A picture tells more than a thousand words
Here is a small photo display of tonights work.
Let’s continue Wednesday evening.
Group meeting
For the meeting today we will meet at Niclas apartment at 1830 today. See you there.
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption from 1994 is one of the best movies to this date according to me and many with me. In this analysis I have focused on the management and the guards and not so much on the plot of the movie. For you who have not yet seen the movie here is a short sum up:
Andy Dufresne is a successful banker who gets accused and sentences to double lifetime for the murder of his wife and is sent to Shawshank Prison. After a rough start he gains respect from his fellow inmates. Before long the warden finds out about his financial knowledge and uses his expertise for his personal gain…
Here is a fun hip hop sum up:
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/02/10/video-the-shawshank-redemption-hip-hop-remix/
In one of the first scenes after Andy arrives at the prison shows the captain of the guard brutally abuses one of the inmates to death while the other guards just stand there watching. How can this be? There are many reasons for this but the three most important ones is the manager, the organization and finally the walls.
In charge at Shawshank is Warden Norton who also is the only manager at the prison (at least that can be seen in the movie). Even if middle management surly exists somewhere I am not sure that they can be considered managers because of their lack of power. Therefore he can run the prison pretty much as he himself pleases. He identifies himself with the prison and his way of viewing things is that the convicted felons are sent “to him” not to the prison. Even if he says this with disgust he at the same time makes it clear that he owns the prisoners as of that they came inside the walls to that they leave the again. This has the consequence that everyone inside that prison is worth as much as they are worth to the warden. For example Andy’s financial knowledge is worth more than Tommy’s life so when Warden Norton needs to choose the answer is not too hard. To further emphasize this he even creating his own “slave workforce” out of the prisoners for the benefit of himself. For him a prison has one objective to society and that is to keep the dangerous criminals looked away to the lowest cost to society. This is a very resource based view of running things; he needs a high wall a couple of guards and since everything is working nothing needs to be changed. That this view leads to a lack of change is clear since the prison and the routines are identical during the 20 years that Andy is imprisoned. A comparison could be made to companies acting on a market without competition and without the threat of competitors entering anytime soon also might have a hard time to motivate development. From all this it is fair to wonder if he really is the right man for the position as warden of a prison when it’s clear that he put no value to the welfare or “rehabilitation” of the inmates. The filmmakers make their position clear: the warden is more of a criminal then any of the inmates. It is also interesting to see how the filmmakers use his disintegration towards a more and more corrupt man to show the dangers of too much power.
The structure of the prison is very army like with a strict discipline and hierarchy. This structure suits the warden perfect. Inside the walls he is king and no state observatory board can be seen. A parallel can be drawn to when a CEO makes a visit to a factory and everything is cleaned and set in perfect order instead of showing the reality. I guess that the politicians and the voters see the problem with criminals as solved when they are caught and sentenced to jail. If they don’t ask about what is going on inside they don’t have to care about any problems. This works something like “someone-else-problem-beam” from the Douglas Adams “hitchhikers guide to the galaxy”. Below the warden is the brutal captain Hadley who is the one responsible for the prisoners and below him is the rest of the guard. The way the structure and the “company” culture are set up there is no acceptance for questioning your superiors. Therefore we can see the guards standing by without interfering even when they show signs of disapproval. To judge the guards as cowards is not as easy as it first might seem since it’s hard to go against the custom and culture but still you must always be held responsible to some degree even if this foremost is a management problem. Structures where no criticism and no creativity exist will not be very good at developing or improving and thus will be stuck in the same routines. Whether this structure is something that is deeply rooted in people’s minds of how a prison should be run or if this is warden Norton’s own structure is hard to say.
