All 6 entries tagged Cbe

CBE reflection

Although I have some brief knowledge about excellence pathway for industry implications, it was an interesting and informative module. After Paul and Chris Hakes explained how organisations should achieve excellence rank, it attracted my attention more and the class presentations and games foster me to learn more. And I finally focus more on continuous improvements which seem like difficult but are very essential for being sustainable and having quality management. Also I agree with Paul’s idea that hierarchy in the organisation from the lowest rank worker to executives should be changed!! But how? And then we decide to implement it reversely in order to create collaboration environment in business instead of competition; therefore, each rank must be ask and help its one lower rank in terms of knowledge and experience sharing. On the other hand, one of other significant points is building learning organisations which are open-minded to learn more and more and keep its mistakes in mind. All in all, CBE is going to form the foundation of this master degree and other modules are going to be give richness.

: 20 Nov 2013 21:38 |  Tags: Cbe Mbe Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Forget to tell a good story, Be a better Company

I have read an article on HBR (Harvard Business Review) which explains how Walmart (world’s second large public corporation according to Fortune 500) has an achievement on society results.

With respect to EFQM, excellent organisations achieve and sustain outstanding results that meet or exceed the needs and expectations of relevant stakeholders within society. Generally companies hire PR people in order to prevent awful headlines. Then, CEO shows up and tells “We are misunderstood and we should need to tell a good story”. Do not tell a good story! The public can embrace company if CEO shows up and makes pretended press-conference instead of criticizing company according to mistakes.

After the deadliest and destructive hurricane Katrina hit many houses and killed 1883 people, Walmart provided meals, cash, emergency supplies by trucks. Those were the right things to do.

And Walmart set big goals in areas such as sustainability, women’s economic empowerment, and more-healthful food. So giant companies don’t achieve enormous revenues or market-share incidentally, they take 360-degree approach to the work, engaging entire supply chain, customers and communities. The multinational big companies take on high risks, because their sales. It means that negligible failures can create terrifying outcomes from the society’s perspective; they can lose great revenues suddenly. According to article, taking on large social issues can be compatible with building a stronger business, and I agree with. Instead of telling a better story to public, be a better company in terms of society like Wal-Mart.

EFQM has 4 results which are customer, people, society, and business results. Especially in the retail stores like Walmart or Home Depot, society results have a high impact on customer’s choices, because they address with end-users who care about environment and humanity. EFQM measures could include perception of environmental impact, image and reputation, societal impact, workplace impact, and awards and media coverage. Those measures give trust company to reach more people and sell more products.

: 27 Oct 2013 20:13 |  Tags: Cbe Mbe Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

PDCA cycle

This cycle is known as Deming Cycle. Although it was created for the improvements in business environment, actually this loop is used in many cases by us. I believe that this cycle forms also the structure of learning process. Let’s investigate all of the steps and give examples:

Plan

What a boring word, isn’t it? Everybody has been talking about how preparing plan is important. However this is the fact that “plan making saves time and money in every ambient”. For instance, housewives prepare the shopping list in order to categorise the needs and places according to discount booklets of supermarket which are distributed by mail or experiences which they have. Actually, we are planning everything in our lives unconsciously, because due to requirement of surviving we should use our resources and capabilities orderly and efficiently. Our resources may be time and money and capabilities may be physical or logical behaviours that we can execute in “Do” step!

Also plan making not only reduces the uncertainties in our life, but also minimize the impulsive and arbitrary decisions. Preparing plan reduces the probability of catastrophic failures in every platform.

Do

No one can have an experience or feedback, before experiencing it. After we made plan or agenda, trial is necessary for collecting data from system. With this act we compare the real results with expectations. For instance, there is middle-size factory which produces electronic equipments for notebooks and we work as a management team. After we prepared our new production line-up for a recently innovated product, we should try to produce it and instead of discussing the expected results in meeting, we need real outcomes. The real result of test is really important in order to check them with anticipated ones. These tests take sometimes much time in some sectors, especially manufacturing sector. For instance, BMW, well-known German automobile manufacturer, put new cars on the market in every 7 years. During 7 years, the department of research and development tries it in every condition which car may be deal with. However, some firms do not have a capability taking a risk and want to observe the outcomes in small perspective. (**)

**Sometimes this step called as “pilot practice”, because most companies do not want to take serious decisions. Pilot practice means that try out the application in a small dimension instead of apply it completely. **

Check

How can we correct our mistakes or wrong decisions? In this step of PDCA loop, we are going to compare the results which have taken from Do-part with the expectations on Plan-part. Sometimes the decisions taken in Plan part may be misleading and we are sure to be on right way. According to me, checking means that “deriving lessons from mistakes”. After we learned from mistakes, new improvements are unavoidable.

