The Scholar of Business

Thirty years ago, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) could easily have been dismissed as a consultancy-led fad or a do-gooding side show, but it looks increasingly like the idea of companies meaning, at least seeming, to be good is here to stay. The lobby of Marks & Spencer’s head office in London is not untypical of the current climate with big corporates. A giant electronic ticker describes progress against what they call ‘Plan A’ – a set of 100 worthy targets that they are committed to achieve over the next five years – help give a better education to 15,000 children in Uganda, save 55,000 tonnes of carbon every year, recycle 48m clothes hangers, convert 20m garment to Fairtrade cotton, the list goes on and to help achieve it every store has a dedicated ‘Plan A’ champion.

M&S is only one of many businesses world-wide keen to promote their good behaviour through their websites, their annual reports, their product marketing and their staff recruitment activity. The pressure from legislators has also increased – the 2006 Companies Act, for example, requires public Companies to report on social and environmental maters and the Economist reports the number of global executives ranking the issue as rating a ‘high’ or ‘very high’ priority rising from 30% three years ago to just under 70% in three years from now. ‘Doing well by doing good’ has become the expected and normal way that large organisations are behaving and, as ever, what is common practice in larger businesses is increasingly being taken up by smaller ones.

Private owned businesses have their own executives and do not need to play by the rules of a corporation. Management plays by their own rules and they tell everyone what management desires. This way of thinking for management is changing, even for the smaller businesses. A ‘manager’ is not solely what businesses are looking for. Their goal is to find a leader who can take their employees to new levels of efficiency, productivity, and skill sets.

A manager and leader are not the same. Understanding the difference is extremely important. The easiest way to understand the difference between managers and leaders is simple. Managers direct employees and tell them what to do while a leader is inspiring. A manager demands respect and uses his or her authority to obtain it. A good leader respects other employees and enhances an individual initiative of freedom, which results in a large amount of respect. In order for a manager to be effective, business theory has proven they expand activities horizontally so they can be controlled. An inspiring leader will promote development to occur at a vertical level. The power is not evident and often times it is out of a leader’s control but in the control of the staff members.

A good leader is far more effective than a manager. This is because a leader creates motivation within the employees of an organization. A leader creates drive and initiative and gives employees ownership for their positions. Employees then want to come to work and do a good job because they are motivated to do so. A manager exercises their control and power to the point that often times, employees wake up in the morning and they don’t want to go to work. Motivation is often lacking with managers who do not possess good leadership skills.

There are two primary tasks you will be required to do as a Six Sigma Green Belt (SSGB). These two tasks include helping deploy the techniques or methodologies of Six Sigma throughout your organization and deploying improvement projects as well. A green belt plays an active role in a company; he or she is the ‘worker bee’ of the Six Sigma process. You will learn in your Six Sigma Online Training classes that a SSGB’s responsibilities include gathering information and data, solving problems, and being a large contributing factor to the success of your company.

A Six Sigma Green Belt can be found in any type of industry. A SSGB is beneficial with any type of transaction driven business like healthcare, government, manufacturing, and finance. Product based industries can make good use of someone with this type of certification. If you are looking for ways to move up with a company or advance your career, this is an excellent step in the right direction.

A Certified Green Belt will learn how to do many things for a business. This person will be able to communicate the business strategy across the company to other employees, integrate lean Six Sigma, select projects and teams, plan and execute projects, and even increase profitability.

Training Six Sigma to leaders within a company is an excellent idea. You might think of training the management or even people who have an impact on others. Anyone in an organization with an ability to lead, inspire, coach, or train has what it takes to go through lean Six Sigma Training. The goal is to find a person who can look at a project, break it down appropriately by steps, assign tasks to team members, ensure things are getting done, set a timeline, and more. Not only do you need the right person, but Six Sigma Online Training can teach them how to organize a team and project successfully with little time out of the office

Planning a Six Sigma project might seem easy, but when it comes down to it mistakes occur all of the time because of important steps forgotten, money being mismanaged, the project being overbid, and more. Six Sigma Certification will teach your employees how to plan a project before even accepting it until the very end of execution. The entire planning phase is vital and often the area where team members or leaders fail. This can be overcome with Six Sigma courses.

The planning phase may have gone quite well for your project and everything seemed to be perfect. However, once you moved into the execution phase everything just fell apart. This is very common. Executing a project is not easy. Training Six Sigma to staff members can teach them how to properly and effectively execute a project at the right time and without disrupting company productivity. The customer might want as little downtime as possible. Understanding the customers’ needs will help with execution also. A Six Sigma Black Belt Certification program will take you through understanding customers and properly executing projects to meet their needs

As regular visitors to our managerzine have come to know, there is research that suggests that feedback is the single most important skill for a manager to master and practice. The benefits are many: clarity, performance improvement, a sense of openness, fairness, motivation. From our work with many managers over the past year, we have come to value the second most important manager skill. It has to do with getting rid of monkeys.

We received a call from a far-flung reader with a monkey problem. He had three direct reports who were managers themselves. Each had some heavy new responsibilities that had been spread around to remaining managers after a series of lay-offs. Turns out, they were not shy about getting him involved with their work. “Can you please review this before I send it out?” was a typical request. “I’ve got a problem. Here’s what happens” was another. Pretty soon, their work became his work, and his time was not his own.

What is happening here is a classic back and forth game of who has responsibility. The subordinate puts the “monkey”-the responsibility– on the manager when he/she asks for a review or when the boss is asked to solve a problem. When a manger picks up the monkey from a direct report, he or she is literally working for the subordinate. The manager’s time is being taken up by a subordinate’s work. Something is wrong with this picture

1. Performance Appraisal Meetings – How to Help Your Staff Member Prepare

I’m often asked by managers how they can make their performance review or appraisal meetings more of a two-way discussion, how they can encourage their staff to be more fully part of the meeting. A start point is to give your staff member time and support in preparing for the meeting