Managing For Results

In a challenging economic environment like ours, the only way to ensure the continued viability of companies is to focus on performance and reward it accordingly. What should be on the minds of executives is how they can effectively measure and manage performance at all levels within their organisations. More and more organisations are implementing performance incentive schemes for their staff and these companies have already started seeing a turnaround in their performance. The only way to guarantee future success is to focus on issues of performance and rewards. However, many companies often miss it in that it is not only rewarding performance that is important but effectively managing it. As a manager, you need to motivate your team to get things done. Motivation is beyond remuneration or handsome incentives. As a manager you need to bond with your staff. You also need to develop relationships that inspire employees to get involved and do more.

Many organisations these days have mercenaries. Their employees are there just because they want to be paid at the end of the month. Performance in this case is driven by the fact that the employee wants to make “ends meet.” When you ask these employees how work is like, there are really upfront and tell you, “I hate my job!” Whilst there may be many other reasons why employees grow to hate their job yet still do it, a primary reason is a poor subordinate – boss relationship. Very few managers have the requisite people skills needed to effectively manage their subordinates for performance. This only makes sense because very few managers have been trained to do so. Many managers have been taught to manage by objectives and metrics to monitor performance, and they have this misconception that bonding with your team members will be seen as a distraction at best or weakness at worst.

Leaders should develop personal relationships with their subordinates. The productive manager is less like a football coach with a whistle around his neck and more like a belayer helping climbers reach the next goal. While it is true that companies with abundant resources can afford to use fear as a motivator and absorb the cost of more frequent hirings and firings, this approach frequently ends up with a demoralised workforce, high staff turnover and poor service delivery.

Many employees are emotional hostages to their work places. They are hostages to emotions such as anxiety, fear and ambition. This negatively impacts on performance. George Kohlrieser (George Kohlrieser, 2001), argues that to escape from these emotional hostage situations, each employee needs a secure base — a person, place, goal or object that provides a place of protection, gives a sense of comfort, and a source of energy. This is where managers are most important.

As a manager, you are there to motivate people to respond to the changing goals and circumstances. You define and direct what needs to be done and you inspire employees to accomplish that. Too often, your subordinates do not give you the results you want because there is no relationship between you, the manager, and the employee. An example would be employees’ response to change. Employees do not resist change itself, rather the pain of change and the fear of the unknown that comes with it. As a result, employees think more defensively, they hold back and resist pursuing success and playing to win. In the workplace, leaders who show concern and interest in their employees' lives and have a predictable set of rules, create a healthy attachment that empowers others to embrace the risk of pursuing success.

Employees want to be cared for. They want to feel that their manager genuinely has their interests at heart. Effectively managing for performance will require that managers move beyond simply giving instructions and demanding results. I am not suggesting that managers should act as “caregivers” or “parents”; rather that these insights help managers work with people's strengths and tendencies, rather than against them. Isolating an employee with authoritative demands and intimidation triggers a sense of isolation, threat, and fear. Then the brain slams the brakes on the ability to take initiative and makes it harder for people to think productively.

Behavioural psychology teaches us that humans will behave more favourable to crisis situations if they feel they have support. Strongly subordinate superior bonds can help teams survive and thrive in crisis situations. In the same light, a thing that managers often miss is that employees will respond more favourably to a rebuke, for example, where they feel that there is a positive relationship between you and them. When you look at it, developing relationships is also psychologically rewarding to those who give it, generating a sense of reward and connection.

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Harnessing the power of teams in organisations?

One of the key challenges facing organisations today is building effective teams that will help the organisation achieve its goals. The need for teamwork at all levels of the organisation cannot be over emphasized. For organisations to achieve superior performance, employees need to work together. However getting people to work together towards achieving a common goal is a challenging assignment for all managers. Part of the reasons why we undertake employee engagement surveys is to help managers assess and improve teamwork in their organisation.

