Management Bits and Tips

A colleague surprised me yesterday when telling me he was reading a book on power. I asked him why and he told me he wanted to learn how to use power in his organization. Immediately I seized an opportunity to lecture him on power basics because I also read a few books on power and had been digesting them for some time. So I told him the Principle of Power I discovered through sheer reading of case studies, mainly power struggles in communist Russia (POP, like a stack operation if you know a bit about computer science or programming). This was later generalized to POPs, Principle of Power Shift:

Kiss Ass. Kick Ass.

Hope you find this succinct definition useful and easy to remember.

Note: The proper sequence is very important for your mental health.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Since I published the first post related to corporate canteens Google Analytics was collecting stats for “canteen” search keywords that led to this blog:

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• working of canteen in organization

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

If you need an employee with a statistical bent ask appropriate questions during interview, for example: “What would you do you come to a cafeteria and find that you need to empty a coffee machine bin?”. The word bin should trigger an appropriate answer after the appropriate counter questions (coffee machines vary), for example: “I would count the distribution of various coffee pack types in the bin”.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

I found the book Selling the Work Ethic: From Puritan Pulpit to Corporate PR in a local library a few months ago and was intrigued by its title and table of contents. After reading it from cover to cover I must say I was really surprised to learn much more about capitalism and the unfolding of consumer society than I learnt during Soviet era from Marxist propaganda. Having a big management library myself I would say I never questioned why all these management books were printed. To know why you need to read this book. Funny enough, after reading, I stumbled across the demo of a computer game about Sponge Bob where he was about to start working hard to be promoted to a management position. Walking around his house he met a welfare creature who asked him not to forget him after the promotion. The whole episode now looks from a fresh selling work ethic perspective especially when I learnt that the CD came from a packet of children food bought in Tesco (selling work values to kids?). I liked the book and bought another one from the same author: This Little Kiddy Went to Market: The Corporate Assault on Children and also a biography Benjamin Franklin: An American Life.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Research shows that employee productivity rises for the next 30 minutes after receiving salary increase or a bonus (bit). Condition this timing for an employee to have the maximum impact (tip).

For example, in these 30 minutes an employee may generate an idea that secures a company’s future success or ensures that a project finishes on time with less budget.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

A person or a company who makes a service request will feel the lack of attention to details and respect if you write a much shorter service response with less detail (bit). Spend or at least show that you spent equivalent amount of time and resources analyzing and answering a request. In some cases (technical support, for example) involving reciprocal request / response interactions you can explicitly promise to spend the same amount of time if you request a time consuming reproduction environment that helps you in troubleshooting or problem artifact analysis (tip).

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

A relation of an employee to an employer and vice versa can be metaphorically modeled by these stages:

Fiancee

Feelings of admiration and love from a potential employee towards an employer or from a potential employer towards a desperately needed future employee

Married

Employment contract

After that a relationship path can diverge into these states:

Separated

Untouchable or ignored employee or employer. No feelings or other ties other than basic bottom line contractual obligations like monthly payments and office hours

Divorced

When an employee is made redundant, dumped or quits a company voluntarily

Widowed

When one party or both are deceased

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

We can’t use “Industrial Language” in software factories. But can we use software debugging and troubleshooting vocabulary:

• Crash
• Hang
• Breakpoint
• Throw
• Exception
• Delete (this might be offensive to software-averse managers)
• Kill
• Suspend
• Trace
• Dump
• Leak
• …

Come up with usage examples yourselves.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Sometimes you are asked to state or put down on paper what you feel, for example, during performance reviews (bit). If you want to avoid discussing the topic politely reply with a smile that you are a machine that doesn’t feel (tip).

Sometimes, it is good to be a machine.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -

Inspired by reading Robert Green’s book The 48 Laws of Power I started carving my own laws of intellectual power. Sometimes they are direct opposites like the first law:

Law 1

ALWAYS OUTSHINE THE MASTER

Rationale

Make observers feel that you are superior. Impress them with your intellect. Go far in displaying your talents or you accomplish the opposite: others will outshine you.

Now working on the second law to be published later today. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ ManagementBits.com -