MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 5 Concepts.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 5 Concepts.
Even if you are not the top decision maker of an organization, why is it important to understand your organization's competitors?
Because you need you know how you help align to your company's objectives. Many companies achieve success through the little things key personnel do every day that secure the company's competitive advantage. Innovative managers can direct their groups through change, even though the company as a whole does not see the need for change. Effective and innovative management at the top is critical for fast moving industries, but other industries are still cemented in the industrial wave and move slowly. It is not as critical for management to recognize the need for change, but if they do not have visionary manager - they will have a difficult surviving in the long run. The refractory, foundry and steel industries of the USA are examples of this comment. Managements with the inability to adapt and change went into bankruptcy, losing billions of dollars for their stakeholder, with the employees being the biggest losers.

What are your personal competitive advantages?

I have a strong sense of accomplishment. I am detailed oriented enough to outline what is necessary without over doing it. My major goals when undertaking a project is to outline the details, plan for action, implement and execute without worrying what can go wrong, just take it on the chin and shoot from the hip - get it done. I have been involved with too many people who complain and debate what can go wrong, why it will not work, and why something else should be done. If they would have just jumped in with two feet and had faith in themselves, their abilities, and the situation - they would have had the project conquered and completed on time. You can not be afraid of failure or success. Ability to execute and your eye on the ball is critical to maintaining your competitive advantage.

What do you do better than your counterparts in your current job?

Not being distracted by why something can not be done or following the little "yellow brick road" that is not part of the project - no matter how interesting it may be. You must be able to critically focus on the bulls eye - the center of the target. Without that focus, the project will not achieve its full potential. As a manager of a department I also strive to delegate all of my job and the responsibilities down as far as I can. This is based on my philosophy to teach and train those reporting to me to do my job. The only way I can grow and expand my job is through the people with whom I empower to do my job and greater deeds beyond. It does work and I am in the process of a pilot program to show what is possible through believing in the right people.

In your industry? Compared to workers in general (in and out of your field of expertise)?
My industry is much smaller in the USA than it was 20 years ago. Much of the industry has gone overseas, but not to competition in foreign countries in my assessment, but mainly to incompetent management through complacency. This industry began exactly like the steel industry - large salaries, bonuses, and perks to salary and top executives and exploitation of the laborers - no communication from bottom to top. Unions really facilitated this problem that lead to the destruction of wealth for the shareholder - which included the workers themselves. There really was no communications, only confrontations between the "white collared" and the "blue collared" employees, which were fostered by the short-termed gains in profits. This all lead to their destruction, as the manufacturing jobs moved quickly out if the USA. This trend was evident many years before the management of these companies chose to acknowledged the trend. The bottom line is to flatten the structure to ensure that the "bottom" is aligned with the "top" and I may add that the top being aligned with the bottom is more important than the top "being aligned with the top" . Management is what directs the strategy and the profits, but never forget it is the "bottoms" that make it all happen.

As a company grows, will its competitive advantages change?

Allied as a company, I see their competitive advantage growing and changing in an advantageous way. The advantage is the ability to maintain strong R&D expenses, global growth, and resistance against competition. The main problem is gathering enough information that is in turn formed into knowledge. There are so many opportunities and many of them are not a good fit. All of these opportunities take substantial resources to pursue. Pursuing the wrong ones can be damaging to the company.
Have you seen this happen in your place of business?
I have my Master of Science in Ceramic Engineering and I have worked in three different sectors of this industry. Currently, being in the refectory industry, as reclining industry in the USA for metal containment, I have seen Allied take a proactive approach to the market - above the curve when compared to my previous jobs and especially to the market.
Is this good or bad? Explain your responses.
This is good, but resources still need to be better allocated. Competition globally is growing every day. The only competitive advantage that we have and the USA has is the immense knowledge base that a majority of the companies take for granted (in some ways). I do not know of many companies that take full advantage and fully exploit their knowledge base that resides in their workforce.

I will say this is good. Allied is global and the management is globally "committed" to being there first to service and commit to the customer. Being proactive and being first to market is very important to the market. Most customer do not remember who is trying to break in, but who was the first to meet their needs!!

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 4 Concepts.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 4 Concepts.
How will your knowledge of information management help you in your future projects and proposals?

