Management is an art Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

Management is an art - Essay Example Any company was considered as a machine, the managers were the operators and the workers, merely pawns. Today management has a whole new concept (McCrimmon, n.p. 2007). Suppose a manufacturing firm hires me as a manager. The workers over there used to make 6 units in an hour. After they hired me, I trained them, taught them some new techniques and now they make 8 units per hour. This efficiency in the workers reflects the efficiency of the manager. If the manager is incompetent then the efficiency of the workers does not change, rather in some cases it goes down. Managers take responsibility of what they do. They are creative and analyzing. Managers discover what is unique about a person and then use his unique quality to achieve their goals. The job of a manager is to achieve performance using a person's talent (Buckingham, n.p. 2005). In order to understand how managers work, let us first understand how many levels of managers are there in an organization. Let us take the example of a manufacturing company. In this company there are three levels of management as shown in Fig 1, Appendix A. The top most level is where the President, the Vice President or the CEO is present. These managers have the greatest responsibility because they are sitting on top of the organization. These people set the goals and objectives of the company. As their work is so important therefore they have to have extensive knowledge of management roles and skills. Their decisions are long term; therefore they are responsible for the company's strategic policies. Next is the second level of management. The managers here set realistic goals for the first line managers. They drive these goals from the long term plans their top most management has made. Managers of this level have specialized understanding of certain managerial tasks. Their tactical decisions actually come from the strategic decisions of top level management. The last, but not the least is the first level managers. Their decisions are usually short term, but these decisions effect the long term decisions made by the top management. They have direct contact with the workers on the job, hence they are responsible for assigning them work. An office manager, supervisor and Forman, all lie in this category. They do not have much experience in managerial skills, but they do have a lot of technical knowledge. In our case, they have production knowledge; can troubleshoot, but there might come a point where they cannot do anything, and will then go to the middle management for help. 3. LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNICATION Leadership means to influence and motivate others. In an organization it affects the cost, revenue, earnings, share prices, motivation and engagements. Management is a subset of leadership. Effective leadership ensures effectiveness in organization. In an organization a leader sets direction, puts in effort to influence people so that they may follow this direction. This direction if set by the higher management and it goes towards goal attainment. There are four major functions of management. Planning, organizing, leading and