Wednesday

No, on the syllabus it says Wednesday, but I’m going to be out of town. So I’m going to have to make for Monday. Or, the following week…

But I can’t take her away from her desk for that length of time. She can come in here and start a move. That’s not a problem. You guys can pass around the attendance sheet, take the movie when its done, bring it back to where…. As a matter of fact, I was going to ask you if you would be willing to do that. I gave here the test to photocopy, so we’ll have it for this Monday, but, yeah, we can delay it.

Actually, you had said that you were under pressure for taking the test on Wednesday…

[Well, it’s just that I’m trying to get the text notes up on the Web site. I’ve got two chapters left to go on the text notes. ]

For those of you who weren’t here on Monday, you read the syllabus right. That was my typo… I haplologies for that typo being in there erroneously but it just slipped in. What we talked about was entrepreneurship and why businesses fail… And so if any of you want any of that material, you can get the study notes from the Web site, it’s all there, so that works really well.

We have a test coming up next week, and it was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but I will be leaving on Wednesday to bail my mom out of a nursing home in Florida. I’ll be leaving early Wednesday morning, and I had arranged for Michele Zivick, my secretary, to come up here and show a video tape. And that video tape is on management and management related issues…it’s about some case studies. It’s very good, by the way, you’ll definitely enjoy it. I don’t feel comfortable asking her to proctor the test. So the choice is to take the test this coming Monday, or to delay it a week.

Delay it, ok. If any of you are really absolutely wanting to take the test on Wednesday, let me know, and I’ll give Michele, my secretary, a couple of copies of the test and you can take downstairs in her little study room, there. So I just need to know that in advance.

But let’s plan on the test being one week from Monday which will be the 13^th.

No, we need to do it on Monday, the next possible class day, which will be Monday. The benefit of having the test on Monday is that you’ll have the whole weekend to study. The bad part of that, and this why I always hated having tests on Monday, is that it blows your weekend…you know, it spoils your weekend. The bad part about the 13^th is not that it’s not a lucky day, but at least it’s not on Friday.

Jeremy, here’s your chalk, put the meeting date up on the board, and the classroom is yours.

Networking Club Meeting

Monday October 6, 8:30 to 9:30

Room 206 Business Building

And I had looked through my stuff, Kevin, and I couldn’t find what you had said you gave me.

[Mr. Mitchell, here are the forms that I was talking about. Maybe Terry could get one of those… And I don’t know if there should be more information included with this. It’s only an application for club membership and whether or not you want an officer’s position.]

[And, Jeremy… did you get one of these? I just picked this up from the Student Senate. This is the application for club membership. Did you already go through this, and get it approved through the Student Senate? Well, that’s what we need. And here’s an example of their bylaws and their constitution. And we’ll need to have 6 officers before they’ll ok it. But here’s all the paperwork for it.

And if you’ll recall what we had talked about before…I just love duplication! Anyway, it’s already in the works, it’s already been planned into phases, but the club will become involved in many of these workings. Is that alright with you?]

Networking Club Meeting

Monday October 6, 8:30 to 9:30

Room 206 Business Building

Alright, I’m just going to take a moment of all your time to briefly tell you what the networking club is all about. Some of you may be wondering what the Networking club is all about. It has nothing to do with computers, so let’s get that out of the way… Well, it has some things to do with them, with our Web page and all of that, but… The term Networking has to do with the networking of students, both past and present students. It kind of goes back to the old saying, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” So its bringing people together that have common interests and just kind of doing fun activities, figuring things out to do for the college, just having a good time and it’s kind of business related. We’ll have different activities that maybe we can do as a club. And like last year, at this time, we were just planning and we’re thinking about doing it again… doing a corn roast, right out here in the mall area. We have a big machine where we stick corn in. So we want to do that again along with a couple of other things. So we’re just going to discuss it, throw some ideas out, things we can do as a group, things we can do as a club.

Next Monday, right down the hall from here; it’s like the second next door to the right down here. It’s at 8:30 in the morning, but from 8:30 to 8:45, we’ll be mostly letting you know what the club is all about. Mostly the 8:45 to 9:00 portion will be more like a meeting where we’ll discuss what people think we should do as a club and what we will agree on. Whether we’ll be doing a corn roast, and what we will and won’t do.

Yes, there will be donuts, there will be bagels, there will be juice. So, we’ll make it a good time. So come on out.

Yeah, in the past, we’ve met every Monday… the first Monday of every month. I also, at the meeting, hope to get some feedback from everybody as to when would be a good time for you guys? Are Mondays good? Are Wednesdays good?

Anything but Friday? So come on out, just stop in and say hello between classes…

[At this point, does anyone have an interest in joining or has anyone thought that far ahead?]

When we talk about leadership, you’re really going to get a sales pitch in here. That’s coming…but we’re starting on management today. I talk a little bit about the benefit of being involved in a club, and your management career. But you want to think about this, because it’s an opportunity to get involved. And that’s how you get to know other students and faculty, and it looks good on your resume, and it’s looks good on your portfolio.

When you go to get a job, you can say all of the accomplishments that you’ve done in this club. Then if you want to, you can get involved like myself and become an active role…you can take my job as a president, if you want to!

Yeah, because I’m going to graduate someday and I’ll still be a member, but I won’t want to be totally involved.

For officers, we have 3, and we’re kind of working on a 4^th guy who is very involved in advertising. And those are just the officials. And there’s different students, like yourselves, who just come to the club meetings, they want to get involved, they want to do what they can…

So, this is like project management, where you get involved, you take on a project, you help with the project. And when you’ve done that you can chalk that up as something you accomplished, here at Inver Hills. That’s a good question, though: What’s the benefit? The benefit is that when you graduate, you all look the same; you all have taken the same courses, you got the same degree. Most of you who apply for jobs are going to have pretty much the same grades. How do you distinguish yourself from your peers? I went the extra distance; I became involved; I was in clubs; I participated, I learned management by experience.

