Current Business Issues

In the last 20 years or so there have been a number of trends, fads and concepts that have served to break the bond between a corporation and its employees, at a huge cost to both.

There are 5 key concepts, this is the second

Dumb Concept #2: “Leadership”

A few years before he died, Peter Drucker was interviewed on NPR.  In that interview, he pointed out what should be obvious to everyone — that all this talk about “leadership” is a bunch of horse manure.

Yeah, yeah, the idea of leadership sounds neat — especially if you’re in management — and it makes a manager sound all charismatic and exciting.

But what is a “leader,” anyway? What does a “leader” do?

I can’t hear the term without thinking of the leader of a marching band.  That’s the person who takes a big stick and makes it go up and down, while the band does the work of actually making the music.

One reason I think of that image is that, in my experience, most of the time the “leader” of the team is the person who found a parade and then got out in front of it.  (I once heard an executive in Fortune 50 company describe that odious behavior as “smart business practice.”)

The concept of a “leader” means that credit for what the team does goes to the leader.  And you see it every day, in the bloated salaries paid to “business leaders” and in the ridiculous way that some CEOs parade themselves as if they were rock stars.

You see it in the lower levels, too, where managers bloviate about leadership and “inspiring” people, when in fact they’re usually just making everyone under them want to puke.

What Drucker said — and I agree with him — is that the business world doesn’t need leaders. It needs managers — people who can actually manage a team of people.

Being a manager means being in service to the team.  It means giving the team credit and making everyone else successful.

So, as we go forward, let’s stop enabling all these tin-pot “leaders” by pretending that they’re doing anything other than grandstanding.  Let’s value the real managers, who actually do the hard (and largely thankless) work of making other people productive.

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The strategic planning process is the formulation of the company’s major objectives and execution plans. This process is of particular interest in GE. Strategy formulation is the process of choosing the best methods for a company where customer needs; competitive position and internal capability are the three factors that play the main role in strategic planning. Every manager needs to have at least a simple notion of strategic planning to formulate his strategic plans. Strategic Planning is a wide and complex subject. Strategic Management background is an essential basis of any organization. Companies plan their various and multilevel activities. A company’s strategic planning is a row of elements that describe how the company uses its resources concerning its inner and outer environments to reach its objectives. Resources contain financial, human, facilities and technology. Resources are limited that is why they are prioritized at GE to support the company’s goals. The positioning and usage of resources includes all elements of the company and develops into strategic decisions of the company. GE strategic planning objective is to increase its economies and at the same time to apply its advantages concerning company’s clients. There are three basic steps of gaining strategic planning within GE:The formulating of a major business strategy. This is the basis of efforts to build a serious competitive advantage. The adaptation of the major business strategy to all the markets where the company’s products are presented. The globalization of the major business strategy. It means the company has to integrate the strategy in all the places of business operation. In order to implement all these factors of strategic planning into practice one should make the SWOT analysis. SWOT analysis is a set of major factors – Company’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats – for formulating strategic alternatives. The GE SWOT analysis shows its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in order to use this information in the Strategic Planning. When the SWOT analysis is done, it is used as the foundation of objective setting, strategy setting and usage. The SWOT analysis is concentrated upon the most important factors and it is useful in a difficult strategic situation. The strengths are analyzed to reach opportunities and to avoid threats. The search of weaknesses is of importance as it allows the manager to minimize them. At the beginning of the 1980s General Electric, the big USA electronics company determined a goal of increasing its market share. This aim was achieved by acquiring Radio Corporation of America and advanced satellites divisions and disposing of its consumer electronics divisions. This was General Electric’s effective strategic planning that helped to increase the annual income. These are the GE strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that still form the basis of strategic planning. The developed GE culture is its strength as well as human resources. The competition is great that is why the competitive advantage is the strength too. Technology is an essential part of any business and its usage presents great opportunities to GE Company. GE developed a vision, mission, and general objectives of the company to develop a strategic plan. Vision is the posibility of the manager to organize people together with a common idea. The mission is a broad notion of the company’s vision. GE’s mission consists of severs factors: history, present preferences, the market environment, resources and competencies. The mission gives the company a reason for existence.A good strategic planning process means sharing the “vision” of the company with the employees and creation of a strong corporal culture. When GE goals are defined, strategies are developed to help in achieving its purposes. The GE culture is shapes under the strategic plan. The GE’s information systems are created to successfully use the strengths of human and other resources within the GE. GE Strategic planning is the process of developing and analyzing the company’s mission, near and long term goals, strategies and resources. The strategic planning process passes at the business and product level. It starts with the analysis of the GE’s present strategic planning and goes on with the making up future perspectives. Strategic planning defines the methods of meeting the company’s future challenges and opportunities. The strategic planning is necessary as it helps to create good decisions and affect the future of GE Company. It becomes obvious that effective strategic planning is a constant environmental analysis for applying the changes in the environment and turning them into the opportunities. It allows GE Company to manage or avoid undesirable environment effects. Using the GE Strategic planning the near and long term goals are developed. GE strategy is a set of actions developed to gain long-term goals. Goals focus on vital changes. Two, three, or five years passes till the strategy is achieved. In general, GE has long-term goals for such factors as return on investment, earnings per share, or size. Purposes elaborate on the mission statement and constitute a specific set of policy, programmatic, or management objectives for the programs and operations covered in the strategic plan. Tactical plans have shorter time frames and narrower scopes than strategic plans. Tactical planning provides the specific ideas for implementing the strategic plan. Operational plans support tactical plans and are the tools for executing daily, weekly, and monthly activities. They include policies, procedures, methods, and rules. GE has essentially grown in size and benefits since 1980′s. GE centralized financial management and strategic planning control, and practiced strategic planning management.
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With the development of an integrated global economy, marked by free trade and free flow of capital, now is the time to pursue a cutting-edge international business career.

