David Burkus’ bona fides include; business school
professor, bestselling author, contributor to Harvard Business Review and
Forbes, speaker and consultant to Fortune 500 companies. With his latest effort
Under New Management – How Leading
Organizations are Upending Business as Usual, Burkus serves up an overview
of a series of paradigm shifting business practices that have been put into
play at a variety of business.
As with many dynamic shifts in long held business
practices, these business practices will likely be met with some serious push back
because they fly squarely in the face of “how we do things.”
While Burkus gives plenty of examples of companies who
have put these shifts into practice things like pay people to quit, ban email
and lose the standard vacation policy have a radical ring to them. Therein lies
the rub; while at places like Zappos, Amazon and tech firms these kinds of
things might make sense, the reality is, most businesses aren’t like those
companies, which make these changes difficult if not impossible to implement.
The trick is to find which of these management shifts
that makes sense for your business and you can implement in your company. One
that is an easy starting place is the hire as a team concept. Rather than
centralizing the hiring process with a human resources leader, why not involve
those frontline staffers who will be working side by side with the potential
new hire in the selection process? It’s those folks who are best attuned to the
needs of their departments and what it takes to be a part of their team.
While banning email might not work, understanding the
negative impact that high volumes of email have on your productivity and
working to limit how you use email might be a better fit for your business.
Burkus isn’t suggesting a one size fits all approach, but rather utilizing and
adapting what works best for you.
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