need answer to mgt questions

PART 12

READING 1

THE IMPORTANCE OF ETHICAL SELF-AWARENESS

Blind spots are ethical vulnerabilities that exist outside of our conscious awareness. When we fail to recognize our moral blind spots, we surrender to our personal biases.

The field of behavioral ethics seeks to understand why people behave the way they do when facing ethical dilemmas.

Behavioral ethics examines how blind spots affect our decision-making processes in both our personal and professional lives.

Behavioral Forecasting Errors

Our biases lead to erroneous perceptions that prevent us from seeing the need to improve our

ethicality. This process is known as behavioral forecasting errors

“Want” Versus “Should”

We predict how we will behave in an ethical dilemma based on our “should” self, but the “want” self dominates when actually facing the situation.

ORGANIZATIONAL AND SOCIETAL BLIND SPOTS

Although blind spots can originate with individuals, they are compounded at the organizational

level.

Blind spots also multiply exponentially at the societal level.

Motivated Blindness

Motivated blindness is the tendency for people to overlook unethical behavior when it is in their best interest not to notice the behavior.

We are blind not only to our own unethical actions but also to the unethicality of others

around us in organizations and society at large.

Outcome Bias

Outcome bias involves judging a decision based on its eventual outcome rather than the quality of the decision at the time it was made.

As a result of outcome bias, we ignore bad decision making if it happens to lead to desirable

results, which can then encourage future bad decision making.

ACTIONS TO REDUCE BLIND SPOTS

The first step in making ethical decisions is ethical self-awareness

Another strategy is to anticipate the influence of your impulses and learn how to accurately assess and learn from your past behavior.

Finally, think about what you would like to have written or said about yourself in a eulogy at your funeral.

READING 2

AUTHENTIC LEADERSHIP

Authentic leadership involves those actions taken by people of high integrity who are committed

to building enduring organizations relying on morality and character. It means being your

own person as a leader.

DIMENSIONS OF A LEADER

An authentic leader practices the five dimensions of leadership: purpose, values, heart, relationships,

and self-discipline. Purpose focuses on the real reasons people choose to become leaders—

not the trappings of power, the glamour, or the financial rewards that go with leadership. Values

provide the “true north” of a leader’s moral compass.

LEADING A BALANCED LIFE

This concept of success implies not merely financial or professional success, but the overall

success that comes from leading a balanced life—one that recognizes the importance of work,

family, friends, faith, and community service, with none of them excluding any of the others.

Leaders who subordinate everything else in life to their work do not develop organizations as

well as those who live a more balanced life. Living such a life and allowing their employees to

do so as well creates higher levels of commitment to the organization and, in turn, improves

the organization’s bottom line. Balancing work, family, social, and spiritual aspects of your life

and providing a meaningful amount of time to each provides the leader with richness in life that is

unavailable to someone who chooses an 80-hour week and is simply a “company person.”

In addition to work/family balance, friendships are important

Getting in touch with people helps develop both the heart of a leader and sensitivity for the difficulties of the lives of others.

ORGANIZATIONAL MISSION AS MOTIVATION

The best way to create real long-term value for a company’s shareholders is to be a mission-driven organization—one that utilizes its mission statement as an integral part of managing the organization, not merely as a plaque that hangs on the CEO’s wall. The best organizations have a corporate mission that inspires creative employees to develop innovative products and provide superior service to the customer

CUSTOMER FOCUS

Customer-focused quality relies for its success on measurements

that focus externally on customers and uses customer feedback as the ultimate measurement of

quality. The role model for customer focus must be senior management. If senior management

is focused on internal operations instead of on customer service, the company will eventually fail

to an environment that empowers and rewards employees who provide high-quality sales and

service to the customer.

TEAM-FOCUSED MANAGEMENT

CEOs are given credit when companies succeed, but it is largely a myth that the CEO is primarily

responsible for the success of a company.

PITFALLS TO GROWTH

There are seven key pitfalls to sustainable corporate growth: lack of mission, underestimation of

core business, single-product dependence, failure to spot change, changing strategy with changing culture, ignoring core competencies, and overreliance on growth through acquisition.

OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

A key obstacle for Medtronic involved litigation in the implantable defibrillator market

ETHICAL DILEMMAS

Socially responsible organizations need to confront directly the issue of ethical standards in

international business.

A second crisis arose in Japan, where two Medtronic-Japan managers were arrested and

put in jail for giving airline tickets to a physician so that he could give speeches at two international transplant conferences

GROWTH BY ACQUISITION

Most acquisitions that fail do so not

from financial issues or lack of strategic vision, but rather from cultural clashes within the newly

merged entities. Medtronic took a proactive approach to integration focusing on four key issues:

leadership of the business, financial leadership, business integration, and cultural integration.

