Reading log - Management

Summary: The article talks about strategies for motivating employees, especially middle managers. First, by attributing a greater (moral) value to to their work other than financial success. Second, by acting as a manager in a way that makes employees feel like you care personally about the success of the company. Take risks, challange yourself visibly and lead by example; not by decree. Third, by staying focused in volatile times: be transparent on performance and challanges in both good and bad times.

Thoughts: I think a lot of these points are attractive. Here, I'll share my thoughts on all three strategies. First, the article really focuses on making performance a moral good, but I think there are more emotional appeals that are just as effective. For example, appealing to the prestige of working at a high-performing company: if other people get on the edge of their seats when an employee says that they work there, they will get personally invested in their performance. Second, I think leading by example is very much easier said than done. The article starts off by making an example of the young middle manager, and it is not trivial for a middle-manager in a coorporation to take visible risks. Lastly, the third point recontextualizes the McKinsey podcast i heard on productivity. That participants talks about culture (the first two points), and KPI meassurements - the third point in this article. Staying focused can be assisted by KPIs, and I think the article should have elaborated more on this as it would have made the third strategy more concrete.

Summary: The article explains the framing effect, a cognitive bias where the phrasing problem statement influences the solution, and how it relates to decision-making in organizations.

Thoughts: The most interesting point made in this article was the remedies to prevent the framing effect. Additionally, this article made me rethink a lot of the other content on management I have been consuming. A lot of them discuss how important it is to set clear targets and communicate them clearly (e.g. the "I morgen" podcast i on Aug. 9th). These articles frame "end goals" as being set in stone, but now I think targets should be reevaluated regularily.

Summary: The podcast discusses the difficulty of balancing performance measures and cultural factors in productivity management. Towards the end they touch on differences between generations; particularly how Gen Z respond to feedback.

Thoughts: I related to how they discussed Gen Z's response to feedback. Gen Z-ers have been raised with continous feedback from social media, and feedback is a big part of our culture now. On another note, I also think that honesty and directness in productivity leadership is something that is undervalued in this conversation. The participants noted that the goal of a company is to make money. Similarly, directness should be practiced in performance measures to make a culture more flat and less diffuse.

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Summary: The participants summarize the I Morgen report from 2023. It explains how the norwegian power market is approaching a crisis, and they explore three scenarios for the future.

Thoughts: The participants thoroughly discussed the possibility of Norway not expanding the power market. This possibility being taken seriously was refreshing and interesting. I could also relate this to my report on the power market in India. Therefore this podcast made me want to read this report in full.

Summary: This article explains how exemplars in cost-cutting don't worsen the end-user experience, but cut organizational overhead through culture and process improvements. A surprising amount of these strategies involve improving employee well-being and leadership engagement. Management needs to find unnecessary costs (even the less tangible) by exploring all opportunities and acquiring deep knowledge about the industry and organization. This requires patience.

Thoughts: Regrettably, the author repeats his general points a lot. For example, strategies like, "Foundational work disciplines and tools" and "Ensure that product design and process design reinforce each other" are two sides of the same coin - one incentivizes the other. Nevertheless, I agree with the overall message of the article. Cost-cutting is best done by improving the organization, not by slashing services. I think people don't talk about retention rate and employee engangement as a cutting potential losses enough. I also want to learn more about how this article discusses process/product compatibility. This is something that requires deep knowledge about the organization, and the article brings up interesting tools such processes like cycle times and customer patterns and underserved groups.