Every organisation has an operations function, whether or not it is called ‘operations’. To some (especially those professionally involved in management of operations!) operations management involves everything an organisation does. In this sense, every manager is an operations manager.

Wikipedia defines operations management as an area of business concerned with the production of goods and services, and involves the responsibility of ensuring that business operations are efficient in terms of using as little resource as needed, and effective in terms of meeting customer requirements. It is concerned with managing the process that converts inputs (in the forms of materials, labour and energy) into outputs (in the form of goods and services).

Operations traditionally refers to the production of goods and services separately, although the distinction between these two main types of operations is increasingly difficult to make as manufacturers tend to merge product and service offerings. More generally, operations management aims to increase the content of value-added activities in any given process. Fundamentally, these value-adding creative activities should be aligned with market opportunity for optimal enterprise performance.

What do Operations Managers do?

Operations managers are responsible for managing activities that are part of the production of goods and services. Their direct responsibilities include managing the operations process, embracing design, planning, control, performance improvement, and operations strategy. Their indirect responsibilities include interacting with those managers in other functional areas within the organisation whose roles have an impact on operations. Such areas include marketing, finance, accounting, personnel and engineering. (Source Open University UK)

Operations managers' responsibilities include:

• Human resource management – the people employed by an organisation either work directly to create a good or service or provide support to those who do. People and the way they are managed are a key resource of all organisations.
• Asset management – an organisation's buildings, facilities, equipment and stock are directly involved in or support the operations function.
• Cost management – most of the costs of producing goods or services are directly related to the costs of acquiring resources, transforming them or delivering them to customers. For many organisations in the private sector, driving down costs through efficient operations management gives them a critical competitive edge. For organisations in the not-for-profit sector, the ability to manage costs is no less important.

Operations managers act on three levels: strategic, tactical and operational.

• Strategic (long term) level

– Responsible for, and decisions about:

• What to make (product development),
• How to make it (process and layout decisions) – or should we buy it,
• Where to make it (site location),
• How much is needed (high level capacity decisions).
• Tactical level (intermediate term)

– Address material and labour resourcing within strategy constraints, for example:

• How many workers are needed and when (labour planning),
• What level of stock is required and when should it be delivered (inventory and replenishment planning),
• How many shifts to work. Whether overtime or subcontractors are required (detailed capacity planning),
• Plant layout and structure,
• Project management methods,
• Equipment selection and replacement.
• Operational level

–Detailed lower-level (daily/weekly/monthly) planning, execution and control decisions, for example:

• What to process and when (scheduling),
• The order to process requirements (sequencing)
• How work is put on resources (loading)
• Who does the work (assignments),
• Quality control and in inspection
• Traffic and materials handling
• Inventory management
• Equipment maintenance policies 

What Skills Do Operations Managers Need?

• Must have knowledge of:

-       Advanced operations technology and technical knowledge relevant to his/her industry,

-       Interpersonal skills and knowledge of other functional areas,

-       The ability to communicate effectively, motivate other people, manage projects, and work on multidisciplinary teams.

• Multi-disciplinary working, for example:

-       Supply Chains - management of all aspects of providing goods to a consumer from extraction of raw materials to end-of-life disposal,

-       The interface with Marketing - determining what customers' value prior to product/service development,

-       Operations Management / Finance Interface - capital equipment and inventories comprise a sizable portion of many firms' assets in addition to normal operating costs,

-       Service Operations - coping with inherent service characteristics such as simultaneous delivery/consumption, performance measurements, etc.,

-       Operations Strategy - consistent and aligned with other strategies and legal requirements,

-       Process design and Improvements - managing the innovation process.

I will be speaking at the Social Media for Business event at Worcester Business school tomorrow (3rd Feb).  We'll be running a live blog of the event so if you can't attend physically, you can still keep up to date virtually.  To participate all you need to do is join in below.

Today marks the start of Apprenticeship Week, an event hosted by the National Apprenticeship Service (NAS) to celebrate the talents and skills of apprentices.  It ties in nicely with recent research by CMI showing that apprenticeships are a great way of developing management skills.  To show we walk the walk we have recently taken on our own apprentice, a miss Danielle Roberts, who will be working in the Management Standards Centre.  She'll be writing a blog and tweeting during her time here so you can gain an insight into the kind of things that apprentices do and how it can benefit you as both a manager and an apprentice.  

AG: Hi Danielle, welcome to CMI

DR: Hi Adi, great to be here.

AG: How did the apprenticeship come about?

I was looking to take my first step on the career ladder after leaving school and thought an apprenticeship would be a great way to do that.  I logged on to http://www.apprenticeships.org.uk/ and found the apprenticeship at MSC advertised, thought it looked interesting and applied.

What attracted you to the role at MSC?

