Chapter 1

After a year as a manager

- No longer a 'doer' - Communicating, listening, and giving positive reinforcement - Learning to adapt and to and control stress.

Arrivers vs Derailers

- "arrivers," or managers who made it all the way to the top of their companies, with "derailers," or managers who were successful early in their careers but were knocked off the fast track by the time they reached the middle to upper levels of management. - what distinguished derailers from arrivers was that derailers possessed two or more fatal flaws with respect to the way they managed people. Although arrivers were by no means perfect, they usually had no more than one fatal flaw or had found ways to minimize the effects of their flaws on the people with whom they worked.

Note:

- "the success of an enterprise generally depends much more on the administrative ability of its leaders than on their technical ability."

Reduction of Status Differences

- A company should treat everyone, no matter what the job, as equal. There are no reserved parking spaces. Everyone eats in the same cafeteria and has similar benefits. The result is improved communication as employees focus on problems and solutions rather than on how they are less valued than managers.

Managers Initial Experience

- Be the boss, telling others what to do, making decisions, and getting things done. - Have authority - Manage tasks - Job is not managing people

Decisional Roles: Obtaining and sharing information with people inside and outside the company is useful to managers because it helps them make good decisions. EDRN

- Entrepreneur: managers adapt themselves, their subordinates, and their units to change. - Disturbance Handler: managers respond to pressures and problems so severe that they demand immediate attention and action. - Resource Allocator: managers decide who will get what resources and how many resources they will get. - Negotiator: managers negotiate schedules, projects, goals, outcomes, resources, and employee raises

Interpersonal Roles: If you're a loner, or if you consider dealing with people a pain, then you may not be cut out for management work FLL

- Figurehead: managers perform ceremonial duties such as greeting company visitors, speaking at the opening of a new facility, or representing the company at a community luncheon to support local charities. - Leader: managers motivate and encourage workers to accomplish organizational objectives. managers can act as leaders is to establish challenging goals. - Liaison: managers deal with people outside their units. ex: CEOs often sit on other companies' boards.

High Wages Contingent on Organizational Performance

- High wages are needed to attract and retain talented workers and to indicate that the organization values its workers. Employees, like company founders, shareholders, and managers, need to share in the financial rewards when the company is successful. Why? Because employees who have a financial stake in their companies are more likely to take a long-run view of the business and think like business owners.

Sharing Information

- If employees are to make decisions that are good for the long-term health and success of the company, they need to be given information about costs, finances, productivity, development times, and strategies that was previously known only by company managers.

After six months as a manager

- Initial expectations were wrong - Fast pace - fast pace and Heavy workload - Job is to be problem solver and troubleshooter for subordinates

Competitive advantage through people: ESHA TD ET STF

- Jeffrey Pfeffer contends that what separates top-performing companies from their competitors is the way they treat their workforces—in other words, their management style. - Pfeffer found that managers in top-performing companies used ideas such as employment security, selective hiring, self-managed teams and decentralization, high pay contingent on company performance, extensive training, reduced status distinctions (between managers and employees), and extensive sharing of financial information to achieve financial performance that, on average, was 40 percent higher than that of other companies. - help organizations develop workforces that are smarter, better trained, more motivated, and more committed than their competitors' workforces. And—as indicated by the phenomenal growth and return on investment earned by these companies—smarter, better trained, more motivated, and more committed workforces provide superior products and service to customers. Such customers keep buying and, by telling others about their positive experiences, bring in new customers.

Training and Skill Development

- Like a high-tech company that spends millions of dollars to upgrade computers or research and development labs, a company whose competitive advantage is based on its people must invest in the training and skill development of its people.

