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The new New Economy Analyst
Report – Dec 29, 2004
Juergen Daum’s new New
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©2004 Juergen Daum. All rights reserved.
Interview with Patrick M. Georges: How can
executives improve their personal productivity?
News categories: The New
Economy Economics, Finance and Acounting, Performance Management and
Controlling
by Juergen
H. Daum1
What can a neurosurgeon tell managers and executives
to improve their personal work productivity? In this interview with Juergen H.
Daum, Patrick M. Georges (see picture on the left), a senior neurosurgeon based
in Brussels, Belgium, and an expert in Human Intelligence Management, who is
teaching courses at business schools, is telling about the secrets of best
practice in management - what differentiates best performers from their peers.
Often the reason is, that the best performers understand more about how the
human brain is working. With this knowledge and by applying some simple Human Intelligence
Management rules, they are able to improve their personal productivity
tremendously. Ultimately Patrick Georges’ concept has lead him to develop the
Management Cockpit2, a
corporate war room, designed according to the principles of Human Intelligence Management
(read more about the Management Cockpit
here).
Professor Dr.
Patrick M. Georges is a senior neurosurgeon based in Brussels, Belgium, and an
expert in Human Intelligence Management. Together with neurologists, human
intelligence scientists, and computer engineers he designed in 1989 the
Management Cockpit –
an innovative corporate war room concept. He and his
company, N.E.T. Research, has installed
with his team more than 50 Management Cockpits at companies and non-profit
organizations. As a teacher and author in Management, he is giving seminars for
senior managers about techniques for improving their personal intellectual
productivity. He also is the Director of the International Institute for Human
Intelligence Management at the HEC (Haute Ecole Commercial) School of
Management in Paris.
Juergen Daum: Why do you think the idea
and the concept of a “Management Cockpit” was so well accepted by executives?
Patrick Georges: Because these people
where looking desperately for something, which really could help them to become
more effective in today’s ever more demanding business world. Traditional
management information systems and other management tools like management
reporting had not been really optimized for helping top executives in the tasks
they are responsible and paid for: reaching market related objectives under
extreme uncertainty through an often huge and not directly controllable
organization.
Juergen Daum: What do top managers need
instead?
Patrick Georges: When we started more than
12 years ago to analyze the challenges top managers and especially management
teams are facing in their work, we realized that one of the major problems
these people and teams are facing is to overcome the information overload they
are experiencing everyday. To set focus and to reduce information overload
turned out to be the basic necessity for managers to become successful.
Scientific studies are demonstrating, that the human brain can cope effectively
with an information stream, which corresponds to up to 800 characters per
minute. According to our studies, managers receive on average 4,000 characters
per minute, in the form of phone calls, e-mail, faxes, meetings and reports. So
one element of the solution had to be the intelligent reduction of information
overload. The second was, to better leverage the common intelligence of a
management team through a more systematic approach how to run the management
meetings. The final solution, which came out of this research, was the
Management Cockpit. It helps executives
and management teams to sort and organize the information overload, respond to
the hundreds of questions pertinent in the running of a company, brings added
value through collaborative intelligence to the know-how of the single
executives and reduces so uncertainty and decision stress.
Juergen Daum: The Management Cockpit,
targeted to support management teams, covers only one of the areas of your
Human Intelligence Research. Another focus of your work is, how executives can
increase their personal mental and intellectual productivity. Can you explain
that in more detail please?
Patrick Georges: First and
foremost it has to be said, that everyone has to live with the intelligence
nature has given to him. We can’t change this. But we can increase the
productivity of human intelligence by means of appropriate work methods and
appropriate work environments. And this is exactly where I am focusing on in my
work.
Juergen Daum: How do you define human
intelligence and how can you improve its productivity?
Patrick Georges: For the
purpose of practicality I define human intelligence as our ability as human
beings to reach our objectives by overcoming obstacles and utilizing our
resources. If you want to increase your personal intellectual productivity, you
have to investigate, what the weaknesses of human intelligence, what the
“blockers” for its productive use are.