The third thing that I think have a big effect on the behavior of the guard is the walls. Walls don’t just make sure to keep the inmates inside the prison but more importantly make sure to keep the world around the prison away. This way the walls acts like a border between two worlds where your doings on one side won’t affect the other world. What’s not acceptable behavior in the outside world might be perfectly fine for you inside. Hence it’s quite easy for the management to form the ways things are done at this facility. This isolated world can be compared to the one created by William Golding in his book lord of the flies where the isolated people also creates a community on a isolated island based on values quite different from the world they come from. In the film ending it’s quite obvious that captain Hadley is chocked when the police comes and arrests him, which shows just how hard it is for him to understand that the laws applies inside their small world as well. Here the film have the outside world comes in as a knight in shining armor to set things right so that the audience get their regular moralizing lectures and a happy ending. But the outside world did keep their eyes closed as long as possible and not until the fact landed on their breakfast table did they act and no one knows if anything changed after warden Norton disappeared, maybe it’s business as usual the next day.
Media Markts KUPP
Is this management?
Dinner on Sunday
We talked about organizing a dinner during which we can talk about our ideas for a movie, and the suggestion to have it on Sunday has come up. How is that looking for everyone?
Google vs Yahoo!
Year 2004 Google and Yahoo! were worthy competitors in the same market with about the same revenue and profit. Year 2007 Google’s net income equaled 6.4 times the one of Yahoo!’s. Even more astonishing, Google’s profit was almost the same as Yahoo!’s total revenues. Google is today one of the best-known names on the Internet around the planet while Yahoo! is struggling. How can Google in the recent year have outperformed Yahoo! to such extent? On our last lecture we had a discussion about the 7S Model, created by the consultants at McKinsey.
The model consists of 3 Hard S’s:
- Strategy
- Structure
- System
and 4 Soft S’s:
- Skills
- Staff
- Style
- Shared Values
Every operating, profitable company has a strategy, a structure and a system to help them carry out their business. Yahoo! and Google doesn’t differ remarkably in this matter, if much at all. We didn’t come up with a satisfactory explanation on the lecture to what the Soft side of the 7S Model could represent, even though the 4 S-words individually gives a rather cool, modern sound. David mentioned that the Hard S’s could represent the American view of a corporation, while the Japanese companies emphasize the Soft ones. This could be the case. Although, my view on the four Soft S’s can be applied to any company and can be summarized in two words – Organizational Culture. Skill, Staff, Style and Shared Values is what I call corner stones of a company’s culture. All companies have an organizational culture. Yahoo! have one. Most importantly - Some companies have one that is far more successful than others. Google is one of those few companies.
Could organizational culture emphasized by the 4 Soft S have something to do with the difference in success for the companies? That is a good question.
With the ethical philosophy “Don’t be evil” Google refuses to favor paid advertisers in it’s web search results or to allow web sites that speaks ill against anyone. Google is obviously a company with distinct ethical values that is shared within the organization. The more or less geeky culture at Google attracts creative thinkers who want to make a difference in the Internet world. People working at Google say it’s an exciting place to be. Employees are requested to devote a quarter of their time working on new ideas of their own choosing. Aim and encouragement comes from higher up in the organization to get any interesting idea into practice as quickly as possible. You could basically have an idea on Monday and have it on the Web site at the end of the week. This creative environment must give a very stimulating feeling.
To attract talent and make young employees feel at home Google headquarters is very campuslike with a playful decor and a legendary cafeteria where people can socialize under relaxed circumstances. Due to the young age of the employees most meetings even start a bit after the hour, the same as our class schedules in school. It’s not hard to understand why Google attracts young, hungry and skillful staff.
Maybe it’s the organizational culture at Google that could explain to some extent the enormous success for the company over the recent years. I would say that the clear culture at Google has played a leading role in the development of the company. Maybe a clear organizational culture is a key ingredient to many company’s success? Maybe the Soft side plays an as important role as Hard side. What do you think?
The Poem
A nice manager is a dream,
The wrong one will make you scream
I like a boss who’s fun,
where should I find this one
At all the exams I were the ace,
Now a got a job at a new place
The boss turned out to be a jerk,
so all I do is fuck the clerk
The new office is full of cash,
and I manipulate some into my own stash
I got tired of managing the accounts,
so I ran away with huge amounts
Laying on the beach in the Caribbean sun,
it feels pretty good being on the run
Back home I used to be a hero,
the company is now worth zero
All the models used to fuck me in school,
now they get fucked in my private pool
Mangement in real life, can we solve the problem?
