Jun 08
Lukeproject management MBA
“重复美国管理的模式是一种愚蠢的行为。”明茨伯格在采访中反复强调。这位管理大师，自从上世纪70年代开始，就尝试着重新定义和解读管理世界。在他看来，对于管理的传统理念，过于强调分析、工具，而忽略了作为管理者，实践和经验才是智慧之源的事实是非常可怕的。
在过去整整30多年中，明茨伯格始终与传统管理理念保持距离，坚持管理不是“教”出来的，而是一手一脚从一线工作中领悟到的。明茨伯格强调用一种科学的、动态的视角来看管理的本质，为此，他提出了“动态管理”的理念，在接下来的“管理大师系列”栏目中，我们将分别从管理的本质、成功管理者要素、平衡的社会三个部分来探讨明茨伯格的这一理念。
真正的管理来自于实践，而不是鼓吹。
这一点，我们可以从不同的组织中看到管理的精髓。比如企业、政府机构、非营利组织……来自银行、娱乐、飞机制造或者零售业等不同的行业，都有着对管理的真知灼见。我们也可以从组织的不同层面看到对管理的不同理解。来自一线经理与中层管理者、CEO，他们都对企业管理有着不同视角的认知。当你位于一个难民营，或者一个交响乐团，你会遇到完全不同又规律共通的管理问题，因此，管理来自于实践之中。
你是哪种管理者？
在真实的商业世界，经理不可能是一部高灵敏度的系统反馈装置，只要输入来自管理典籍中的理念、工具，然后管理就开始了。实际情况中，CEO们往往忙于解决突发的危机，不断被打乱计划，需要应对眼花缭乱的各种状况。
新的管理方式应该是这样的：它不再是outlook上一连串的任务表，而是一种动态的过程。管理者通过分析信息、与人沟通协调甚至是直接行动这三个要素来达成既定目标。不同的管理者都有最适合于他的管理方式，有些长于沟通协调，有些长于分析信息，不可忽视的是，优秀的管理者必然具有三者的平衡能力。管理不是一种职业，而是一种实践。你需要去思考，从中找到适合你的方式。
然而，也许你会说，在现实的管理中，我们都会遇到一些困境。比如，信息困境：谁是这一商业关系的主导者？应该如何向下属授权？面对新市场，如何执行以往的管理？你还会遇到人事困境：当管理工作非常杂乱时，你如何让其他人工作得井井有条？应该让企业像军队一样高纪律，还是给一些无序创造的空间？如何不要过于傲慢，又保持自信？而有时，行动的困境则更为直接：你该如何面对变革？
于是，我给予管理者这样的框架：艺术、科学和手艺。
擅长分析信息摆脱困境的人，属于科学这个范围。他们喜欢用科学的工具分析信息，寻找系统的证据。另一种管理者则具有艺术气质，他们富于想象力，具有透析人们想法的洞察性。还有一种管理者，他们强调经验出真知，一旦出现问题，总是愿意先行动后思考，勇敢面对变革。
优秀的管理者往往能够找到这三种素质直接的平衡点，形成适合于他个人的管理方式。这一找到平衡点的过程，也就是在管理中实践的过程。
现在，美国式管理最糟糕的一个产物就是MBA。他们完全忽视从实践中获取认知。负责MBA的教授纷纷强调分析技能和工具，而脱离了真实的管理情境。分析不是管理，管理者应该是结合自己的经验，来制定管理方法，而不是沉湎于工具和技巧之中。
“美式管理”软肋
更为糟糕的是，当管理者从MBA毕业后进入咨询公司，他们又会更多地追寻工具和分析，忘记了管理的本质是什么。有些咨询公司宣称，他们的模式工具可以解决任何问题。对于一个手拿锤子的小孩子来说，所有的东西看上去都像是钉子。没有一个研究理论是绝对的真理，所有的真理都是相对的。好的咨询公司懂得根据实际情况来提供服务。
的确，美国人引领了“美国式管理”的辉煌数十年，这种“美国式管理”是指对美国公司管理方式的称谓。但是现在这种管理方式显然出了问题。很多企业高管已经与企业脱节，不再了解真实的运转情况。长此以往，在美国公司内部，只有一个高高在上的CEO，他们对基层事务很少问津，却对股票价格紧张透顶。真正好的领导者应该是关注公司的每个层面，并且确实能把握一线生意进展的真实状况。
不可忽视的一个问题是，在美国公司，每个高管都拿着巨额的红利，而且就算是他们管理公司失败了，他们还是心安理得地接受巨额的薪酬。任何一位严肃的领导者都应该明确自己的薪水与绩效之间的关系，不应该让自己的薪酬超越于组织中的其他成员之上。所有接受年终红利的管理者都不应该自称为合格的领导者。
眼下，美国式管理出现的主要问题在于，没有一个CEO能够有效衡量对于公司长期发展所产生的影响。绝大多数的红利是针对短期绩效发放的。这是一种误区。谁会给可能在两年后让银行破产的CEO发奖金？这就是华尔街的怪诞之处。
人们工作都是为了获取报酬。销售员的奖金很容易衡量管理，因为直接与销售数据相关。而CEO的奖金却很奇怪，它们的多少取决于股票价格在市场上的波动。而实际上，股票价格波动有着复杂的影响因素。因此，我们很难去考察CEO长远的绩效。正如我们目前面临美国银行或者花旗银行等等的问题，他们难以判断两年后银行可能出现的破产风险。
我的建议是，将公司整体绩效，针对不同层级，乘以不同的比例来计算，公司的成绩与每个人相关，这种方法具有一定的公平性。尽管这样，我们也很难用短期成绩来折射长期绩效。
在年终，我们总会就过去一年的成绩来评估每个人的奖金。但是，往往有些经理会选择猎杀来年的销量来获得今年的绩效奖金。你将如何处理这种局面？下一任的经理往往就会成为替罪羊。
在美国式管理的公司中，CEO从来不会说长期目标、探讨十年计划，对他们来说这简直是疯了。
我的忠告是，千万别复制美国式管理，这简直就是一种愚蠢的自杀行为。在过去数十年，美国培养了很多优秀的企业管理者，但是在未来依旧沿袭过去的美国式管理，将是一场灾难。
Feb 06
Lukeproject management Microsoft Project, PM, project management