I wanted to do an apprenticeship in business and administration, this is because I would like a career in business and administration. I thought an apprenticeship would be right for me because I like to work and be active while learning instead of being in the classroom.

What are your plans after this?

Currently I am doing a level 2 Business and Administration apprenticeship, I would like to continue on to do level 3.

What will your apprentice diary contain?

My apprentice diary will contain what I am doing and learning on the apprenticeship, what skills I am gaining and the kind of tasks I'm currently working on.  I'll also write a bit about the fun (and not so fun) parts of the job.

AG: Thanks Danielle, sounds good and I look forward to the blog.

AS: Thanks Adi.

I read Adrian Gaskell's recent blog  'Insight into how power can corrupt leaders'. While I thought about adding a comment in relation to how followers could influence this,  it struck me that this might be better expressed as a seperate blog.
 
Many of us as leaders are also in a position of followership.  The term followership can have an unfortunate connotation with being passive, submissive and subordinate. Arguably truly effective followership can be characterised by ; engagement, active questioning, the generation of alternative approaches and, where appropriate, the confidence to supportively and constructively challenge the leaders' position. Or as Ira Challeff contends in 'The Courageous Leader' "courage, power,integrity, responsibilty and a sense of service" underpin an effectve followership model.
 
Arguably one of the ways to mitigate the risk of power corrupting leaders Adrian identified in his article is to have an organisational culture where effective followership is cultivated and that enables value based challenges to leaders behaviours to be made.
 
To what extent as leaders do we

a) develop our own followership

b) encourage effective followership characteristics in those we wish to follow us?

This is a guest post by John Cummings, CMI Ambassador and Fellow.

Less than half of employees in the UK rate their senior leadership team as effective, the Kenexa Research Institute has found.

The institute's survey of almost 22,000 employees in 18 countries revealed that an organisation's senior leadership team has a significant impact on its employees' overall opinions of the company.

Elsewhere, India reported the highest ratings of leadership effectiveness at 69 per cent of employees while workers in Japan reported the lowest ratings at 33 per cent of workers.

Jack Wiley, executive director at the Kenexa Research Institute, suggested that strong management skills are vital to both the external success of the business and to effective employee interaction.

"UK employees view their senior leadership team as effective if it quickly responds to marketplace opportunities and competitive threats, keeps employees well-informed about organisational issues ... and motivates people to work hard and to put in extra effort when needed," he said.

Earlier this month, Ruth Spellman, chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, said that she expected more UK managers to focus on workforce engagement in the coming year.

That was the startling outcome of a survey by Microsoft recently to mark the 4th annual Data Privacy Day.  We all know and have heard stories of people posting pictures of them in various drunken states on Facebook and this returning to bite them on the bum professionally.  Or sports stars getting into hot water for tweeting things they shouldn't be about team affairs.  Now more than ever your personal brand is alive and out there for all to see, so how do you ensure that your online brand is helping you rather than hindering you?  CMI are about to launch a brand new website and I'd like to share 5 ways that you can ensure when people Google your name, what they find will enhance your reputation, will get you that job, will win you that contract.

5 ways CMI can help you to enhance your personal brand

1. Your professional profile - The focal point of the new website for you will be your professional profile.  This will be a search friendly repository for all information about you.  It will contain information on all contributions you make to the CMI website, links to your external accounts on LinkedIn, Twitter etc., it will contain your online CV, any professional bodies you are a member of and more.  If a contact wants to find out about you then this is the place you want to send them.  As this profile is search friendly we expect it to appear high in the search listings if anyone enters your name into Google.
2. Showcase your knowledge - Ok, so you're an expert in your field.  How can you prove it?  Third party recommendations are great, but with the new CMI website you'll be able to show off your knowledge each and every day.  CMI Answers will enable you to answer member queries on your topic, with the number of answers given, and importantly, the average rating you've received for each answer displayed in your professional profile.
3. Blog your way to success - Blogging is a great way of showing off your expertise and broadcasting it to a wide audience.  The CMI management blogs will be the highest profile in Britain, and here's why.  Each blog will be fed into Google News, so in addition to the exposure you get there, Google News items also appear in the main search results too.  Blogs will also be syndicated to our Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, giving you an automatic following of thousands of managers from around the world.  Tweets are also being displayed in the main Google results so you're really covering every base where Google is concerned.
4. You know you're great, make everyone else know too - Networking is one of those things that is well worth doing, but we want to make it easier and a more effective use of your time.  CMI run lots of great events throughout the year and throughout the country that afford you a great opportunity to network with managers across the land.  But more often than not you don't know who is going to attend so cannot go to the event with a plan in mind.  That is all about to change.  Each CMI region will have dedicated online networking areas where you can meet people before events online, network face to face at the event, then continue to network after the event back on the website.
5. Become a professional chameleon - If you think of the best personal brands, the Beckham's and the Madonna's, they benefit both due to the ubiquitous nature of their brand and the way they can constantly re-invent themselves to keep pace with the changing society.  By contributing regularly you gain that ubiquity whilst also forcing yourself to adapt to the changing world, and of course getting constant feedback from your followers on how successful you are at that.