Informational Roles: Not only do managers spend most of their time in face-to-face contact with others, they spend much of it obtaining and sharing information. In this regard, management can be viewed as gathering information by scanning the business environment and listening to others in face-to-face conversations, processing that information, and then sharing it with people both inside and outside the company. MDS

- Monitor: managers scan their environment for information, actively contact others for information, and, because of their personal contacts, receive a great deal of unsolicited information. Besides receiving firsthand information, managers monitor their environment by reading local newspapers and the Wall Street Journal to keep track of customers, competitors, and technological changes that may affect their businesses. - Disseminator: managers share the information they have collected with their subordinates and others in the company. - Spokesperson: In contrast to the disseminator role, in which managers distribute information to employees inside the company, managers in the spokesperson role share information with people outside their departments or companies. one of the most common ways that CEOs act as spokespeople for their companies is speaking at annual meetings and on conference calls with shareholders or boards of directors. CEOs also serve as spokespeople to the media when their companies are involved in major news stories.

Four managerial functions by a manager to be successful: POLC

- Planning - Organizing - Leading - Controlling

Self-managed teams and decentralization

- Self-managed teams are responsible for their own hiring, purchasing, job assignments, and production. Self-managed teams can often produce enormous increases in productivity through increased employee commitment and creativity. Decentralization allows employees who are closest to (and most knowledgeable about) problems, production, and customers to make timely decisions. Decentralization increases employee satisfaction and commitment.

Team Leader

- This relatively new kind of management job developed as companies shifted to self-managing teams, which, by definition, have no formal supervisor. 1) primarily responsible for facilitating team activities toward accomplishing a goal. This doesn't mean team leaders are responsible for team performance. - It should be clear that the team members own the outcome. The leader is there to bring intellectual, emotional, and spiritual resources to the team. Through his or her actions, the leader should be able to show the others how to think about the work that they're doing in the context of their lives. 2) responsible for fostering good relationships and addressing problematic ones within their teams. 3) responsible for managing external relationships. Team leaders act as the bridge or liaison between their teams and other teams, departments, and divisions in a company.

Different kinds of managers:

- Top managers - Middle managers - First-line managers - Team Leaders

Conceptual Skills

- ability to see the organization as a whole, to understand how the different parts of the company affect each other, and to recognize how the company fits into or is affected by its external environment such as the local community, social and economic forces, customers, and the competition. - Good managers have to be able to recognize, understand, and reconcile multiple complex problems and perspectives.

Effectiveness

- accomplishing tasks that help fulfill organizational objectives such as customer service and satisfaction

Motivation to manage

- an assessment of how motivated employees are to interact with superiors, participate in competitive situations, behave assertively toward others, tell others what to do, reward good behavior and punish poor behavior, perform actions that are highly visible to others, and handle and organize administrative tasks. - Managers typically have a stronger motivation to manage than their subordinates, and managers at higher levels usually have a stronger motivation to manage than managers at lower levels.

Organizing

- deciding where decisions will be made, who will do what jobs and tasks, and who will work for whom in the company. - organizing is about determining how things get done.

Effeciency

- getting work done with a minimum of effort, expense, or waste. - Efficiency alone is not enough to ensure success.

Top managers

- hold positions such as chief executive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), chief financial officer (CFO), and chief information officer (CIO) and are responsible for the overall direction of the organization. 1) they are responsible for creating a context for change 2) to develop employees' commitment to and ownership of the company's performance. 3) top managers must create a positive organizational culture through language and action. op managers impart company values, strategies, and lessons through what they do and say to others both inside and outside the company. Indeed, no matter what they communicate, it's critical for them to send and reinforce clear, consistent messages. 4) to actively manage internal organizational communication. 5) monitoring their business environments. This means that top managers must closely monitor customer needs, competitors' moves, and long-term business, economic, and social trends. 6) responsible for creating employee buy-in

First Line managers

- hold positions such as office manager, shift supervisor, or department manager. 1) The primary responsibility of first-line managers is to manage the performance of entry-level employees who are directly responsible for producing a company's goods and services. 2) Thus, first-line managers are the only managers who don't supervise other managers. 3) The responsibilities of first-line managers include monitoring, teaching, and short-term planning. 4) encourage, monitor, and reward the performance of their workers. 5) teaching entry-level employees how to do their jobs. 6) make detailed schedules and operating plans based on middle management's intermediate-range plans. 7) In contrast to the long-term plans of top managers (three to five years out) and the intermediate plans of middle managers (six to eighteen months out), first-line managers engage in plans and actions that typically produce results within two weeks.