Juergen Daum: And what are these
weaknesses or productivity blockers?
Patrick Georges: The problem
is linked to some specific characteristics of the human brain. Its
concentration span is short. Its recognition of form is imperfect and biased.
Its short-term memory can only hold very little information at any one time.
Its long-term memory stores the information in its own way and often forgets
what stock it carries. The brain processes information slowly. It can only do
one thing well at a time and is easily overworked.
Juergen Daum: So the human brain seems to
not be very efficient. What can we do about it?
Patrick Georges: Unfortunately, there is
no wonder weapon available. But if you understand, how the brain is working,
you can achieve tremendous results. The key to unearth the full potential of a
person’s intellectual capacities is to provide better support throughout the
various stages of the thought process. And this means: you have to increase the
power of concentration, focus attention, optimize the perception of forms,
organize the short-term memory better, and better organize the knowledge stored
in the long-term memory.
Juergen Daum: And how do you make it
happen? How can one better support the thought process in the different areas
you just mentioned?
Patrick Georges: Take the first topic:
concentration. Concentration is what enables us to access the content of our
memory. Our level of intelligence depends greatly on this power, for example
how long we are able to work productively on a file. But concentration is
highly selective and very limited. It is impossible to focus your attention to
everything that comes before you. We therefore constantly strive to reduce the
cognitive cost of a task by selecting certain sources of information. We filter
the information. And ideally, our intelligence should select information on the
basis of the task at hand. Unfortunately, that is most often far from being the
case. For example, probably triggered by a kind of “safety instinct”, the human
voice and face immediately capture a large part of our attention if they reach
our perceptive areas, even in cases where we receive no useful or desirable
information for our work or tasks we are actually executing. We therefore have
to assist and protect our concentration in such a way that it selects the right
kind of information; information that corresponds to our objectives rather than
being based on out-dated reflexes or the objectives of others.
Juergen Daum: And how can a person, for
example an executive, protect better his or her concentration?
Patrick Georges: Not every person has the
same level of natural concentration capability. Selective focusing ability
varies from one person to another. It can be measured for example by a simple
selective listening test. If you have problems in concentrating, you should establish
some basic behavior rules to increase your concentration protection power. One
of these rules might be, to never decide to buy in the presence of the seller.
The seller, a sales person, captures and focuses the prospects attention by
placing his voice and face within the client’s field of attention, thus
reducing his chances of focusing on the rational elements of the
decision-making process. As an intelligent buyer you should always leave the
shop for a few minutes before deciding whether to buy or not. Another rules
might be, to work free from the sound of voices. The human voice is a priority
source of information that the brain cannot help but process. The human voice
captures a large percentage of our power of concentration when we are subjected
to it, whether consciously or unconsciously. So if you have work to do, for
which you need your full concentration: close your office door and unplug your
phone. If your are in deep concentration, it will take you up to 20 minutes to
gain again the same level of concentration you had, before an interruption e.g.
through a phone call, has taken place.
These are only some examples for such rules, which I am teaching in my
seminars.
Juergen Daum: But to know these rules
is one thing. To apply them successful, another. How can managers make sure to
succeed?
Patrick Georges: These things in deed seem
to be obvious, but people often have problems to be disciplined enough. My
recommendation therefore is: put your three to five main rules on a sheet of
paper and check regularly, for example every week, if you still are aware of
them.
Juergen Daum: You mentioned before,
that our short-term memory is weak and can only hold very little information at
any one time. What can we do about that?
