Unit VII. Company Structure

Lesson 1

1) I am a health service senior manager. I am in charge of the health service for a large part of the north of the country. It’s a very challenging and interesting job. Partly because we employ so many people and partly because this is a period of great change in the health service. It’s very exciting to be in charge of so many people. A senior manager in the health service has a lot of responsibility. I can take very important decisions.

2) I am a junior level manager in the health service. I am a little disappointed in the job, actually. I don’t feel that I really do much managing at all. Most of the time I simply obey orders that come from the senior management. And I have to make sure that the people I am responsible for do as I tell them. I thought that I would be taking decisions when I became a manager. But I don’t get much chance to do that.

Unit VIII Management styles

Lesson 5

Most people would agree that managers are leaders. They have to be able to influence the behavior of other people, in order to achieve the objectives of the organization.

What makes a good manager?

The earliest studies of managerial leadership concentrated on the personality of the manager. These studies tried to identify the aspects personality that were associated with leadership. These aspects of personality are called traits. Traits can be physical characteristics, such as height, or they can relate to intelligence, personality or social behavior. Typical personality traits that were examined are shown below.

– Intelligence, the leader should be intelligent, but not a genius. Leaders are good at solving complex problems.

– Initiative, the leader should be independent. . Leaders are good at taking actions when this is needed.

– Self-assurance, the leader should be confident. Leaders have a good opinion of themselves and of their abilities.

The traits approach to leadership has not been successful at predicting who will make good leaders, and the traits that have been identified are vague and unscientific. Most analysts have abandoned this approach to understanding management.

Lesson 5

A dialogue

A: A lot of people study business and go on management training courses. But I don’t think they learn how to be leaders. I don’t think it’s possible to teach someone to be a leader. You either are a leader or you aren’t. It’s that simple. It’s something you are born with.

B: I don’t agree. I don’t think leadership is something that you are born with. I think people can learn to be leaders. I think leadership is a sort of technique, really. And anyone can learn a technique.

A: But look at the great leaders in history – Alexander the Great, Napoleon. They were very special people, weren’t they? They had a quality that other people don’t have. And you can’t teach that.

B: Of course, they were special people. But they were special because they had the techniques of leadership that I was talking about.

Unit X. Negotiating Skills

Lesson 1

They tried it. They liked it. So they bought it.

They tried it. They liked it. So they bought it.

We can never be the biggest. But we can be the best.

We can never be the biggest. But we can be the best.

Did you know that the whole thing was absolutely free?

Did you know that the whole thing was absolutely free?

Lesson 2

I have said that great men are a mixed lot / but there are orders of great men // There are great men / who are great amongst all men // but there are also great men / who are great amongst great men // And that is the sort of great man whom you have amongst you tonight // I go back 2,500 years / and how many of them can I count in that period? // I can count them / on the fingers of my two hands: // Pythagoras / Ptolemy / Aristotle / Copernicus / Kepler / Galileo / Newton // Einstein // And I still have two fingers left vacant // My lords / ladies / and gentlemen // are you ready for the toast? // Health / and length of days / to the greatest of our contemporaries // Einstein //

Lesson 3

Part A

A: OK, this brings us on the next item of our agenda this morning, which is online business. Now, I know some of you are concerned about a recent performance of E-stock, our online subsidiary. So, I’ve asked Gary Cale, our new head of e-business, to bring us up to date. Over to you, Gary.

B: Thanks, Michelle. To start off, then, I know you have all seen the figures up to the last quarter – disappointing to say the least. Nine months ago, when we first went online, we were getting over 250,000 hits a day. Three months ago, when I joined this company, we were getting just 60,000 and it was obvious we were failing to attract sufficient customers to our website. So, what was going wrong? In a word, technology. The problem was not the service we were offering, but the website itself.

