Fancy Yourself as a Manager?

So fancy yourself as a manager? You are not alone in having that ambition. What does it mean to be a manager? I suppose the first thought that comes to mind is that a manager gives orders and tells other people what to do. That it partly true. But it is not quite as simple as that. In fact, managers have to take orders as much as anyone else. The term “executive” actually implies executing orders – orders perhaps not under their power to influence.

Every business has to decide where it is going. What it is trying to achieve. Words like objectives and targets are used in management theory. Whether these targets are related to items such as sales or budgets, they are broken down into sub-targets as they go further down the organizational hierarchy. The managers at the various levels in the structure are given these targets or objectives to achieve. Sometimes they are given considerable freedom to achieve the targets in the way they see best. Sometimes their independence is limited, perhaps very limited.

Subject to these constraints a manager has certain clear-cut functions. First, he has to plan- to look ahead- to anticipate. When you drive a car you look as far ahead as you can to see what hazards lie ahead. If you see some children playing in the road ahead you start to slow down, check your breaks are working and generally watch for trouble. What would you think of a driver who kept his eyes on the road – six feet in front of his bonnet? A manager who is able to anticipate problems has more chance of coping with them.

Another function of managers is to control. We have already seen that managers are expected to achieve targets of some sort or another. The manager has to keep these targets clearly in mind when he is involved in the decision-making process. Progress towards the targets needs to be monitored and any deviations corrected. It is a bit like the captain of a liner sailing across the Atlantic to New York. Every now and again he will check to see whether or not the ship is on course. If it is beginning to drift to port he has to bring it back onto course. That is what we mean by control.

Managers are expected to get results of one sort or another, in one way or another, but they get their results through people. The manager of the England football team never kicks a ball in an international football match, but he is expected to get the best out of his team. Everyone in the team is expected to cooperate to get the ball in the back of the back of the opposing team’s net. All have to be persuaded to pull together – in the same direction. In management terminology this aspect of a manager’s job is called coordination.

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Read the text. What is the main idea of the text? Divide it into logical parts. Define the key-sentence of each part. Suggest your title.

No school, professor or book can make you a manager. Only you can do this, and you can become a manager only by managing. Of course, you can learn the skills that are extremely helpful, particularly in such clearly defined areas as accounting, statistics, law, and finance. But this will not make you a manager. Experience is the only teacher. Experience is, however, is not the uniformly effective teacher. An old aphorism criticizes the person who has worked for 20 years but has only reexperienced the first year 20 times. Learning is not automatic. What schools can do, and what books can do is to provide you with some insights and intellectual tools to be applied against your experience. Most of you are practical people; certainly most managers are. You are concerned about doing things than about thinking about them. You are more concerned with action than with contemplation. Most business students and managers are uneasy about theory. It is abstract and difficult, too unrelated to real problems, it seems, ‘too academic’ and just ‘too theoretical’. But theory is very important because you and all men and women of action are also theorists. No matter how pragmatic you consider yourself, no matter how rooted in reality a manager views himself, you and he operate on theories. You all possess your own theories about motivation, authority, objectives and change. You will need them – and you will have them whether you know it or not. You will be a better manager if you are aware of your assumptions and you examine them periodically and modify them when necessary. Nothing is as practical as a good theory. A great deal of management theory and practice must be described as ‘common sense’. For the objectives of management may be defined as the formulation of priorities and plans.

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Date: 2015-02-16; view: 1790