Actually, I’m actually a shy person, myself. But this can really help to build up your self confidence, it will teach you to do different things, and things that we can do to raise money. If you think that you’re a shy person, guess what maybe we can raise enough money to sent a group of people over to Toastmasters or something. Toastmasters is a big club of people where they all get together, and all they do is speeches. It may seem boring and it may seem silly, but it helps people in the real world. I mean you need to get out there, you need to have heavy speaking skills. Well, this is a club that’s kind of organized to help people do that. And, as an example, I’m a supervisor at Target Corporation, right now. And I do hiring; and a lot of the questions that people hem and haw about, and it’s a really simple question, is when was the last time you did something in a group or an organization that accomplished something; what was your role and how did you contribute? Well, most of the time, as students, you’re usually off by yourself, and maybe as a homework assignment you’ll be put in groups, but if you’ve done something in a club that you became involved in, and if you helped to make something a success, you can sit there in an interview and tell them what it was that you did.

And that’s something you can be proud of, and it pays, and then you shine. In Jeremy’s case, as in Liz’s case, they got involved and it’s going to pay off. Now, in Liz’s case, she got a job here, because I wrote her a great letter of recommendation. Now, she might have gotten that job without my letter, but my letter certainly didn’t hurt. And I networked that, and that’s what the club is all about. I said, “Hey, he’s an opportunity.” So the Networking Club is all about getting to know people and getting to know businesses and community people, and current and former faculty and current and former students. And it’s a win-win-win situation. And in Jeremy’s case, he’s put in a lot of work. And at some point I’m going to be able to write a really nice letter for him, as will Liz from the Alumni Association—and probably Cheryl Frank, the president as well.

Oh, definitely. As a matter of fact, some of the core key members of this club who are former students are my best entrepreneurial success stories. Guys like Dave Russted who have done very well. If you went to the Blues Fest, has anyone gone to the Blues Fest? Yup it was in Duluth. Well, if you bought a water or a soda product or beverage, Dave Russted ran that venue. He’s an entrepreneur who makes tons of money. Also, he has a snowplow company, a lawn service company, a truck wash company. Slumberland is his number one account. He’s very successful.

He’s my only former student who has a house on Lake Owasso, which is in St. Paul, and it’s where my friend the doctor has his house; it’s where the man who owns Old Dutch has his house. So do I like to brag about Dave and his success? Sure I do. And you can meet him, you can get involved with him; you can do an internship with him, etc. He believes in this college; he believes in this club; and think you met him at which event here… But, yes, there is definitely a payoff.

{There’s a blood drive on October 8^th, I believe. And I’m curious to know how you’ll know that we gave blood for the extra credit. }

If you tell me that you gave blood, I will take your word on that. But when you give blood, you will get a little card; you’ll get some certification that says you were there. So you can show that to me as well.

You bet, you only have to give blood once. And I encourage you to give blood. It’s one of those things…in a resume, when someone asks what you have done for the community, you can say, hey, I give blood. And they’re impressed. Most businesses have blood drives at their business. By the way, the Business Boosters Club, which is now kind of the Network Club used to run that blood drive. And we were very proud of that. It was an iatrical part of our year’s activity, and when we had a side chapter, they also ran it.

Our best quarter, and in the old days we had quarters, where we had a spring drive and a fall drive, we had one blood drive where we actually raised 400 units of blood. Now, when this is all done this time, and I don’t want to put the Student Senate down, because I’m thrilled that they’re doing it, but they’re not even going to come close to 400 units.

One of my best students that I recommended for a job was in charge of that recruitment for that blood drive. And he went all around the campus dressed in surgical scrubs and he hit up everybody. And his brainchild, his idea, was to pit the men against the women. And go up to you and go, “Did you give blood?” And the student would go, “No, I didn’t give blood…” And he’d say, “What! Are you a wuss? Are the women going to beat us?” And we had a big poster in the cafeteria, and it was like a big thermometer and as the women would sign up, it would show up on the poster. And then he also pitted the jocks against the heads. I’m talking about the old days now…. But it was fun, as we competed against each other. And you knew there was a blood drive on campus that week—you knew! And he had posters and signs up and he really… you know it wasn’t just him, but he was kind of the locomotive behind it.

Well, later on I got a call from one of my former instructors that I had hired to teach a sales class. He ask, “I know it’s a long-shot, but might you have somebody that could sell medical and surgical products? I said, “yeah, I do. I have this student that involved; he had actually become a medic; he realized the value of the blood drive, and we raised 400 units of blood.” And the guy goes, “My God! Inver Hills gave 400 units of blood?” And I said, “Yeah, Jeff was behind that!” and he said, “Well, I have to meet this guy Jeff.” And I said yeah he should. Jeff started out in the nursing program but decided that he didn’t want to be a nurse and deal with bed pans. So I convinced him to take all the medical terminology classes and as many science classes as he could and then switch over and get a sales degree. So he took our sales and marketing program and got the sales… Well, as it happens, he didn’t quite graduate, he was one or two classes short. He still hasn’t graduated, by the way. That happens, but he’s still a success story, right?

Well, anyway, I gave this guy Jeff’s name, he called, Jeff sounded good over the phone, he was interviewed, they were impressed, because I had helped teach students in a sales class how to interview for a job, and I would teach about personality profiles, and he realized that if you’re selling surgical implants, and you’re calling on doctors, and we’ll talk about that in this class, you have to be sharp, to the point, and quick, and get right to the objective… He did that in the interview; they were impressed and they hired him. That was the first time they had ever hired a two year graduate; and he wasn’t even a graduate.

Now, he has switched companies and makes a lot more money. And I love to tell this story because I used to live in Inver Grove Heights on Bonar Court… When he moved in to my neighborhood in a better house than mine, I decided that I needed to sell all my rental income property and move to Apple Valley. He’s doing very very well. And it’s because he got involved. But we went above just giving blood, but… But I would certainly encourage you to do that. So I’ll give you 15 points, and you’ll get a little card and you can share that with me. But at the end of the semester, I’ll ask you for your extra credit, and you can turn in a little half of a piece of paper with a photocopy of the paperwork that they gave you.

And, by the way, you don’t actually have to give blood. If they turn you down, it’s just as good. You made the attempt; you went there, you scheduled the appointment, and you tried to give blood. So that’s all I need to know is that you were there. They will give you some paper work and you’ll hang on to that, and you can prove to me, then, that you gave or at least attempted to give blood.

If you give blood off campus, that’s ok too. I’m ok with that too. There again, you do need to have some proof.

