Loading...
Answers
MenuIf business managers perform the same roles and functions globally, why then do organizations fail?
This question has no further details.
Answers
Interesting question, but I doubt anyone humble enough will be able to answer it in a few lines. I'll use an example from sports to answer: all baseball/soccer/football teams have the same amount of players (on the field) and the same roles/positions. They usually also have a similar amount of managers. Why then do some teams succeed and others fail? The answers are one, and most often a combination, of the below (the bigger the organization/team, usually the more reasons):
1. Individual talent (of the employees and/or of the managers).
2. Lack of experience (of the employees and/or the management).
3. bad fit of the business for the market (this could be a bad fit in general, or just at the present time).
4. (the manager) Not knowing how to inspire and motivate your team.
5. The manager's managers not knowing how to inspire and motivate the manager.
6. Not enough money (this is often used as an excuse, but can often be a legitimate reason - there is only so much a person can do with a limited budget)
Many excellent answers have been written on the subject, and I am sure that they are more elaborated that mine. A good start would be "The One Minute Manager" - it's old, a bit 'corny' and has some generalizations, but as I said: it's a good start.
I've successfully helped over 300 entrepreneurs, and I'd be happy to help you if you need.
Good luck
Hello! The implied correlation in the question relates to alignment of roles versus organisational success. This is a very narrow perspective. Assaf already highlighted a range of things to consider in relation to the team or managers themselves, I want to point out the environment and business context.
Regardless of the skill set and motivation, business managers deliver in vastly different business environment. They can face different challenges in relation to e.g.:
(1) Local competition
(2) Time to close on deals
(3) Environmental enablers - e.g. availability of digital infrastructure vs relying on traditional sales channels
(4) Regulation and law
(5) Economic trends - whether the local branch operates in a recessionary or expansionary economic environment
The entire 'stack' of challenges needs to be considered to adjust for environmental differences. I've seen vast differences in how successful companies adjust to local business environments and would be happy to share these observations and techniques with you.
It all boils down to one thing: communication. There are 2 groups of people that determine the success of an organization: the customers and the employees. Companies often focus all their efforts in communicating with the market but fail to recognize that employees are what actually moves things forward. The roles and functions of managers differ very little, what differs is the way that they act in those roles. Good managers act out of empathy, know how to motivate and most importantly listen, bad ones on the contrary delegate, control and belittle. Especially in the age of Millenials, the second type of managers will certainly lead to the organization's failure.
I worked under both types of managers and saw my own performance drastically differ. I was so intrigued by the magnitude of the influence that I decided to study leadership and afterward I started my own organization that I manage based on the previously mentioned principles. To this day, I'm still amazed by the things my employees do and the way that impacts the success of the organization. In case you in need of marketing and business development consulting, feel free to check out our website: https://www.solveo.co/
Such an excellent question especially relevant as so many corporations are failing. Great points have been made, however market and operational variances are the responsibility of company leadership. How leadership makes decisions and with whose input is determined by experience.
_____________________
Turn-arounds require precision.
_____________________
Sears is unfortunately headibg for a corporate graveyard. The hedge fund that acquired Sears made a mess of things.
Sears held three major assets: real estate, Craftsmen tools division and Kenmore appliance division.
The hedge fund liquidated two divisions - typical, but ill-advised. Sears should have judiciously sold real estate, jettisoned Kmart and focused on retailing and wholesaling Craftsman and Kenmore.
Leadership decisions determine the success and failure of companies.
Related Questions
-
How do build a empowered and motivated engineering team?
