Executive Summary: Malcolm Baldridge Award

Only a few distinguishing awards exist that are ever given by the President of the United States. The Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award is given to the individual or group of individuals that is formally recognized for the outstanding of both public and private U.S. organizations. Up to, but only 18, of these awards are given a year and they are divided up into six separate groups: small business, service, education, health care, non-profit, and manufacturing.  As of last year, only 90 have ever been given out. To achieve this award, it is nothing short of a true achievement in excellent performance. In my opinion, this award should only be given to the individuals who truly understands and respect every aspect of business, whether it be non-profit or profitable. This award gives great contribution to the element of competitiveness as well: The central and true aspect of an American Company. The people who are selected for this award clearly understand something about running a smooth business and, at the peak of their success, could teach others how to be just as successful. This award is not just given out to anyone. This award clearly demonstrates effective and productive methods of management while also maintaining a management system that thoroughly ensures continuous improvement.

The other part of this award is the program that it instills into companies: The Malcolm Baldridge Performance Excellence Program. The program is for, like what the award disguises, between, businesses that are both private and public, and also deviate from small business, service, education, health care, non-profit, and manufacturing. The program basically is to direct a company into a proper management system and to show ways of ongoing improvement within the company. The program, not to be mistaken, is the building block to properly run a company, while the award, is to distinguish individuals or a group of individuals for either performing to the programs standards or showing multiple signs of improvement much like to the program. I think this system is very effective in keeping competition within our economy fair and observed, while personally, I also feel like it is a way for Government to “have their hand in the cookie jar” in standardizing competitive practice. I would assume most people would either view this as a win-win situation for our economy to have awards like this, while its also an equal tradeoff that our Government would be always playing a role in the economy and the management practices that are done within businesses of all types.

So the comic I found is quite funny and while it doesn’t speak about THIS award, this photo lightly amuses how some businesses give out meaningless awards to commemorate hard work. So, again, this comic is just a light humor to the ideas of Awards in General, not to the Malcolm Baldridge Award:

Traditional Functions of Management

Traditional functions of management have many steps of preparation and expectations for success. When its all said and done, it comes down to preparation and the intangibles that fix the smaller issues that ultimately, fix the bigger issues. Many businesses refer to this practice as micro managing. A competent manager can perform these task when that manager puts forth the problem in front of the, come up with a practical solution to fix the issue, and execution of the practical solution. Some managers find this to be secondary, like breathing, while others may struggle with this ability.

Lets begin with the preparation that most companies must endure to be a sustainable company. Organizing and coordinating efforts for a company is the first step. You must be organized with documentation, materials needed for daily use, even intangibles like power and running water within a company. Proper facilities are always necessary when it comes to this because you cannot maintain a business without minimum requirements by the state ( plus, it would behoove you to at least look like you care about your employees). Other intangibles, but a big factor, is proper staffing. Staffing people can be done mathematically and correctly if shown the proper technique. To break it down, you need to know how much you can spend ( which will vary per month based on profit), mark hours that staff will not be present for that week (requested time off) and distribute the hours equally so that everyone will have a paycheck based on the hours they expected to work when they applied for the job. This formula essentially this:

P x V = S

S x H = T

P will be the positions determined based on shifts, V will be the vacancy factor ( the amount of days out of 7 usually), S will be the total number of staff, and H will be the hours total that needed to be used during the week, and T will be the hours that you can use to divide up based on the number of employees you have for that month. Easy right?

The last thing I would like to touch up on is the gap that is commonly found between managers and these task. Its almost funny how people do not understand the position of manager fully. The 21st century manager does these task and so many more within a company to keep things running smoothly. And that is what a manager is now: He/She is a problem solver and a task performer. Managers line up the task that need to be accomplished daily and anything else that pops up they essentially smooth it over to the best of their ability. Managers are sometimes looked at as “the go-to” for problems when it occurs in a company, because they are the ones that must micro manage the company. A manager will only fall behind and possibly will be inspected for replacement if a manager cannot identify issues in a timely manner when they occur and come up with a solution quickly. You just have to keep a close eye on everything because if you don’t, the repercussions will follow and, giving this problem a personification, it would be like trying to dig out of a hole: It only gets harder when things are not done promptly and effectively.

As always, some light humor:

Continuous Improvement and the Tools

So to have a successful business and to create a long term constituency plan, you need to analyze your business and where it can use improvements. You also need to analyze the tools you already posses that can improve the areas needed within your business. The way we analyze where we need improvements is based on what kind of improvements exist. Continuous improvements is the most basic: making some bigger, better, faster, etc. and striving to deliver your product in the best manner possible. Like many things, however, this improvement sounds great on paper, but the cost to do so is only best when kept low, which is a total redundancy because you want your best. The only time this is really effective, in my opinion, is when cost meets satisfaction. Another form is incremental improvements, which essentially is a slow process of fixing everything within a company, constant and a slow grind of improvement. In my opinion, every company does this in some form: whether you change vendors to changing types of plates to using a different kind of liquid soap in the bathroom, every company evolves slowly and gradually to keep cost lowest they can without sacrificing quality. The other type is a breakthrough improvement. Pretty much, this method is a rigid sudden change that isn’t gradual, but rather in effect as soon as possible. This is for companies that are struggling and need instant change to cut losses and fix whatever it is the company is lacking in improvement. Most of these types of improvements is based on urgency: the degree of what needs to be changed and how quickly the change can be implemented.