Information knowledge will lead to knowledge management. This will allow you design, develop, and implement a data warehouse. Having accurate and timely information in the form of knowledge reports will make you more efficient. You will have the time to analyze information and knowledge (80 to 90 %) instead of taking that amount time gathering and assembling the data into useful information. This will direct you to strategically aligned projects and proposals quickly. Also based on models and criteria you set up, it may highlight projects and proposals that in the past would have gone under the radar. It is my opinion that there are a certain percentage of opportunities that pass companies by because they do not recognize them and urgency of seizing them now instead of later. Timing is everything and missing a golden opportunity due to distractions (such as gathering data to assembly information so it can be analyzed into knowledge) is probably a cost that never gets assigned on a income statement.

How can you work to improve the internal marketing activities at your organization?

This is a difficult one. The best way currently is to improve my human capital at work and enrich my current relationships. This will increase my awareness through the departments. Additionally, this will increase my knowledge of the inter workings of each department and their processes. The more I understand and engage in some of these processes the better I can facilitate interdepartmental communications. In simpler terms, make myself a valuable company wide source of knowledge - a knowledge resource for department to access.

How will your preference of the four-lens approach impact your ability or desire to assist new employees in becoming acclimated to the culture of your organization?

Using the four lens approach would have a positive impact on these aspects. It will also help you analyze you knowledge and assessment of the organization. There are numerous mistakes that can be made during the orientation of a new hire. Orientation programs are very important and these first impressions that are established during the orientation will have lastly effects on the new hires attitude and commitment to the company.

Companies that take the quadrant A/B perceptive and just have a detailed checklist to "crunch" through generally give the impression of going through the motions is important. This does not instill motivation or initiative in the new hire. There is also a chance of having an impersonal program and leaves the employee overwhelmed and feeling of not being welcomed.

Companies that take the quadrant C/D perceptive will generally instill enthusiasm and excitement. The employee will feel engaged and welcomed into the company's culture. The employee will understand the mission and vision of the company and probably what are its long-term goals. The weakness is that the employee will have no clue to how they fit into the company's strategic objectives and how they contribute to the success of the company. They do not know the expectations, responsibilities, and what they are accountable for when performing their job.

So using the four lens perceptive is critical in developing and implementing an orientation program that positively impact the bottom line instead of being a drain on the company's resources.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 3 Concepts.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 3 Concepts.
How will your knowledge of the financial concepts help you in your future projects and proposals?

Knowledge is power and powerful. So it may not do anything to your decisions, but with them - at least you would be making an informed decision instead of one with your head potentially in the sand or in a vacuum. So to answer the question, yes knowledge would effect the potential projects and proposals. You will start to access PVA, NPVA and various other capital aspects and use these to shape your decisions as well as how you approach them. Additionally,it will challenge you to develop metrics for "things" not normally "accounted for" and develop more "realistic" metrics for "cost of quality" and skill level/intellectual property of workers.

Conceptually understanding the financial aspects and their interactions coupled with common sense will help make sound decisions. NPV takes in account the true value of money, which PBP or ROI does not. But depending on a company's perspective and time frame, the PBP may be more important than the highest NPV, due to cash flow issue and cash reserve requirements.

Does the risk level of a leader come into play when making such financial decisions? How so?

Yes it comes very much into play. Betting on the company's cash reserves and confidence in the Sales force to exceed the forecast is needed to meet the competitive pressures. Also it allows you to look past the strict restraints of PBP that are prevalent (Industrial age mentality) and more into the NPA aspect of projects. Risk may take 5 years or so to pay off big and these projects would be pursued if PBP was used in combination of NPV of only 3 to 4 years. It is very easy to miss big profits from not choosing a project, because its payoff took too long.

Will the decision-makers’ preference of the four lens impact his or her decision making based on the financial models reviewed in this module? Why?

Yes, the preference for one aspect of the four lens and not all of them will impact a decisions-maker's perspective significantly. This was evident in the HBR articles about budgeting. Typical industrial age and type A perspective dominate the budgeting perspective of a company. This causes many companies to forget what their true vision and mission is when addressing the strategic initiatives. The leader must guide the decision-maker's to embrace the four lens approach or have the budgeting and planning processes embrace each other instead of competing against each other. Strategic objectives through implementation of initiatives can only be achieved through human, capital, and financial resources. These resources are typically heavily relied on for planning, but usually not budgeted for in the budget process. Allocating and committing these resource in the budgetary process facilitates motivation to achieve the strategic directives put forth by the company's vision.

It is important for the leader to ensure that strategy, short-term planning, and budgets interact for the betterment of the company's wealth. The four lens approach allows the executive management to not only quantify initiatives, but also prioritize them and identify any gaps in objectives that may exist. This fosters communication among the workers and leads to greater innovation, enhanced performance, and competitive advantages, which all contribute to the long-term growth and wealth generation for a company.

