The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First Review

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The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First ReviewThe premise of Pfeffer's book is that companies' success is directly correlated to the quality of people and their management. This seems like common sense. After all, many companies proclaim "people are our biggest asset." In practice, however, it's uncommon sense: companies often lack the deep conviction necessary to follow through. It's much easier to take a "tough love" approach to "management," cut training and lay off 10% of the workforce than it is to focus on the long-term people issue.
Based on his research, Pfeffer offers several HR practices that are common in effective organizations. Among them:
* Maintain a sense of employment security. Psychologically speaking, people will work more effectively when they can focus on doing their job rather than worrying about keeping it. Similarly, if employees are your company's hugest asset, then it behooves you to ensure they're not working for your competition. This is common sense.More companies practice uncommon sense and get sucked into the peformance death-spiral. For example, we frequently read where a new CEO is brought in and his first action is to initiate layoffs. (Apple Computer is an often-cited case study of this.)With their sense of security threatened, the remaining employees will become less motivated. Profits begin to sag, so the company reacts by cutting training. Employees may have more accidents, and customer service is affected. The spiral continues until it or the company broken.
* Hire selectively - a recurring theme is that to avoid layoffs, you need to be operating efficiently enough not to *have* extra employees.
In a perfect world, we would have a large number of applicants, screen them based on corporate fit and their attitude, then filter them out through several rounds of screening. Senior staff should become involved in the latter part of the process to emphasize the importance of hiring.After hiring, we need to evaluate the success of our hiring practices and adjust them as necessary. This follows the axiom "that which gets measured, gets done." This common sense approach is used by highly successful companies such as Southwest Airlines and Cisco.Companies exhibiting "uncommon sense" may get so desperate to fill the position that they go against their own guidelines. Having made this mistake before, I am very much aware that a bad hire is far worse thanno hire.
* Facilitate ownership and responsibility through decentralized decision making.
Assuming you hire the "best and brightest," you should trust them to use their brains. This provides a sense of ownership, challenge, andsupports the organization's organic development. We all hope to have the equivalent of the "Post-It" note developed internally by folks taking initiative.
Pfeffer had an interesting comment from Bill Gurley about the effectiveness of stock options. Specifically, they're not really as much a sense of ownership as we'd like to believe because if the market has a violentdownswing (as it did in early 2000), employees are almost incented to leave their underwater options.
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Pfeffer's book is an evolution of his previous ideas. What's also interesting in his analysis was seeing that long-term company success was *not* correlated to technology or industry.
Pfeffer's suggestions seem like common sense, but Pfeffer realizes they're not AND is aware of the need to quantify the information. The case studies and quantitative research are very helpful in supporting these ideas. In a few of the cases -- Lincoln Electric springs to mind -- it would be especially helpful to have a more recent examination, perhaps a follow-up.The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First Overview

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The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business Review

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The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business Review
According to Carla O'Dell and Cindy Hubert, "this book tells you how leading organizations achieve great results in knowledge management, or KM, and provides the strategic principles to help you do the same in your organization." Note the use of direct address in this, the second paragraph of the Preface. O'Dell and Hubert almost immediately establish a personal rapport with their reader and sustain it as they present their material throughout the book's lively and eloquent as well as substantial narrative.
Although O'Dell and Hubert have extensive experience with all manner of organizations because of their respective responsibilities with APQC (American Productivity and Quality Center), each is a world-renowned thought leader in her own right. It is to the reader's great advantage that they can - and do - bring their considerable talents to bear when examining a wealth of information, insights, caveats, and recommendations generated by hundreds of AQPC-sponsored initiatives that include research studies, special reports, conferences, workshops, seminars, and publications.
As its website correctly notes, "Since 1977, APQC has been focused on providing organizations around the world with the information they need to work smarter, faster, and with confidence. Every day we uncover the processes and practices that push organizations from good to great. As one of the world's leading proponents of process and performance improvement, we follow our mission to help organizations around the world improve productivity and quality by discovering effective methods of improvement, broadly disseminating findings, and connecting individuals with one another and with the knowledge they need to improve."
O'Dell and Hubert carefully organize their material within 11 chapters that (in effect) provide a sequence of stages by which to plan, launch, implement, and then strengthen a KM program to achieve objectives that include these:
o Establish the foundation that positions KM for the future
o Determine the value proposition
o Identify critical knowledge needs
o Identify critical knowledge now available
o Identify critical knowledge gaps to be filled
o Formulate a framework for KM strategy development
o Select and design KM approaches
o Activate social networking
o Determine governance principles, policies, and procedures
o Build a knowledge sharing culture
o Measure the impact of KM operations and initiatives
I especially appreciate O'Dell and Hubert's brilliant use of reader-friendly devices in each chapter such as "Resources" that contextualize and expand on material discussed in the chapter, boxed summaries of key points and suggested action steps, Figures and Tables (to illustrate alphanumeric relationships), and checklists that will facilitate, indeed expedite periodic review later of key passages.
There are hundreds of comments and phrases inserted throughout the book that strengthen the aforementioned rapport. For example, direct address ("you can assess where the flow of knowledge is breaking down" on Page 31) and invitation with use of a first-person plural pronoun ("Let's now examine how to gauge such impact" on Page 142). In other words, from beginning to end, O'Dell and Hubert take the reader under their proverbial wing of knowledge and wisdom and over time prepare their reader to provide the leadership and management that are required to convert the right information into the most effective action.
Near the end of the book, I can almost hear them say, "Now let's take a look at several companies that have gained the new edge in knowledge management. Let's see what we can learn from them that will help you in your own organization." The mini-case studies are of ConocoPhillips, Fluor, IBM, and MITRE. This material, all by itself, is worth far more than the cost of a copy of this book. Their greatest value, however, can only be derived if the material that precedes them is read (and preferably re-read) with appropriate care.
Vision alone is not enough. Thomas Edison once said that "vision without execution is hallucination."
Action alone is not enough. Peter Drucker once said that there is nothing "quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all."
And knowledge alone is not enough. Extensive research conducted by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton (among others) suggests that a significant percentage of C-level executives have a "knowing-doing gap."
I know of no other single source that offers more and better information, insights, and advice about knowledge management than does this one. I commend Carla O'Dell and Cindy Hubert on a brilliant achievement. Bravo!The New Edge in Knowledge: How Knowledge Management Is Changing the Way We Do Business Overview

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