What is a team? There are two key characteristics of a team; the presence of a unifying task and interdependence among the members in accomplishing the task. Besides these, the environment in which a work team operates also plays a key role in the success of any team effort. Putting together an effective team is not an easy task. In most cases people pretend to work together on the surface but there will be deep-rooted divisions within the team that need attention for the team to succeed.  It is easy to talk about teams when in actual fact it is a group of individuals who share nothing in common besides having the same paymaster.

If only organisations could understand and harness the power of collaboration in group relations, there would be a marked improvement in performance. Ordinarily employees are geared to work in teams and the primary role of management in this case is to integrate team practices into everyday work patterns. However, before embarking on this exercise, it is important to assess and understand the teamwork environment in the organisation. Without a thorough understanding of the said environment in the organisation, team building efforts may fail because you might be addressing the wrong team issues. There is also a need to understand team-working styles of each team member. This information can be used as a basis for giving feedback to the individual and fellow team members. The strength of this approach is that information gathered herein normally leads to self-awareness and self-correction.

Effective teams, to a large extent, rely upon the psychological capacity of team members to work together. Individual team members need to have an appreciation of their role in the team and how it affects the effectiveness of the team. The members need to have a clear sense of the goal the team is trying to achieve.  They need to have a collective sense of reality, where each one clearly understands not only their role but also that role of other team members.

In a presentation to the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organisations Symposium, Susan Long (2000) noted that most people in work teams or organisations saw their role as the single most important without which the organisation would not operate effectively. It is this kind of attitude that forces people to be single-minded in dealing with work colleagues or fellow team members to the detriment of the team.

Considering the number of different groups individuals are members of and the roles they play in these groups at work, there is potential for difficult inter -group relations. The effectiveness of any team efforts revolves around the ability of individual team members to integrate the different roles, values, and the way they exercise authority in groups. The way people exercise authority is very critical in the success of team working in organisations. Without clear authority and boundary definition, work teams spend most of their productive time engaged in counterproductive behaviour.

For a team to be effective there must be a way of containing the anxiety arising from working in a group. When a group of people meet especially in the work place a number of group dynamics take place and, if not handled properly, can destroy the team. You are probably wondering about situations in your own organisations where people rarely work together towards achieving the organisation’s goals. In most cases it will seem there are personality clashes when in actual fact, it is all to do with group dynamics related to how people exercise authority in groups. The bad attributes of the team are often projected onto other people or departments within the organisation. This is normally a source of frustration and conflict that characterizes work teams in organisations today.

Without the ability to understand the deep-rooted psychological basis of group relations, team building efforts will continue to produce lukewarm results.

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The New Sliced Bread

Psychometric tests are fast gaining popularity as the tool of choice for various uses such as Recruitment and Selection, Staff development and Team development. Many organisations are now opting for psychometric tests as they have realised that they are a powerful way of ensuring the best candidates are selected by assessing their ability and preferred behavioural styles. Organisations can use these tests for career planning and matching employees to jobs, identifying academic abilities and aims and aspirations covering work and life outside work.

Psychometric tests aim to measure attributes such as intelligence, aptitude and personality. In recruitment they are used (in conjunction with other methods) to help determine how a candidate might perform in a given role. With the current situation in our country where, if a vacancy comes up, hundreds of people apply for it, psychometric testing can be a very effective tool in the selection process to determine the most suitable candidate. Given that the majority of managers regret their hiring decisions almost immediately, not forgetting the cost of recruitment, it makes sense to make sure you get it right from the onset. Psychometric testing improves the efficiency of the recruitment process, thereby reducing the time and money spent on unsuitable candidates.

The main purpose and key responsibilities of a role need to be considered, and there is a need to separate the desirable, essential and peripheral skills/attributes before committing to psychometric testing. After this you can then determine which psychometric tools to use. Psychometric tests allow you to measure and analyse specific information that may otherwise be very difficult, or time consuming to accurately gauge. There are various tools which can be used, not only in recruitment but in the retention and development of staff as well. For example, personality or behavioural profiling can be used to gain an insight into particular traits, areas of strength, weakness, work style and preference. We all know the saying,

‘employees don’t leave companies, they leave managers.’

