I have started this webpage for sharing both what I have learned about management in general and insights I have had. I will also provide links to useful sources of information about management located on the Internet.
I am a person who is very representative of the E-Generation, both the electronic computer literate generation as well as the entrepreneur generation. I have grown up with computers in my home since the age of 9. I obtained my B.S. in Business Management via the Internet in 2001 from the University of Phoenix Online.
I have worked in a unionized manufacturing plant, on farms, in the Federal Government, for a government contractor, in a small Internet startup, and for Fortune 500 companies. I have a well rounded familiarity with various types of businesses.
Currently, I am in graduate school working to complete my MBA at Eastern Michigan University. I hope that this will round out my business knowledge and credentials to help me more successfully bring my management philosophies to the corporate world.
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One of the basic tenants of management that I strongly believe in is that if an organization runs on a philosophy where it places its customers first, its employees a close second, and balances this against a budget that profits will follow. Granted, managing an organization is not this simple but I think that any organization that puts anything before customers and employees is not going to be a successful long-term company. I don't think that investors, shareholders, or stock prices should ever come before (or even get close to) customers and employees in importance to the company. By importance I mean the amount of resources that are applied to make these two groups happy.
Granted, I can also understand those that say put the employees before the customer. The saying "the customer is always right," is a pretty good generalization and one of the principles I base my theory of putting the customer slightly above the employee on the priority list. It really comes down to a case by case basis. You don't want to risk losing key employees but employees are easier and usually cheaper to 'buy' than are customers. A business definitely is going to have a hard time maintaining profitability if it loses key customers but may be able to replace even the most gifted employee(although it may have to hire two people to do that one person's job).
Just look at companies that have been successful in the later part of the 20th century and i think you will see that they had a good product and customer relationship as well as a reputation for a good company to work for. i am thinking of companies like ibm, upjohn(now pharmacia), and farm bureau insurance. I am not saying these companies are perfect just that they seem to run on this philosophy.
There was a great article I read about the importance of both customers, employees, and their loyalty titled "completing the loyalty triangle" by Mylle Mangum. "It costs less than a tenth as much to keep a good customer relationship as it does to acquire even a mediocre one. And the result of retaining customers is mind-boggling. Increasing customer retention by just 5 percent can increase profits by 25 percent to 95 percent," states Ms. Magnum. She goes onto say, "Loyalty is a basic trait of major, long-term achievers in any marketplace." I would add to this and say that if you don't focus on loyalty your company probably won't be in business in the long-term. Every business person needs to hold the wisdom embraced in the following quote close to heart and always at the forefront of their mind, "Keeping customers is never easy, regaining lost customers is supremely difficult and extremely expensive," Delivering the Value of IT: eCollaboration - Creating the Extended Enterprise.
Also, Ms. Magnum's article sites a reference as to why investors aren't as important as one might think. "According to Frederick Reichheld's book, The Loyalty eEffect: The Hidden Force Behind Growth, Profits and Lasting Value, Major global corporations now lose, and must replace, half their customers in five years, half their employees in four years and half their investors in less than one year." If investor churn is very high and investors rate your business based on profit it seems to make sense that efforts are best placed in maintaining loyal customers. Revenue should be a company's true source of profit and not stock price. I think a lot of companies have forgotten this.
I can talk a lot about this subject and will continue to expand on this. If you have any comments please send them to me at:
ian@kormanworld.net