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Starting Operations: about people, work and systems
Written by John Berry & Sue Berry on 29th December 2022. Revised 5th January 2023.
4 min read
A firm doesn’t just work. The manager must determine, in detail, what the firm is to do and how it’s to do it. The firm, as a system and in turn as a series of processes involving people and technology, must be defined. This definition starts with the contract that the firm has with its customers. The manager’s job is then making order from chaos - making the firm predictable in pursuit of required deliverables. Here we show how the manager uses the customer contract to define the firm and its operations.
Organising People: setting the scene about management
Written by John Berry & Sue Berry on 21st June 2022. Revised 14th December 2022.
4 min read
Organising people requires an amalgam of many disciplines. At its core is psychology: the science of people and their behaviour. Psychology describes behaviour stemming from both conscious and unconscious thought, and those thoughts are driven by personal and group feelings, attitudes, beliefs, and values. Overall, management is about outcomes – and about interventions to realise specific, considered, and desired outcomes. This chapter is the point of departure for our book.
Gaining Services: employing people and contracting suppliers
Written by John Berry & Sue Berry on 29th November 2022. Revised 14th December 2022.
6 min read
Gaining the services of people starts with the manager thinking about what those services are and how they might be procured. The manager must characterise the person needed. We describe how modelling can help here. Managers must recruit, and we illustrate how this should be done. The activity ends with the firm entering employment and supplier contracts. We discuss all the issues. We also discuss engaging volunteers.
Redundancy: Get It Right!
Written by Sue Berry on 1st May 2017. Revised 22nd June 2022.
32 min read
All firms make jobs (and those employed in them) redundant. Redundancy is normal. It’s the manager adjusting the firm to match the new environment in which it trades and operates. But redundancy is complex. It can kill the firm if badly run. Tap our experience to run safe. This white paper shows managers how to implement a fair and robust redundancy process that dismisses the right people. Call us for more.
Discretionary Behaviours
Written by John Berry on 3rd May 2017. Revised 17th June 2022.
2 min read
Discretionary behaviour contributes positively to overall organisational effectiveness, contributing to operational and organisational outcomes. We explain what discretionary behaviour is. Behaviour sits between motivation and performance. If we are motivated, we behave in a particular way. That behaviour causes performance.
Mixing internal and external candidates devastates staff commitment
Written by John Berry on 25th September 2017. Revised 17th June 2022.
7 min read
Many managers deliberately mix internal and external recruitment in the hope of selecting the best person for the job from as large a pool as possible. Simply, consider internals first, in isolation. If any internal can do the job – judged by a fixed bar - they go forward with an internals-only contest. Because any one has the ability to excel, a variable bar selection can be used to rank them. Anything else is just wrong, damaging and here’s why.