If you understand how individual employees might respond to different situations, you can adapt your style to bring out the best in your staff. This can all be achieved through the use of psychometric testing.

Psychometric tests can be used in profiling for internal promotions or re-organising work flow. By reallocating tasks amongst staff members to suit their abilities and preferences, you can increase job satisfaction and organisational efficiencies. When everyone is put in a position where they are able to fully utilise their natural abilities, there is a higher chance of them being more productive as well.

Overall, psychometric tests can be used to the employees’ and the organisation’s benefit. The expenses involved in psychometric assessment are minimal when compared with the costs of high-turn over, under-performance or misemployment of staff. Both parties stand to gain, depending on the objective of the tests. The organisation will benefit by getting the best skill to fulfil its need, thereby guaranteeing longevity and sustainability. The employee will benefit by being placed in a department, or being given work, which best suits his profile. This results in a win-win situation.

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Something's Gotta Give

There is so much pressure on working mothers. At home, you have to be a jack-of-all-trades and a master of all: cooking, feeding, nursing, cleaning, singing, teaching, juggling… all the professions rolled into one! At work, you have to be the cool, calm, collected, no-spit-porridge-milk-or-vomit-on-my-clothes professional with not a hair out of place. You cannot afford to get flustered or frazzled lest you be called unprofessional. All thoughts have to be collected and filed in a chronological order for quick and easy access (never mind that worrying cough that kept you awake last night..)

There is so much competition in the working world and for working mums, its double the workload. You cannot afford to, no matter how much your body begs you, just fall into bed at the end of an exhausting day at work. There is still homework to supervise, a family to feed, fevers to tend to. On top of this, you still have to read and research in order to keep up with the Joneses of the workplace, that young flock who are up to date on the technology, who are innovative and vibrant and ready to take on the world and all her cousins (could it be the ready meals when they get home and the undisturbed nights???)

How then to juggle all this and still maintain one’s sanity, and still maintain an edge to be competent enough at work? If anyone has a solution, I would love to know it please! I believe something’s gotta give. You can do the juggling act perfectly enough, but the results you produce will not be perfect. The house will not be as sparkling as you want it to be, the kids as cultured and well mannered as you would wish them to be, the husband as cooperative as he should be. At work, yes, you will produce results, on time too, amazingly. Yes there will be few or no errors (whether of judgment or typos) in your reports. Yes you will know exactly where you put which file, how to search for documents on the computer, how to google anything, and even how to use Excel. You will not be as techno-savvy, as well read and researched, as on-point as you would want to be. This would mean cutting on the other side; no homework supervision, no picnics with the family, no after work bathtimes…

Competing with the workplace Joneses? I don’t know. They will always have an edge over you. They do not have so much to juggle. They do not have to come to work having left a sick child at home, worried sick about that 38 degree reading on the thermometer before they left home. They have all the time to do research and to read as widely as they can.

Slow down, take a deep breath, refocus and be realistic. If you can’t beat them, then start a new game. Do your best, at home, at work. Put your all into what you are doing. Do your reports as thoroughly as you would change a diaper or feed a fussy eater. Learn what you can, research what you can. Be the best you can be, don’t overpromise on deadlines, and it will all work out. Because apart from clocking 24 hour days, there’s just not enough time to keep up with the Joneses!

By Lesley Nyandoro (Consultant)

For views and comments email Lesley at lnyandoro@ipcconsultants.com or ipc@ipcconsultants.com

The Customer Has Been Neglected

The Customer has been neglected

It is amazing how very little attention is paid to the aspect of customer care by a lot of organisations. While management spends hours on end drafting and crafting strategies, trying to pave the way forward for their organisations, this very important aspect is most often forgotten. It is rather ironic that regardless of what strategies you come up with, the onus at the end of the day rests on the client /customer, without whom you would have no business.

