Maximizing your return on people

Though most traditional HR performance metrics don't predict organizational performance, alternatives simply have not existed--until now. During the past ten years, researchers Laurie Bassi and Daniel McMurrer have worked to develop a system that allows executives to assess human capital management (HCM) and to use those metrics both to predict organizational performance and to guide organizations' investments in people. The new framework is based on a core set of HCM drivers that fall into five major categories: leadership practices, employee engagement, knowledge accessibility, workforce optimization, and organizational learning capacity. By employing rigorously designed surveys to score a company on the range of HCM practices across the five categories, it's possible to benchmark organizational HCM capabilities, identify HCM strengths and weaknesses, and link improvements or back-sliding in specific HCM practices with improvements or shortcomings in organizational performance. The process requires determining a "maturity" score for each practice, based on a scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high). Over time, evolving maturity scores from multiple surveys can reveal progress in each of the HCM practices and help a company decide where to focus improvement efforts that will have a direct impact on performance. The authors draw from their work with American Standard, South Carolina's Beaufort County School District, and a bevy of financial firms to show how improving HCM scores led to increased sales, safety, academic test scores, and stock returns. Bassi and McMurrer urge HR departments to move beyond the usual metrics and begin using HCM measurement tools to gauge how well people are managed and developed throughout the organization. In this new role, according to the authors, HR can take on strategic responsibility and ensure that superior human capital management becomes central to the organization's culture.     

How to motivate your problem people

Managers who motivate with incentives and the power of their vision and passion succeed only in energizing employees who want to be motivated. So how do you motivate intractable employees--the ones who never do what you want and also take up all your time? According to Nigel Nicholson, you can't: Individuals must motivated themselves. Nicholson advocates a method that turns conventional approaches to motivation upside down. Instead of pushing solutions on problem employees, the manager should pull solutions out of them by creating circumstances in which the employees can channel their motivation toward achievable goals. That means addressing any obstacles-possibly even the manager's own demotivating style--that might be hindering the employees. The author's method demands that a manager take charge of a difficult situation and resolve it. An investment of time is required, but it will bring the manager to a resolution sooner than other means would. Using detailed examples, Nicholson walks the reader through his method, pointing out potential pitfalls along the way. First, the manager creates a rich picture of the problem person. Second, the manager exercises flexibility and reframes goals so that the employee can meet them. Third, in a carefully staged, face-to-face conversation, the manager meets with the problem employee on neutral ground. Whether a problem is solved or simply resolved, the payoffs from using this method extend beyond the specific employees who have been difficult to motivate. Besides increasing a manager's chances of motivation problem people, the method can inspire an entire team by signaling that the organization deals with difficult people rather than discarding them.     

Six IT decisions your IT people shouldn't make

Senior managers often feel frustration--even exasperation--toward information technology and their IT departments. The managers complain that they don't see much business value from the high-priced systems they install, but they don't understand the technology well enough to manage it in detail. So they often leave IT people to make, by default, choices that affect the company's business strategy. The frequent result? Too many projects, a demoralized IT unit, and disappointing returns on IT investments. What distinguishes companies that generate substantial value from their IT investments from those that don't? The leadership of senior managers in making six key IT decisions. The first three relate to strategy: How much should we spend on IT? Which business processes should receive our IT dollars? Which IT capabilities need to be companywide? The second three relate to execution: How good do our IT services really need to be? Which security and privacy risks will we accept? Whom do we blame if an IT initiative fails? When senior managers aren't involved in these decisions, the results can be profound. For example, if they don't take the lead in deciding which IT initiatives to fund, they end up overloading the IT department with projects that may not further the company's strategy. And if they aren't assessing security and privacy risks, they are ignoring crucial business trade-offs. Smart companies are establishing IT governance structures that identify who should be responsible for critical IT decisions and ensure that such decisions further IT's strategic role in the organization.     

