Bulletin No. 20 | March – April 2004

Topics in this issue

REMARKS FROM THE EDITOR

The major objective of business executives is to achieve a better ratio of output to input in each element of business activity, in other words, to make each element more profitable. In many instances, money is only the common denominator or measure of the elements which go into the productivity equation. What proved to be really matters today, is that one which must necessarily encompass human relations.

The universal threats such as the changing of people needs and demands, the growing complexity of workplace, the ne psychological contract and the human crisis – all bring great impact upon how the management treat their workforce. Mismanagement, miscommunication in the long run can result in liabilities for the company. Ignorance og the human side of workforce will turn to be a slow disastrous impact. The corporate business model where the corporation is a well-oiled machine, shaped like a pyramid of individual boxes, manned by an army of hired hands, under the command of a Chief Executive Officer – is no longer appropriate. The dynamic community, linked with networks of interdependent teams composed of people with diverse characteristics using all talents and guided by a shared purpose and quality process – seems to be the ideal corporate model today. 

In this edition, you will be encouraged to evaluate your leadership style and change accordingly if you feel necessary. Improving individual productivity is an essence of gaining more influence on your surrounding, but mind you – not everybody wants to change and wants to be a better person. Some people are really resistant to change. What you need is just go ahead, follow your common sense, and do the best for the people around. No leader without follower, no victory without pain, no freedom without sacrifice – Nobody without doing anything. Enjoy your reading!

Elizabeth Goenawan Ananto
Editor


TIPS OF THE MONTH

You can be a leader by taking one or more of the following nine roles

  1. Sages
    Expand other’s knowledge about a wide array of subjects and use it to design strategy.
  2. Visionaries
    Inspire large groups of people to go beyond their previous accomplishments.
  3. Magicians
    Coordinate change by bridging the gap between where the organization is and where it should be.
  4. Globalists
    Consolidate the experiences of people across culture by demonstrating an interest in the diversity and finding a common group.
  5. Mentors
    Help employees advance their careers by helping them learn and work with their potential
  6. Allies
    Form effective teams and alliances
  7. Sovereigns
    Take opportunity for the decision they make even if they involve risk or uncertainty
  8. Guide 
    Use clearly stated principles based on core values to guide their employees’ tasks and attain goals
  9. Artisans 
    Try to improve performance by ensuring the quality of a company’s product and production processes

(Source : The Action Centred Leader, John Adair)


COMMUNICATIONS

* Checklist for Leader – Motivator

  • Do you agree that each subordinate has his/her own target and continuous responsibility to come to the agreeable standard of achievement?
  • Do you know the contribution of each member of your team and encourage the other members to do the same?
  • In term of success, do you acknowledge and encourage further success?
  • In term of failure, do you identify what the problem is and give constructive guidance for the next success?
  • Do you delegate more?
  • Do you give more freedom to your team to act as individuals?
  • Do you show them your trust or control them unnecessarily? 
  • Do you give them appropriate training to update their knowledge and skill? 
  • Do you encourage each of your team to develop their maximum potential?
  • Do you evaluate their achievement and discuss with them openly?
  • Do you compensate their contribution with monetary value?
  • Do you spend enough time to talk, listen to each of them so that you know exactly that they are unique individuals?
  • Do you know the needs and wants of each member of your team?
  • Do you give regular briefing so that each member follow the on going problems and issues and future plan?
  • Do you know that internal communication is one of the most fundamental factors for building external relationship?

Check this out, how respondents (N=126) receive information and value the internal information in a public service company. (Ananto, 2003)

Receiving Information%
Detailed job description72%
Work achievement 60%
Institution policy80%
Work compensation60%
Weakness16%
Job evaluation40%
Job relevance56%
Strategy to handle job52%
Internal Issue48%
External Issue48%
Quality of Information%
Employees can speak openly in this co.64%
I can speak openly with anybody72%
I receive info directly from my supervisor68%
I receive info from my colleagues92%
I know about my personal social welfare 64%
I know about the future plan of this co.72%
I know about procedural changes   68%
I know the benefits of my work88%
I know about my future career 28%

MANAGEMENT

The Anatomy of Healthy Company

According to the survey of 500 Fortune companies in 2002, one of the problems facing CEOs is the increasing threat from the stakeholders. Robert H. Rosen, a clinical psychologist stated that companies are now struggling for universal 5 pressures : 

  1. The Power of People
    The power of people is the most potent force, for it reaches into all facets of all kinds of business. It touches every stage of operations, every strategy, goal and vision. It affects all companies regardless the size and the sector  of business it operates.  Because individuals are contributing more and more to the lifeblood  of companies, the costs of mismanaging them can only drain companies. Management can choose either to treat people as valuable assets to be maintained and improved upon or to treat people as costly liabilities that increasingly demand more money for health claims, accidents, and replacement.
  2. The Changing Complexity of the Workplace
    Old assumptions about people’s training, schooling, values and cultural backgrounds are no longer operative and must be discarded for a new openness and flexibility. In a company of mix cultures, both management and co-workers need to learn about each other and  strive to meld  everyone into a unified and multi talented workforce. Companies should be absence from gender and cultural, race issues and treat the employees according tp the standard of professionalism.
  3. The Dynamic of Blender
    Business people are struggling to understand, accommodate and get benefits from change. But in process, we can become easily burned-out, stretched beyond limits, and over stressed. The companies and managers who see the opportunities in this who learn how to work with different kinds of employee and take advantage of technological and competitive breakthrough – will escape the suffering of misjudging and mismanaging the power of this force. 
  4. The New Psychological Contract
    A new psychological contract between employee and company that is redefining traditional understandings about premises, loyalties, working relationship and roles. From the corporate view, the employers can no longer offer lifetime employment jobs, guarantee advancements. Economic survival demands that they are able to expand and contract quickly and be flexible enough to respond to changing markets and global opportunities.
  5. The Human Crisis
    There is a dramatic expansion of companies’ roles and responsibilities to incorporate the whole employee, not simply the person who work eight hours a day. The crisis demands that companies begin to pay more attention to employees’ minds, bodies, relationship and families. Companies that ignore the total person will receive a very painful lesson. Expanded benefit programs, the old narrowly defined health insurances, pension packages are now considered less valuable. Employees want more compassion and opportunity at work, more enlightened attitudes and behavior. 