Act

We have already planned, tried, and checked! We should finalise and keep it sustain our attempt. Act step shows us how people work well. It is time to show and prove people our knowledge and work in this step. Reaching excellence level in production is not a dream, but it requires much willingness an adaptation to excellence ideology and patience.

Even we have finished the cycle; the most important principal about PDCA-cycle is keeping it sustain. It means that we should follow this path for all new improvements or innovations. And this will give us continuous improvement in long-term. After this cycle rotates in a time, the quality of product will improve and company can achieve excellence.

: 26 Oct 2013 20:57 |  Tags: Cbe Mbe Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

That was not a boring meeting!

Honestly, I haven’t imagined how much I am going to learn meeting approaches before we have started; I just thought that Paul wants to create collaboration within team. However, it was really enjoyable, because I was sitting in a CFO chair. After Paul distributed the role cards to everyone, I was so flustered, because I haven’t got any finance background except academically. However, our roles and missions are already assigned on role cards, so I didn’t need to worry about it. Then, I consider that I should put in order all missions from urgent to negligible (I have already prepared for meeting, so I didn’t try to catch up topics all the time). Also I have already written down the departments of hotel which I suppose to talk about problems such as inefficient stock management at kiosk.

After general manager started to talk according to her agenda, I was matching the arguments which I have already decided or taken notes (General Manager should control the meeting and give the floor someone). All of other managers from different department discussed the issues one by one which general manager has already decided.

Furthermore, our times are valuable and in order to achieve benefits in meetings, we have only 45 minutes to cover almost all topics (Time management is very important, someone should keep the time). Honestly, we finished all urgent topics; however, we couldn’t find time to talk about minor issues.

Everyone has an opportunity to express his/her ideas in a democratic way. For instance, we decided together set up location C as weeding location (This approach gives a feeling that my idea is valuable).

 All in all, we have taken some decisions dynamically and this game was really enjoyable. We have learned that how to make a beneficial meetings and what is essential for successful meeting.

: 25 Oct 2013 21:01 |  Tags: Cbe Mbe Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Productivity and Creativity are rarely seen together at the same time

Although my presentation was not good, our team has caught very good points. According to me, a man sees rarely both productivity and creativity in business at the same time, because it can be found in very unique business platforms, although almost all employers or CEO tries to achieve them. However, there are some elements that may help to increase productivity and creativity sparks in working environment such as improving the working facilities conditions, hiring more qualified and smart employees instead of rockies, strength the collaboration and forget the competition within company, etc.

As we assume that official working hour is 48 hours in UK, a typical employee’s 42,85% of time runs in office, factory or anywhere belonged to company(I excluded sleeping times). How is possible to work incredibly productive and creative in a boring facility? Working environments suppose to provide working willingness and needs perfect with different items such as contemporary interior architecture or colourful and visual billboards in order to not seem like ordinary, because those people who works there as a white-collar are going to create or produce innovation which is not common. For instance, Google’s office which is amazingly decorated provides not only extraordinary working experience but also give their employees good spirits.

Besides working environment, recruiting high skilled and smart people creates qualified area and delighted discussions which have a different perspective from a typical team works. I believe that working or studying within a group consists of smart people forces people to become like them, even you are less talented than others. Furthermore, training the unqualified rockie not only spends much time and money and you may not forecast the output.

Furthermore, due to the steep hierarchy in corporations, competition may be seen as cure of creativity in short-term; however, it really kills the collaboration and solidarity of team-work in long-term. Despite inner competition and individual awards, co-operation working methodology should be achieved and team award suppose to be applied by top-management.

: 23 Oct 2013 00:44 |  Tags: Cbe Mbe Turkey Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Wouldn't I be a Leader?

Hello everyone,

Actually it will be my first blog post, I am a bit anxious. Being a part of WMG and studying MBE with successful future leaders are awesome! I really like the teaching method of Paul which is very distinctive and unique.

I ran into with word of “CEO” when I started university. I have no idea about what it means in Turkish and which people can be. My major in undergraduate was mechanical engineering. The professors haven’t told me anything about becoming CEO or CFO. However, Paul told 3 days ago that in some organizations, technical people should be worked in uncompetitive business areas in order to avoid confusing them. According to me, Paul tried to say that Technical Managers shouldn’t become a CEO. The reason why I wanted to study in WMG is learning the fundamentals of considering like a leader of a business like CEO and being much inspired man, instead of becoming a typical engineer who stays in factory all the day and trying to figure out technical issues. So I should continue to study much hard for becoming a world-class leader from WMG. Also desire plays a great role in success. If a man doesn’t want to do something, we wouldn’t expect any world-class achievement. According to me, desire is the milestone of doing a new thing in our lives.

: 12 Oct 2013 20:27 |  Tags: Cbe Mbe Turkey Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem