Managers And Managing

• Chapter 2 focuses on managers and managing within organizations.

Learning Objectives

• Describe management, its importance, managerial roles, and how resources are efficiently and effectively utilized.
• Identify the four principal tasks managers undertake.
• Differentiate among the three levels of management.
• Distinguish three types of managerial skills.
• Discuss major shifts in modern management practices.
• Identify and explain the five challenges managers encounter in today's competitive landscape.

BuzzFeed Case Study: Adapting to Technology

• Create content, collect data on who is sharing the content, then tailoring the content specific audiences around the world.
• BuzzFeed operates a cross platform, global network for news and entertainment with over 7 billion views weekly.
• The company emulates Paramount Pictures' business model by owning all key components of its media business, including video production and data analytics.
• BuzzFeed publishes content directly on social media apps, recognizing users prefer to stay within those platforms.
• The company considers itself to have a "learning-driven" culture with a continuous loop of information and data.
• BuzzFeed organizes employees into teams of 7 and reorganizes quarterly to keep the creative process fresh.
• The company's management team prioritizes cross-functional collaboration and continuous improvement as part of their "agile management" approach.

Defining an Organization

• An organization comprises people working together, coordinating actions to achieve goals or desired outcomes.

Defining a Manager

• Managers are responsible for supervising and optimizing the allocation of human and other resources to achieve organizational goals.

Defining Management

• Management involves planning, organizing, leading, and controlling human and other resources to achieve organizational goals efficiently and effectively.

Organizational Performance

• The ultimate goal of management is organizational performance.
• Organizational performance measures how efficiently and effectively a manager uses resources to satisfy customers and achieve organizational goals.

Defining Efficiency

• Efficiency measures how well or productively resources are used to achieve a goal ("doing things right").

Defining Effectiveness

• Effectiveness measures the appropriateness of the goals an organization is pursuing and the extent to which they are achieved ("doing the right things").

Connection Between Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Organizational Performance

• Operational performance increases in direct proportion to increases in efficiency and effectiveness.

Efficiency, Effectiveness, and Performance Matrix

• Low Efficiency/High Effectiveness: Manager chooses right goals but uses resources poorly. Results in a product customers want but is too expensive.
• High Efficiency/High Effectiveness: Manager chooses right goals and makes good use of resources. Results in a product customers want at an affordable price and quality.
• Low Efficiency/Low Effectiveness: Manager chooses wrong goals and uses resources poorly. Results in a low-quality product that customers do not want.
• High Efficiency/Low Effectiveness: Manager chooses inappropriate goals but makes good use of resources. Results in a high-quality product that customers do not want.

Managerial Tasks

• The four principal tasks include planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

Planning

• Planning entails developing strategies to achieve high performance.
• Deciding which goals the organization will pursue.
• Deciding which strategies to adopt to attain those goals.
• Deciding how to allocate resources to pursue the selected strategies

Organizing

• Organizing includes structuring working relationships so organizational members interact and cooperate to achieve goals.
• An organizational structure is created when organizing occurs.
• This system includes task delegation and reporting relationships that coordinate and motivate members to achieve organizational goals.

Leading

• The roles are to communicate the organisation's clear vision, energize and enable employees to understand their role in achieving goals, and encourage all to perform at a high level. Leads to a committed, motivated workforce.

Controlling

• Controlling assesses how well the organization has achieved its goals.
• Taking corrective actions maintains or improves performance.
• Allows the ability to measure performance accurately and regulate organizational effectiveness and efficiency.

Mintzberg's Managerial Roles

• There are three categories for managerial roles: Interpersonal, Informational and Decisional.

Levels of Management

• The three levels managers are grouped into: First-line managers, middle managers and top managers.
• They are arranged into a hierarchical pyramid.
• The most senior manager in the organisation are top managers, and they report to the CEO.

First-Line Managers

• Also called supervisors, they oversee non-managerial employees performing tasks related to the production of goods and services.

Middle Managers

• These managers supervise first-line managers and optimize the organization's resources to achieve organizational goals.

Top Managers

• Top managers are responsible for performance across all departments/divisions, accountable for organizational successes and failures.

Top Management Team

• The top management team is comprised of the CEO & COO, Directors and other top managers.
• They are responsible for achieving organizational goals.

Managerial Task Distribution

• The amount of time spent planning and organizing increases as they ascend the hierarchy.
• Top managers spend more time planning and organizing.
• Lower managers spend more time leading line managers and non-managerial employees.

Managerial Skills

• There are Conceptual, Human and Technical skills.

Conceptual Skills

• Conceptual skills describe the ability to analyse a situation and identify the cause and effect.
• These skills are about seeing the bigger picture.

Human Skills

• Human skills include the ability to understand, alter, lead, and influence the behavior of individuals and groups.
• It also includes learning how to empathize, communicate, motivate, coordinate.

Technical Skills

• Technical skills include job-specific knowledge and techniques required to perform an organizational role.
• These include knowledge of learned systems, accounting, and IT skills.
• Managers group depending on their expertise and job-specific skills.

Core Competencies

• Competencies refer to business-related expertise in areas like customer service, quality offerings, and innovation.
• Core competencies are department-specific skills, knowledge, and experiences that enable an organization to outperform others, creating a competitive advantage.

Management Practices Responding to Globalization

• There includes restructuring, outsourcing and self-managed teams.

Restructuring

• Restructuring involves simplifying, shrinking, and downsizing operations to decrease operational costs.
• This includes eliminating jobs.

Outsourcing

• Outsourcing means contracting with another company (often low-cost) to perform activities previously handled internally, such as manufacturing, marketing, or customer service.
• Outsourcing increases efficiency and lowers operating costs.

Self-Managed Teams

• A group of employees who assume responsibility for organising, controlling and supervising their own activities and monitoring the quality of goods and services they provide.

Competitive Advantage

• Competitive advantage occurs when an organization outperforms others by producing desired goods and service more efficiently and effectively.
• Can be achieved by innovation, efficiency, quality and responsiveness to customers.

Responsiveness to Customers

• Competing for customers to fulfill their needs with products and services.
• Includes training employees to be responsive to customer needs (especially for service businesses).
• Being aware and alert of customer needs.
• Action through acting fast in providing value solutions to keep them satisfied.

Quality

• The products or service's "fitness for use".
• Includes measurement of durability, reliability, serviceability, dependability

Innovation

• Innovation entails entrepreneurial focus that looks at creating new products or services or new ways of producing products or services.
• Managers must create environments in which people are encouraged to be innovative.