Job sculpting: the art of retaining your best people

Hiring good people is tough, but keeping them can be even tougher. The professionals streaming out of today's MBA programs are so well educated and achievement oriented that they could do well in virtually any job. But will they stay? According to noted career experts Timothy Butler and James Waldroop, only if their jobs fit their deeply embedded life interests--that is, their long-held, emotionally driven passions. Butler and Waldroop identify the eight different life interests of people drawn to business careers and introduce the concept of job sculpting, the art of matching people to jobs that resonate with the activities that make them truly happy. Managers don't need special training to job sculpt, but they do need to listen more carefully when employees describe what they like and dislike about their jobs. Once managers and employees have discussed deeply embedded life interests--ideally, during employee performance reviews--they can work together to customize future work assignments. In some cases, that may mean simply adding another assignment to existing responsibilities. In other cases, it may require moving that employee to a new position altogether. Skills can be stretched in many directions, but if they are not going in the right direction--one that is congruent with deeply embedded life interests--employees are at risk of becoming dissatisfied and uncommitted. And in an economy where a company's most important asset is the knowledge, energy, and loyalty of its people, that's a large risk to take.     

Manage your energy, not your time

As the demands of the workplace keep rising, many people respond by putting in ever longer hours, which inevitably leads to burnout that costs both the organization and the employee. Meanwhile, people take for granted what fuels their capacity to work--their energy. Increasing that capacity is the best way to get more done faster and better. Time is a finite resource, but energy is different. It has four wellsprings--the body, emotions, mind, and spirit--and in each, it can be systematically expanded and renewed. In this article, Schwartz, founder of the Energy Project, describes how to establish rituals that will build energy in the four key dimensions. For instance, harnessing the body's ultradian rhythms by taking intermittent breaks restores physical energy. Rejecting the role of a victim and instead viewing events through three hopeful lenses defuses energy-draining negative emotions. Avoiding the constant distractions that technology has introduced increases mental energy. And participating in activities that give you a sense of meaning and purpose boosts the energy of the spirit. The new workday rituals succeed only if leaders support their adoption, but when that happens, the results can be powerful. A group of Wachovia Bank employees who went through an energy management program outperformed a control group on important financial metrics like loans generated, and they reported substantially improved customer relationships, productivity, and personal satisfaction. These findings corroborated anecdotal evidence gathered about the effectiveness of this approach at other companies, including Ernst & Young, Sony, and Deutsche Bank. When organizations invest in all dimensions of their employees' lives, individuals respond by bringing all their energy wholeheartedly to work -and both companies and their people grow in value.     

When your contract manufacturer becomes your competitor

PC maker Lenovo started out as a distributor of equipment made by IBM and other companies; now it has formed a joint venture with IBM and will eventually affix its own logo to its computers. Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) started out manufacturing vehicles for Volkswagen and GM; now it's preparing to sell its own cars in China, Europe, and North America. Lenovo and SAIC represent a host of formerly anonymous makers of brand-name products that are breaking out of their defined roles and pushing the brands themselves aside. In this article, the authors explore the double-edged relationships original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) forge with their contract manufacturers (CMs). On the one hand, an OEM can reduce its labor costs, free up capital, and improve worker productivity by outsourcing all the manufacturing of a product. The company can then concentrate on value-adding activities--research and development, product design, and marketing, for instance. On the other hand, an OEM that retains a contract manufacturer may find itself immersed in a melodrama replete with promiscuity (the ambitious CM pursues liaisons with other OEMs), infidelity (the OEM's retailers and distributors shift their business to the upstart CM), and betrayal (the brazen CM transmits the OEM's intellectual property to the OEM's rivals or keeps it for itself when the contract is up). OEMs cannot simply terminate their outsourcing arrangements--they need contract manufacturers in order to keep specializing, adding value, and staying competitive. But OEMs can manage these relationships so that they don't become weak or the CMs too strong. Doing so requires modesty about revealing trade secrets; caution about whom one consorts with; and a judicious degree of intimacy, loyalty, and generosity toward partners and customers.     

