Michael Stanly - Current Notes on Procurement Operations Leadership

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Recent Approaches to Talent Management in Professional Services Firms

Accounting for Good People
The Economist
July 21, 2007, p68

Talent management is the key with a professional services firm, and there’s some sound, collective advice from the Big Four accounting firms, and a few others.

- make people-related goals one-third of the partners’ annual evaluation
- put programs in place to stay in touch with former employees to maintain ‘emotional allegiance’, enabling them to ‘boomerang’ back to the firm, or at least to be a positive advocate in the marketplace
- make career breaks, sabbaticals, leaves, flex-time, home-officing, and part-time work an acceptable norm within the firm, for those on non-linear career paths
- to attract new MBAs it’s likely necessary to ensure an international assignment supplemented by language instruction; also, show evidence of high ethical standards
- many that join consulting and accounting firms do so with a plan to leave in about 3 years; to combat this, more in the firm need to be involved in identifying top talent so that they may be more effectively encouraged to stay; that is, have the partners help coach less experienced staff
- solid performers may be retained if the ‘up or out’ policy is dropped and a new senior role is created to enable those that are not destined to be partners to contribute, nonetheless
- consider expanding the ranks of [equity-holding] partners, as owners are best inclined to encourage networking and cooperative behavior

More on these topics might be found in “Mobilizing Minds’ by Lowell Bryan

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Summer '07 Reading List

- Diplomacy by Henry Kissinger, ISBN 0-671-51099-1
- Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, ISBN 0-684-82490-6
- Journeying Far and Wide by Philip M. Kaiser, ISBN 0-684-19350-7
- Kissinger by Walter Isaacson, ISBN 0-7432-8697-9

Monday, March 26, 2007

Spring '07 Reading LList

- The McKinsey Way by Ethan M. Raisel, ISBN 0-07-053448-9 (a good re-read)
- Faith and Politics by John Danforth, ISBN 0-670-03787-7
- Thomas Jefferson by Fawn M. Brodie, ISBN 0-393-31752-8
- Woodrow Wilson by H. W. Brands, ISBN 0-8050-6955-0

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Winter '07 Reading List

- How to Think Like da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb, ISBN 0-440-50827-4
- Memoirs by David Rockefeller, ISBN 0-679-40588-7
- 1776 by David McCullough, ISBN 0-7432-2671-2

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Kennedy Sees Big Growth in BPO

Kennedy Information Research Group, a leading analyst of the consulting sector, estimates that worldwide business process outsourcing will grow at a CAGR of 11.6%, from $2.5 billion this year to $7.5 billion in 2009. Further, it is to grow at an increasing rate in coming years. Cost savings is a key reason given by 70% of companies to outsource, and 57% of responding companies say best practices and innovation are another key reason. But Deloitte and DiamondCluster indicate that outsourcing's anticipated benefits are simply falling short of expectations. It's a very complex business construct, particularly in an area that has not been heavily outsourced thus far like commodity purchasing. And, whoever figures it out first is going to win big.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

Forrester's Work in System Dynamics

The Prophet of Unintended Consequences
by Fisher
Strategy+Business
Fall 2005, p 78

Though certainly not a replacement for more academically-oriented reading on system dynamics constructs, Fisher provides plenty of context around the thinking and influences which shaped Jay Forrester’s work at MIT over the decades. One colleague that Forrester mentored, John Sterman, taught a 3-day course in system dynamics which I attended a few years ago in London, and I was struck by its applicability to the understanding of price movement in price-volatile commodities. That said, what I was actually engaged in back then was ‘systems thinking’ versus system dynamics, about which Forrester has said, “The trouble with systems thinking is it allows you to misjudge a system. You have this high-order, nonlinear, dynamic system in front of you as a diagram on the page. You presume you can understand its behavior by looking at it, and there’s simply nobody who can do that”.

A few more thoughts from Fisher’s article:
- system dynamics, defined: a methodology that uses computer-based models to simulate and study the interplay of growth and equilibrium over time
- when one part of a system is changed it can push back and influence other parts of the system in unpredictable and extreme ways; this is why some problems can be fixed by changing a small but consequential practice that is influencing all the other factors in the system
- most industrial activity can be represented by five networks: materials, orders, money, capital equipment, and people
- a ‘must read’ is Forrester’s Industrial Dynamics, a 1961 classic; in it he posits that most business problems are not caused by competition of market trends, but are a direct result of company practices or policy
- advanced systems dynamics software to examine would include Vensim (Ventana Systems Inc of Harvard, MA), while a simpler tool is Stella (Isee Systems of Lebanon, NH)

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Building One's Professional Network

How to Build Your Network
By Uzzi and Dunlap
Harvard Business Review
December 2005, p 53
A means by which to think-through and plan one’s professional network is presented in this article. The key thoughts are:

Sharing knowledge, not hording it, actually increases the value of it

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas”—Linus Pauling; individual success is tied to being able to think in an interdisciplinary manner; diverse network ties are therefore vital to being innovative and competitive

Most personal networks are highly clustered around one’s friends and associates, with many in the network already knowing one another; this is the self-similarity principle

Create a table of who you know, who introduced you, and who you introduced them to; this will show you whether you have diversity in your network, and who your network brokers [see below] are

The proximity principle, which holds that people tend to populate their network with those that they spend the most time with, may be overcome by applying the shared activities principle, leading one to thoughtfully join community, voluntary, service, sports, boards, charitable organizations, etc., so as to expand the circles of networking

Identify your brokers or superconnectors—those who tend to introduce you to many others—and nurture those very key relationships

www.michaelstanly.com mike@michaelstanly.com

Name: Michael Stanly

Location: St Cloud, Minnesota, United States

Michael J. Stanly's career work is supply chain operations analysis, focused on cost management via purchasing, transportation, and inventory control. His functional expertise is in commodity purchasing and price risk management, and industry expertise is in the food manufacturing and distribution sector. Stanly was a Manager in McKinsey & Co.'s Operational Effectiveness Practice for four years; a division Director of Materials Management at Pillsbury for ten years; and, the Vice President of Strategic Sourcing and Logistics for seven years at Multifoods.

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