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 The Magic of "Buzzwords"
by Gene Siciliano
More Information About the Author: Click Here for the Gene Siciliano Home Page
Got a problem? There’s a hot new tool out there designed just for your problem. Results (almost) guaranteed! Business literature is filled with esoteric buzzwords describing magical new techniques to transform your business into a smooth-running, profit powerhouse. The books are filled with phrases like Benchmarking, Activity-based Management, Core Competencies, Reengineering, and a couple dozen more. Where were all these great tools when we were in business school? How did the entrepreneurs and managers of the last couple generations manage to survive — let alone succeed — without these ingenious, fix-anything tools in their pockets? The answer is they didn’t. Because they did. Huh? They didn’t have to survive without these tools because they did have them. We’ve always had them, in fact. Only back then, they didn’t have the fancy names and 4-color media publicity designed to make them appear new so you’d buy the book or the tape, or hire a specialist to teach you the new magic on which they happen to be the world’s leading authority. They were simply called "good management." Let me give you a few examples: | Buzzword: | Translation: | How we used to say it: | | Benchmarking | Since you don’t have all the answers, compare notes with your peers and look for ideas that seem to be working for them that might also work for you. | Don’t reinvent the wheel. | | Cycle time reduction | Find ways to reduce the time it takes to develop, make and deliver your products to your customers. | Get your product to market before the other guy does. | | Pay-for-performance | Assign goals related to your overall objectives, and then pay people based on how well they achieve the assigned goals. | You get what you pay for, so hire the best and pay them what they’re worth. | | Reengineering | To accomplish dramatic improvements in process, productivity and quality, you need to make dramatic changes in what you have been doing up to now. | If it’s broke, fix it. If it’s really broke, really fix it. | | Total Quality Management | Find out what your customer needs, then systematically find the errors in your process that prevent you from doing that consistently, and fix them. Work at this every day, a little at a time, until the errors are all gone. | Give your customers what they want, and do it as efficiently as possible. | | Value train analysis | Find ways to lower the costs associated with key activities, or differentiate yourself in ways your customers will value, or both. | Give your customers what they want, and do it as efficiently as possible. | Well, you get the idea. It’s not our intention in these pages to discount the value of these tools or the consultants who offer them. They do work, if the tool is suited to the problem, and if it’s properly implemented. We simply want to point out that you don’t need to sort through a basket of trendy new tools to find solutions to your management problems. Good management practices never go out of style. More importantly, they are never really "trendy." The basic tenets of good management appear in phrases most of us readily recognize, like these favorites of ours: - Decide ahead of time what you want to accomplish.
- Focus on your most important things first.
- Plan your business, then follow your plan.
- Hire good people, pay them fairly, and use them wisely.
- You’ve made a profit when the cash is in the bank.
- If something isn’t working, find the cause and fix it.
- If something is working, see where else you can use it.
- If you don’t know the answer, get help.
- You’re not done learning until they close the lid.
And that’s the truth. |