SHAREHOLDERS COME THIRD

The theory is simple. Customers are first, employees are second,

and shareholders come third. Only by truly meeting the needs of the first two stakeholder

groups does the successful company have any chance of satisfying the shareholders. The key to

meeting shareholder expectations is transparency.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

The key to improved corporate governance is to restore power to boards of directors to govern

corporations. The board should play an important role as a check on the company’s executives

and a means of ensuring long-term as opposed to short-term focus. One key to creating this type

of board is to have a majority (perhaps two-thirds) of truly independent board members who

have no business relationship to either the corporation or the executives

PUBLIC POLICY AND RISK TAKING

Medtronic found itself cast in a leadership role in the reform of the U.S. FDA. The key issue in

the reform movement was the steadily increasing approval time for new drugs.

SUCCESSION PLANNING FOR THE CEO

One of the most critical and often overlooked steps in a CEO’s career is succession

PART 13

READING 1

INTRODUCTION

The following principles use Dr. Frankl’s work to guide our search for meaning no matter what job or situation we are in, and to connect our work with the meaning in other parts of our lives. These principles are as follows:

1. choose your own attitude.

2. commit to meaningful values

3. find meaning in the moment

4. don’t work against yourself

5. practice self-detachment

6. use creative distraction

7. transcend your personal interests.

MEANINGFUL WORK

we are entirely free at all times to choose our response to the circumstances of our lives.

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ATTITUDE

We can choose to bring a positive attitude to the situation, adopt a creative approach to imagining what is possible, and unlock the passion or enthusiasm that makes the possible actual.

COMMIT TO MEANINGFUL VALUES

Frankl described the will to meaning as the authentic commitment to meaningful values and goals that only we as individuals can actualize.

He belives the will to meaning is a basic human drive.

FIND MEANING IN THE MOMENT

The search for meaning requires a conscious effort.

DON’T WORK AGAINST YOURSELF

Our jobs are never just our jobs.

Our good intentions can become the cause of failure.

You boss may understand that your ability to relate in a meaningful and positive way with coworkers is a key indicator of your ability to lead.

PRACTICE SELF-DETACHMENT

Detachment is a conscious choice to create psychological distance that opens the door to action, learning, and growth.

USE CREATIVE DISTRACTION

Thinking itself can become an obsession, particularly when it is focused on negativity and complaint.

TRANSCEND YOUR PERSONAL INTERESTS

Real success, like happiness, is not a goal or target.

LIVING AND WORKING WITH MEANING

The opposite of meaning is despair- a condition brought on by the apparent meaninglessness of life.

READING 2

OVERVIEW

Work organizations and their leaders sometimes take actions—intentional and unintentional—

that cause emotional pain to their employees. That pain can become toxic and thus have a negative

effect on the organization. Alternatively, there is a meaningful role for compassion in an

organization, and managers face the task of handling toxic emotions and their consequences

for those people who experience pain in the workplace. In short, compassionate companies can

improve their toxin-handling practices.

SPECIFIC SKILLS NEEDED BY AN EFFICIENT TOXIN HANDLER

A Gallup poll of two million employees revealed the value of compassionate managers, finding

that most people value having a caring boss higher than money or the fringe benefits they receive.

It takes some basic skills to be an effective toxin handler:

1. reading emotional cues of others and themselves

2. keeping people connected and in communication

3. acting to alleviate the suffering of others

4. mobilizing people to deal with their pain and get back to a stable state

5. building a team environment that rewards compassionate action

The impact of using these skills to diminish the emotional pain of even one person in the organization

can have a significant positive impact on the whole organization.

USEFUL PRACTICES

Compassionate organizations promote a healthy, productive culture through a set of policies,

procedures, and belief systems that produce generative responses from people at all levels of the organization.

TOXIN HANDLERS

The work of the toxin handler is to respond compassionately to pain in the organization, reduce

its impact, and enable people to return to constructive behaviors. Toxin handlers have complex

profiles. They are caregivers, leaders, social architects, and builders of productive systems of relationships. Their work reflects five major themes:

1. listening

2. holding space for healing

3. buffering pain

4. extricating others from painful situations

5. transforming pain

BURNOUT CAN OCCUR

The potential toll on toxin handlers is, not surprisingly, burnout. Without support and the ability

to “decompress,” the toxin handler can suffer psychological, physical, and professional setbacks.

Paying attention to others more than themselves has its costs, and the potential for becoming

addicted to helping others is real

PROVIDING ASSISTANCE

Healing the handlers is possible when there is a clear personal vision of why they are helping

someone, when they are provided with the tools and skills to protect themselves, and when conversations are held that recognize and bring into consciousness the intention to not get overly

involved emotionally with the people in pain.