They're just five reasons that I can think of.  I'm sure you can think of many more, but keeping on top of your personal brand is one of the biggest challenges that managers face in the 21st century, and CMI want to help you to do that.

I found myself watching Any Given Sunday yesterday after the Telegraph listed the top 10 sporting movies, inspired by Invictus.  The movie is most remembered for the following speech given by Al Pacino

Later that evening I did some cycling training in the garden and used some inspiring footage from various bike races to keep me motivated and get me pushing for that extra inch. It struck me that such stirring stuff is unheard of in a corporate environment. Can you imagine your boss giving a Pacino style speech to you and your colleagues?

Sport so often fosters a sort of devotion that is equally often lacking in our working life. Just imagine how powerful your team could be if you could motivate them to push for that extra inch all the time rather than settling for mediocrity.

How do you motivate your team? Have you ever had such spirit within the places you've worked?

This is an interesting video on Deming and American management (by the BBC in 1992): Prophet Unheard. It includes some nice old footage of Deming in Japan.

The second part explores the Deming Prize, understanding data and the PDSA cycle

The final video covers work at Florida Power and Light

The corrupting influence of power has seldom been far from the news in the last 12 months, be it bank bosses awarding themselves hefty bonuses or politicians fiddling their expenses.  It's almost become a cliche now for our leaders to tell us to act in a particular way whilst they themselves apparently act according to a completely different moral code.  So it was with great interest that I came across a study into this very subject by Joris Lammers at Tilburg University, in the Netherlands, and Adam Galinsky at Northwestern University, in Illinois.

The authors conducted 5 studies to test the idea that both thinking about and having power affects the way in which people resolve moral dilemmas.  

“In determining whether an act is right or wrong, the powerful focus on whether rules and principles are violated, whereas the powerless focus on the consequences.  For this reason, the powerful are also more inclined to stick to the rules — irrespective of whether this has positive or negative effects — while the powerless are more inclined to make exceptions.”

Fiddling expenses

Lets use an example thrown up by the study.  Lammers and Galinsky tested whether people would over report their expenses based upon their level of power.  One for the politicians this one me thinks.  Anyway, the participants were asked to rate the seriousness of doing such a thing on a scale of 1-9, with 1 being deemed highly immoral and 9 not.  Those in the high power group rated this offence as a 5.8 on average, whilst those in the low power group rated it as a 7.2 on the scale.  So in this example the powerful expected high standards of others, but a second study puts this moral stance into a different light.

Cheating your way to the top

Whilst half of the test group were involved in the above experiment, the other half were asked to roll two ten sided dice, with the number they rolled assigning them that number of tickets in a lottery run at the end of the study.   The average score was expected to be around 50.  The low power group reported an average score of 59, which may have been good luck or they may have cheated their score up a bit.  What is interesting though is that the high power group reported an average score of 70!  So whilst they clearly expect high moral standards from others they aren't quite so exacting with their own behaviour.

This was born out by a further study asking some members of each group how acceptable it would be for someone else to break the speed limit when late for an appointment and how acceptable it would be for the participant himself to do so.  The remainder were asked a similar question but about declaring taxes.  In the speeding experiment the powerful rated others as a 6.3, but themselves only a 7.6.  The lower power group rated 7.2 and 7.3.  

In the tax dodging study, the powerful rated other dodgers as immoral (6.6) but if they themselves kept things from the taxman it only warranted a 7.6 on the moralometer.  Interestingly the reverse was the case in the low power group with their responses showing they were much harsher on themselves than they were with other people.

Entitlement is the key

The key to the results was the sense of entitlement individuals felt towards their position.  The powerful individuals that didn't feel they deserved their position were typically scoring in a similar fashion to those in the low power group.  So if we want our leaders to behave morally this would seem a good place to start.

 

Employees who find themselves in jobs they did not aspire to should be encouraged to achieve their career aims, an expert has said.

Psychologist John Moulder-Brown told Recruiter.co.uk that career compromise is one of the biggest causes of dissatisfaction among workers, regardless of salary.

He suggested that management development strategies should focus on offering support to staff seeking to achieve their career goals – even if those aims are ultimately with a different company or profession.

"The greater level of compromise, the more trouble there will be. If people are not performing or they want to move on, they can always be replaced," said Mr Moulder-Brown.

In addition, the psychologist contended that employers should use soft skills to determine whether their employees are happy in their jobs.

This week, Ruth Spellman, chief executive of CMI, said that she expected more UK managers to focus on workforce engagement in the coming year.