The Economic Cycles are shortening and increasing the pace at which Businesses have to adapt in order to survive. There is evidence though that Management does not have the skills or ability in some cases to acclimatise to the new business order. They often go into denial, and then adopt a blame culture, before having to admit they misread the situation.
During my last year in Singapore presenting and lecturing to Senior Industry Management, I was constantly surprised by the lack of their knowledge of the tools that could help them better manage their Business. In one of my presentations at a Microsoft Seminar to CIO’s I used an example of an end-to-end process, “Cash-to-Cash”; and how the process could be decomposed into lower level processes allowing performance metrics to be applied to better manage their Working Capital. But I could see from the look on their faces that they did not understand and would not be able to communicate this approach to their Companies Management Team. I repeated this presentation at a CIO Magazine event, where I was a keynote speaker, and once again could see a lot of blank looks on the audiences faces.
I have been in the Enterprise Software business for many years. One of the complaints from senior management, that was consistently voiced, was that the software was great for operational staff. But it did not present the information in a form that they could use to manage their businesses. This mantra seems to have died, and I am beginning to be concerned that the new generations of managers do not have the intuitive skills required to run a successful business.
Attached to this blog is a Newsletter I produced on this subject which was published in CIO Asia Magazine. It was my first attempt to try and create and awareness of a potential problem looming on the business horizon.
With the concerns over the environment, the erratic economic cycles, and the modern managers inability to respond quickly to change it is essential we apply the available technology too continually improve our work environment.
BIZIntelligence_JANUARY_2009_ISSUE_200109.pdf (139.98 kb)
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