Just trying to get a phone call through to some organisations is a nightmare because the telephone is constantly engaged or no one bothers to answer it, not to mention the time you have to spend on hold after which you are told that the person you are looking for is unavailable, before being unceremoniously cut off without even a chance to ask if someone else could help you.  In some instances you are told that the person you are looking for is not in and upon requesting on being assisted by someone else, you are rudely informed that no one else except that person can help you so you just have to try calling them back later. Honestly some of the things you hear are appalling to say the least. There is a serious need for organisations to become customer focused and realise that they exist to serve the customer and going out of their way here and there to please them is mandatory for organisational success.

A customer can be external or internal and both are important. The Human Resources Department, for example, exists to serve internal clients, whom if dissatisfied cannot carry out their work effectively and this has an overall negative bearing on the organisation as a whole. So whether internal or external, the least service you can afford a customer is to please them with efficiency, good attitude and knowhow of what you are doing.

This concept has been so widely understood by organisations in first world countries but now has to be just as equally understood by organisations in Zimbabwe if they are going to be competing in the big league. This is where customer care courses come in. For a long time Zimbabwean organisations have gotten away with being rude and hostile to customers because at the end of the day, it had no real bearing on organisational performance. Customers had no option for alternative services or products and in most cases had to swallow down abuse being totally at the mercy of the service or product provider. Fortunately dollarization has brought with it customer freedom, where customers can choose, except of course in the case of parastatals where one just does not have any choice for service provision. It is these organisations that perhaps need customer care skills the most.

Customer care courses help to re-orient the employees on what is truly important –customers. The objectives of these courses are to create a mind shift for employees from “I am king and this is my domain’’ to “Customer is king and my job here is to delight them with excellent service.” Employees need to understand that customer service is not in any way linked to the amount of money they are getting on the job or how they are being treated by their superiors. This is often the justification for poor customer service. What we often forget is that each one of us is at some point a customer or client of someone else, and just as you do not understand why someone may go out of their way to be nasty to you a customer who has done nothing wrong except choose them as their provider of goods or services, is the same confusion that customers face at your hand. They do not and should not care about your work conditions or that you are not feeling well or you have just had a fight with your boss. All they should worry about is that their needs are effectively and efficiently met without any emotional pain. The fact that you as a service or goods provider are sitting behind that desk and not at home means you have an obligation to the customer and are bound to deliver good service with a good attitude.

Employees, especially customer facing ones need not only to manage their own behaviour but to understand customer behaviour and how to deal with individual needs. Skills need to be developed and refreshed to address all aspects of customer service and understanding customer care standards.

Other organisations argue that training should be the least on the agenda of things to do considering the tight cash flows that they are facing. It is true that some organisations can really not afford to train but for others it is a mere excuse to make way for “more important” projects. What they forget to realise is that training is a long term investment if done correctly, one that will reap them life time rewards. For once an organisational culture of customer excellence is set; it can be easily perpetuated for as long as long as the organisation is in existence.

A while back I wrote about the importance of employer branding and how some organisations would never get people interested in working for them because they have built poor brands for themselves. An employer brand is what insiders and outsiders to the organisation perceive that organisation to be like. Most of it has to do with customer service. Who would want to work in an organisation in which you have been treated like trash? Chances are when the name of that organisation comes up you are quick to point out how terrible they are and this is how an organisation’s image is tarnished just by word of mouth.

The new age customer is different, more demanding and more aware of their rights than the customer of old. Organisations that are aware of this fact are likely to do better than those that aren’t. It is never too late to make a turnaround for the better and most often the difference between being great and mediocre lies in refocusing and letting the customer be the central focus of all business activity.

Memory Nguwi is the Managing Consultant of Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. Phone 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number 077 2356 361 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.com

Why Businesses Should Embrace Social Media

When you need to find information, what’s the first place you look at? “The internet” I guess. The same applies to your clients and potential clients. Now reports say the second most visited website as of 26 march 2012 is Facebook, the social media giant, just after Google ( of course). But reports as of April 2011 have it that it had toppled Google as the most frequently visited site. Chances are, your competitors are plying their wares on the World Wide Web through such social media. If you aren’t using social media for your business, your potential customer base is passing you by.


New research states that local marketers are engaging with Facebook like never before.  According to small-business social network Merchant Circle as of 2011, 70% of small businesses now use Facebook to reach consumers. This was up from 50% for 2010 and is more than the 66% of them that say they currently use Google search advertising. So what this means is that Facebook now ranks as the most popular marketing tool among local businesses.

Consider this:

1. Fifty percent of active Facebook users log in at least daily and spend close to an hour a day and are posting more than 500 updates a second.
2. There are 1.6 million active Facebook pages and more than 350 million active users
3. When it comes to Twitter, there are close to 20 million users who are posting an average of 600 tweets a second

That is a lot of information being exchanged. When you take those numbers and couple it with your competition who might be taking advantage of blogging as a way to spread the word about themselves, you simply need to be swimming in that information ocean, don’t you think?

So clearly, Social Media is NOT a fad. It is not going anywhere. When I first started writing this article, I went really deep into what social media was, the individual platforms and why you should care. Ultimately, none of that mattered because you only need to know one simple fact. Social Media, as a whole, has completely changed our culture forever. What people thought was a fad has now become a complete ‘culture shift’.

The social media phenomenon is global and it is not "just used by teenagers and young adults". This is why businesses should realize the social platform is an increasingly important platform for consumers to learn about companies' branding and problem resolution. However, most companies are "still in the 'crawl' stage of the crawl-walk-run continuum" in catering to this social demand. This is because they, particularly their legal departments (IT could be one of them), are struggling to figure out where and how social media should be managed.

Very good examples of businesses who have embraced such are Marriott Hotels, online travel agent Expedia and budget carrier AirAsia can be said to be doing a "terrific job" using social media to serve many of their customers' needs such as marketing, promotions and customer service through social channels. Malaysian Airlines, for one, allowed customers to book their flights and check-in online on Facebook with MHbuddy. According to Amin Khan, executive vice president of commercial strategy at Malaysia Airlines, the MHbuddy app functions as its "ticket office on social media", giving users greater convenience when booking flights and sharing their plans with online friends. Clearly, social media is a proven tool in marketing your business.

Here are five other reasons to jump into social media:

1. Stay up to date on your industry
2. Track what others are saying about your business and respond to those comments
3. Offer emergency updates or jump in when a breaking trend happens in your industry
4. Offer amazing customer service through your social media presence. Ask and answer questions
5. Drive traffic to your website

I will give you enough time to look at the above and consider embracing social media. If you decide to embrace it as a business, check out our next IPC Bulletin (May Issue) for more on Why and How Businesses can embrace social media.

By Lovemore Jokonya

(IT Consultant) For views and comments email lovemore@ipcconsultants.com or call +263 4 481946-8

Profit and Productivity

The Relationship between Profit and Productivity 

As highlighted in previous articles on the same subject, production is the not the same as productivity. Productivity in simple terms means producing more with fewer resources while maintaining or increasing the quality of products.  However it is the relationship between profitability and productivity which must be explored for the benefits of all stakeholders.  Productivity analysis provides key insight into business performance that normally is not shown by the ordinary financial analysis.  In this analysis we try to show the dynamics of change in revenue and expenses between two accounting periods (2010 & 2011) expressed in terms of impact of productivity and price recovery. Such a strategic analysis of the company’s financial performance is so vital especially when the company wants to strategise for the next or coming period.

