Innovative Approaches to Corporate Management

Innovative approaches to Corporate Management

Felipe Guadalupe

Innovative approaches to Corporate Management

A company is only as strong as its weakest link. In order for it to succeed in today's competitive market, the company will have to depend on the acquisition and application of good, relevant knowledge on which to base its decisions. For that to happen, good and sound decision making has to be a part of everyday business. Therefore, corporate managers have taken innovative approaches to corporate management by creating consistency and unity towards a purpose, along with an environment where both the company and employees can excel.

Experienced managers have come to realize how they impact their subordinates and that most problems in a company occur as a result of a lack of communication up and back down the "chain of command." The more informed the employees are, the better managers will be able to instill a common vision and establish consistency throughout. Once one creates that constancy and unity, one will enable the company to have a lasting vision that unifies everyone in the company under a common purpose. For the company to succeed, everyone needs to share the same vision. This can be accomplished by valuing, recognizing, and rewarding the outstanding and dedicated contributions of the many employees who take care of their customers. In doing so, the vision will be clear and everyone will know and will personally be able to relate to and identify with the objectives of the company.

Companies must grow to attract and retain talented and experienced workers. Typically, "talent goes where there is opportunity" (Thurm, 2004, p. 1). Where there is opportunity, there is growth. Too rapid growth will tend to stretch a company and its managers too thin, which can create new problems. A good example of this occurrence was in the 1990s. Enron Corp. was one of fastest growing companies of the 1990s. It was forced to file bankruptcy as a result of the top executive's embezzlements and fraudulent scandals that cost its employees their life savings.

Every company has managers, all with different leadership styles and strengths. Not everyone has the same style of managing. The assessment and development of their style of leadership is essential to achieving the management strength that the company needs. It is a manager's job to improve the value of, and make a profit for, the company. In order to do that, he or she has to have everyone onboard "playing from the same sheet of music." Discipline needs to be established before any team can function as a team. In the article, "It's your ship: A Navy commander's grassroots leadership (2003), a Navy commander, Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, took command of his ship, the USS Benfold, encountering very low morale throughout the ship. He utilized what he called his grassroots leadership strategy to raise the ship to be the best ship in the Pacific Fleet. While in command, he incorporated three principles that he used as guidelines for his leadership strategy.

First, "Create discipline through purpose" (Unknown, 2003). Abrashoff did away with the diversity and instituted a unity program to help the crew focus on the ship's common purpose and become a team through communication and support of each other.

Basically, he wanted to instill in them that there is no "I" in "team."

Second, "Listen-and communicate-aggressively" (Unknown, 2003). Here he interviewed the crew extensively, asking about family and personal background. He told them what he needed from them and asked them what he could do for them to help them achieve their goals. In doing so, he was able to produce an environment where anyone could critique anyone else on the ship through proper communication channels.

Finally, "Be a champion for your team" (Unknown, 2003). If the crew needed something and it was within his power to obtain it, he would give it to the crew. They eventually came to believe that they owned the ship. No longer was it a "your" ship mentality. Abrashoff had changed that sort of thinking. He gave them full reign over the ship by establishing three rules. The crew could not do anything that would damage the ship, hurt themselves or others, or waste taxpayers' money.

In the end it would pay off. The ship's retention went from 20% to 100%. That team spirit had finally unfolded to show a display of new founded camaraderie through out the ship which helped earn them the Spokane Trophy for the best ship in the Pacific Fleet.

It is important to exhibit and practice good leadership qualities to have people willingly follow your instructions. Companies not only need good leaders, they need good managers as well to controls resources and expenditures to allow the company to prosper. There are many different models of management strategy that corporate management can follow to assist them in helping their company evolve. Process-based management, corporate entrepreneurship, and Total Quality Management (TQM) are some of them, just to name a few.

Process-based management deals with how companies provide products and services to their customers. It focuses on five areas to help develop longevity for the company. First is promoting a process-based culture, where people are trained in the mindset of learning a process so that they do not even have to think about what they are doing, they just react to a learned behavior. Second, there is managing end-to-end business processes. Here is where the focus is on how to improve on the process from start to finish, reducing the cost and time and still provide quality products and services to the customer. Next, is understanding and meeting customer expectations. In this step, one analyzes the customer's need and how they will value your product or service. Once it is known what the customer expects, one can tailor the service and/or work with the