So you determined the types of improvements but its also important to notice what kinds of tools are your disposal for fixing these issues. The tools at your disposal are pretty much different ways to analyze data and ways to correct problems. Doing things like group meetings, brainstorming, public polls, and advertisements are basic forms to improve sales and productivity in general. Other types of tools are ways to collect data: like pie charts, graphs, different types of flow charts, and demographic charting. This display lets people analyze data differently, knowing where improvement can be made and also where their strength and weaknesses are. In my opinion, this is crucial to business success. Success is only defined as a constant necessary of change to attract new customers and keep old ones. The only way to do this is by analyzing data and know where your strengths and weaknesses are.

As always: a good comic to lighten the load.

The Nature of Leadership and Management

So after figuring out how to navigate Blackboard and downloading Adobe to my laptop, I read up a little about the types of leadership and styles of leadership. There are many forms of leadership and types, similar to what you may find in Government. They range based on perspective of what is demanded out of a workload and how the tasks are accomplished. The 21st Century, however, created a new form of leadership that I would like to brush up on which is: Eclectic. Eclectic style of leadership combines other forms of leadership to create a new style, purely based on ones morals and values. I personally like this form of leadership because in today’s modern era, nothing anymore is either “black or white.” In other words, there are shades of gray that gives people the chance to not be so rigid and confined within one systematic form of leadership. If you want to give and take from an Autocratic form of leadership, yet still keep the confines of a Bureaucratic style that gives everyone a chance to speak their mind freely, you can now do so! This new form also allows people to be their own boss. Leadership is no longer a one person job that demands the workload to be moved along like a plow mule. Everyone is credited to being their own boss and responsible for doing their work. In my opinion, this form of leadership is changing the natural workplace to the “Modern Workplace.” Today’s workload and competitive market for a job can almost guarantee that a person doesn’t need an upper level position cracking a whip over them. This leadership style is the marking of the new era in the competitive workplace.

Book Review: The First Time Manager

The book First Time Manager is a detailed written work for anyone who wants a managing position within a business. The overall book isn’t too long, it breaches just over 100 pages, and the chapters are about 2-4 pages a piece. In my opinion, and from my professional experience, I think this book is great. The chronological order of the book from the chapters talking about change within a workplace to how to deal with customers and situations with employees flows very well and the chapters are well thought out and spaced so they do not over talk about the same subject. I like how the book refereed to good quotes and situations to best describe an example of what they were referring to.  I also believe this is a great book for people who once were managers and wanted to pick up some light reading material if they were serious about rejoining the managerial profession. This book, in an honest sense, gives people a heightened sense as to how to deal with stress from employees and how to find a happy median to finding and hiring the right type of employees that will best represent your company.

I would like to take a chapter and compile a few noted opinions about it. The first one, as I mentioned earlier, is how to handle fellow employees and how to discipline bad behavior within the working environment. I cannot express how important of a chapter this is for a manger. A manager must have an equal balance of humor and understanding but also must have an authoritative demeanor when handling employees. An important fact I would like to point out that the book did not really mention is write ups. When an employee commits enough of an offense that must deserve a write up, it is important that it is signed by the offender and given a chance to say if they agree with the write up or not and given a few lines to explain their side of the story. Most companies have a “3 strikes and your out” rule and most write-ups begin with a warning, followed by time off (with no pay) with a meeting to discuss the issue at hand, and finally termination. This is important BECAUSE when you file away this document, there could most likely come a day where this dispute could come up again and you have documented proof that the employee was aware of the situation and signed it. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen. This is a valuable game changer strategy within the managerial position on how to prevent employee issues from arising. Above all else, the book makes a good point within another chapter that dealing with either a disgruntled customer or an employee that it is purely business and not personal, and as such, shouldn’t be taken personal.

To summarize, this book identifies the keep ingredients on how to make a efficient manager. It covers all the necessary levels a manger must perform at, and the dissection of explanation is very well done. The only suggestion I would embark on giving the author is making a section of the different type of managers within business and exclusively giving a brief description of what they would normally encounter, because as most people know, no 2 jobs are the same and the same goes for this job. The only other topic I would have covered is standardizing a system on how to handle other managers in a business. If you join a company that has more than one manager, or a group of managers that all report to a general manager, the book really should have dived more into working with other people of the same position. Otherwise, this book is flawless on giving its reader a well-developed sense of being a manager within a franchise.

Concept of Change: Technology

In the business world, the concept of internal and external change is frequent. Changes in the technological world is just as frequent as any other change. Analyzing the changes in cellular devices, wireless internet and portable computers have been recent examples of change in the work force. The change is necessary for the work to be more efficient. It is through this change that productivity is managed and production is more efficient. This type of change is also considered planned, an expected degree of preparation that will eventually evolve in the workplace.

Personally, I believe this is good for the working world environment. Technology is constantly evolving. Right now you can check emails, websites, and update portfolios wirelessly and on a small handheld device. Tablets can create charts and create sessions for meetings. Computers can calculate more information and the invention of “wifi” can connect anyone anywhere. Yes, technology has thoroughly evolved the workplace and has made the workload easier.

The Beginning

As they say “Big things have Small Beginnings” and they say “Every Great Journey begins with a single step.” This is the beginning of the greatest story ever told. Yours.

Glad to start my blog 8/26/2012.

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