Source: TechRepublic
Let’s have a look at a typical project manager’s day. In the morning, he comes to his office and checks his e-mail for messages with project updates. He then spends hours calling his team members, e-mailing them or meeting them in person to collect all the information he needs and to make sure that everything is well and on track. After that, the manager has to merge these updates into the project plan. The updates also need to be communicated to the upper management. So the project manager has to make reports and hand them in to the company’s executives to keep them aware of the project’s progress. The manager also has to follow up on clients’ feedback or partners’ actions. During the course of the day, he constantly has to resolve issues through another endless series of e-mails, phone calls and meetings.
Looks familiar, doesn’t it? E-mail is still the most popular project communication tool. An employee on an average project gets between 30 and 100 e-mails per day. The majority of these e-mails contain tasks, change requests and discussions, so it’s hard to overestimate the knowledge buried in e-mail inboxes every day. This knowledge often bypasses project management tools like Microsoft Project.
Have you ever missed an important e-mail? Or forgotten to send a reply to an urgent request? Was it ever easy for you to find an indispensable piece of information buried in the thousands of messages that you have in your inbox? What if you weren’t CC’d on that e-mail? It gets even worse when you need to quickly share information that’s lost in your inbox with a newcomer.
This knowledge, buried in e-mails, causes project managers in too many organizations today to waste hours on transferring information from e-mails into their project management systems and back. As a result, their productivity and efficiency are damaged by this unnecessary routine. Instead of being a project leader, a project manager turns into a project secretary.
Traditional project management systems often are not integrated with e-mail. Systems like Microsoft Project are designed with the top-down project management approach in mind and aren’t suited well to leverage collective knowledge in an easy way. It means they create dozens of needless, routine jobs for the project manager. Therefore, instead of helping project managers, these systems make the manager’s workload even bigger.