Strict type A perceptive of focused only on the budgetary results ignores the the long-term growth plans and SHV that includes

R&D investments, Process Improvements, New markets and customer, management of intellectual property, and increase in asset base (property, plant, and new equipment).

These are all drivers for value creation and cash flow. A budgetary perspective focuses only on short-term earning and metrics, which result in corresponding responses and being short-sighted.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 2 Concepts.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 2 Concepts.
Look at your own organization. How has supply and/or demand changed at your organization within the past year?

My company, being in a very mature market, refractories, is not only competitive but ever changing. The customers are changing from the old "kick-back" and "handshake" environment to the modern age of lowest price with all the service. The integrated steel industry has dramatically changed the market. It always has - due to large volume of refractories it takes to make iron. The old time USA mills are bankrupt and/or being bought out by foreigners - Mittal, India - is a the biggest aggressor at the moment. All of this also effects the supply/demand of raw materials, which in turn effect the direction of product lines and their effectiveness in the market. Additionally, as the refractory industry as a whole is staying the same (only due to China and India building their infrastructure) - the monolithic market continues to grow. It is growing at the expense of bricks. This has been going on for decades and will continue. Skilled brick layers are getting more difficult to find and less people are wanting to learn this skill.

What factors impacted or instigated the change?

To continue.... The global market in my company's industry has more of an effect than anything else. As Aluminum engines become more and more popular, coupled with rising energy costs - the cost of aluminium units increases. This creates a competition of alumina for refractories vs the aluminium for metal. A supply/demand that effects every single consumer - even if they do not even know about it of even acknowledge it.

This is further fueled by the growing/developing infrastructures of China, India, and Russia. China has more integrated steel mills than the USA and is producing more tonnes as a result. This has lead China to import scrap metal and iron ore from the USA. This has created issues for mini mills, i.e. Nucor, that only uses scrap metal.

Raw material costs have gone up more than customers will pay for the refractories. The supply is high enough and the competitor are willing enough to lower margins and continue supplying the metal melting manufacturers. My company is branching out into heat containment applications, where demand is growing and competition is waning.

The growing infrastructure of China and India will continually compete for these resources.

Reflecting on your past professional life, briefly describe one mistake you have made in your professional career. What have you learned from that mistake?

Probably the most consistent mistake is my inability to play the office politics and brown nose the "bosses." Never been great at playing this game, sucking up to people just because they can advance me never has been my strong suit. I have learned that working hard and being loyal really only get you so far, but I also sleep well at night.

Time will tell, but all I can be is honest, loyal, be a Christan and practise this every day at work. Having integrity and having people follow me for what I do and how I do it, instead of my title and position of power is enough me. I hope that in the long run operating without hidden agendas, sharing the glory and the failures will result in a challenging position that includes stewardship.

Other mistakes include being overly aggressive and impatient when completing tasks and projects. My sense of urgency is usually greater than most. Through this, I learned to listen actively more and let others do the task with my guidance and mentoring. It is a little more rewarding to guide and teach others how to successfully navigate a project, then just doing it myself.

If factors are changing rapidly, which is common in growth organizations, when do leaders find the time to “reflect” on the mistakes to make corrective action?

Dean your comment is right on, the best time is to reflect the moment you have acknowledged the mistakes. I guess my key point is "when the leader acknowledges the mistake". This reflection needs to diagram exactly how the mistake happened and not just "blame" someone or something. Blame only results in a "band-aid" being placed on the issue, labelling it a "corrective action", which will lead to the mistake occurring over and over. Reflection is to dig deep and acknowledge exactly why the mistake happened and aggressively address it. This is called instituting an immediate corrective action and then follow up with an in depth fix or a preventative action. Preventive actions get to the real root of the problem and best done through immediate reflection of the mistake - not months later.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 1 Concepts.

MBA 735 – Reflections on Module 1 Concepts.
How do growth characteristics vary depending on the waves of change an organization experiences?

As the waves of change has progressed from Agricultural to Judgment - speed of information and communication channels determine the growth characteristics. The more efficient the communication channels and the greater need for adaptability to market changes is also factor in these characteristics. In more stable and mature markets or even declining markets, typically stuck in the Industrial age, tend to deal with growth slowly and plan more for what may happen, the past - instead of the present and focus on the future.

The future will be in industries that information and competition is readily available and growth is also available to the company that addresses the issues quickly and effectively. Judgment wave based companies will only act on the valid opportunities, those which align with the company's vision and mission - but also with the individual values and beliefs.

