The most recent Fortune has an article by Jim Collins titled “The 10 Greatest CEOs of All Time.” They are:
1. Charles Coffin, GE
2. Bill Allen, Boeing
3. Sam Walton, Wal-Mart
4. George Merck, Merck & Co.
5. Darwin Smith, Kimberly-Clark
6. James Burke, J&J
7. David Maxwell, Fannie Mae
8. William McKnight, 3M
9. Katharine Graham, Washington Post Co.
10. David Packard, Hewlett-Packard
One can argue the validity of such a list. What one can’t argue, however, is that these leaders, to almost the person, worked very hard to communicate a single vision and strategy to employees, and then backed that strategy message up with policy decisions.
They also sought to communicate something else: that the business valued and respected its employees. In the words of David Packard:
“We have a responsibility to our employees to recognize their dignity as human beings.”
Read the article and the profiles here (a Fortune.com subscription is required).
The New York Times‘ recent Blogs in the Workplace discusses blogs as an alternative to email, instant messaging, etc.:
For several years Mr. Tang viewed this daily surge of e-mail messages as an unpleasant but necessary part of his job managing a team of eight engineers. Then, a few months ago, he began using an alternative to e-mail, a Web log.
[…]
At Community Connect, Mr. Tang’s engineers use a service called LiveJournal to post updates about tasks like fixing server computers or configuring software. Hitting the upload button sends the text to a private site, viewable by the authors and their managers, including the date and time of the postings and, often, links to relevant Web pages.
“When I want to know something I check the Web log,” Mr. Tang said. “It saves me the trouble of e-mailing people or yelling across the room to get a status update.”
[…]
“People are starting to use Web logs to archive data that would have otherwise been lost,” Mr. Tang said. He noted that much of the company’s internal communications had been via instant messaging — and was lost as soon as the correspondents closed their chat windows. Now, though, employees are starting to post transcripts of relevant discussions on the Web logs, he said.
An independent research firm, Nucleus Research, recently conducted a study that quantifies the cost of spam to employers. According to the research:
* Companies lose approximately 1.4 percent of each employee’s productivity each year due to spam.
* The average employee receives 13.3 spam messages each day.
* Employees spend, on average, 6.5 minutes per day managing spam.
* Spam costs U.S. companies $874 per employee per year in lost productivity (based on an hourly pay of $30 and a work year of 2,080 hours).
For more information, see Infoworld’s recent coverage.