A game plan for self-protection that includes options for action is critical for long-term

success. World-class athletes, for example, overcome stress through methods including hydration, physical movement, mental change of channels, balanced eating programs, and emotionally changing channels. It is also necessary to build up one’s reserves in advance, and this can be fostered by:

1. increasing one’s physical strength

2. boosting one’s emotional capacity

3. regenerating mental capacity

4. building spiritual capacity

AIDING AND SUPPORTING TOXIN HANDLERS

What handlers and their organizations can do at the interface between the handler, the organization, and the person in pain is to generate an increased level of organizational understanding, respect, and language for the role and work of toxin handling

WHAT DO COMPASSIONATE LEADERS DO?

Leaders sometimes create painful messes by themselves. When this happens, they need a repertoire of personal pain-handling skills.

THREE MAJOR STRATEGIES

1. prevention

2. intervention

3. restoration and recovery

ORGANIZATIONAL AND INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY

FOR HANDLING TOXIC SITUATIONS

The following list of questions can help the organization make an assessment of its organizational

capacity and individual capacity for compassionate response(s).

Reading 3

THE 64,000-DOLLAR QUESTION

Here is a question for you to consider. When it comes to removing a bandage from a wound, do

you pull it off quickly or slowly?

Are We Rational or Irrational?

Behavioral economics seeks to understand the underlying reasons why human beings function as they do. Behavioral economists are interested in understanding human weakness and determining how people can be taught to avoid temptation, increase self-control, and become more efficient in reaching their long-term goals.

The Yerkes-Dodson Law and the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

The Yerkes-Dodson Law is best exemplified by an experiment addressing the issues of incentive and performance.

Contrary to advance expectations, performance peaked at a certain level of shock

(around the medium level) and then tapered off as the shock levels increased. In short, (negative)

incentives to perform only work up to a certain level and then performance drops regardless

of the incentive present.

The Theory of Cognitive Dissonance

Leon Festinger, a noted social psychologist, articulated the powerful concept of the

Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. He suggested that the experience of a simultaneous contradiction between one’s own contrasting attitudes, values, or emotions will generate a certain

level of discomfort (e.g., surprise, guilt, or embarrassment), which then motivates the person

to find some way to reduce the discomfort or anxiety

Physical Attractiveness

The phenomenon of “birds of a feather flock together” is another area of intrigue. Known as

assortative mating by social scientists, the concept under study is physical attractiveness

Cake Mixes Without Eggs?

The lesson from the egg theory? People want to feel involved, and have a sense of contribution, pride, and psychological ownership.

The “Not-Invented-Here” Bias

In effect, Sony fell victim to the Not-Invented-Here (NIH) bias—the tendency to

like one’s own ideas and to discount or reject those of others.

The NIH bias, like many other findings in behavioral economics, presents us with a double-edged sword, and so it should be examined carefully.

Returning to the Bandage Question

Remember the question about how rapidly bandages should be removed from a patient? The

presumptive answer was that it is better to remove them rapidly rather than slowly. What was

the long-held rationale for this approach? Because it presumably causes the patient less discomfort.

But what is the surprisingly real answer to this behavioral question? The rapid removal of

bandages from patients became standard practice because it reduced the discomfort level of the

caregivers. They could rip off the bandages, move on to the next patient, and avoid having to hear

the cries of pain for very long. Like many other issues in human behavior, what we first believe to

be true (or have historically been taught) may not be consistent with the results of scientific studies.

PART 14

READING 1

As online technologies evolve, it is easier than ever for individuals to connect with each other.

SOCIAL TECHNOGRAPHICS PROFILE

Understanding why your customers participate provides

direction on how to engage them to participate with you. The Social Technographics profile

was created with the central idea that not all participants in the groudswell will participate in the same way.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds -a technological process that allows readers to subscribe to areas of content interest and automatically receive updates in a standardized form from a site when new content is published.

TAPPING THE GROUNDSWELL

1. people

2. objectives

3. strategy

4. technology

The POST method is very important to understand because there is no one right way to engage the groundswell

Companies should start small, learning how to work with the groundswell to build

success.

Listening

Listening helps clarify what the market is saying about your brand.

Private communities are an active strategy for listening

Brand monitoring is a passive strategy for listening that seeks primarily to hear what the groundswell is saying about your brand.

Talking

None of the goals for blogging can be reached if your core audience does not even

know you are there!

Energizing

Energizing is used to start the word-of-mouth engine.

Supporting

Allowing the groundswell to support itself by enabling people to connect with each other is another key approach. Dell learned that customers who answer questions value the mental rewards

they receive for helping people.

Embracing

Embracing utilized the groundswell to innvate with help from potential or existing customers.

THE GROUNDSWELL TRANSFORMS

The journey to engage the groundswell influences a company from the outside.