Around the World

In case you hadn’t noticed, U.S. firms are expanding abroad. This requires organizations to form effective strategies for entering the international business market. They need to be aware of legal matters pertaining to specific countries, and they need to be concerned with organizational and administrative issues, especially if they are involved in a partnership with a foreign firm. As international business markets become more competitive, U.S. firms are learning to use resources more efficiently by reducing costs, streamlining operations, and developing marketing strategies. That’s why today’s professionals need comprehensive knowledge of international business as well as foreign cultures and languages. Globalization has increased the need for international business workers with these specialized skills to manage multicultural and multinational workforces effectively.

“Distance” Learning

An international business degree will provide you with the training you need to manage an international business and to succeed in our global economy. With an international business degree, you’ll be equipped with a global focus across different functional areas of business. You’ll learn theories of international protocol and how they continually change. You’ll learn to recognize global differences and apply sensitivity to cultural diversity issues in communications, management, marketing, and the legal aspects of global business operations in your international business career. You’ll explore the differences among various economic development levels, as well as the new economic groups forming in Europe and Asia.

International degree program coursework may include international marketing, export/import practices, globalization, international trade, financial management, business planning, economic development, international law, international business policy, international culture, foreign languages, overseas business practices, foreign market analysis, foreign operations, sourcing, communications and negotiations, critical thinking processes, ethical codes of conduct for global business leaders, marketing strategies, and management practices and processes.

The Real World

With an international business degree, you can work as a business strategy consultant, managing consultant, account manager, project manager, business developer, distribution manager, director of international affairs, finance advisor, foreign market analyst, or management analyst, to name a few.

Management analysts, for example, held about 605,000 jobs in 2004, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment of these international business career professionals is expected to grow faster than the average for all occupations through 2014. And, median annual earnings of management analysts were $ 63,450 in May 2004, with the highest 10 percent earning more than $ 120,220.

Be part of the international business explosion by earning your international business degree today.

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