Introduction
- Yesterday’s Leaders and Managers
- Effective Communication with People
- Helping to coordinate the interface of engineering, marketing, sales and manufacturing
- Comparisons between Defense Contractor structures and commercial Corporate Structure
- Tomorrow’s companies
Today’s
managers and leaders have not changed very much since Roman times. In the time
of Julius Caesar who was known as a great leader. He had an expertise at
getting things done. When only 25 years old he had to deal with pirates and was
quite firm at having them tracked down and executed as an example. This is an
example of many where he was quick to take action in a particular situation. A
strong leader takes action quickly when dealing with situations and when he
does it instills trust in those under him.
But, he was not good at management. He led with an iron fist when
dealing with mundane political issues and had to rely on the advice of his
senators and sub-ordinates to get things done according to the laws of the
time. Throughout history other men like Genghis Khan who conquered most of Asia
was a great leader who was brilliant at military strategy led his troops in
great victories over the years of his reign. But he was better suited as a
leader, instead of manager because he of autocratic and told his troops and
generals what to do.
Today’s
generals in our army and marines are considered great leaders like Colin Powell
whom many seek his advice for war strategy and guidance for deployment of
troops. His personality did make him a good manager. He had good interpersonal
skills at inspiring people and motivating them. People respected him due to his
extensive decoration and experiences as a Captain in the Vietnam was as a South
Vietnamese Army adviser from 1962 to 1963 (Wikipedia\Colin Powell). His role
when selected as Secretary of State illustrated his strengths as manager and
leader. A good leader projects this image of assurance in decisions and respect
for those around him.
Organizations
at companies like government have a structure and hierarchy. They direct work
but are not always leaders. Bush was considered a leader as president but was
ruthless in his autocratic authority. He fired anyone that disagreed with him
including Colin Powell. He violated over 35 areas of the constitution for illegal
wiretapping. His inability to listen to his expert advisors and upper level
managerial staff in the Whitehouse made him a liability. His actions and those
of Cheney let this country to its current crisis.
Heads
of national and international corporations followed the examples of leadership
and ethics the Whitehouse portrayed. Companies ranging from Enron, Ford,
Chrysler, AIG, various banks all had corrupt leaders who only thought about
short-term profit and outsourcing to increase the profits with no regards to
the employees within the organizations. The power that these leaders and top
level presidents of corporations had grown with their corporations to the point
that it had corrupted them. They lived the high life with no regard to the long
term future of their companies. The average salary of CEO’s has increased over
the last decade from 40 to 1 time to 300 to 1 that of most workers with
incredible bonus each quarter. (Mackey, HBR, 6/14/2009) Power at such levels
led to corruption of lack of trust by the corporations when performance fell.
The CEO’s as leaders left with very large severance packages.
They
gave themselves and executive outrageous bonus’s and raises even though their
profits were decreasing and they were forced by stockholders to cut staff. This
intensified their poor leadership and managerial skills with their corporation
staff. They tried to rationalize by persuasion to their stockholders and
employees that outsourcing would help the companies on the whole. Over the last
two decades as manufacturing has been outsourced to China many managers helped
direct the overseas operations. They were good at managing the operations but
didn’t have the persuasiveness to be the corporate leader. The followers of a
corporation took direction from the CEO and upper management. Today is the best
time in history for students to analyze the failures of many of yesterday’s
stable corporations. Many CEO’s or leaders of these corporations failed to
listen to the managers under them that the companies were in trouble. Commercial
corporations in the effort to reduce manufacturing costs outsourced to China
without realize the impact on the American economy. Managers of many
corporations that went to China to have thing made at a lower cost often found
their products stolen by China when the companies that supposedly had their
goods made in China closed. Then a few weeks later a new Chinese company opened
manufacturing exactly the same items the closed United States Company made.
Corporations in their greed have lost billions of dollars in manufacturing
potentials by outsourcing from China to India, Pakistan and Lebanon and lower
cost countries.
We
have allowed the GNP of this country to shift to billions to China and India
with the cutting or elimination of employee training further eroding the
competitive edge. We have given away a great deal of our technology and
business methodology away to foreign competition. It has had a long term
negative effect on our ability to compete globally. Conformity with upper
management has led us down that road along with greed for more short term
profit.
Many
of the upper managers in these companies and boards preferred to go along with
whatever the CEO said and were afraid for their jobs to tell the CEO’s that
many of the outsourcing decisions would have backlash effects. Rarely do you
have leaders that are good managers. I perceive good leaders are those that
have visions of how things should be done. They have a flare for inspiration
and innovation. Steve Jobs at Apple is an example of an exceptional leader. He
has a brilliant insight for ideas to develop new products for Apple. Without
Jobs Apple would not have been as profitable as it is today. We have many
managers today who can’t “think outside the box”. They think very conservatively
form Six Sigma training which I didn’t think was very inspirational. Excellent
leaders are those that are risk takers and willing to try something new as an
approach for a corporation.
The
best company today that is incredibly innovated and treats its employees like
people with ideas is Google. They have a unique work environment, where ideas
and innovation are nurtured and allowed to blossom. Ideas for new products and
ways of doing things are embraced and not condemned for being unique. Leaders
and managers at defense contractors think the opposite.
Defense
contractors such as General Dynamics, Lockheed, and BAE that I have worked at
over the years as a contractor don’t want ideas outside of the way to solve an
engineering problem. Their managers don’t want lower engineers involved in any
decision making process like a commercial company. The management structure is
10 tiers deep and decisions on such things as buying new software or hardware
takes months or years based upon approval from corporate. They don’t produce a
commercial product with their own money. They get government handouts from
contracts and often have to ask for more money when they go over budget. I have
found that the worst managers and CEO’s work at defense companies. The upper
management gets very large salaries and bonus. They often don’t listen to their
engineering managers when it comes to how long it will take for a project. They
underbid how much and how long it will take because they know they can ask for
more money later, they are disorganized and provide poor communications to
those along the corporate ladder.
Most
managers and corporate CEO’s would not survive working in the commercial sector
due to the different work environment. Many companies like Lockheed tried to
change their corporate structure to adapt to commercial products in the late
1980’s and early 1990’s and almost went bankrupt. They were too top heavy and
had managers that were followers and couldn’t think inspirationally like their
commercial sector counterparts.
For
the managers and leaders of tomorrow to be more effective they have to listen
to the needs of the consumers. Change and adaptation is essential for the
survival of any corporation. We need effective leaders such as those at Google
and Apple to draw up the creativity of their peoples to develop more
collaboration amongst all the employees to compete with the global market of
tomorrow.
References
Yukl, G. (2006). Leadership in Organizations Pearson Education LTD.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colin_Powell
Mackey, J Why Sky-High CEO Pay Is Bad Business, Harvard Business Review, June 17, 2009
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/how-to-fix-executive-pay/2009/06/why-high-ceo-pay-is-bad-business.html
Glaser, J. E., &
Jones, C. (2008, March). Meeting People's needs. Leadership Excellence ,
25 (3), pp. 13-14.
Jones, G. R., &
George, J. M. (2007). Essentials of Contemporary Management (2nd ed.).
Boston: McGraw-Hill Learning Solutions.
Rosen, K. (2008, June
12). The seven types of managers-where do you stand? Retrieved March 1,
2009, from All Business:
www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/sales-selling-sales/10207093.html
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