Managers fulfill three major roles while performing their jobs: IDD

- interpersonal - informational - decisional managers talk to people, gather and give information, and make decisions.

Planning

- involves determining organizational goals and a means for achieving them. - planning is one of the best ways to improve performance. - It encourages people to work harder, to work for extended periods, to engage in behaviors directly related to goal accomplishment, and to think of better ways to do their jobs. - For example, the question "What business are we in?" is at the heart of strategic planning.

Leading

- involves inspiring and motivating workers to work hard to achieve organizational goals. - it is important for leaders to clearly communicate what an organization's goals are.

Controlling

- is monitoring progress toward goal achievement and taking corrective action when progress isn't being made. - the basic control process involves setting standards to achieve goals, comparing actual performance to those standards, and then making changes to return performance to those standards.

Middle managers

- positions such as plant manager, regional manager, or divisional manager. 1) They are responsible for setting objectives consistent with top management's goals and for planning and implementing subunit strategies for achieving those objectives. the implementer of the company's strategy" who figures out the "how" to do the "what." 2) to plan and allocate resources to meet objectives. 3) to coordinate and link groups, departments, and divisions within a company. One middle manager described his job as, "A man who can discuss strategy with [the] CXO at breakfast and [then] eat lunch with workers." 4) to monitor and manage the performance of the subunits and individual managers who report to them. 5) middle managers are also responsible for implementing the changes or strategies generated by top managers. Because they're closer to the managers and employees who work on a daily basis with suppliers to effectively and efficiently deliver the company's product or service. they're closer to the people who can best solve problems and implement solutions.

Technical Skills

- specialized procedures, techniques, and knowledge required to get the job done. - Technical skills are most important for team leaders and lower-level managers because they supervise the workers who produce products or serve customers. - Team leaders and first-line managers need technical knowledge and skills to train new employees and help employees solve problems. - Technical knowledge and skills are also needed to troubleshoot problems that employees can't handle. - Technical skills become less important as managers rise through the managerial ranks, but they are still important.

Human Skills

- summarized as the ability to work well with others. - Managers with human skills work effectively within groups, encourage others to express their thoughts and feelings, are sensitive to others' needs and viewpoints, and are good listeners and communicators. - Human skills are equally important at all levels of management, from team leaders to CEOs.

What companies look for in managers:

- technical skills, - human skills, - conceptual skills, and - the motivation to manage.

Seven deadlies- things great bosses avoid

1) Pressuring employees to attend social events. When your employees are with people from work, even at some party, it might just end up feeling like "work." 2) Pressuring employees to give to charity. 3) Not giving employees time to eat during mealtime hours. 4) Asking employees to do self-evaluations. 5) Asking employees to evaluate their coworkers. 6) Asking employees to do something that you don't want to do. 7) Asking employees to reveal personal information in the spirit of "team building."

Top 10 manager mistakes:

1. Insensitive to others: abrasive, intimidating, bullying style 2. Cold, aloof, arrogant 3. Betrays trust 4. Overly ambitious: thinking of next job, playing politics 5. Specific performance problems with the business 6. Overmanaging: unable to delegate or build a team 7. Unable to staff effectively 8. Unable to think strategically 9. Unable to adapt to boss with different style 10. Overdependent on advocate or mentor

According to Pfeffer, companies that invest in their people will create long-lasting competitive advantages that are difficult for other companies to duplicate. Other studies also clearly demonstrate that sound management practices can produce substantial advantages in four critical areas of organizational performance: sales revenues, profits, stock market returns, and customer satisfaction. SPCS

Customer satisfaction through employee satisfaction.

Employment Security

Employment security is the ultimate form of commitment companies can make to their workers. Employees can innovate and increase company productivity without fearing the loss of their jobs.

Management

Getting work done through others.

Selective Hiring

If employees are the basis for a company's competitive advantage, and those employees have employment security, then the company needs to aggressively recruit and selectively screen applicants in order to hire the most talented employees available.