Top 10 Management Tools

Since 1993, Bain & Company's global Management Tools and Trends surveys have been an excellent gauge of the business climate. That remains true today. In an extraordinary time, the 2009 questionnaire produced a telling set of findings.

Benchmarking, a cost-cutting tool, was the most heavily used among the 25 tools surveyed. Outsourcing, another way to reduce costs, jumped to No. 4, while Business Process Reengineering remained on the Top Ten list. As another indication of where executives feel their companies are headed, the vast majority-88 percent-of those who downsized in 2008 plan more cuts in 2009. And only 24 percent of executives believe that today's market leaders will still lead in five years.

Top 10 Mgt Tools

1.Benchmarking

2.Strategic Planning

3.Mission and Vision Statements

4.CRM

5.Outsourcing

6.BSC

7.Customer Segmentation

8.Business Process Reengineering

9.Core Competencies

10.Merger & Acquisition

There's also regional variation-and a wake-up call-in that hopefulness: Managers in Asia's emerging economies are much more focused on growth and innovation than their counterparts in North America.

From Management Tools for turbulent times

Results Brief newsletter 06/12/09

by Darrell Rigby and Barbara Bilodeau

5 Personal Core Competencies for the 21st Century

Every epoch requires people and organizations to develop core competencies or skills needed to be successful. In the time of Henry VIII (yes, I am watchingThe Tudors), key competencies to master probably included fealty to a powerful lord and skill with a rapier. Not so much in demand today, however.

What are the core competencies needed in this century? Harvard Graduate School of Education professor Helen Haste has identified five that we should begin teaching our students. We business managers should also consider how to bring these skills to our companies and careers.

• Managing Ambiguity. “Managing ambiguity is that tension between rushing to the clear, the concrete, and managing this ambiguous fuzzy area in the middle. And managing ambiguity is something we have to teach. Because we have to counter the story of a single linear solution.”
• Agency and Responsibility. “We have to be able to take responsibility and know what that means. Being an effective agent means being able to approach one’s environment, social or physical, with a confidence that one actually will be able to deal with it.”
• Finding and Sustaining Community. “Managing community is partly about that multitasking of connecting and interacting. It’s also, of course, about maintaining community, about maintaining links with people, making sure you do remember your best friend’s birthday, that you don’t forget that your grandmother is by herself this weekend, and of course recognizing also that one is part of a larger community, not just one’s own private little world.”
• Managing Emotion. “Really it’s about getting away from the idea that emotion and reason are separate… Teaching young people to manage reason and emotion and not to flip to one or the other is an important part of our education process.”
• Managing Technological Change. “When we have a new tool, we first use it for what we are already doing, just doing it a bit better. But gradually, the new tool changes the way we do things. It changes our social practices.”

From By Sean Silverthorne August 13th, 2009

http://blogs.bnet.com/harvard/?p=3332&tag=nl.e713