Listening to your customers, developing relationships with them, and being collaborative will provide a solid long-term foundation as the groundswell continues to evolve.

READING 2

CONTENT IS THE KEY

With the use of online technological tools the ability of businesses to reach customers and

potential customers has vastly increased and been greatly enhanced. Marketing success for online

businesses can be significantly improved by creating “killer” content, which is compelling

content that grabs the viewer, is of interest and of use to the viewer, and, in many instances,

might be shared with others by the initial viewer.

What Is Content?

Content is broadly defined as any writing, photos, graphs, charts, and the like produced for not

only business websites, but also for any other social media, including blogs, Twitter, Facebook,

LinkedIn, and more. The purpose of creating engaging and useful content is to convert passive

viewers into active purchasers by developing relationships with viewers so that they know, trust,

and like a company’s product or service even to the extent that many will share the company’s

content with other potential buyers.

One important benefit of producing strong content is the elimination of the possible—

and often probable—annoyance of customers and would-be customers caused by bombarding

them with advertisements, phone calls, and direct mail. Properly done, content is not simply

“copywriting.” It is relating stories.

Publishing

Publishing content on websites is similar to what book and magazine publishers do; they learn

the interests and needs of their prospective readers and then publish material that addresses those

interests and needs. Therefore, a targeted approach is needed to determine the profile of customers

and potential customers and write content for them. Before publishing any online content, a

business must answer the following questions:

1. what is your purpose in creating content?

2. whom are you trying to reach?

3. how will the content be created?

4. on what online sites will the content be placed?

To succeed in publishing, a business must differentiate its message; it cannot be the same

as its competitors. The online business must develop a distinct identity that will set it apart.

The most effective way to differentiate online is through unique content—through stories that

are appealing, creative, and bold—stories that viewers find engaging and useful.

The Art of Effective Storytelling

The stories developed and used as online content must fit the targeted audience.

Who Creates and Develops Content?

It is important to include all departments of a company in creating and developing content. Although

the marketing department might appear to be the logical creator of content, every other

department should play a contributory role.

What Format Should Be Used for Content?

Content should be created around a major theme—a basic storyline or dominant underlying

message.

A Publishing Schedule

Content should be produced on a predetermined schedule. Some content may be offered daily

through tweets, Facebook, or replies to blogs. More content, but still based on the major theme,

may be sent weekly, including new blogs, helpful how-to advice, and updates on the company

website.

Content Is a “Help” Tool

Content must be of real value to the business’s customers and potential customers. Although a

company’s ultimate storytelling objective is to drive up revenues, first and foremost it must connect in a human way with customers and potential customers by demonstrating its humanity

and caring philosophy

Using Content from Other Sources

Often some appealing content written by customers or other viewers may appear on other websites and may be republished on a company’s site; this is known as user-generated content

Where Is It; How Do I Get to It; Can I Use It?

A business’s content must be easily found. Information given through the use of multiple key

words makes it easier for users to find the content.

B2B Content

All of the information previously given relating to content also applies to businesses selling to other business(B2B); however, some differences exist in B2B marketing. It is important for the seller to know the prospective buyer and how that person makes buying decisions. B2B buyers are unique.

USING DIFFERENT SOCIAL MEDIA FOR CONTENT

Not only must a business understand how to develop strong content but it must also know where

and how to place that content.

Blogs

Blogs are sites displaying comments (short or lengthy) on specific topics. Blogd are different

from most other sites in that they are interactive—they can communicate back and forth with

other websites.

Webinars

Web-based seminars in which online conferences may be held or lectures, training events, or

other types of short presentations via the Internet are called webinars.

E-books and White Papers

E-books are electronic books to be read on computers or on other social media sites.

Customer Success Stories

Creating a customer success story is fairly easy. It must be a true story, not fictional. It must be

interesting to the recipient. It must have a human side—an approach that causes the reader to

care what happens to the customer or business being portrayed.

Videos

Videos can provide very strong stories. They must tell real stories. They should feature actual

people from the company doing the video. They should include testimonials or other positive

material from a company’s customers and/or vendors

Podcasts

Podcasts are programs to be played back on audio devices. For some desired outcomes they will

serve a company’s purposes better than videos. The rules for producing successful podcasts are

similar to those for producing successful videos.

Photographs

A business can illustrate its operation, its people, its fun times, and more through still photos

placed online, in brochures, or in other print marketing places. The photos must be tagged and

described so that when they are shared the persons in the photos, the places they were taken, and other key information can be identified and verified.

EXAMPLES OF SUCCESSFUL CONTENT

Examples of strong, successful content developed for different forms of social media by a number of organizations are widely available, including a golf academy, the U.S. Army, Boeing, and an English enterprise that seeks to help young girls think positively. Businesses may adapt their own content and social networking based on these examples.