Alright, we’re going to talk about management today. On Wednesday of next week, the day that I’m not here, Michel will come up and she’ll have an envelope with the attendance sheet for the day, and she’ll also have a video. And the video will cover some management topics. So we’ll get that started; it lasts something like thirty minutes or so. You can watch the video and when the video is done, you can head out. Kevin has agreed to bring the video and the attendance sheet back downstairs. I will be back the following Monday. So I will be back and all squared away for that test.

[Well, it’s to accomplish a goal… that’s the last part of the definition at any rate. ]

Ok, very good. It’s a group of people, and we’ve talked about this before very briefly…

What is Management?

Group of people, who:

Plan Mission Goals

Organize

Lead

Control

Manage resources

But management is a group of people who plan, organize, lead, control…. They manage resources. One of those resources is a group of people called employees. But the resources that are at our disposal are land, labor, and capital. So management is that group of people who has that responsibility, and that’s a key word isn’t it? …Who volunteers or fesses up or gets involved to take on the responsibility to lead this organization and this group of people. …To help setup the mission that determine the goals; whatever it is this business is going to do. Who are we going to serve…. So, actually, management is a group of people who serve people. Because every business in every organization is all about its customers, isn’t it. Whether it’s Hardy’s with their hamburgers, or Best Buy and stereo equipment, or Inver Hills, where the customers are students. Or, it could be the church, where the customers are sinners or potential sinners, right?

What is Management?

Group of people, who:

Plan Mission Goals

Organize

Team Lead

Control

Manage resources

Every group of every organization has a target group of customers that they want to help or to help solve a problem for. And so this team of people, this group—and team is a critical word here—organizes themselves to carryout that mission to serve those people and to figure out how they are going to use and how they are going to get the resources they need to carry that out.

So the Networking Club is very much like a business, isn’t it. We have to recruit, we have to do projects, we have to have fun. We have to network and help each other get jobs and internship positions, and do and say good things that revolve around Inver Hills. So the focus of that organization is Inver Hills. But it’s comprised of a pretty large group.

Now, how many are actually working members of the club, who actually help to plan events and do stuff like Jeremy did today? Well, it varies over time. And their not always going to be in the same room at the same time, are they? But that is still a cohesive group who shares that common bond, that common goal, as it were.

What is Management?

Group of people, who:

Plan Mission Goals

Organize

Team Lead Process

Control

Manage resources

Alright, let me give you the definition of management, this is the textbook definition. It says, “What is management? Management is both a process for achieving organizational goals and a group of people. So this is a process. And because this is a process, there some science to it, isn’t there. There’s some structure to it. So, management is both a process for achieving organizational goals, and a group of people.

So as a process management is the planning, organizing, leading and controlling an organizations people and resources to achieve its stated goals. Now, when you read this definition while studying for your test…because you know there might just be such a question. The author puts that in there because it’s important. And this, by the way, is the first of a number of looks at what you’ll get for what we call management. And that’s really what we study in the world of business overall, isn’t it.

If you’re going to go for a job interview, do you think that there is even a remote chance that who ever is interviewing you is going ask you, “Well, give me the definition of management?” What are you going to say? It’s a process, and a team of people who organize and plan the use of resources towards a goal to achieve and satisfy the needs of customers…. Yeah! You got to know this! You got to have it in your gut, don’t you! So you can spill it out! I mean I would hate to have to, word for word, regurgitate this crappy piece of definition: “The process of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling an organizations people and resources to achieve its stated goal.” Even though that’s what it really is.

So you need for when you apply for a job, you need to be able to figure out one of the questions that they are going to ask you, and then put that into a perspective that can respond to. Ok, what do you want to do? “Well, I want to be a leader, I want be a manager. I don’t want to be a peon who gets told what to do. I want to tell people what to do.” Well, management gets to do that, don’t they. How do they get to do that? Well, they earn that right, partly by studying organizational behavior and management studies, and partly by proving themselves via work experience. And that’s partly what happens when you get involved in clubs and activities on campus.

Layers of Management

Top

Middle

Bottom – (supervisory or entry-level)

When we talk about management, we have to talk about the layers of management. And what would those levels or layers of management be comprised of? Ok, top, middle, and bottom, or supervisory or entry-level management. And nobody really likes the term…I mean, come-on, bottom management. Like, I’m in bottom management; I’m in the bottom level of management. So that never really gets used. So it’s entry-level or supervisory management. And they have the responsibility for the day-to-day supervision, the day-to-day activities. Middle management is involved project planning and determining how exactly the resources are going to be used, and to describe what those supervisors need to do on a weekly basis, or a monthly basis. They will accumulate the resources, they will fill out the budget forms… Is there a lot of meetings and a lot of paper work involved in middle management? Yeah. And it’s also tough, because you’re getting pressure from above to achieve results, because we’re goal oriented, aren’t we. And you’re also getting pressure from down below, because they might say, “We can’t do this, this is too much, it’s too hard. You’re driving us too fast.” So middle management gets the squeeze don’t they?

Layers of Management

Top $

Middle

Bottom – (supervisory or entry-level)

Many of your parents, or maybe there are people you know who may be in middle management. And it’s a tough spot to be in. But you have to prove yourself in middle management to get the top spot. And these are the ones who get paid the best dollars aren’t they. And someone asked me earlier this semester, “How do I get into business and start at the top?” Well, there’s only two ways to do that. Either you start and run your own business and because you’re the entrepreneur, you wear all the hats—you are the top. You then have all the responsibility, right? Then the team is you. Or, you go to college and you get a degree and if you are really lucky, you get plugged into a management fast-track program, because you were a stellar student and you got a lot of great references from your college and your teachers… And they plug you into a middle level management position and you prove yourself to them in their industry and then you move up to the top.

But no one starts at the top. You have to be sponsored. And how you are sponsored is by proving yourself. And we’ll talk more about that on another day, when we talk about our leadership lecture, where we’ll talk about leadership styles etc.

But many companies today will tell you where you start at our company, which is where?