产品:让市场作主

中国境内的金融产品是随着金融改革进程的展开而逐步问世和增加的.这意味着,与其它各方面情况一样,它也受到计划体制的严重影响.政府部门主要通过四个环节来实现对金融产品的控制:即控制金融产品的种类,控制金融产品的规模,控制金融产品的价格以及控制金融产品的交易.对金融产品的管制大大束缚了金融机构的创新能力,也不利于满足实体经济对金融服务的要求.     

让工行品牌拥有美——工行牡丹江分行私人银行中心创建“美丽工行”纪实

建设“美丽中国”呼唤“美丽金融”。2012年9月27日,牡丹江分行私人银行中心挂牌营业。虽然只有三个月,却被客户称为“美丽工行”。截至12月31日,吸纳高端客户31户,储蓄存款20148万元,日均1874万元;累计出售理财产品38345万元,基金8524万元;销售财产保险1455万元,国债1896万元;办理财富卡69张,信用卡73张;推介个人贷款6笔。金额300余万元,创造了客户推崇、同业领先的金融佳话。     

让会计准则早日无国界

随着国际经济一体化的日益加强,资本市场的全球化以及与之息息相关的会计准则国际化,已成为各个国家不可回避的现实问题.本刊特摘登4月15日《中国证券报》采访证监会顾问冯汉光和邱家赐的"让会计准则早日无国界"一文、以飨读者.     

See your brands through your customers' eyes.

Subaru markets an L.L. Bean Outback station wagon. Dell stamps Microsoft and Intel logos on its computers. Such inter-weaving of different companies' brands is now commonplace. But one of the central tools of brand management-portfolio mapping--has not kept pace with changes in the marketplace. Most conventional brand maps include only those brands owned by a company, arranged along organizational lines with little regard for how the brands influence customer perceptions. In this article, the authors present a new mapping tool--the brand portfolio molecule--that reveals the way brands appear to customers. The brand portfolio molecule includes all the brands that factor into a consumer's decision to buy, whether or not the company owns them. The first step in creating a brand portfolio molecule is to determine which brands should or should not be included. The second step is to classify each brand by asking five key questions: 1) How important is this brand to customers' purchase decisions about the brand you're mapping? 2) Is its influence positive or negative? 3) What market position does this brand occupy relative to the other brands in the portfolio? 4) How does this brand connect to the other brands in the portfolio? 5) How much control do you have over this brand? The last step is to map the molecule using a 3-D modeling program or by hand with pen and paper. Individual brands take the form of atoms, and they're clustered in ways that reflect how customers see them. The usefulness of the tool lies in its ability to show the many forces that influence a customer's buying decision--and to provide a powerful new way to think about brand strategy.     

让车贷驶上高速路

商业银行只有实行的利率更优惠，担保方式灵活多样，产品更适合大众胃口，才会在日益增长的汽车金融业务市场中占有一席之地。[编者按]     

让客户等待抑或让窗口等待

排队论是运筹学的一个分支 ,又称随机服务系统理论或等待线理论 ,是研究要求获得某种服务的对象所产生的随机性聚散现象的理论。排队论起源于 190 9年丹麦哥本哈根电话公司的Ａ·Ｋ·爱尔朗发表的题为《概率与电话通话理论》一文。排队论起初是与电话、通信问题相关 ,尔后 ,在交通运输、计算机系统、公用服务事业得到了广泛的应用。其显著特征是解决系统中随机到达、等待服务的排队问题。如 :加油站前等待加油而排队的汽车、车站售票处等待购票而排队的旅客、医院门诊等待医生诊视而排队的病人…… ,无一不是排队现象。金融业是一个服务行业…     