Part B

B: Now, three things make a good website. First, access to the website must be fast. The slow access speed of our website meant people were getting bored waiting for pages to load and simply going somewhere else. Second, a good website must be easy to use. Ours was so complicated, that the customers sometimes didn’t know if they were buying or selling! And third, a good website must have excellent search engines. Ours didn’t. To give you an example of what I mean, a fault we hadn’t noticed in the programming caused fifteen hundred people to invest in a company that didn’t ever exist. Yes, embarrassing. I’m glad I wasn’t here to take the blame for that one! OK, to move on. Greenbaum-Danson is unquestionably one of the world’s leading financial services companies. We are the biggest, oldest and most respected firms in the business. But to succeed in online stock trading, to succeed in any area of e-business, you need a first-class website. So, creating a first-class website was our first priority. The next thing was internet advertising, winning back the customer confidence we’d lost. That’s a longer job, but we’re making progress. The final thing, and this always takes time in e-business, will be actually to make a profit. Well, we can dream!

Part C

B: Have a look at this. It’s a graph showing the number of trades our customers make per day on our website. As you can see the figure was fluctuating for the first three months and then fell sharply to bottom out at just 10,000 trades a day. For a company of our size, that wasn’t too impressive. But look, we are up to nearly 40,000 trades now, our highest ever, and still rising. OK, I’m going to break off in a minute and take questions. So, to sum up. One, improvements in our website have led to more hits and increased trading. Two, advertising on the Internet will help us to win back customers. Three, profits will follow. E-trading in stocks is the future. In the US alone it’s the way a quarter of the public choose to buy their shares. This is the information age and the Internet is the ultimate information provider. I’m reminded of what banker Walter Wriston once said: ‘Information about money is becoming more valuable than money itself’. Thank you.

Lesson 4

Speaker 1

Spend as much time as possible with at6 the outset getting to know exactly who you are dealing with. Inexperienced negotiators tend to go straight in there and start bargaining. That may be ok for a small one-off deal, but it’s no way to build a long-term business relationship. So, create rapport first. This could take several hours or several months. When you are ready to start negotiations make sure you agree on a procedure before you begin. And while they are setting out their proposals don’t interrupt. Listen. And take notes. Then have lunch! Don’t be tempted to make your counter-proposals and enter the bargaining phase until after a good long break. You’d be surprise how much you can find out over a decent meal. Bargaining, of course, is a critical phase, but it can be surprisingly quick. If it isn’t, break off and fix another meeting. Don’t try to run marathons. When you do finally get to the agreement stage, agree the general terms but leave the details to the lawyers – that’s what they are there for. Close on a high note and remember to celebrate!

Speaker 2

Prepare thoroughly. If you don’t, you won’t know whether to accept an offer and may end up arguing with your own side, which is suicide in negotiation. So, make sure you establish all the points you’re going to negotiate and have a clear idea of you opening target and walk-away position on each. Your opening position or OP is your initial offer – on price or whatever. Your TP, your target position, is what you are realistically aiming for. And your WAP or walk-away position is the point at which you walk away from the negotiating table. Always be prepared to do that. Know what your fall-back position or FBP is – what you’ll do if you don’t reach an agreement. Some people call this your BATNA, your best alternative to a negotiated agreement. You nearly always have a BATNA, however undesirable. But if you really haven’t got one, you’d better be good at bluffing or you’re going to lose much time.

Speaker 3

Ideally, a successful negotiation is a kind of joint problem-solving meeting, where we identify each other’s interests, wants and needs and then explore the different ways we could satisfy those. I say ‘ideally’ because it hardly ever is like that. Win-win negotiation is a great idea but most people have a simple ’I win – you lose” mentality. So, what do you do with a person who simply won’t listen, who keeps interrupting, who becomes aggressive who makes last-minute demands, who won’t make a decision? I must have read dozens of books on negotiation tactics. The problem is, so has everybody else. So, they don’t really work. My only advice is don’t get personal – ever, don’t agree on anything until you’ve discussed everything, don’t make any concessions without asking for something in return; ask lots and lots of questions; and don’t give in to pressure. Remember, if the answer must be now, the answer must be ‘No’.