There is a mistaken belief that making a profit means the company is productive. In productivity accounting PROFIT = PRODUCTIVITY + PRICE RECOVERY. The question that then needs to be answered by every executive is: Is our profit growth productivity driven or it is price driven? A more sustainable business model is where profitability is productivity driven. It is important for captains of industry to note that an increase in capacity utilisation does not mean there is an increase in productivity. 

Using an example, I am going to take you through the process of interpreting your financial performance using productivity accounting. The company below produces 2 products; sweets and chocolates. Profit growth for this company from 2010 to 2011 is US $37.00. Of the $37.00 how much was due to productivity gains and how much was due to price recovery?

		Data Period 2010			Data Period 2011
	Value($)	Quantity(tons)	Price($)	Value($)	Quantity	Price($)
Products
Sweets	224.00	127.00	1.76	320.00	165.00	1.94
Chocolates	430.00	210.00	2.05	490.00	225.00	2.18
Total	654.00			810.00
Resources
Labour	252.00	21.00	12.00	328.00	25.00	13.12
Materials	260.00	65.00	4.00	303.00	72.00	4.21
Capital	142.00	550.00	0.26	142.00	550.00	0.26
Total	654.00			773.00
Reconciliation
Revenue	654.00			810.00
Costs	512.00			631.00
Profit	142.00			179.00

Productivity Analysis

		Effect of
	Profit Variance	Productivity Variance	Productivity Variance	Capacity Utilisation	Resources Allocation	Price Recovery
Resources		$	%
Labour	-15.89	-10.34	-3.45	0.00	-10.34	-5.55
Materials	19.02	10.86	3.77	0.00	10.86	8.16
Capital	33.87	21.22	14.94	21.22	0.00	12.65
Total	37.00	21.74	2.98	21.22	0.52	15.26

Total productivity increased by 2.98% with a positive impact on profits of $21.74. This occurred because total output quantities (volumes) increased by 14.95% while resources quantities increased by 11.62%.

Labour productivity declined by 3.45% with a negative impact on profitability of $10.34, while material productivity (or yield, recovery, etc.) rose by 3.77% and capital productivity jumped by 14.94%. The positive effects of materials and capital productivity growth offset the negative effect of labour productivity losses giving increase in total productivity of 2.98%.

The labour productivity loss might simply be a result of staff turnover causing the skills base to deteriorate, or perhaps the appointment of new and less effective supervisors. On the other hand, it might be a strategic act like deliberately employing additional skilled people to manage production line so as to improve material recovery and reduce downtime on the plant. It could be associated with the introduction of a new product line and labour productivity loss will only be temporary. The simple causes of labour productivity losses can be addressed though training while the more complex causes flow from strategic interventions that were designed to trade off labour productivity losses in order to get gains on material and capital.

Profits were further increased because of price –recovery. This came about because product prices increased by 7.75% while total resources prices increased by only 5.89%. This positive profit impact can be seen as either “good” or “bad” depending on circumstances. If the company is simply price gouging then the effect will be to reduce competitiveness or cause people to seek substitutes. Alternately, it might have arisen because the company had endured a period of severe price under- recovery in the past and this was simply redressing the imbalance. It might also be the result of the company’s own accounting conversion of not revaluing capital such that the capital price remained constant.

Of the $37.00 profit growth from 2010 to 2011, productivity contributed $21.74 (or 59%) and price recovery contributed $15.26 (or 41%). This would put the company in the “Awaken” segment of the strategic grid. This performance indicated the best of both worlds where the organisation is improving productivity and price recovery. However, excessive price recovery may create opportunities for competitors to undercut the business’ product prices and thereby reducing the company’s market share. Organisations placed in this category survive through price – recovery because of the nature of their market. It is very likely that organisations in this segment are in a “monopolistic “situation.

We urge organisations to continuously monitor productivity changes to enable them to come up with viable strategies needed to make the business sustainable.

Memory Nguwi is the Managing Consultant of Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources consulting firm. Phone 481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number 0772 356 361 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com or visit our website at www.ipcconsultants.comor visit our blog www.ipconsultants.blogspot.com