The Hindu Business Line : If you thought you knew business...

AFTER tasting success with Business: The Ultimate Resource, the Chartered Management Institute has brought out Dictionary of Business and Management, with over 6,000 jargon-free definitions. The blurb plugs in the book as `an essential reference for both business studies students and practising managers'. A sampler:

Cobweb site is an Internet site that has not been updated for a long time. Circle the drain is to be on the brink of complete failure. To be buzzword-compliant is to be familiar with the latest Internet jargon.

Dirty price is the price of a debt instrument that includes the amount of accrued interest that has not yet been paid. Elevator pitch is the practice of pitching dot-com business plans to investors in a short space of time. Eye service is the practice of working only when a supervisor is present and able to see you.

Gun jumping is insider trading. Gweeping is the activity of spending many hours at a time surfing the Net. Grass ceiling is the set of social and cultural factors that discourage or prevent women from using golf to conduct business. Greybar-land is a state of vagueness induced by staring at the grey bar that appears on a computer screen when the computer is processing something.

Naked writer is a writer of an option who does not own the underlying shares. To Napsterise is to distribute without charge something that somebody else owns. Pencil-whip is to criticise somebody in writing. Permalancer is a freelance worker who has worked in one company for so long that he or she is virtually a permanent member of staff.

Story stock is a stock that is the subject of a press or financial community story that may affect its price. Tyrekicker is a prospective customer who asks for a lot of information and requires a lot of attention but does not actually buy anything. Young old is the group of people aged between 55 and 75.

Useful reference material.

US, EU balance

THE US sees Europe as "spent, unserious and weak", while they see the US as "high-handed, unilateralist, and unnecessarily belligerent". Robert Kagan looks at `America and Europe in the new world order' in his book Of Paradise and Power. A few glimpses:

Europeans insist they approach problems with greater nuance and sophistication. They try to influence others through subtlety and indirection. They are more tolerant of failure, more patient when solutions don't come quickly. They generally favour peaceful responses to problems, preferring negotiation, diplomacy, and persuasion to coercion.

A greater American propensity to use military force did not always mean a greater willingness to risk casualties. The disparity in military capability had nothing to do with the relative courage of American and European soldiers.

With a highly educated and productive population of almost 400 million people and a $9 trillion economy, Europe today has the wealth and technological capability to make itself more of a world power in military terms if Europeans wanted to become that kind of world power. They could easily spend twice as much as they are currently spending on defence if they believed it necessary to do so.

There is a cynical view current in American strategic circles that the Europeans simply enjoy the "free ride" they have gotten under the American security umbrella over the past six decades.

Today the median age of Americans is 35.5; in Europe it is 37.7. By 2050, the American median age will be 36.2. In Europe, if present trends persist, it will be 52.7. That means, among other things, that the financial burden of caring for elderly dependents will grow much higher in Europe than in the US.

A compact book on foreign affairs.

Behind the wall

CHINA has always been seen as a black box, more so after SARS news.

Andrew J. Nathan's book, China's New Rulers — the secret files, provides a peek inside the highest levels of the Communist Party of China and about the entrenched political culture in which the views of superiors count for nearly everything and the opinions of ordinary citizens for almost nothing. More:

The Chinese Communist Party is a secretive, selective organisation of about 65 million members who have positions of influence in all sectors of Chinese society, whether as village leaders, university officials, factory managers, newspaper editors, or bureaucrats in charge of everything from public health to police intelligence.

Women have remained largely shut out of high office. Women are classified with ethnic minorities, intellectuals, and youths as groups for whom quotas have been established for lower-level positions. Wu Yi, age 63, is the best-known female politician in China.

For historical reasons, security in retirement has emerged as a new and highly valued norm of the Communist elite.

During the Cultural Revolution, thousands, perhaps millions of cadres were hounded from office, then exiled or imprisoned and sometime denied medical treatment.

The Fourth Generation leaders see Tibet, like Taiwan, as a proxy battlefield in China's relations with the US. For half a century China has engaged in a campaign to repress religious and cultural freedoms in Tibet while promoting economic development, in order to consolidate its control over what it sees as a strategically crucial territory.

Contrasting with the isolationist nightmare of the Mao years, China attracted $47 billion in direct foreign investment (excluding financial investments) in 2001 and exported goods worth $266 billion, figures equivalent to 4 per cent and 23 per cent of its GDP for the year.

Will SARS change all that?

Six leanings

WHEN `lean enterprise' and `six sigma' marry, you get lean six sigma, as a third `improvement technology'. And Barbara Wheat's book Leaning into Six Sigma is a `parable of the journey' taken by a company in crisis.

The back cover promises that the story is designed to introduce everyone in an organisation to problem-solving strategies that get rid of excess inventory, speed up processes, and improve quality at all levels. More:

Unfortunately, easy fixes sometimes cause more problems than they solve. There are several types of `easy fix' solutions, basically finger-in-the-dike stopgaps.

You can cut costs, reorganise (again), centralise, decentralise... and all of this amounts to continuous fire-fighting, a continuing approach to greasing any wheel that squeaks — without taking the wheels apart to get at the causes of those annoying squeaks.

It is a sign of problems when management is making decisions without specific data to support them. `Tribal knowledge' — although it can be a starting point in making decisions — is generally not enough in itself for smart decisions, especially since this `knowledge' may be only a belief or a feeling or simply a hope.

One sigma means your yield is only 31 per cent. Most companies operate at three and four sigma, which means yields around 93 to 99 per cent.

The seven types waste: overproduction, correction, inventory, processing, motion, conveyance, and waiting.

The truly lean organisation is one that teaches its employees to be waste-conscious in all they do.

Change does not happen by accident. Leaders must find a way to make the status quo uncomfortable for everyone in the company.

Six Sigma is about quality — but not just in terms of the final product. It is quality of customer service as well as manufacturing.

A perfect product delivered two weeks late is not Six Sigma.

If employees are not trained to identify waste, they will adopt non-value-added activities, such as rework, as part of the process — even going so far as to write the steps of rework into their standard process documents.

A slim book to lean on.

(Books courtesy: Fountainhead, Chennai. E-mail: fhbooks@satyam.net.in)

Tailpiece

"He grants any wish that you ask him, and he's fast."

"How?"

"He has a currency-counting machine."

hindubusinessline@hotmail.com

D. Murali

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