In short, a corporate mentality that recognizes and appreciates the human side of its business as much as the financial side. The employee needs for self-esteem, growth, and well-being. Employes deeply believe that their personal value are at odds with what’s important and worthwhile to their employers. They head CEOs make speeches about fairness and equality, they learn about executive pay packages. They hear about a company’s spirit of competitiveness, then find that office politics, not professional excellence, reap the biggest promotions. 

Thus, despite many manager’s conviction that they are good people managers, their management style is controlling and self-centered. In this environment, employees have been regarded as costly liabilities and had to be pushed for maximum output. If all of us, do not invest in our workforce now, this shortsighted will haunt us for decades to come. 

(Source : The Anatomy of a Healthy Company, Robert H. Rosen)


HUMAN RESOURCE

Productivity Improvement

It is clear that work efficiency and productivity embrace far more than financial sacrifices. Researchers find the employees want quite different things from what the employers think they want. The manager who believes that all the employee wants is his daily bread and more of it, will put all his emphasis on financial incentive. The following is the example oh how the supervisors and employees rate differently about working conditions. 

EmployeeSupervisor
1. Appreciation18
2. Feeling ‘in’ on things210
3. Sympathetic help on personal matters39
4. Steady job42
5. Good pay51
6. Interesting work65
7. Getting promotion73
8. Loyalty to fellow employees86
9. Good working conditions94
10. Tactful discipline107

In separate study by Cornel University, reported that employees who had quit their jobs revealed the following information :
– 20% had never been told how they were doing
– 22% said that  they received conflicting orders most of the time
– 36% believed they did not get as much instruction as they needed
– 28% said their supervisor only give them partial answer to a question
– 66% felt that the best-qualified persons were not selected for promotions

The low absence employees were questioned about what factors they considered  essential in maintaining good attendance, the answers were :

  • recognition of work well done
  • favourable attitude toward management
  • a feeling of ‘belonging’ to the group
  • freedom to talk over problems with immediate supervisor
  • pride in their group’s productivity
  • opportunities to participate in decisions affecting their job and work

(Source : Improving Individual Productivity, Stalley & Dellof)


PROFILE THE MONTH

ExxonMobil

Pada tanggal 30 November 1999, Exxon Corporation and Mobil Corporation secara resmi melakukan merger dan membentuk Exxon Mobil Corporation.

ExxonMobil adalah perusahaan minyak dan petrokimia terkemukan di dunia. Anak-anak perusahaannya melakukan usaha bisnis di lebih 200 negara di seluruh dunia, mulai dari kegiatan eksplorasi dan produksi minyak dan gas, sampai menghasilkan dan memasarkan bahan bakar, pelumas dan bahan-bahan kimia lainnya, usaha pembangkit tenaga listrik, dan penambangan batubara serta mineral-mineral lainnya.

Anak-anak perusahaan Exxon Mobil telah berusaha di Indonesia selama lebih dari 100 tahun. Dengan komitmen yang besar terhadap masa depan Indonesia, ExxonMobil secara konsisten berupaya untuk menjadi warga masyarakat yang bertanggung jawab dimanapun perusahaan melaksanakan proyek-proyek pengembangan sumber daya alamnya. 

Perusahaan mempunyai komitmen untuk membantu kebutuhan dan aspirasi warga setempat, melalui keikutsertaannya dalam program yang dapat meningkatkan kualitas hidup dari masyarakat sekitarnya, termasuk proyek-proyek yang terkait dengan pendidikan, kesehatan masyarakat, perlindungan lingkungan serta kegiatan pemuda dan olahraga. 

ExxonMobil menjunjung tinggi komitmen untuk menciptakan lingkungan kerja yang aman, kaya akan keragaman, dan ditandai dengan suasana dimana terselenggara komunikasi terbuka, saling mempercayai, dan perlakuan yang adil bagi semua. 

(Sumber : ExxonMobil di Indonesia)

ExxonMobil, salah satu pendukung gerakan Clean Up the World Trisakti tahun 2002 & 2003. 

PUBLIC RELATIONS IN ASIA : AN ANTHOLOGY

This book describes the current status and structure of public relations in ten Asian countries : China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand. It attempts to link public relations practice in each country with key variables such as culture, political system, level if economic development and activism.
Many multinational corporations are beginning to enter the Asian market and would benefit from the information contained in this book. Public Relations in Asia would also help readers learn the unique dynamic of public relations between socio cultural factors and public relations practice in the Asian continent, thereby becoming better multicultural communicators. 

Published by Thomson, Singapore (2004), this book is edited by Dr. Krishnamurthy Sriramesh, an Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. 16 writers are involved representing 10 countries. Elizabeth Goenawan Ananto is the Contributor for Indonesian chapter. 

Public Relations in Asia, will be launched in Jakarta on Thursday, May 17th.

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