Entry-level, which is? Sales, customer service, maybe maintenance. Or, may in the mailroom…you know the old joke about starting in the mailroom? Whey do you start in the mailroom? Let’s say I want to go to work for an ad agency, I want to go and work for Fale and McGill. I’ll tell them that I will do anything, because I want to work in the add business. Where are they going to start you? In the mailroom. Why the mailroom? Because in the mailroom, you get to know who all the players are. You get to see what’s going on and how the organization works. If it turns out that you actually get to deliver mail and not screw up by spending the day talking at the water fountain, and actually slowing productivity down, because one of the goal is an increase in productivity, right? Well, then they will move you forward, and they’ll assign you a project and you’ll do that and keep moving forward.

Ultimately, if you prove that you can do the work and do the job, you will move up; you will become recognized. The biggest single area, where people start out, is customer service. Why? Because any company is all about its customers. So you have to know the business from the inside out; you have know about the customers and their problems and their concerns. If you’re in customers service do you get to work with all the other divisions, all of the other areas? Yeah, this customer is happy with the product, but someone in accounting screwed up her billing. You’ve got to straighten it out, you learn the whole business in customer service, don’t you. So that’s where you are most likely to start.

By the way, my plan for college students is for them to get a two year degree, then start in sales or customer service, prove your ability by always exceeding any expectation that is given of you, and then tell the company that you want to get a four year degree. I got my two year degree, now, but I want to get a four year degree. You give tuition reimbursement, or at least you should or you will do tuition reimbursement… You want to keep me, and you want me to be better, and you want your company to grow, then you pay for my last two years of education. If they had success from your last two years of education, and you have grown into a valuable member and have helped that company to move forward, are they likely to pay for your masters degree? Yeah! And you PhD? Yeah! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this little plan out, does it.

By the way, Inver Hills has more tuition reimbursement employers than any other institution in the State of Minnesota. We’re very very proud of that. So, not only do I give my students this pitch, I give all the employers that pitch. And if you look at the board downstairs, our cooperating business partners: Northwest Airlines, West Publishing, Blue Cross Blue Shield, 3M, they all do that. As a matter of fact everyone of those partners…we’re actually teaching our classes in their business facilities. Not just for their employees, but for anyone in the community. So I’m teaching a class on Tuesday night, but there won’t be any West employees there, but I’m teaching the class at the West facility. Now, they want the class there, because they want the employees to be able to take it. It just turns out that this semester there weren’t any. But that’s the kind of partnership that we’re all about.

Layers of Management

Top $

Middle

Bottom – (supervisory or entry-level)

What is Management?

Group of people, who:

Plan Mission Goals

Organize

Team Lead Process

Control

Manage resources

Direct

We know what they do: they plan, they organize, they lead, they control, and they manage resources… And, they direct.

Layers of Management

Top $

Middle

Bottom – (supervisory or entry-level)

And, so, these people [middle management] are looking at what’s going on in the next month, the next quarter, and maybe what’s going on in the next year, because quarter to quarter leads to the next year. These people [top] are looking at what’s going on five years down the road. What direction do we want the company to go twenty-five years from now.

Right now, Best Buy is planning to become a global company. They just bought an operation in Canada. And we had an article in here and in my marketing class that talked about their establishing a buying office in Shanghais. And they are making a commitment to become a global company. Well, that’s a big step for them. Well, that was a top management decision. By the way, that decision was pretty much made a year or two ago before they moved into their new corporate headquarters. And one of the reasons they needed a new corporate headquarters was to facilitate that whole procedure. Well, they had a bad economy for awhile, so they delayed it for a while. So they took a little respite for about 13 months. And now it appears as if that decision has been moved back on, and so it will move ahead now with more speed.

By the way, when they built that new building, one of the main parts of that new building is their training center. And so the part that points toward highway 494, as you are driving by, the first two floors are dedicated to training. Why did they need all that space for that training, which they never had before? They plane all kinds of people in from all over the world, just like 3M does.

What is Management?

Group of people, who:

Plan Mission Goals

Organize

Team Lead Process

Control

Manage resources

Direct

Layers of Management

Top $ Vision

Middle

Bottom – (supervisory or entry-level)

So, they have a vision, don’t they. These people [top] have vision. And they’ll say what the overall goal is. Well then those middle managers have to figure out how their units, and these people are VPs in marketing and divisional or department heads… These people have to figure out what my unit has to do, so we can achieve the top goal. For example, sales will have to be at this amount; customer complaints reduced to this amount; profits to this amount, ok? Every organization or every group within the overall team works towards meeting those goals. Those frontline supervisors, they take their individual teams of employees to meet those midlevel goals. And so it’s like, ok guy, here’s what the shop has to do; here’s what shipping has to do; here’s what marketing and sales has to do, and what customer service has to do, and what product fulfillment has to do, and on and on.

So if I’m a supervisor of one of those groups, if my group meets its goals, and its plan, the middle guys and gals look good, and then ultimately we make our top goals. And that’s how it plays out.

What is Management?

Group of people, who:

Plan Mission Goals

Organize

Team Lead Process

Control

Manage resources

Direct

Layers of Management

Top $ Vision

Middle Objectives of each unit

Bottom – (supervisory or entry-level)

All of this is based on objectives. What are the objectives for each of those units. What tasks must they accomplish? So how many of you have a job description at work? Ok, I would hope that you all have a job description. I have a job description. It is fairly clear about what my responsibilities are, right? What my tasks are, what I must do. I must meet my class, I must have a syllabus, I have to fill out certain reports… Those tasks and those job descriptions lead up toward each of those units meeting its objectives. And that’s what it’s all about.

Ok, where did this thing called management come from? What’s the history? How long have we been managing? Forever! Ever since man had excess goods and materials, and we could market and we could have specializations of jobs… If you lived and existed in ancient society, every family or every unit is getting what they need, right? Hunting, fishing, gathering, or whatever. There’s no ability to organize, because you’re just existing, you existence is day to day, right? But when you have been successful in hunting and/or you have a good location or a good heard, like we have in all of North America, you can spare a few people to do some other things. Well, then what happens is that we start to form groups or teams of people. Now can you be more efficient in the hunting? Yeah, not everyone is hunting. Some people are actually hunting and killing, but some people are driving. They are going way out and they are bringing the game into where they guys with the spears are. Well, that’s a plan isn’t it. That’s organization.

