Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management keep making?

Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by wtvanhest on Thursday August 17, 2017 @12:33AM (#15033829)

On the Nestle example:

One of the biggest constraints in a business is employee focus. Theoretically, you want to maximize future free cash flow. Unfortunately, there are many inputs: rev growth, solid roi on capex, lowering non-essential costs, employee retention, unit costs, brand etc.

Management teams have to distill the message about what they want in a way that many employees can get behind. Nestle was too focused on unit costs, and should have likely added one more constraint like rev growth, but if they added too many, employees as a group would lose focus.

Most businesses have 2-3 essential business drivers. 1 is never enough, 4+ is likely too many to focus on.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by pasta on Thursday August 17, 2017 @01:16AM (#15033983)

I think Alibaba has a nice priority list:

Customers, employees, shareholders.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by triplesec on Thursday August 17, 2017 @03:56AM (#15034623)

That looks on the face of it nice and worthy but it's rather be meaningless because those are not actual goals. Those words are way too loose for that. The other thing about it is it smells like a marketing phrase rather than anything truthful

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by pasta on Thursday August 17, 2017 @06:00AM (#15035226)

Why would they be meaningless?

You can use this list in any way. For example when you want to increase your product price. This is fine when it is good for the customer (because they will get a better product). But it is not fine when you do it for the shareholders alone.

They are also goals because the ultimate goal is to please the customer, then the employee and than the shareholder.

I think they are great guidelines.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by slii on Thursday August 17, 2017 @07:50AM (#15035837)

Does that also mean it is always a great idea to decrease your product price?

In the consulting company where I work at employees come before customers. Employees are the single most important asset and much harder to replace than customers.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by wtvanhest on Thursday August 17, 2017 @11:43AM (#15037768)

Why not make everything free? That would benefit the customer dramatically. The reality is that 'customer first' is a good idea, but not actionable.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by cpeterso on Thursday August 17, 2017 @03:55AM (#15034618)

Google uses a hierarchical system for quarterly and annual goals called OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) that tries to align goals for the company, orgs, teams, and individuals.

http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-ranking-system-okr-20...

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by matrixagent on Thursday August 17, 2017 @07:26AM (#15035698)

Anyone else using that? We use it at my company with very varying levels of success.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by wtvanhest on Thursday August 17, 2017 @11:44AM (#15037775)

Almost all big companies. It was done when I worked at Intel 2010sh

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by matrixagent on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:13PM (#15041074)

Interesting. How did you like it? Does every person at Intel have their own quarterly OKR list, or do they stop propagating down at some level? Were they always on time? How did lower levels give input with regard to what they thought were important goals? Or did really everything come top-down?

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by groby_b on Thursday August 17, 2017 @10:09AM (#15036901)

A lot of places. It dates back to (IIRC) Intel in the late 70s. Doerr brought the idea to Google.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by matrixagent on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:12PM (#15041054)

Oh, I hadn't heard it was that old. Fascinating, so far I've always thought it was something that came directly out of Google itself.

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Re:Ask HN: What mistakes in your experience does management ... by groby_b on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:16PM (#15041100)

Google has a good PR department? ;)

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