Understanding "people" people

Nearly all areas of business--not just sales and human resources--call for interpersonal savvy. Relational know-how comprises a greater variety of aptitudes than many executives think. Some people can "talk a dog off a meat truck," as the saying goes. Others are great at resolving interpersonal conflicts. Some have a knack for translating high-level concepts for the masses. And others thrive when they're managing a team. Since people do their best work when it most closely matches their interests, the authors contend, managers can increase productivity by taking into account employees' relational interests and skills when making personnel choices and project assignments. After analyzing psychological tests of more than 7,000 business professionals, the authors have identified four dimensions of relational work: influence, interpersonal facilitation, relational creativity, and team leadership. This article explains each one and offers practical advice to managers--how to build a well-balanced team, for instance, and how to gauge the relational skills of potential employees during interviews. To determine whether a job candidate excels in, say, relational creativity, ask her to describe her favorite advertising campaign, slogan, or image and tell you why she finds it to be so effective. Understanding these four dimensions will help you get optimal performance from your employees, appropriately reward their work, and assist them in setting career goals. It will also help you make better choices when it comes to your own career development. To get started, try the authors' free online assessment tool, which will measure both your orientation toward relational work in general and your interest level in each of its four dimensions.     

让资本市场在废墟上运行——中国证监会主席尚福林慰问地震灾区支持上市公司灾后重建纪实

汶川大地震使四川境内的上市公司遭受重大损失,有些证券交易所倒塌,正常的交易行为受到一定程度的影响,对此,中国证监会主席尚福林高度重视,于6月4日到四川实地查看证券期货经营机构、上市公司的受灾情况。     

金融监管如何更有效率?

金融监管要做到既不缺位又不越位,这就是监管的辩证法。     

Reclaim your job

Ask most managers what gets in the way of their success, and you'll hear the familiar litany of complaints: Not enough time. Limited resources. No clear sense of how their work fits into the grand corporate scheme. These are, for the most part, excuses. What really gets in the way of managers' success is fear of making their own decisions and acting accordingly. Managers must overcome the psychological desire to be indispensable. In this article, the authors demonstrate how managers can become more productive by learning to manage demands, generate resources, and recognize and exploit alternatives. To win the support they want, managers must develop a long-term strategy and pursue their goals slowly, steadily, and strategically. To expand the range of opportunities, for their companies and themselves, managers must scan the environment for possible obstacles and search for ways around them. Fully 90% of the executives the authors have studied over the past few years wasted their time and frittered away their productivity, despite having well-defined projects, goals, and the necessary knowledge to get their jobs done. Such managers remain trapped in inefficiency because they assume they do not have enough personal discretion or control. They forget how to take initiative--the most essential quality of any truly successful manager. Effective managers, by contrast, are purposeful corporate entrepreneurs who take charge of their jobs by developing trust in their own judgment and adopting long-term, big-picture views to fulfill personal goals that match those of the organization.     

Match your sales force structure to your business life cycle

Although companies devote considerable time and money to managing their sales forces, few focus much thought on how the structure of the sales force needs to change over the life cycle of a product or a business. However, the organization and goals of a sales operation have to evolve as businesses start up, grow, mature, and decline if a company wants to keep winning the race for customers. Specifically, firms must consider and alter four factors over time: the differing roles that internal salespeople and external selling partners should play, the size of the sales force, its degree of specialization, and how salespeople apportion their efforts among different customers, products, and activities. These variables are critical because they determine how quickly sales forces respond to market opportunities, they influence sales reps' performance, and they affect companies' revenues, costs, and profitability. In this article, the authors use timeseries data and cases to explain how, at each stage, firms can best tackle the relevant issues and get the most out of their sales forces. During start-up, smart companies focus on how big their sales staff should be and on whether they can depend upon selling partners. In the growth phase, they concentrate on getting the sales force's degree of specialization and size right. When businesses hit maturity, companies should better allocate existing resources and hire more general-purpose salespeople. Finally, as organizations go into decline, wise sales leaders reduce sales force size and use partners to keep the business afloat for as long as possible.