Patrick Georges: Our short-term memory is
our working memory. It is the place where it is decided what will be retained
for your work at hand and what will be forgotten. It is the poor performance of
our working memory, in terms of duration and capacity, that most reduces our
intelligence. Our working memory is like a whiteboard on which, during the
thought process, information relevant to the situation or to the decision to be
made is inscribed. The information comes both from our internal memory, the
long-term memory, and from the outside world. But the working memory, probably
situated in the frontal lobes, is small and the information inscribed in it is
rapidly deleted. The storage capacity of our short-term memory is equal to
approximately seven units of information. We can retain seven pieces of
information from a few seconds up to ten minutes, but we have difficulties
retaining ten. If information is presented in addition to the initial data that
makes us forget the initial data. For a good presentation or for a good management
report the conclusion is: you have to give your audience or your readers some
time between the presentation of groups of various data so that they can reach
a sub-conclusion or group it on the basis of the first packet of information
received. This grouping task will empty our working memory and enable the
entrance of a new information package without deleting the first. For example
good chess players owe their intelligence to their strong ability to categorize
and regroup the positions on the chessboard. This principle is the reason, why
we conceived the Management Cockpit Walls as divided in so-called “logical
views” – each one being easy to distinguish from the other and each consisting
of not more than six different single information pieces – the visuals or
frames.
Juergen Daum: What would you recommend
specifically to managers, who want to start to increase their mental and
intellectual productivity?
Patrick Georges: Respect your biorhythm
and your intellectual productivity curve over a working day! In the morning,
from around 7 to 11 a.m. you have your most productive time. Reserve this time
for your most important project and close your door and do not answer phone
calls. Also never start your day by reading your mail. In the morning your
brain is very receptive and “open”. You will program it, in reading your mail,
with other people’s issues and objectives. From 11 a.m. on, you have your
“communication peak”. Make your important phone calls and have your important
meetings. Put the not so important tasks or meetings in the early afternoon,
when you have your lowest intellectual performance. Choose your “Business of
the Day” every morning, when you wake up. Decide to finish something important
before the end of the working day. You will “program” your brain with this
objective, so that it will become more likely, that you will achieve it.
Juergen Daum: A manager’s task is to
make decisions. What is the key to better management decisions?
Patrick Georges: You can increase your
decision accuracy as a manager through more hard facts. We are very bad judges
of probability. For managers, who have to make every day decisions on the basis
of probability estimations of certain favorable or unfavorable business events,
this fact can lead to significant damage. If something has a 2% probability of
happening in statistical terms, we would intuitively estimate the probability
as 10%. If something has a 95% chance of happening, we would estimate it as
80%. Moreover, if a risk is serious, we tend to underestimate it. While when a
risk is small, we tend to make it bigger. We are also more sensitive to losses
than to gains. We would do much more to avoid a small loss than to make a major
gain. Therefore, try to base your decisions on facts. Insist on getting more
statistics on company activities. Numerous executives are very surprised when
receiving such statistical facts. For example the fact, that certain clients
with whom they spend much of their time are not profitable. Or that such and
such a sales person systematically sells 80% of the target he sets himself
while another always reaches 105% of his objectives. Therefore: take care for more reliable business data.
Juergen Daum: Managers are often constantly under pressure and very
stressed persons. How would you conceive an “anti-stress” program for
executives?
Patrick Georges: Make sure, that every intention is followed by a
decision. An intention is a piece of information that creates a desire in us. It
is the “I must do this or that”, which we get after a meeting. It is the red
light in our head, a worry. It cannot be turned off until a decision is made or
something is done. You should train yourself to recognize, when you have an
intention in your head and above all not to let it fall into your subconscious.
You should therefore quickly note it down or act upon it directly. The worries,
the background stress we have are due to these numerous intentions which we
have every day. They clutter our subconscious because they have not been dealt
with properly when they were still in our conscience. Executives should
therefore always carry a notepad or a Dictaphone where they can collect their
intentions, their desires, their worries as and when they arise. They can clean
out their memory with it. If you have not got into the good habit of doing that
during the day, you should least push yourself to do it before going to bed.
Worries or intentions that are not written down and therefore remain in your
memory are a recipe for a bad night.
Juergen Daum: What else would you classify as important to
managers concerning their intellectual productivity?