A friend of mine experiences management problems at work and asked for my opinion, I thought it a good idea to add the information (without names of course) on our blog so we can discuss it.
It’s a pretty small business with 10 employees plus the owner, let’s call him X. One problem is that there is no boss. X is there from time to time and tells the employees what they do right and wrong, but X doesn’t think it’s his responsibility to “babysit” the employees. X wants them to run the business pretty much by themselves, but still in his way. When X is not there, most of the time, the employees do as they see fit, most often with better results than when being told by X since he is not familiar with all the details. One problem is that it seems like the employee who knows X best, tells other employees what to do. But, since there is only five people working at the same time and ten employees in total, the one who’s “in charge” by the parameter given above, often vary. The result is that different employees do things their own way, and that the new employees are being told different things by different people. The outcome is of course that no one knows how things are supposed to be done, but all employees think their way are the right way, especially if they know the owner in a more personal way; which several of the employees actually do, they have been friends with X before they started working for him.
Another problem is that X often has a bad attitude which affects the employees, and further on the customers. One thing that the employees agree upon is that X’s attitude directly correlates with the business income. So when business is bad, he’s attitude is worse than usual, but if it’s really good he can be quite nice.
The employees know that X is aware that there are problems in the staff, but they employees don’t think he understands the extent of it. The atmosphere has now become a little stiff and several of the employees have said that something has to be done to address the problems.
If one is to propose solutions one must bear in mind that the problems should be addressed with as low costs as possible since the liquidity is limited.
Please note that my friend hasn’t worked there for a long time and therefore might not see the whole picture, also take into account that we don’t know what cooperation X would provide if suggested a solution.
What do you guys say; anyone have an idea how to address these problems?
Limiting the thoughts of something you love
It seems that my love for this movie, Star Wars VI, is only equaled to that of my future first-born son. Even though I have written a second draft for my assignment and have cut much text, it is still longer than the first draft! This will be taken care of in the future, when I can decide what parts that are least connected to the assignment.
I have edited my post which can be found below so if you find the time to read it and comment, please do! Rasmus’ comments were very useful.
Thoughts about the movie
During the meeting today, we talked about how we wanted the movie to be. It seems like we have a few different categories from which to choose one option:
| Technology | Method | Content |
| ¤ Make a Flash movie ¤ Film our own movie ¤ Put together clips from existing movies |
¤ Music Video ¤ Fakeumentary ¤ Documentary |
¤ Earn 50.000 ¤ Home Loan Crisis ¤ How a change of names can change attitude to something (e.g. from Berg to Materialdesign) ¤ “Doggy-Style Calculation” (where financial analysts start with what they want the result to be, for instance the value of company, and then make up the numbers in order to land on the correct value) ¤ Fashion – Kate Moss snorts Cocain and becomes more popular. Is that management? |
We discussed a few combinations in particular:
1. What if everyone knew what result they wanted before they started counting?
The movie could start with someone trying the calculate what days of the year not do any business, kind of like Tycho Brahe did. The equation would be across all six boards inside D1 and the film would be fastforwarded, so that we can see the entire calculation. Eventually, some date pops out.
Somehow, the mathematician tries to persuade someone not to do something that day – for instance buying stock or getting a haircut. After that we need to make the transistion where we show that this of course is stupid, but that it happens every day in company finance (remember the example from the KB course with the economists trying to predict the future). In the end, perhaps the viewer should ask itself the question: Is that really management?
2. Prepare for the boss
This is regarding the idea that the boss, perhaps a CEO or a military General, wants to inspect his troops. His vision is to see how things really are, but of course everything is improved and cleaned when he arrives. He has no chance to see things the way they REALLY are, because everybody is tidying up before he arrives, whereever he goes. A funny scene might be where the military Captain shouts to his troops: “Clean the woods! The General is coming!”
The question raised in this video would be: Is that management? He never actually sees what is going on, but perhaps believes that he does when he is inspecting.