Have any of you guys dear hunted before? Good dear hunting is good management. The groups that just go out there and sit all day in a stand all by themselves may or may not see a dear. They probably drink a lot, and hopefully they won’t fall out of their stands. But my father-in-law is a dedicated dear hunter, and I never go with him, because it’s too much work. I mean, they have drives and they have certain times when they know when certain stands to be right, and then they send certain guys out…and that’s how they do it. Well, that’s organization.

So this has been going on for a long time. Well, the first real organizations were the city-states that we had. And by this point, we have an abundance or an excess and an ability to produce more agricultural product than we need. And so now we can have people making other certain things that we need. So now we have people making pots and pans, some people are making spears. Not everyone is good at making a spear, right? The one who is really good at making a spear isn’t out hunting, they are making spears, right? This is the specialization of labor and that’s how management evolved. Well, imagine the Chinese and their cities and their organizations, and the Greeks, and the Romans… And as they conquered other territories and built fancier cities, pretty soon, other people want to take those cities away, don’t they. And now we have war and conflict and we have the military.

So management really became the science that it is today because of the military. And if you look at what happened in Iraq just a little bit ago and it’s still happening today, that’s a tremendous exercise in management. Logistics and getting all the right parts and pieces and having the right plan… And even today, they are still arguing about whether or not it was the right plan; did we have too many or too few soldiers.

So no matter what the outcome, people are going to debate how we got there. This has been going on for a long long time.

It wasn’t until the 1950s that management became the scientific business study that it is today. And it was really after World War II, kind of when marketing got its start. But it was then when we started to write whole text books that were totally dedicated to a new concept of the management of business, of business management relationship. And what really made it change in the 1950s was no longer did employees have to be there. In the military, I had a unit and if you were in my unit, you had to be there, right? If you leave my unit or do anything, you’re AWOL, your then put into the brig, right? I’m going to put you in prison. Now, we have business units where people volunteer to be a part of it. So we now have profit-sharing, and we have many ways of motivating employees. Does that mean that I can’t say that this is what you have to do or your fired? You do what I say or your fired! It won’t work, because there might be two other jobs down the street. I’m not going to work for an ass. If you’re going to be a jerk, I’m out of here.

So we had to realize that we had to put together new benefit programs and incentives for employees. In the old days in the 20s and early 1900s, business managers who were mean or bad or who didn’t care about their employees, they had unions formed against them. It might have been, “Yeah, well I have control, I have all the jobs. If you want Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, if you want physiological, you want to have food on your table? If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to fire you.” Well, so the unions formed to organize against that and to give the workers some place. So now we have a very different environment, don’t we.

By the way, America has actually been at the heart, for some time, of modern management thinking and philosophy. And the Japanese, after the war, actually came here and studied it and took it to a higher level. They gave us quality management and quality circles, etc. Now we’re trying to take from the Japanese and trying to take it to a level above them. And, actually, we’re doing that pretty well. So you see how management, as a science and as a study, has evolved over time?

Well, much like in the military, you have a responsibility, you have a task. So it has to be divided up. Well, in the military, what we’ve done is we said we’re going to have a navy so that we can fight on the water and so we can enforce blockades. We’re going to have the army so we can have infantry and we can march masses of troops, whether it be with tanks, horses, or whatever…. And we’re going to have the marines so we can make an assault from the water, and keep what we have. And then during World War I, we realized that we needed an air force, because the Germans had blimps and other stuff and they were dropping bombs out of planes and screwing up our planning. So we had to have an air force. And now we have the United States military, and it is basically divided up into those different functional areas.

Now, this is no different than a business that is divided into different functional areas, right? For example, the functional area of accounting, keeping track of your money and your systems. And information management, the computer stuff, right? …Marketing, production, operations, customer service. So what we learned in the military is pretty much the same as what happens in the business environment only it’s done with a different kind of morale.

Frighting, it’s a military term. I was first exposed to it during Viet Nam. It had actually come about, and had been talked about in World War I and a lot more in World War II, but it really started to play out in the Korean War, and in the Viet Nam War, it became a really big deal. Frighting is when you kill your officer.

I had friends who came back from Viet Nam who explained the whole thing to me, and I’m like, “Ok, I think I might have heard my dad talk about that, once, but what is it?” Well, the problem that we had in Viet Nam is that we had a lot of people who got college deferments and they stayed out of the action. Most of the other people weren’t qualified for college, so they got drafted. So we had a lot people in the military who [end of side one]

…who were what were called NCO, noncommissioned officers, and they with their education had earned the right to command there. Now, they might have gone through one of the academies. How much real soldiering experience did they have? Oftentimes, not much, and many of them didn’t have much leadership experience. So what happens is that a group of soldiers get together and says, “Hey, this jerk doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s going to get us all killed!” This has been highlighted in several recent films, ok? This jerk is going to get us killed. So what do they do? They blow his ass away—they shoot him. And they make it look like it happened in a battle scene. I was blown away when I heard about this.

Well, what is that? That’s all about the fact that those soldiers did not have respect for their leader. So whether it’s in the military or whether it’s in business, you have to have the respect of the people who are going to be a part of your team. I’m not going to follow an idiot am I?

By the way, I had friends who told me that it was a good thing that I didn’t go to Viet Nam. And I asked, “Why? is because I’m dyslectic and I would have been going right-left instead of left-right, or because I would have screwed up on the drill exercises?” But he said that the real reason was, “…because you’re a loud son-of-bitch. You can’t do anything quietly. And in Viet Nam, if you wanted to live, you had to sneak on the ground, and you had to be as invisible as dust.” So hear is Mitchell with his big and loud voice. So what they were saying to me was, “Yeah, if you had been in my platoon—bang! We would have got you, because you would have given our position away with your damned loud voice.” Now, in reality, in boot camp, they would have beaten that out of me, wouldn’t they. And I would have quickly learned that I had to sit down and shut-up and be respectful and say yes sir and not talk unless I’m asked to speak. And that’s how it would have worked.

Well, the same thing happens in the business environment. If you lose respect for your leader in your organization, is that organization in trouble? Look what happened to ENRON… I mean the whole company evaporated in an instant! Those people made some really bad decisions.

