, the discussion topic needs to be defined precisely.  No waffling is permitted.
• The moderator will decide who should participate and when the decision will be made. 
• If the meeting is for update purposes only, the moderator sets the date for the next update.
• If the meeting is an on-going discussion, the moderator’s primary responsibility should be following the discussion thread and keeping people on track.
• If the discussion is to be led by specific people (the primarily stakeholders), they need to create the initial thread.  The meeting begins only when this initial thread has been created and distributed to each participant.
• Each person then has the ability to read each post, consider it and respond accordingly.  If they want to add a comment that is not in response to someone else’s previous comment, they can do so.
• Even though this is a discussion, people should present questions and suggestions for the next steps to be taken.
• Individuals should also suggest solutions to problem areas raised as a result of the information to be presented at the meeting.  While knowledge acquisition is important, virtually all discussions should be oriented toward making progress.

If your firm is small, the most effective vehicle might be simple e-mail exchanges with each participant being copied.  The only problem with this approach is that it would be difficult to create a concise history of the discussion.  The moderator might have to act as the scribe, creating a master document that contains history.

If your firm is large, this approach will not work well.  In this case you would probably need to acquire a software system that has been designed specifically to facilitate an on-line discussion.  My fiancé is currently pursuing a master’s degree in nursing and several of her on-line classes require that student groups collaborate to publish papers relating to some aspect of nursing management.  Each student can access a discussion board whereby group members can submit original thoughts regarding the subject at hand or respond to a comment made by another group member.  The discussion board has the ability to organize the information into new subject areas or associate each student’s submission with another student’s contribution.  The moderator (group leader responsible for writing the final paper) can see what has been submitted and ask questions of the group or individual students.

If a face-to-face meeting is required, particularly if a decision needs to be made, the following suggestions might help. 

• The agenda for each meeting, and all accompanying documents, should be distributed sufficiently in advance of the meeting that each person has the time to read and assimilate the information, and form an opinion as to what needs to be done.
• The agenda itself must be decision oriented.  If someone has reservations regarding the decision that will be made, those reservations should be discussed in advance of the meeting (using some of the suggestions made earlier).  Each person should be ready to make a decision.
• Do not schedule more topics for discussion than can be covered in one hour.
• Encourage people who do not speak up to do so, and counsel in private those who want to take control of the meeting.
• Do not criticize people for mistakes made or suggestions that prove to be unworkable. Brainstorming and taking risks are important success factors.
• Limit the discussion on each topic.
• Make a decision at the end of each discus­sion.
• Use each meeting to praise people for their individual and collective efforts.

Meetings can be an enormous non-productive cost.  We have the ability to acquire knowledge, discuss issues and make decisions in a collaborative electronic environment.  Many of us can increase our productivity if only we didn’t have to attend an endless series of meetings that really don’t seem to have any useful purpose.

Introduction

Let’s say you are the leader of a software selection initiative for your firm. What should you expect from resellers of the products in which you have an interest? Conversely, what should resellers expect from you? The selection of a new accounting or ERP system is a bit like a dance competition with well rehearsed partners that can take your breath away or so bad that you want to change the channel. If you are one of these participants, who do you want for your dance partner?

The Prospect Profile

If I am a prospect, what should I bring to this dance competition to enhance my chances of success? Perhaps the most important attribute is a commitment to the project. I’m not just talking about the project manager, but every level in the organization.

The CEO has to back the selection team 100% and take an active role (not just passive interest) in the project. In addition the CEO and other executives have to define exactly what they require from the system to assist them measure their progress toward the achievement of their strategic goals. If they do not, then the system will be of little use.

Similarly individuals and groups from each level in the organization need to define exactly what they want. It doesn’t have to be an exhaustive list of specific functions, but rather a definition of how the system needs to help them do their jobs more efficiently and more effectively.

The CIO or IT Manager needs to take an active role in the project, but should not direct it. The CIO needs to make sure that the technology of the system is appropriate and that it will carry them forward for many years.

Knowledge is perhaps one of the most important success factors. In many instances people might have formed a picture in their minds (sometimes a very fuzzy picture) regarding where they want to be, but they may not know how to get there. Prospects need to admit that they don’t have all of the answers, but they do have a thirst for knowledge. They need to learn as much as they can before they start this project (industry requirements, strengths and weaknesses of their current system, functionality that is available in today’s systems that might be of interest and of course how to manage a successful software selection project).

Now this is the ideal prospect!

The Reseller Profile

Most accounting and ERP systems are sold and supported by resellers so let’s just pick on resellers.

While an intimate knowledge of the products they sell are a critical requirement, that’s not what’s important initially. Prospects need a firm that will lead them to success. In this case the definition of success is going to be different for each prospect. Since many prospects have not been through this process, their lack of knowledge is the most important initial issue.

Most firms are not an ideal prospect as described above. They may not even understand that their business processes might be one of their restrictions, and they may not understand what’s possible in terms of modern business management systems. Prospects need a reseller that understands business or at least understands that every firm needs to evaluate its business processes.

Prospects also need a reseller that offers as its most important selling point a detailed process roadmap that will literally take a user by the hand and lead them through every stage of the knowledge acquisition, business process analysis, software selection and implementation project. Notice that I have said absolutely nothing about an evaluation of the attributes of the product or products offered by the reseller. The answer is simple. How can you properly evaluate a software product if you don’t have a solid basis for comparison?

In the end prospects need a business partner that will help them acquire the knowledge necessary for them to create a foundation for business success. Yes, prospects need a business management system that will do the job, but more importantly they need the knowledge and cooperation that only the best reseller can provide.