What if managers could bring this “project secretary” job to a minimum and concentrate on the leadership part of the management job? How much more efficient and productive would the whole team become as a result? Experts say this is possible.
The change comes with the growing popularity of Enterprise 2.0 principles applied to project management. Project Management 2.0 relies on the same concepts as Enterprise 2.0. The power of many, also known as collective intelligence, helps to build, maintain and evolve an up-to-date picture of operations. Flexible Project Management 2.0 tools merge this picture from various pieces, giving a perfect example of what enterprise social software researchers call “emergent structures.” The software supporting these two concepts, collective intelligence and emergent structures, open new opportunities for boosting your own efficiency and your team’s efficiency by cutting the daily routine and leaving more room for creativity and leadership. They make a project manager’s life easier by bringing three major benefits:
Reducing routine work
Project Management 2.0 practices and supportive tools eliminate the need for extra meetings, phone calls, and e-mails, thus saving you time and letting you focus on getting things done. The best tools in this area are integrated with e-mail. They don’t break the habitual workflow, allowing project participants to communicate via e-mail messages. At the same time, they automatically absorb information from e-mails, which usually bypasses project management systems and is traditionally buried in the team’s inboxes. With project management 2.0 tools, this knowledge is shared and available to everybody on the team at any given moment in time.
Just imagine: there’s no need to call and ask your peer to find the important e-mail from a customer who wanted to make changes in a project schedule. Tasks, clients’ requirements, status updates, ideas, and project discussions are all captured by a single system, are shared among the project participants and are available at any given moment in time. So even if you need the information when nobody is in the office, you can still get it immediately. No need to call your employee on Saturday evening when you suddenly need to know where the project stands. Besides, there’s no need for the manager to manually adjust project plans and individual team members’ schedules.
Project Management 2.0 lets you to avoid micromanagement by allowing team members to mark updates of their part of the project work in the shared collaborative environment. This gives the project manager the up-to-date picture of where his team and the project stand. The top-down control comes in when the project manager aligns and guides those activities. Project Management 2.0 practices and tools let you gain harmony between top-down and bottom-up management styles.
Providing multiple project views
Besides giving an up-to-date picture of internal project operations, the new-generation technologies enable managers and other members of the project team to view projects differently. Project participants can pick any reasonable sub-set of tasks, create a view with these tasks and share the view with someone who needs it. It means that more people can collaborate and contribute to the project work productively.
Each of these views can be changed by team members as the organization and its environment changes. The whole structure evolves with time. Managers, who have access to more perspectives and to boarder views, can align multiple projects, avoid scheduling conflicts, and set the right priorities. Flexible, many-to-many structures that allow creating, sharing and easy merging of views are an important part of the Project Management 2.0 approach. This approach enables collective intelligence and leads to collaborative planning. In turn, collaborative planning makes organizations more productive and transparent.
Giving the complete picture of all projects
Upper-level managers can access the global organizational view, which gives them a clear picture of where the business stands. Project Management 2.0 tools merge individual employees’ to-do lists into one picture that is always up-to-date. It means that corporate executives are constantly in the loop with what’s going on in the project. The information is always at their fingertips. As a result, the organization’s leaders can adjust strategic plans to changes in the business environment much faster. It becomes easier for them to rapidly and cost-efficiently recognize changes and adapt to them. The whole organization becomes more agile and therefore more competitive, thanks to very simple tools and the powerful practices of Project Management 2.0.
The key to the making the whole organization more productive lays in gaining efficiency for the project manager and his team. Project Management 2.0 tools and practices become a catalyst to important innovations on the organizational level. They let everybody from team members to project managers and corporate executives focus on getting things done and spend less time on routine tasks. Naturally, software will not do the whole job alone, but it empowers people and multiplies their efforts. Project Management 2.0 democratizes project management, bringing it outside of enterprise project management offices to other departments, as well as to small and midsize businesses. It makes companies more agile, projects more controllable and people more productive.
RSS