Management Corner

You never know what you don’t know.  I just learned that in baseball a hit isn’t a hit if it’s an error.  You can hit the ball, get on base, but it doesn’t count as a hit if, for example, the player catching the ball drops it.  I could blame this on me being a hockey player.  To a hockey player baseball is… well… baseball…. (imagine trying to hit or catch a baseball while 5 other guys are trying to take your head off…) Baseball scoring is different than most any other sport.  [...]

I recently spoke on a thought-leader panel for Actuate, developers of BIRT and PerformanceSoft.  I was asked about the role of mobile technology and thought I would share my answer: “The integration of mobile technology into performance management, business intelligence and reporting applications is one of the most talked about aspects of performance management today.  Are you seeing this as a major change in how organizations utilize performance management technology?” What was my [...]

For those of you who don’t know, about three months back, the FTC launched an antitrust probe(basically, a civil investigation) of Google, amidst allegations that the company engaged in unfair, anticompetitive business practices related to its namesake, the Google Search Engine. There are some pretty heavy accusations on the plate here- the FTC has allegedly been investigating whether or not  Google’s unfairly pushing down the pagerank of companies which offer services that compete with their [...]

Agencies such as FINRA, the FTC, and the NLRB are bringing complaints against companies arising from their social media activity or employee related activity, thus, highlighting the need for companies to demonstrate that they are exercising due diligence to promote ethical conduct and prevent criminal conduct in the context of social media activity (i.e. Federal Sentencing Guidelines, § 8B2.1). Companies would be neglectful not to add a social media component to their corporate compliance and ethics [...]

One of the biggest problems ERM suffers from in the market is simply defining it, making it easy for managers to understand how they can affect it, positively or negatively, and why it is just as real as the painfully tangible operation risks that shut down their production.  Risk managers are constantly searching for examples that enable them to sell risk management throughout the organizations.  The recent tragedy at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is about as good an example as we [...]

I’m pleased to announce Amyn Thawer, Senior Director & Counsel, Global Compliance and Regulatory Affairs for eBay Inc., will be joining us to present at the upcoming HR & Employer Compliance Summit this November in San Diego.  Amyn will discuss guiding employees in the social web — focusing on how eBay Inc., one of Silicon Valley’s most successful technology companies, stakes its success on harnessing the latest trends in the Internet. Amyn Thawer is Business Ethics Officer and [...]

So how could Starbucks solve this problem of one bad cup of coffee spilling to creating one dissatisfied customer, and those customers adding up over time to topple them as a market leader?  How could they measure this risk and mitigate it? But first remember, this is only a problem because Starbucks was a dominant market leader; they were practically the only major player in this market.  They created the market and then rapidly saturated their primary and secondary markets (Wall Street was thrilled).  [...]

I’m sitting in Starbucks writing a follow-up email to a new potential client on how we might work to support their new GRC initiative, which happens to be different than both their GRC and EPM initiatives.  Of course their EPM initiative does not encompass both BPM and CPM as it should, or the less popular OPM.  It surely does not encompass the other, trendy CPM.  (Read trendy as created by a provider with no real differentiators so they make up a new acronym as camouflage).  Sorry, whenever [...]