I am assuming your question is more pertaining to empowering and motivating (rather than hiring). I can outline some of the practices I have seen really result in high motivation and sense of ownership among engineering teams: * Empathize - Your engineering team will work well and be more motivated if they see you as one of them rather than a person who doesn't understand their function. Show your geeky side to them, and show that you understand their thought process and drivers. * Pick their brain on big and small decisions (roadmap, usability, whatever it is) - Product teams value being heard. The more you position yourself as someone who is WANTS to listen, is keen to have their inputs, you will be surprised at how involved they can get, and also how you can actually tap into a lot of smart ideas/thoughts from them that you can develop on. * Take care to explain - show how you arrive at decisions. Share your research, competitive analysis, and even your thought process on arriving at a feature set or list of things for a release. Its stuff you would have worked on anyway - so no harm sharing with more eyes! * Share customer feedback - nothing motivates your engineers than a positive interaction with a customer. Get them to see customer feedback. Have them sit in and observe some of the usability studies. (B2B - have them see you do some demos or do a successful sales pitch) * Send out interesting articles, insights, business and tech articles with your comments/highlights to them on a regular basis (maybe twice a week?) - maybe even some analysis you did on competition or customer feedback * Engineers like working with people they feel are competent and complement the work they are doing to build a great product. So make sure they see how everyone else around them is also doing a good job and adding value and contributing to the success of the product. * Be transparent about the product/business - Make them feel they are responsible and involved in the business, not just technology. I've seen engineering teams happy about their annual goals having components relating to making revenues, keeping customers happy, or reducing costs. If they are enthused about the business as a whole, they will be more motivated with their engineering efforts * Have a mix of little experiments, R&D, attending to engineering debt, in addition to bug fixes and new features that each engineer gets to spend some time on (based on their interest) * Finally get to know each of your engineers personally, and be aware of what their priorities are. Each of us has different motivations in life, so there is no silver bullet to motivate people. When they know you care for them, they are more motivated :).SG
-
What advice would you give me when I take over a new department with a weak team?
For the first 90 days, listen and plan - but don't do anything. You need to understand why they are under performing and 9/10 it's because the previous Manager was just not a good Manager, could not recognize people's strength's, had them in the wrong roles, tried to do their jobs etc etc Read "First break all the Rules" - get to know your team, get to understand their strengths, get people in the right roles (plan a change if reqd) and then your focus after that is break down the barriers that stop your team being successful and get out of their way. “Now, discover your strengths!” that Swier suggests is also a marvellous book\resource to help you in this task. You are in a very fortunate position - there is nothing more rewarding than turning this situation around and there is only one way to go.... up... and that will get you noticed. It is much harder to take over a high performing team and either keep that going or further improve on it, as it's very unlikely you'll get the chance to really meet the previous Manager and understand why they had success and that team's loyalty will be with the previous Manager - this team will be looking for someone to lead, guide them and help them be successful as no-one goes to work wanting to under perform. Show and help them to achieve that and they will do and achieve remarkable things and you will be so proud of them as you watch them develop, achieve, grow in confidence and keep going. So, give thanks for having landed such a great career opportunity and go enjoy it.MH
-
How can I open a US bank account for an LLC without traveling to the USA?
I am based in Canada and ended up opening a US bank account with Harris Bank in Chicago without physically visiting their office. This was about 4 years ago. So maybe contact them and see if they could help you.AC
-
What should be the top priorities for an entrepreneur when starting a company?
Making sales and figuring out what potential customers want. Really, everything else can be done after you've proven that there really is a business opportunity. www.DavidCBarnett.comDC
-
Any advice on starting up small businesses in two countries at the same time?
Please realize that my suggestion would be slightly different if I knew which two countries. However, without knowing that here's what I'd suggestion: 1. Since you're just getting started figure out which country provides the best legal benefits for starting a company. This should include tax benefits, legal protection, and ease when it comes to filing paperwork (incorporating, managing payroll, taxes, etc.). This will undoubtedly save you time and money moving forward, and staying lean. 2. Once you've established your home base country, you'll still need to hire people in the other country as you scale. You may want to think about using a service like oDesk or Elance, not necessarily to recruit people but to manage ALL the paperwork associated with hiring international people. They will of course be given contract status. If you are going to be providing employees equity then I'd suggest consulting a lawyer for how people in the non-home base country will be treated. 3. Reporting revenue. You need to be very careful about whether you are providing goods and services. If it's goods keep in mind that you might be subject to tariffs. If you're providing services then I think you might be in the clear, but please double check. Finally, some countries might have an issue with where the revenue was actually made i.e. are you sitting in your office in your home based country while servicing clients in the non-home base country, or are you actually in the non-home base country. 4. No matter what you'll need to setup a remote working environment for yourself. Invest in the best technology you can, and find clients who are willing to utilize your services on a remote basis. Here are a few additional posts on running a remote team that I've written: http://femgineer.com/2013/09/running-remote-and-making-progress/ http://femgineer.com/2013/03/how-to-transition-to-a-remote-team/PV
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.