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Business management: choosing the right transport

November 11, 2011 By

When a company is choosing its transport services this is a major decision. Though initially it may be thought that the transport of the company’s goods could be managed in-house, and indeed, if this can be managed in a van or two, this is perfectly possible. However, it should be considered that even with experienced staff the management of a fleet of lorries or arranging for rail freight has its own nightmares of organising logistics, and maybe taking energy from the core business of making and selling a quality product.

Clever use of specialised freight or shipping companies can really make a business more efficient. And for businesses that need goods carrying to a range of places, nationally, within Europe or internationally, and particularly for companies who plan to develop or expand export services the choice of business transportation is crucial. [Read more...]

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The Abilene Paradox: the Management of Agreement

October 26, 2011 By

The Abilene Paradox is a psychological construct in Decision Making theory. Formulated by Jerry Harvey after he and his family were on the way to Abilene, which it appears was an unpleasant journey on a hot day when it was finally realised that none of them wanted to go but had agreed because they thought the others did.

In terms of organisations the Abilene Paradox can be stated as follows:

Organisations frequently take actions contradictory to their real requirements, therefore defeating the very purpose they are trying to achieve.  A major consequence of this paradox is therefore that the inability to manage agreement is the major source of organisation dysfunction.

It is the inability to manage agreement, not the inability to manage conflict that is the characteristic of organisations stuck in the Abilene Paradox.

 

Does your organisation display symptoms of the Abilene Paradox?

  • Members agree privately about the problems facing this organisation
  • Members agree what the solutions to these problems should be
  • Members don’t communicate these true feelings. In fact they hide them in public.
  • With such inaccurate information decisions are often poor and counterproductive
  • Members become angry, frustrated, irritated and express dissatisfaction. They form subgroups, cliques, and blame other groups and authority figures

The cycle repeats unless ways are found to manage agreement. Managers should not only recognise the symptoms but be skilled enough in techniques to resolve the issues.

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Management Skills: Why is providing effective feedback essential?

August 12, 2011 By

“Feedback” is the work most often used when talking about formal or informal appraisal interviews and whilst this is an obvious situation for feedback, there are other situations where giving feedback is an important part of the process such as coaching and mentoring. That is guiding and helping staff to learn and gain skills either in a recognised coaching situation or in day to day working contacts.

There are more ways of providing feedback than simply by sitting-down discussions between manager and subordinate. For example, a task that helps people learn by experience or gain a better idea of strengths and weaknesses or even a psychometric questionnaire  for self-analysis can give valuable insights.

Feedback helps employees to answer the questions about themselves and their performance. It may be that employees get the wrong idea about what their managers think of them and their work (especially when the manager is often busy and harassed). Employees without feedback can be underrating or overrating their work performance.

However, poor feedback is worse than none at all. If a manager’s comments are seen is inaccurate or biased or just plain unkind then the impact on performance is going to be negative rather than the positive learning effect that feedback should have.

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Analysing the Abilene Paradox and one way of managing agreement

July 18, 2011 By

The Abilene Paradox – acting in the diametrically opposing way to that which everyone knows should be done, is about managing agreement. As with all paradoxes, the underlying behaviour is about absurdity. It just does not make sense for organisations, whether the smallest business or largest corporation to take actions that lead in the opposite direction to all the information they collectively possess for solving the important problems they have. The actions are absurd because they make the matter worse.  The psychological behaviours powering the paradox are:

1) Action anxiety – people are anxious about acting in a way which they think is contradicting what other people think.

2) Negative Fantasies – people fear that their reasonable and sensible actions and ideas will have a negative consequence if they express them. (People will laugh at me?)

3) Real risk – many people are unwilling to take risk and yet risk is part of life.

4) Fear of separation – people fear ostracism from their group  and the fear of separation from others is what powers the paradox. A paradox within a paradox – by not speaking out people in the organisation actually create the separation they are most anxious about.

Approaches to solving this may differ, but a simple and effective one is to gather the people in the organisation who are key actors in the problem and solution into a group and confront the issues. The person who has convened the meeting then “confesses” his insights into the situation, listens openly to the feedback and lets other members give their views on the issues. The solutions to the problem might be quick and simple once the problem has been faced. There is of, course, risk involved and the lid of Pandora’s box may have been lifted and ugly conflict released.

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