Patrick Georges: Eliminate as many messages as possible, which you
receive. At least half of the information received by managers today is made up
of junk mail, which does not help them to reach their objectives. We have to
train our intelligence to mistrust our old reflexes, which tell us that if it
is among our mail it is for us, it is for our benefit that we should act on it.
And have your regular brief date with yourself every day, your quiet half hour,
a brief quiet activity at a regular time. This will recalibrate you, even on
busy business days.
Juergen Daum: Professor Georges, thank you very much for this very interesting interview.
1Juergen H. Daum is an
internationally recognized expert, author, speaker, and consultant in
enterprise management. He currently acts as the Chief Solution Architect of the
Business Solutions Architect Group at SAP AG and advises senior executives,
CFOs and finance professionals in finance transformation and enterprise
performance management best practice. He is a frequent speaker on enterprise
and performance management topics and a frequent contributor of articles for
leading journals. He is the author of the book Intangible Assets and Value
Creation (John Wiley & Sons, 2003). Website: http://www.juergendaum.com/
2 The Management Cockpit concept has been originally developed by Patrick Georges and his company
N.E.T. Research. The intellectual
property rights of the Management Cockpit concept have been acquired in 1998 by
SAP AG. The name Management Cockpit is a trademark or registered trademark of
SAP AG.
“Fixed
budgets don’t work today. A
budget is a too static
instrument and locks managers
into the past - into something
they thought last year that it
was right. To be effective in
a global economy with rapidly
shifting market conditions and
quick and nimble competitors,
organization have to be able
to adapt constantly their
priorities and have to put
their resources where they can
create most value for
customers and shareholders. In
order to do that, they need
the right concepts, management
processes and tools –
concepts such as the Beyond
Budgeting Management Model. The
introduction of new management
instruments such as the
Balanced Scorecard, which help
to better align the entire
organization with corporate
strategic objectives and to
focus it on the essentials,
has created the right
foundation. Because if
corporate strategy and the
objectives are clear for all
people in an organization, one
can principally react faster
to changing market conditions.
But then the fixed
budget comes into their way
and prevents them from really
doing the right things. Though
what is often missing is a
more flexible operational
planning and control model.
The Beyond Budgeting model
wants to fill exactly this gap.”
Juergen
H. Daum
New!
-
visit J.H.D.'s
Beyond Budgeting Info Center
-
including latest BB insight
materials, interviews with BB
pioneers etc. - here an
extract:
| J.D.'s
insight article "Beyond
Budgeting" | Interview
with Lennart Francke, CFO of
Svenska Handelsbanken
| Panel
Discussion with Borealis,
Nestlé, and Unilever
| Interview
with Jeremy Hope –
co-founder of the Beyond
Budgeting Round Table
|
Interview with J.D. on
finance and IT
|
Additional Resources:
N.E.T. Research – The Management
Cockpit Company
Why a new Management System ? –article by Juergen H. Daum
Juergen H. Daum's groundbraking
book: Intangible Assets and Value Creation, Wiley 2002
J.D.’s Beyond Budgeting Info Center
J.D.’s Best Practice Channel – Finance
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Malcorps
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Performance Measurement
Panel discussion: Beyond Budgeting – breaking free from the annual fixed budget
Beyond Budgeting on the move: report from the First Annual Beyond Budgeting Summit in London
Interview with Lennart Francke: Managing without budgets at Svenska Handelsbanken
Approaching the next level of shareholder value management – basics (part 1)
Corporate Performance Management: Managing profitability and growth in the new environment
How to create value with Real Options based innovation management
Leveraging e-Business Opportunities for Finance – Q&A with Juergen Daum
Interview with Leif Edvinsson: Intellectual Capital: the new wealth of corporations
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Interview with David P. Norton: "Intangible Assets and the Balanced Scorecard"
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The book of the month: “The Innovator’s Dilemma” by Clayton M. Christensen
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More about Enterprise Management Best Practice and related topics will be continued here in the new New Economy Analyst reports. To subscribe for Juergen Daum’s free-of-charge e-mail newsletter (a regular summary of the recent reports) click here.
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