Steve Neiderhauser knows p³ + What / How = Why!

Well, it's always nice when, after launching a daisy cutter (TM - Spooky Action) like this previous post, one of your grumblings is echoed by a nice piece of higher powered big-time consultant research. The assertion was:

... in the pursuit of lean, all we get is mean. As we lop off 10 one-thousandths from the sheet metal we use to make our microwave ovens to squeeze 10 million out of our Cost of Goods Sold, we know what is happening. It is mated with management naivete born of hurry, pressure or boredom that drains 100 million from another line on the P&L.

The Big time consultant? BoozAllenHamilton. Take it away, Steve...

8 Simple Rules for managing a wayward company

What's a bigger disaster than all the combined corporate scandals of the last five years? Why, it's incompetent management, of course.

Bob Prosen, the executive director of the UTD Prosen Center for Business Advancement, cites an analysis by Booz Allen Hamilton -- Management ineptness, over the past five years, has cost shareholders seven times the lost equity value from corporate scandals.

In an interview (registration required) with Dallas Morning News columnist Cheryl Hall, Prosen talks of a survey that he created -- 64 top Dallas-Fort Worth executives responded to questions about leadership. Then he surveyed their employees. The results?

The two groups are on different pages, maybe on different books.

Among the most serious disconnects: 70 percent of the executives felt they clearly communicated their top business objectives. But more than half of the employees couldn't articulate them.

"When you walk the cubicles and ask employees what are the company's top two or three objectives, many say, 'I don't know,' or possibly 'I don't care,' which is a bigger systemic issue of culture and morale," Mr. Prosen says.

Gee.Shocking. More folks who don't know, haven't been told clearly, couldn't care less: What?" and "Why?" (Secret: If you know why, you don't have to have all the answers to "what?") Steve has more on Prosen's 8 Simple rules derived from MBWA (management by walking around. Check it out.