December 17th, 2007 11:02 AM By WCG Staff
Expertise
The issues of expertise and qualification are complex multi dimensional issues that can have negative or positive impact on profitability, effectiveness and efficiency. The complexity in evaluating knowledge, expertise, as well as qualifications can be caused by factors such as lack of uniform standards, subjectivity of particular field, social and cultural norms, as well as the speed of knowledge creation.
Nevertheless, virtually any solid organization will require some methodology to assess expertise in order to fully take advantage of its impact on organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Hence, in terms of knowledge management, the most basic and fundamental process will be the assessment of individuals as well as overall organizational level of expertise and knowledge.
Within this purgative, it is vital to emphasize that research should be the first step. In order to maximize the outcome of knowledge and expertise evaluation, research and development are the corner stone’s of successful S.O.P. However, the quest for perfection should not stand in the way of results. Hence, research and development as well as actual implementation should contain sensible aspects that would translate into practical applications.
A note of caution: there has to be a differentiation in how and why different employees with varying level of responsibilities, duties and job descriptions can and must be evaluated. This will become more obvious in follow up entries. In the coming days and weeks we will outline explicit procedures which are successfully tested both in academic as well as real world situations.
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December 15th, 2007 09:04 AM By WCG Staff
Cost Reduction Management
Virtually every executive on virtually all levels and across all industries and business sizes, have to deal with budgeting and cost efficiencies. One would be hard pressed to find any executive that is not attempting to reduce cost to increase profitability. However, considering the role of modern management coupled with technological development in the most recent two decades, one may wonder about the effectiveness of executive times to re-negotiate or find alternative solutions.
That being said, the sheer mention of the value of executive efforts and cost cutting in the same sentence may make the stakeholders rather nervous. Such concerns can be easily addressed by simple cost benefit analysis. In our experiences, the outcome is virtually always the same; the cost of having high level executives deal with cost saving daily tasks exceeds the benefits of those cost savings .
The most suitable solution lies within outsourcing . In our experiences we have found that a pay per performance model in this particular case is the most beneficial approach. Once a third party is chosen, the compensation could include a minimal base payment combined with a percentage of cost saving. Yet such agreement requires that virtually all contracts and agreements of the given organization is up for analysis and improvement .
Ultimately, cost saving and cost reduction management should be a vital part of overall strategic management. Yet the methodology and approach to such measures requires extensive cost benefit analysis in order to maximize the outcome which can be beneficial to all stakeholders.
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December 07th, 2007 08:26 AM By WCG Staff
Management Evaluation SOP
Regrettably, SOP or Standard Operating Procedures have gotten a bad reputation because of the societal and cultural movement toward different schools of thoughts in terms of individualism and micro management. However, standard operating procedures have not lost any significance because of popular misconceptions.
Essentially, SOP refers to a set of predetermined rules and actions that are inherently designed to achieve a prearranged set of results. The concepts of individualism or the fast past business world has not influenced the importance of such procedures. Though, because of popular misconceptions, stakeholders have to integrate measures that address concerns such as individualism as well micro management .
The most logical solution to take advantage of SOP while easing the minds of employees is within SOP itself; if SOP entails measures that put the SOP under constant review and evaluation, the concerns of employees should be eased. This brings us to the issue of SOP in evaluating management .
The mere fact that virtually every aspect of daily business is or should be subject to constant review and evaluation, diminishes the argument that executives cannot or should not be measured and evaluated. Yet, there are some additional concerns when it comes to upper level management; which can include the rather subjective nature of decision making that plagues the executive daily duties.
This is where SOP can have a significant positive impact by establishing neutral set of requirements and points of assessment that would take the subjectivity out of the evaluation process.
In the coming days and week we will outline specific procedures and measure to enhance effectiveness and efficiency in such SOP.
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December 05th, 2007 10:52 AM By WCG Staff
Evaluation of Management
Management personnel have traditionally been subject to strict hiring standards coupled with tough competition. However, the upper management is rarely subject to external performance evaluation. Most executives are evaluated by means of internal mechanisms unless public relation incidents require the illustration of fair practices. However, we are the opinion that this approach is fundamentally flawed.
It is obvious that performance measurement that is conducted objectively can assist a great deal in optimizing and improving performance and ultimately the outcome. However, the traditional SOP which only measures frontline workers; inherently neglects to measure the performance of the leadership. The opponents of rigorous executive evaluation argue that a significant portion of virtually all executive duties may not lend themselves to objective measurements because of inherent necessity of judgment calls as well as personal conclusions.
That is where a third party such as a management consulting firm can be a great deal of help. Seasoned and experienced management consultants as well as their respective management consulting firms can aid in devising measures that would objectively measure executive performance without creating undo internal conflict as well as assist in later stage implementation of potential improvements.
The greatest challenge of implementing such procedures would be within the ability to establish the necessity which may encounter a great deal of resistance by those executives that will be subject to such evolutions. Nevertheless, other stakeholders can and should push for such measures to enhance organizational effectiveness and efficiency.
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