In an HPO, managers on all levels of the organization maintain trust relationships with employees by valuing their loyalty, treating smart people with respect, creating and maintaining individual relationships with employees, encouraging belief and trust in others, and treating people fairly. Managers at an HPO work with integrity and are a role model to others, because they are honest and sincere, show commitment, enthusiasm and respect, have a strong set of ethics and standards, are credible and consistent, maintain a sense of vulnerability and are not self-complacent. They are decisive, action-focused decision-makers, avoid over-analysis and propose decisions and effective actions, while fostering action-taking by others. HPO managers coach and facilitate employees to achieve better results by being supportive, helping them, protecting them from outside interference, and by being available to them. Management holds people responsible for results and is decisive about non-performers by always focusing on the achievement of results, maintaining clear accountability for performance, and making tough decisions. Managers at an HPO develop an effective, confident and strong management style by communicating the values and by making sure the strategy is known to and embraced by all organizational members.
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HPO characteristics: Quality of Management
- The management of our organization is trusted by organizational members.
- The management of our organization has integrity.
- The management of our organization is a role model for organizational members.
- The management of our organization applies fast decision making.
- The management of our organization applies fast action taking.
- The management of our organization coaches organizational members to achieve better results.
- The management of our organization focuses on achieving results.
- The management of our organization is very effective.
- The management of our organization applies strong leadership.
- The management of our organization is confident.
- The management of our organization is decisive with regard to non-performers.
- The management of our organization always holds organizational members responsible for their results.
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“Trust is very important at SABMiller. If I trust someone, it means I can work with that person and I can ask honest questions. Because what I am basically testing is their thinking process, logic, insights, and how they arrived at those insights. I cannot go back and check the raw data, so if they say to me, “We are going to take a five percent increase on this brand, and this is the reason why I believe that we should do it, we have done elasticity studies and competitive benchmark surveys, and we have looked at the equity of our brand through our consumer research and our monthly tracking” then I have to trust their judgement. So I am checking the building blocks: how did they get to that decision? That is what I am probing the whole time. Am I comfortable that they have done a professional job of looking at the data and building up their case to get to this decision? All of that is based on trust that they do a good job and are open and honest to me. When that trust relationship breaks down, you cannot manage the business. We have ways of picking up if something is not right. The most obvious is in the actual governance: financial controls, an internal audit department. The other way is that we make sure – not because we are suspicious but because we believe it is a way of controlling integrity – that there is a mix of people in the organization. So we have people who are long term SABMiller managers who we put into the local organization quite quickly. And we know that they have a stronger loyalty to SABMiller than to the local operation and they will pull me to the side and say: “I think you should check this.” When trust cracks, that is it, it is over. There are no second chances in our organization with trust. If you lose your trustworthiness: pack your bags and go, because we are going to end the relationship anyway.”