Layers of Management

Top $ Vision Decision-Makers

Middle Objectives of each unit

Bottom – (supervisory or entry-level)

Well these leaders are decision-makers, that’s what they do. And so if someone asks, what do managers get paid to do, well, they get paid to make decisions. One of the presidents had a sign on his desk that said, “The buck stops here.” What does that mean?

I take ultimate responsibility for anything and everything that ever happens in America. Well, how can anyone take ultimate responsibility for anything and anything that happens in America? But he’s got the ultimate job, right? And hopefully he’s got people all down-the-line, and hopefully he’s got people who know what they’re supposed to do, and hopefully it all works.

But that’s what it’s really all about. And people say that it is lonely at the top, because everyone is shooting at you, everyone wants your job, everyone is secretly wishing that you’ll screw-up so that they can get your job. It’s tough…it’s tough.

And, by the way, I truly don’t believe that executives, today, deserve all the dollars that they get paid. I think they deserve a premium salary, and I think they deserve stock options and profit sharing, but it has to be tied to actual and direct real results. And much of what happens in an organization—and this is my opinion—should be shared with the employees. So when I start my Signs For Sale, it will be an employee owned company. I will be the leader for awhile, but eventually I expect to be put aside as the leader. And I will still have a certain amount of stock or ownership, but it will be those employees building their company. Does that work?

Do you want an example? Look at Anderson Windows. Go and take a tour of Anderson Windows, an employee owned company. They are unbelievably powerful. Now, fortunately for all of those employees, the family who started it, their kids didn’t want to take over the business. And so they had to make a choice. And they ended up entrusting their key top management and middle management to become owner/operators of this business. And the way that they are going to make that work is to give bonuses and profit sharing to every employee. Does anyone know anyone who works for Anderson Windows? What kind of bonuses do they get?

Yeah…every six months or every year, they pay a bonus. And if the window industry has been bad, their bonuses are pretty small. Almost every time, though, they have been able to declare a bonus, they would do so. And sometimes it’s not because of sales going up, but because costs have been cut. And if the costs go down, then there is money to be shared. It’s incredible. Once I asked a student, who worked there, to bring me in one of these bonus checks. I wanted to actually see one of these bonus checks. Well, he had just one, and he brought it in. I had heard that they were going to be pretty big that year. Anyway, he brought in that check for me to see, and do you know how much it was for? It was for five thousand dollars. And he said that he hoped to get another one before this calendar year, or this tax year is over.

Now, that was in addition to his hourly wage that he made, which is pretty darn nice. Well, I asked him what he was going to do with the money. And he said, “Hey, baby, five grand is a really nice down-payment on a really nice boat!” By the way, does that help the whole economy, when everybody gets their bonuses and they buy boats and motorcycles and snowmobiles? Or when they make expansions on their houses, or buy lake homes? Absolutely!

That’s a company, where all of the employees all throughout the plant, are empowered for quality control and other things. For example one employee might say to another, “Hey, what are you doing? You’re screwing-off! You can’t be doing that!” They are tough on each other. I was in the plant on a tour with my students, and we had just been told how this company worked. And I’m like, “This is cool—I like this!” Well, we were inside the plant, and this guy starts whistling. And I’m going, “Well, I think we are supposed to be where they told us to be. I think all my students are within the yellow line…” We all had our hardhats on and our safety glasses, and whatnot. But I looked at him as if I was doing something wrong. But we were all behaving like we were supposed to. But the guide said, “No, no, what that guy is doing is alerting them to take this window off to the side, because he spotted a problem with quality control.” Later he told me that that guy saw something out of the corner of his eye that didn’t look right in that window. And it apparently got through its first inspection, but it something about it got missed. Well, when you look at it straight-on, you wouldn’t see the flaw, but this fellow saw something that didn’t look right when the sun was coming through from the angle he was at. So he pulled it aside and tagged it. Once that tag is put on there, that window has to be completely and thoroughly tested and inspected.

And, indeed, as it happened, there was something wrong with the glass. Hence, it didn’t go out into the real world. Well, this was incredible. Well, how many companies, and where somebody who doesn’t even work in that department, do that? But with Anderson, it happens every single day. So that’s every member of the team, every party, every unit, that is working towards the ultimate goal.

Oh, he was just a factory worker; he was just a mill-guy, where they worked with routers and that kind of stuff. I mean, he was a skilled employee, but he was an entry-level skilled employee. So he had a routine sort of production job.

The guy who saw what was going on, was the assistant to the training director. Now, what would the assistant to the training director know about windows? Well, he trains people how to look for quality, right? And, of course, he knew what was going on. And he wasn’t even supposed to be on the floor that day, but he was making sure that this tour was staying within our yellow line, and if we had questions, he wanted to be there to answer them. Anyway, I was amazed. It was absolutely amazing.

When we start off in the military process, we start off with a mission. And the mission is the overall goal that you want to accomplish. So in World War II, we had to beat the Japanese and we had to beat the Germans. We had two fronts. We had some help with the British and the Russians, and some folks who had escaped France and had escaped Italy. But it was like, whoa! there’s a lot of forces that were poised against us, and this was a tough situation fighting two fronts. So we had to organize the navy, the air force, the marines, and the army, as well as the coast guard to do the job.

The mission was to win the war, right? And we had to do that on both fronts. Which meant that we had to get the Germans out of North Africa; we had to get the Germans out of Italy; we had to get the Germans out of France; we had to get the Germans out of Norway, Sweden, and Poland. Fortunately, the Russians helped with the Polish part, and ended up taking it when it was all done, right? Now, we also have to fight the Japanese, because they bombed us in Pearl Harbor. Now we have to fight all of these islands in the Pacific—Wow!

Fortunately, had we planned and prepared in advance for a war? Did we have the ships needed? ….We lost some ships, but because we were a good production society, we could make more ships and more airplanes. At one point it was said that the Japanese and the Germans with all of their submarines and airplanes couldn’t shoot-down our pilots and our boats fast enough. We could make the boats and train the pilots and train the captains and crews faster than they could be destroyed. So the ability to plan, produce, and to organize is guaranteed to win wars.