Uncertainty and disorder is all around, as the Judgment age progresses, the more chaotic the global environment becomes more competitive and decision making becomes more important. The leader must be very adaptive and have the ability to build cross-functional teams and facilitate communication channels.

Have you experienced growth in your current or other employment? What factors led you to believe you did or did not experience growth?

I have been in several experiences that exhibited strong growth as well as slow growth. The most recent example was acquiring the technology of a bankrupt company and translating this technology into the current operation culture. It was growth to the company, but for the purchased brand - a re-emergence of ability to ship product to the customer base. Market share was being captured and seized by the competition and the intent of operations and QA was to establish stability back into the market and to the customers. Being in a relative mature USA market, the refractory market captures market share. The other growth has been global through the building of manufacturing sites in "other companies" - the best example of true company growth is the manufacturing plant in china.

The success in China is due recognizing a fact that molten metal is being produced in China and will not be decreasing at all, but increasing. The corporate vision is to serve the customer by "Being there" and the only way to do this was by building a manufacturing plant to support this vision and also take advantage of the the USA's knowledge base to best service this customer base.

If you were given the new project assignment of managing a fast-growing division/department/segment of your organization, what personal skills would you need to improve upon to be successful in your endeavors?

Personally - would be the effective and efficient means to capture necessary and relevant information. I have never been scared or backed down from engaging a project or making a decision. I would rather make a solid "wrong" decision - based on information at the time, then not doing anything (again decision to do nothing - is a decision). I would suspect being in strong growth, one needs to step back into ones beliefs and values and have that navigate you through the chaos. The more solid ones beliefs and values in morals and ethics - the better ones success during the chaotic growth stage.

A leader must be secure with themselves and their abilities. If the leader knows and understands their weaknesses and limitations, then the greater the ability to deal with and embrace uncertainty exists. As the leader has great success and few failures without the understanding the reasons for each - the greater development of arrogance and infallibility.

Reflections on Module 5 - 5c

Many organizations that use the balanced scorecard approach require different people within different functional areas as well as different levels of the organization to complete a balanced scorecard evaluation. Why would it be important to obtain different evaluations? Would you recommend this approach? Why or why not?

Different evaluations on various levels allow the strategic objectives to "filter down" through the levels. Not all departments or people in a company can directly or even indirectly impact the metrics of the executive balanced scorecard. Allowing and advocating the setting of metrics in all department and ensuring that they align with the mission and vision can be very powerful. All employees feel engaged in the company and feel included in the successes of the company as well. This will lead to increased creativity and innovation throughout the company. This approach is highly recommended and will lead to an agile/responsive company to the changing environment lead by customer demands.

A balanced scorecard would be a very powerful means to not only align the workforce to the company's bottom line, but also ensure that the company does not drift away from the strategic objectives. I would guess that many times subtle changes happen over time "at the ranks" that end up with huge cumulative consequences that had gone unnoticed for too long. Accurate and meaningful metrics at that level would have alerted employees at that level to correct and address those issues. This would result in the problem addressed at the lowest level. If these employees needed help, then they would contact the resources they needed to address the problems. Point is that noticing the changes and issues that cause problems before they get too "out of hand" is key to maximizing success. Allowing problems to get too out of hand lead to a drain on a company's resources and missed opportunities.

Reflections on Module 5 - 5b

Does a leader’s lens perspective impact the benchmarks he or she identifies as critical for his or her organization and/or the analysis of such benchmarks? Explain.

The quick answer is yes. Each leader has several benchmarks that are important to them, based on their perspective. If the leader does not use the four-lenses perspective, then too much focus can be placed on one aspect of the company. This can lead to issues being unresolved or addressed in other important/critical areas of the company. It may take years for these issues to finally effect the health of a company - but it will eventually effect the company negatively. The leader should use their preferred benchmarks, but also be open to other benchmarks that measure all of the four-lenses perspectives. Monitoring and evaluating these "other" benchmarks allows the leader to have their hands on the pulse of all the company's activities. This should lead to resources being assigned to where they can maximize profits and sustain long-term growth and stability for the company.

The other point is that as the wave of change enters into the everyday life of a company, past benchmarks may not be great guides in the prediction of the future. This is probably the greatest danger of settling and only using old/past benchmarks. Changes in the global market may have made the benchmarks obsolete. One example is the current ratio. It the current ratio really a good benchmark anymore? It may still have value, but only if you understand the company's business better. Ratios at 1.0 or below may not be bad - but may indicate a market leader, not a laggard. Point is that these old past benchmarks used presently are based on the Industrial Wave mentality - what is there relevance in the Judgment wave? Time will tell!!