April 2007 Archives

The McKinsey Quarterly: Exploring business's social contract: An interview with Daniel Yankelovich

The values of the generations that grew up before 1950 are embodied in the concept of enlightened self-interest—not naked self-interest, but enlightened self-interest. Enlightened self-interest is when you make a profit by meeting a need, by fulfilling a social function. The unintended consequence of the shift in moral values during the 1970s has been the ascendance of unenlightened self-interest—winning for yourself; I win, you lose. The Enron psychology was winning for yourself, being out for yourself. The rationalization was, “We didn’t do anything wrong, because we didn’t break the law.” Well, Enron did break the law, but many of the people who are undermining the trust of the public hold the view that morality simply means not breaking the law. To my generation, that’s moral blindness.

I just had a conversation today with Dulce-Maria Vasquez of Kamaleo, a consulting firm in Mexico focusing on change management, and who did a great job at Schneider Electric last year.

On one of her presentation change management is presented as a process. You know: Analysis > Development > Roll-Out > Post-Roll-Out > Stabilization... or something like this.

I believe there is a flaw in such a presentation, not because it's wrong, but because it is misleading. Some managers might actually end up thinking that change can be systematic and automated. That's dictatorship. Indeed, there are some phases and milestones to any major collective change, but in the same way as a growing plant: first a leaf, then a branch, then flowers, then fruits...What managers should do to make change happen is only a process at a high level: to have a good crop, you need to plough, then to sow, then to water, maybe spread some fertilizer, and to harvest when the day comes. But if you stay at that level, you are unlikely to succeed as a farmer. Plants are complex systems which evolve over time depending on external factors. One plant might be growing and healthy while another one is dying. You might be facing draught or floods. This means that you must be prepared to take unforeseen action all the time. What makes a great farmer is the ability to spot possible illnesses very early and take action accordingly. But that's not a process. It's a practice.

So is change management, and knowledge management, and management in general.

Bain recently issued a report on the top 25 management tools for 2007. Here's the list:

• 1. Balanced Scorecard


• 2. Benchmarking


• 3. Business Process Reengineering


• 4. Collaborative Innovation


• 5. Consumer Ethnography


• 6. Core Competencies


• 7. Corporate Blogs


• 8. Customer Relationship Management


• 9. Customer Segmentation


• 10. Growth Strategy Tools


• 11. Knowledge Management


• 12. Lean Operations


• 13. Loyalty Management Tools


• 14. Mergers and Acquisitions


• 15. Mission and Vision Statements


• 16. Offshoring


• 17. Outsourcing


• 18. RFID


• 19. Scenario and Contingency Planning


• 20. Shared Service Centers


• 21. Six Sigma


• 22. Strategic Alliances


• 23. Strategic Planning


• 24. Supply Chain Management


• 25. Total Quality Management

[thanks successful-consultants]