Well, ok, the mission is to win the war. What’s the tactical situation? So first we do the mission stuff and then we do the tactical stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it’s the overall plan and how that’s all going to fit together. So when we look at the tactical and operational side of it, well, gee, we’re going to take Normandy Beech… First of all we’ll have to keep that a secret, even though we were amassing troops like crazy. The German’s must have known something was going to happen, they just didn’t know where. So we set out fake information and whatnot. So, ok, we have to have supply and logistics, we have to have medics. Virtually every boat that would float that the British could gather was on that shore that day.

By the way, not this summer but the summer before, I was on a tour with some guys who were on a mine sweeper. And their job, the night before D-Day, was to make a final sweep, because they didn’t want… The German’s were dropping mines by planes, and they didn’t want those guys hitting mines and giving away the invasion before it began. So they really wanted to make sure that every single mine had been swept away. And those people on that boat actually sat back about a mile and a quarter from the Normandy shore and watched the whole invasion that day.

There assignment was to retrieve the mines that the German plans would drop. Well, no planes had dropped any mines that day, but at night they came back and dropped more and that night as they were trying to find more of them, they hit a mine and their ship had sunk. It’s a pretty sad story, but….

But they had told me all about the planning that went into this day. And they thought they had given it away, because a German submarine had seen them. And if that German submarine only saw one mine sweeper, that’s not a big deal, because every night there was at least one mine sweeper. But if the sub had seen five mine sweepers or ten mine sweepers…so if he went the whole distance of that coastline and had seen fifteen mine sweepers, they were panicking that their secret had gotten away, and that the German’s had figured it out. Fortunately, he only saw one or two, which seemed like normal activity. But if the German’s had had ten or twelve hours of advanced time, that would have been a disaster, an absolute disaster.

So the tactics are…ok, let’s get this thing put together. So this is what the army will do; this is what the air force will do. And in that invasion we know that many of the bombs fired from the navy gun ships went too deep, didn’t they. And they ended up blowing up harmlessly in farm fields. Fortunately some of them hit their mark, and some of the air force pilots hit their marks. But a lot of those German concrete gun turrets were not taken out like the plan hoped they would be.

Now, a whole other group of guys has responsibility on those landing craft for going and scaling those walls. And they had ropes and hooks… And so the beech had to be secured. And everything along the way has to take place. And if those guys didn’t get up there to take out those positions, you’re going to lose a lot more soldiers. So, fortunately, that part of it went pretty well. And most of those guys went and they threw hand grenades in and they blew up those turrets. But they were assigned one location.

Mission: win the war on both fronts

Tactical: planning

Operational: day-to-day

So, when they get here to the actual operational stuff, which is the day-to-day stuff, it gets very specific, doesn’t it. So you’re assigned a particular job. And if you do your job, all of these other jobs will play-out and work fine. It’s like in the orchestra, if everyone plays the music as it is written, it’s beautiful. If everyone starts playing their own shit, it’s worse than shit, isn’t it—it’s torture! So if you follow the plan that your supposed to do…. And “In Saving Private Ryan,” what went wrong that day? They had maps, by the way, and they had all seen the maps, they new all of the elevations; they had all the detail. Well, some of the soldiers were dropped in the wrong locations. Some of them were dropped too far out from shore. Well, those landing craft were designed to make it to shore, pull-up onto the shore, the front gate drops down and it’s supposed to hit the shore. Every inch of that shoreline had been SCUBA dived and charted. They knew the depth at that precise time, and at the times when the invasion would take place. But many of those drivers got scared because there was so much incoming. Consequently, they panicked, they dropped their gates, and the soldiers went off the landing craft with 200 pounds on their backs, and they drowned.

That’s not how it was scheduled to be. So management sets up the plan. This is how we orchestrate this. If everything goes according to plan, you’ll have success. And in this case, fortunately, most of those guys kept struggling until they felt bottom, but there were many that didn’t. And those poor soldiers had no chance, the drowned immediately.

Once they were on shore, every single guy is supposed to dig a hole. And every single guy has a grid to secure. And they broke the whole shoreline down into a grid arrangement. And each group of men coming off those landing craft was responsible for that piece of ground. And if you held your piece of ground, then the next group would come over you and they would take out the barbed wire; and then the next group could start to scale the cliffs to go up and get those guys.

So the plan started to unravel when they didn’t get all of their guys dropped in the proper locations. Consequently, not every place was being secured the way it was supposed to.

Mission: win the war on both fronts

Tactical: planning

Operational: day-to-day

great detail

So that’s the operational side. So we get down to all of this detail. Well, in a business, you’re going to write an operations or procedures manual. And that’s very detailed, isn’t it.

If you work in a retail store, here’s how you cash in, here’s how you cash out. Here’s how the store opens in the morning. Well, how does the store open in the morning? Well, a manager, or assistant manager, or the owner has to do what first? What’s the very first thing that happens before that store can open?

Turn off the alarms, absolutely. Then we have to power-up the cash registers; the cash registers take a certain amount of time to run through their programming and all of that. And then we turn on the lights. But once you start turning on the lights, the customers are going to be anxious to come in, right? So you don’t want to turn on all of the lights to soon.

And all of this procedure clicks into place; there is an exact time scenario that you’re going to follow.

Once the day has started, well then, the manager can solve problems, and deal with shipments and whatever else might need to happen. Then at the end of the day, you do the reverse of that cycle. This all has to be clearly spelled out. So you have to think through all of that detail.

Imagine trying to run this college with all of its detail. For example, when and where are all the classes, not to mention, the Schedules, programs, and instructors. Now, all of a sudden Mitchell shows up and says, “I have to go to Florida to be with my mom! I have to go and bail her out of a nursing home and hopefully get her into her apartment. I have to miss some days.” Oh, don’t you have a back-up for that? Yeah, we should have subs, but do we have subs? No. So fortunately Michel volunteered; I have to have a plan; I have to tell my dean how my classes are going to be covered, which is why the test kind of threw me off; I kind of forgot about that. So, gee, thanks for reminding me about that before class. Now I think I have everything covered; so I write her a letter and tell her how I’ve covered it. Hopefully that day will go fine and no one will miss me.

But you have to think through a lot of detail. The other night I was at West Publishing. I was teaching a class a there. I told them which nights that I needed a VCR. I called, as a back-up, just to make sure that my VCR was in my room that night because I really needed it. When I got up to my room, there was no VCR. So I went to the security guy and I said, “I ordered a VCR from so and so; they promised me that it would be there…” And he said it was too late and that everyone had gone home. He said that he didn’t know where it was and that he couldn’t get me one.

