Management Philosophy and Style

The Marketing Concept:  The entire organization ... its products and services, policies, management practices and people ... are all focused on meeting the needs and wants of current and potential customers.

Training and Motivation:  You can't have one without the other.  If your people are trained but not motivated, they'll never do their best.  And if they're highly motivated but untrained, they'll still mess up your business, just sooner.

Empowerment + accountability + training + incentives/rewards = performance:  "Instead of goal-setting, I see it as negotiating  commitments to each other, in and between all levels of the organization.  People commit to goals more readily, and more firmly, when they help define them."

Entrepreneurial Management:  The opposite of bureaucratic management.  Maintains entrepreneurial spirit as a growing company adopts more formal management practices.  How can we best encourage each person to assume ownership ... of their own responsibilities?

Maintenance vs Motivation

Frederick Herzberg defined the difference between “maintenance” and “motivation” factors.  Vacations, pensions and health insurance can all help maintain employee morale and security.  That makes them critical Maintenance Factors, but they don’t motivate anyone to positive action. 

The difference between bureaucratic and entrepreneurial organizations – effort  versus results – is often caused by insufficient or poorly-structured motivational factors.  Here’s where even small changes can create almost instantaneous and ongoing performance gains … at all levels of any organization … including non-profits and government.

See How-To Article,  Entrepreneurship:  Not Just For Entrepreneurs.

Marginal Costing (Manufacturers)

In traditional costing, overhead is allocated to each finished good - for the purpose of evaluating inventory.  However, this makes it far more difficult to manage profitability (at differing production levels).   

With Marginal Costing, operating managers deal with marginal contributions, sales price minus direct manufacturing costs.  This permits the use of simple tools like breakeven charts to better forecast bottom-line impact at different sales and production volumes.   This step is critical, but only it helps your own profit management, or you want to push profit responsibility lower in your business.

Marketing can also better measure the net profit contribution of incremental sales increases, vs the incremental costs of new sales promotions or new customers.