Maggie's Farm

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Saturday, March 4. 2017

Management


I believe that I have no talent and no skills at management. I wish I had. We had an after-church brunch last Sunday with pals, and my friend who is a management consultant challenged me to complete the %s on his simple matrix where R/W means Right Thing Done The Wrong Way, W/R means Wrong Thing Done The Right Way, etc.


I filled in the %s with my guesses, and he explained that my hypothetical business took a 70% cost in poor management.  He said that my guesses were probably not too far off for many organizations but I might have the categories wrong. He said one reason for it is that, in organizations, most people have little real skin in the game and just hope to keep their paychecks coming but, in general, organizations are inefficient and one can only hope to keep it as low as possible.



Posted by The Barrister in The Culture, "Culture," Pop Culture and Recreation at 15:00 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

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Brunch at the Ritz-Carlton after church. Oh my. A quick Google shows it to be $89. That's insane. You are so out of touch with the real world.
#1 Nancy on 2017-03-04 18:06 (Reply)
I have heard people talk about the "real world" many times in my 64 years. It apparently excludes students, clergy, stay-at-home moms, government employees (which, you may note, would include firefighters, teachers, police, nurses, park rangers, surveyors, librarians...), the military, professional athletes and entertainers, the rich, those on relief, children, the retired...

Who qualifies as "real world" to you?
#1.1 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2017-03-04 21:07 (Reply)
Good point. I wrote that thinking, "$89 for brunch at the Ritz?!"

But you know? It's none of my business and if I could afford it a brunch at the Ritz would be a really nice treat for someone I know.

I was out of line and I apologize.
#1.1.1 Nancy on 2017-03-05 01:07 (Reply)
I'll take your word for it on the $89 brunch.

While I would question the sanity of anyone who would spend that much on a meal, it's no less real than the cold leftover pizza I had for brunch today.

Why do you care about how much someone spends on a meal? Is that the real world? Curious.
#1.2 Jack Walter on 2017-03-04 21:43 (Reply)
ProTip: that's not an expensive brunch.

"it is written, Man shall not live by McDonald's alone" - Matthew 4:4, Orange Catholic Bible.
#1.3 Vic Morrow's tommy gun on 2017-03-04 21:51 (Reply)
Actually, it is an expensive meal that very few people could justify. But I guess it's still in accordance with the OCB in that it doesn't violate the supreme commandment of "Thou shalt not disfigure the soul." I suppose a meal that expensive also doesn't disfigure the figure, either. One must be proper, even when one is having brunch.
#1.3.1 Jack Walter on 2017-03-05 02:47 (Reply)
I think you'll enjoy the red salmon.

its a brunch, meaning, everything on the menu. besides, its a write-off.
#1.3.1.1 Vic Morrow's tommy gun on 2017-03-05 03:45 (Reply)
The primary purpose of any organization is to perpetuate itself, regardless of its stated or intended purpose. The Ford Motor Company's primary purpose isn't making cars, making cars is just the way they make money and their purpose in making money is so that the Ford Motor Company continues to exist as a source of paychecks. Making good cars - cars people want to buy at a profitable price for Ford - is merely a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. If Ford could make more money for more people by manufacturing toaster ovens or producing music videos or sponsoring synchronized swimming teams, they'd be doing that in a heartbeat.
#2 Jerryskids on 2017-03-04 19:22 (Reply)
Egg-Sackly
#2.1 Dorf on 2017-03-05 11:24 (Reply)
"Skin In The Game" is a repeated mantra in Taleb's Antifragile
#3 Assistant Village Idiot (Link) on 2017-03-04 21:09 (Reply)
This why I operated my small businesses as dictatorships. (Although to not listen to my managers and line people would have been stupid.) Give me an occasional SWOT analysis and a large helping of gut feelings--management is a rush!
#4 Gene on 2017-03-04 23:48 (Reply)
I just finished "Abundance," very interesting in general, but one idea the author pushes beyond all others is the advantage of incentive prizes for technological advances. People are such that they'll invest far more than the face amount of a prize to win it. The author apparently originated the X Prize for non-governmental space flight. He believes all kinds of abundance is around the corner as a result of the exponential growth of cool ideas that will do things like make simple medical diagnostics so cheap even the poorest billion people on Earth can easily afford them. Pure water, too, and energy.
#5 Texan99 on 2017-03-05 10:08 (Reply)
QUOTE:
I filled in the %s with my guesses, and he explained that my hypothetical business took a 70% cost in poor management.

Which brings us back to the rough estimate; half of everything is wasted — assuming good management. The question always being, which half?
#6 Zachriel on 2017-03-05 11:29 (Reply)

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