What role could top management play in helping a company acheive efficiency, quality, innovation,?

Question

What role can top management play in helping a company achieve superior efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers? How are these four generic building blocks of competitive advantage related to each other?

Answer 1

Top management must be the foresight of the company and be willing to accept input from any source that proves to be of benefit. A company where the upper management works just as hard as the employees in the firm, makes intelligent and well thought out decisions, changes and implementation of programs, incentive or otherwise, is a company that can't help but be successful.

If efficiency is to be achieved, particularly superior efficiency, a system known as Lean manufacturing should be implemented. For instance in the Company my husband owns, he directs all employees to seek out ways to become as efficient as possible and he has implemented a 3 step rule. If an employee must walk more than 3 steps to complete a task then he is working too hard.

Quality, this is something that comes down to the heart of the Company...the employees. If disgrunted employees exist quality suffers because nobody cares. Those who do care get tired quickly of covering everyone else's butt. The management has to have an ear to the ground and know when quality is in jeopardy and the ability to always know how your company is functioning on all levels is one that every upper manager with any wherewithall, will have developed long before s/he rose to the position they are now in.

Innovation...sometimes reinventing the wheel is just not necessary, but enhancing it just might be. So, being open to suggestions, ideas and even goals is an important factor that a Company needs to rely on, even unviable ideas are at least proof that the company staffing is at least thinking effectively. The upper management has to remember that the Company started from nothing and built progressively upward due to dedicated, hard working, idea oriented people...changing that mid stream isn't viable if it has been working. Innovation is not being afraid to try something different, know when something isn't working and being able to accept feedback both supportive and constructively critical.

Responsiveness to customers...this is the one area that no company wants to short change. It is the client that makes or breaks the company and regardless what upper management or employees think, the company will not succeed if it isn't in tune with its clients and willing to do what it takes to ensure the client is happy.

These four generic aspects do indeed create the competitive advantage and each are closely related to the other regardless what some upper managers believe. A company can not stand on its own if each of these areas are not strong factors within the business because each needs the other.

Without efficiency deadlines, requirements, deliveries, etc cannot be met effectively. Without quality there is nothing more than a bad name to show for the lack of it. The lack of innovation can set the company back years in comparison to its competitors. Lack of responsiveness to customers drives those customers to competitors who can meet and surpass all of the above qualities without question.

Cohesive qualities that on their own will get results but together will create a power house win/win enterprise

Answer 2

Individuals in the management level of any business need to have a thorough, working knowledge of their operation with a vision of the company's future in line with the mission statement.

Management should be dedicated to achieving that mission without sacrificing ethics and integrity; the ability to lead is perceived largely by knowledge and experience, but both are worthless unless founded in ethical behavior.

Management should also understand the difference between authority and accountability. Authority can be passed down the chain of command; accountability cannot. Authority is delegated; accountability is not. Management can delegate authority to team members, but must retain accountability for the results.

Management should know when to delegate; micro-managing is never effective.

Management should empower the employees by delegating tasks and allowing the employees to function to the best of their ability. Innovation and creativity should be encouraged and rewarded. Employees should receive on-going training to keep their skills sharp.

Management should be proficient in the art of communication, with correction given by constructive criticism.

When management utilizes these basic tools, integrity will become the foundation of the enterprise. Employees will be responsive to both management and clientele, enhancing the business's reputation and, therefore, the client base.

A solid team with superior efficiency and a quality product is the end result.

Answer 3

This is a very good question;
First of all; let me make sure that I understand your question. It seems you are asking WHAT management can do as opposed to what it SHOULD do.
Let me assume you are asking what they can do; I have been involved in middle management for most of my career in Engineering and have worked for very large Commercial companies, Aerospace as well as start-ups and the one thing I realized is that management is everything in a company. At each of these companies, I worked for some very poor managers and excellent managers as well. I learned my management style from both for obvious reasons, the bad ones taught me what NOT to do and the good ones taught me how to lead.

Superior efficiency: In a company (regardless of size); trust in management is essential. A good manager should surround himself with the best there is and share his expectations for business success in regular meetings. A good manager knows he is not the expert but a leader that everyone will be willing to work for but most importantly, follow and respect! he must set a vision that is attainable and indentifies clear milestones and a plan to reach them. He must project his plan and energize his direct reports by taking their inputs and not let any idea fall through the cracks. By doing this, he lets them know that they are a crucial part in the success of the comany, it empowers them. The old 'open door' policy has been replaced by the best managers with 'what do you think we can do?, let's go in your office and chat!'; then he listens and only interrupts to ask questions....why? because he recognizes that by doing so, it tells the employee that he respects his opinion. Except for minor interruptions he should make comments and point possible flaws only at the end of the discussion and explain that perhaps a final meeting is needed where this idea will be presented for further 'tweaking'. He should expect no less from his hiearchy of magament direct reports.

Quality: If a manager instills the skills discussed above for his staff; any of the remaining items fall in place rather easily. Quality is driven by the vision and discipline from management, the staff's responsibility down to the lowest level of supervision must also practice the same.

Innovation: This is the only area where top management needs to project a solid knowledge base, not necessarily that they have to be the epxerts, but a solid base of experts to continually stay ahead of the curve for whatever business area they are in. The same rules apply though, listening and planning is the key

Product responsiveness: By far the most important aspect of management. This area is complex and really has many groups attached to it but the main ones are marketing, quality, document control, application/customer support, repair. All in all; a well defined team that answers to a customer's inquiry for all levels of support from usage to failure of the product is a must. A succesful company will spend a great deal of their budget on this alone because they know what the price for failure in this area is. This area does not necessarily have to fix the problem in 24 hours, but it should have a clear plan on corrective action back to the customer within 24 hours and follow through!

In closing, each of these areas are related to each other in such intricate ways that it would take me another couple of pages to rant on, but suffice it to say that top management can do a great deal of good or harm in a company. There was a survey done in a magazine some time back that asked employees this question: 'If you had the choice of getting a pay raise or get rid of bad management, which one would you choose?".....a very large percentage voted for booting out bad management.

I personally have been involved in this scenario and you know what? the CEO who knew me well, asked me to stay on when I turned in my resignation. He said; 'I'd much rather lose a bad General than lose an army of soldiers'.....the bad manager and his staff were let go not soon after that! He then asked me to step in and take over a position in mid-management under the new regime. Obviously, he's one of the ones I respect in my career and molded my management style after.

Thanks for letting me rant on!....had fun....

Answer 4

Easy... Have them work for a month at the lowest levels available at their company... Hopefully, they'd come up with some changes and even give the underlings a raise... But, I wouldn't count on it...

Answer 5

They are all related in that they are not the baliwick of top management, lol.

You PAY people to provide these things for you.

Answer 6

I'm sure you were just curious huh? lmao. good luck on your homework.

Answer 7

they should let their employees just do their jobs. This is what they were hired to do. Just stop micromanaging

Answer 8

very interesting question