Jon's Management Philosophy 2.0 is your guide to running a more sustainable business; a small business, a large business, any business.  It contains the elements necessary to make your organization work, to make it achieve the triple bottom line: economics, environment, and corporate social responsibility. Click above to get your free copy.

 

· Project Management- All programs and activities can be broken down into tasks. Each task has a scope of work, a budget, a schedule and a quality objective. It has customers from which we can gather expectations and measure our results against those expectations. While performing your tasks, always remember your values. Do not compromise on values. To help you stay organized, use commercial software such a Microsoft Project. You will look and feel more professional.

· Continuous Improvement- Use continuous improvement practices to do things better. Anything can be done better. We should always be looking for ways to improve. Brainstorm! Ideas can come from anywhere. We should always be listening for new ways to do things differently. No idea is a bad idea; it may be a catalyst to finding a better idea.  It should be a challenge to find better ideas. And remember, sustainable practices are often just ideas to eliminate actions, steps in processes, or entire activities. EX. Hybrid vehicles may be an answer, but eliminating the travel may be a better answer.

· Corporate Image- Your image is a reflection of what you are, what you represent, and the vision, mission and values you live. Your actions, your literature, your every communication should be based upon the image you want to project. Stakeholders can then be influenced, and they can discover the shared values that you have. I assume you publish your values. I assume you live your values. Is developing a Sustainable Community part of your vision or is it incorporated into your values? Either way, it gets embedded into your corporate image.

· Quality Management- One of your goals must be to beat customer expectations. Meeting customer expectations is the very definition of Quality and is the one thing that ensures your continued existence. Develop measuring systems to obtain customer feedback and use them. “What gets measured, get done”. Measure your progress toward sustainability and measure its impact on your cost effectiveness. The results will surprise you.

· Communication- How does leadership communicate the vision? How does the organization know what the customer wants? How does the leader determine what motivates his employees or teach corporate values? And, how do employees learn? Communication is the essence. Miscommunication, poor communication or no communication will create problems. Great organizations have great communication. It is an essential ingredient for any enterprise. Continuous improvement, management, leadership, employee development, motivation, and quality all depend on open two way communication. We must inform, we must collaborate, we must develop trust and we must listen for an enterprise to function properly. The better we do these things, the better our overall performance. Inform! Collaborate! Listen, Earn Trust, Listen, Listen!

Corporate Social Responsibility- implies actions that are responsible, actions that will maintain your existence and grow your organization into the future. It implies your future will be in a better community that you have helped to create because you are a thriving business. Corporate Social Responsibility is Sustainability. Both are good management.