Well, it’s a good thing that I had a back-up plan, right? If this didn’t work, I could do this, you know? Sometimes you have to shift on the fly; that’s the way the real world is.

Well, the more I thought about…and I thought, “Wait a minute, he promised me it would be there. He’s not going to let me down. He must have put it in the wrong room” Sure enough, in the room next door, there’s my VCR. So it was just a little screw-up. And whether it was my fault or his fault, I don’t know; but I just brought from where I found it into my classroom. Now, as I’m driving home, I thought, “Oh-oh, I didn’t put that VCR back where I found it, where it was supposed to be…” That guy is going to go and find that the VCR is missing! Well, I moved it into the next room. Should I have put it back where I found it when I was done? Yeah…. Those are the little things that help make you a better employee in thinking about all of that detail.

Mission: win the war on both fronts

Tactical: planning

Operational: day-to-day

great detail

But when you look at all the detail down here, I mean, it’s enormous, isn’t it? Those soldiers had to have guns, they had to have back-up ammunition, they had to have medics.

And listen to this, this blows me away: There had to be clergy there. Why? They wanted to repent for their last sins. And if they were catholic, it was very important. With other religions, it is very important too, but they have to have clergy there; and that was critical. And by the way, if there is not a proper medic coming, those soldiers are not going to fight. There going to say no-way, you haven’t prepared for this. There was a huge debate about how some of the equipment would work. And the soldiers were saying in advance that the British equipment was bad and designed wrong. And so fortunately those commanders had listened and, in midstream, they changed some of the equipment.

Mission: win the war on both fronts

Tactical: planning

Operational: day-to-day

great detail

But there’s a huge amount of detail, though, that has to happen here. And, along the way, if we do things properly, we’ll win the war.

He in the Twin Cities, we have a pretty proud heritage. And right over here, where Cargil’s facility is on highway 13, on the Minnesota River… That was a ship building port. Why was it located there? Why was it in Minnesota? There was also almost an identical one up in the Port of Superior. But why was it here near the Mississippi River? It’s a logistical concern…

Yeah, it was safe. And we had lots of workers… And the ships were actually built of wood. There was metal framing on the outside, but at the core of the type of boat they were manufacturing was an operational plan that had been tested and proven. And once they had the forms and everything in place, they could pop ships out… They were making ships over here at one ship per day. What? How can you have one ship leaving the Port of St. Paul, going down the Mississippi River, down to New Orleans at one each day? That was unbelievable! Well, that’s good operations management, isn’t it.

Mission: win the war on both fronts

Tactical: planning

Operational: day-to-day

great detail

They had the plan…and every ship was identical. They had everything staged, and all the materials were here. Well, we’re in lumber land, aren’t we? All of this Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin… so all of the lumber comes here, the steel comes here, we take the welders out of Maytag’s washing machine plant and, now, they were welding on these ships.

And we would take women and train them for these jobs, as well…like, Rosy The Riveter. And they popped out one ship per day. Is that a good team, is that a good organization all working together for the same cause?

By the way, while they were doing this, they were self-rationing things like sugar, gasoline, rubber. They were out collecting recyclables, because we were running out of steel. We couldn’t dig enough steel out of Northern Minnesota…. By the way, those mines, up north, won two world wars. They clearly won two world wars. We couldn’t make enough steel fast enough. So people were out recycling.

Did you know that every farmer in Minnesota and Wisconsin, almost everyday, was hauling stuff to South St. Paul and West St. Paul… You know how you go to a farm and see all kinds of old machinery laying around? All of this old metal stuff? And farmers won’t throw anything away, because they bone-out old machinery for spare parts.

Well, my friend, who lives down here by the refinery, right where County Road 42 and highway 52 intersect, said that he would bring in, every fourth or fifth day, a trailer load full of scrap to get recycled to, basically where North Star Steel, now, is; where they take old cars and recycle them. And he said it was amazing. So everyone participated in that ultimate victory.

Why was World War II different than Viet Nam? Well, in the case of World War II, the enemy was clear…the cause was clear. We were being threatened. Were we actually being threatened in Viet Nam?

It was a political war; it was a fight against communism. It was as war to stem the flow of communism. But people didn’t believe in that. Now, instead of having all these soldiers who volunteered, we had a draft. And was it a very different army? Today, in Iraq, we have an all volunteer army, don’t we. It makes a big difference. In the whole war, I’m aware of only one instance where an American soldier took out other American soldiers.

Right… But in Viet Nam, that used to happen weekly, as my friend had said. So there’s a big difference.

This is my own personal opinion, and I love to throw it out to the vets. A lot of people think that we lost that war and, technically, I suppose you could say that we did. But I don’t think that we lost that war. I think that we won the bigger war, because we beat communism. We have still not completed that task though have we. There’s still North Korea, and that’s a posing problem, and we still have Cuba. But Russia has changed gears; China is in the midst of changing gears. China took on Hong Kong and bought into capitalism. They took over one of the world’s largest banks overnight. Russians wish they had that. Well, how did that happen? Well, we stood-up in Korea, and we stood-up in Viet Nam. And Ronald Reagan launched Star Wars. And it was Ronald Reagan, and this is my opinion, who should get a certain amount of credit for ultimately beating communism. Now he didn’t do that alone, but he committed our universities and our institutions to Star Wars. The Soviets did not have the system of education that we have. They were absolutely taking from their people to support the military. Those people suffered big time, while we had commercial goods and services all over the place. We had great lives while they suffered during the cold war. At some point, those people are going to say screw this shit! This isn’t going to work anymore. And, ultimately, it was Ronald Reagan and Star Wars, and the military spending that put the slammer on them. And they had to start thinking about change. And ultimately took a big turn towards capitalism.

Anyway, I love to tell that story. And anyone of my friends that went to Viet Nam, I tell them that they did not fight in vane. You might not have come home to the hugs and kisses that these soldiers are getting as they’re coming home from Iraq are getting and deserve. But, ultimately, that was an important thing to do. Of course, obviously, I’m a little biased in my opinion.