Speaker 4

I think, it was the negotiations trainer and writer. Gavin Kennedy, who said the worst thing you can do to a negotiator, is to accept his first offer. You may think that’s exactly what he wants. But that’s where you’d be wrong. If you accept this first offer without a fight your opponent will think he could have got a lot more out of you. He won’t be happy at all, and you don’t want that. So, play the game. And don’t worry about dirty tricks. They’re only dirty tricks when your opponent uses them. When you use them, they’re tactics! So use them. Shock them with you opening offer; use your English as an excuse to deliberately misunderstand them; kill them with silence; use your emotions when it’s to your advantage; right at the end, say you have to get an OK from your boss or make another last-minute demand.

Lesson 5

Extract 1

A: Now the next thing is: we’d like to see some movement on price. We had a rather lower figure in mind than the one you’ve quoted us.

B: OK. What sort of figure are we talking about?

A: Well, something nearer to seven million euros.

B: Now, let me just check I understand you correctly. You are offering us seven million for the whole construction contract?

A: That’s right.

B: And what sort of time-scale are we looking at?

A: We would expect you to complete the project within 18 months.

B: How flexible can you be on that?

A: Not very. We were hoping to have the plant fully in operation by next September.

B: I see… Can I make a suggestion?

A: Go ahead.

B: Well, would you be willing to accept a compromise?

A: That depends on what kind of compromise you had in mind.

B: Well. What if we offered you an alternative? What if you paid us two million in advance, two million in mid-contract, and another 3.2 million on completion?

A: On schedule?

B: On schedule. 18 months … Or thereabouts.

A: Hm. So that’s 7.2 million euros in all.

B: Correct.

A: And what if you run over schedule?

B: Then there would be a penalty. Let’s say 25 thousand euros for each week we ran over schedule.

A: Hm. I’m afraid this doesn’t really solve our problem. What we need from you is a guarantee that the project will be finished on time.

B: And, as you know, I can only give you that guarantee by bringing in more outside contractors.

A: Which ups the price to your original bid of 7.8 million euros?

B: Yes.

A: At the moment we don’t see that as a viable option.

B: 7.8 million is really my best price on that.

A: Well, in that case, I think, that’s about as far as we can go at this stage.

B: Now wait a minute, we don’t want to lose this deal for 600.000 euros, surely… How about this?...

Extract 2

A: Right. We seem to be nearing agreement. But, erm, before we finalise things, can we just run through the main points once more?

B: Sure.

A: Now, you’ll provide a series of eight two-day in-company seminars for our telesales team over the next six months. You yourself will be conducting most of the sessions with two other trainers using the materials specially designed to meet our specific needs and approved by us four weeks prior to the seminar?

B: That’s correct.

A: And, er, let me get this quite clear, each seminar is to have no more than 16 participants, is that right?

B: Yes, we find the seminars are more effective with smaller groups.

A: Hm, I suppose you are right. It does also mean running more courses, but OK. Now, since we are booking eight seminars, we’ll obviously expect a reasonable discount on your usual fee.

B: Erm, yes. Could you give us the idea of what you are looking for? Because with this particular course…

A: I would have thought a 15% discount was fair. So that’s eight times 3,000 pounds is 24,000 pounds minus 15%, which is, erm, 3,600 pounds. And that would come to a total fee of 20,400 pounds. And you’d invoice us on completion of the whole series of seminars. Are these terms broadly acceptable?

B: Er, well, just a moment. We haven’t actually agreed on the discount yet. As I was about to say, with that particular course there wouldn’t normally be such a large discount. We offer 10% on five or more our standard seminars, but this is a specially designed course for your personnel only. Obviously, we have to cover our development costs.

A: I should think you could cover them quite easily on just over 20,000 pounds, mister Smart. No, my mind’s made up. 15% - take it or leave it

B: Well, now, I’m afraid we could only accept this on one condition.

A: Which is?

B: We’d want a 25% non-refundable deposit in advance…

A: Done.

B: You see… erm, sorry?

A: 25% deposit – no problem. I’ll get accounts to make you a cheque for, let me see, 5,100 pounds… Well, that’s it. I think we’ve earned ourselves a drink!

B: Erm, well, yes. Nice doing business with you.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 1735