Managerial Skills (Essay Sample)

Management
Name
Institutional Affiliation
Present an overall description of what management entails and how it is properly implemented.
Introduction.
According to Mary Parker Follet, management can be defined as the "art of getting things done through people" F. W. Taylor on the other hand defined management as the "art of knowing what you want to do and then seeing that it is done the best and cheapest way." From the above definitions, it can be derived that managers themselves do not get involved in the work itself but organize a taskforce in such a way that the others perform the errands which they are best suited to perform for the overall purpose of achieving the set goals of the organization.
Management basically involves coordinating and overseeing the work activities of the junior workers so that their activities are completed efficiently and effectively (Drucker, P. F, 1986). Efficiency in this context refers to the ability of obtaining the ultimate output from limited inputs for the sole purpose of minimizing the cost of the resources. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the management is what will facilitate the completion of the organizational set goals and targets.
Ideally, coordinating and overseeing the work of others is what differentiates a managerial position from a non-managerial one (Labovitz, G., Rosansky, V., & Varian, T, 1994). More often than not, it will entail grouping together organizational material and human resources and channeling them to the utilization of the scarce resources efficiently and effectively to achieve the overall organizational goals.
To properly implement its roles, the management of the organization has to be systematic and organized in carrying out its functions. This can be facilitated through: planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling the organizational activities.
Planning.
Planning involves defining goals, establishing strategies for achieving those goals, and developing plans to integrate and coordinate activities (Sink, D. S., & Tuttle, T. C, 1989). The management is involved with the duty of formulating objectives, policies, procedure, rules and budgets of the organization (Dr. M. Thenmozhi, 2000). Based on some logic methods, an organization cannot thrive without a well structured strategic plan.
Organizing
To co-ordinate both human and non-human resources for purposes of achieving the overall goal of the organization, a management has to incorporation the organization function. Through good organization, the mission and activities of the organization are arranged and structured in such a way that the set goals and targets are attained.
Leading
Leading can be said to be the process in which managers direct and influence the actions of their juniors by means of creation of an enabling environment for carrying out the normal business chores. In other words, leading entails performing duties with and through people to accomplish the organizations’ goals.
Controlling.
This is the forth function of a management. Basically, controlling can be said to be the monitoring, comparing and correcting work performance by managers who are prudent enough to correct and align the organization with its main objectives. It facilitates sustaining the organization to its going concern.
2. Describe the give examples or how challenges managers face in today’s world is characterized by uncertainty, ambiguity and sudden changes or threats from the environment.
Organizations do not operate in vacuum but rather operate in systems which are larger than itself. These systems constitute the environment. However, the challenges and threats that managers face in the environment they are operating in are as discussed below.
The diversity of the employees.
Proletariats in an organization have heterogeneous characteristics in terms of gender, age, race, and ethnicity. These differences bring about great variations in terms of attitudes and the working styles among the employees. Accommodating diverse groups of people, addressing their lifestyles, family needs, and work styles is a major challenge facing the managers. There exist great difficulty in blending the knowledge, skills and ambitions and experiences of diverse group of employees. In actual sense, the success of the manager is dependent on the employees work performance.
Moreover, the talented and innovative employees are usually in constant pursuit of ‘greener pastures’ and new opportunities. It is not a wonder that some of them open secret enterprises to compete with the firm hence acting ultra vires through rendering unfair and unethical business practices. Nevertheless, the trade secrets of the organization are at risk of exposure by employees to the outside competitors. This also makes the enterprise to vulnerable to defeat by its competitions who implement the secrets given to them by the unethical employees.
Allocation of Resources.
Among the major roles of manager is to make critical organizational decisions which involve re-organizing the limited financial and human resources of the company. Success will only be witnessed when the resources are allocated adequately and properly. According to Metz, E. (1984), institutions especially the miniature ones stand to lose a lot whenever they misappropriate the organizational funds and resources. In this case, managers face a great challenge when it comes to make decisions on how to utilize the resources, on when to acquire new resource and how to distribute them among various department of the organization.
Inadequate funds.
As the business expands and grows due to economies of scale, it is usually constrained by capital needs. Many are the times when the profit obtained from one operating cycle becomes insufficient to fund extra working capital required for the next operating cycle. Raising capital through acquiring loans is usually subject to consideration lest it leads the company to vicious debt crisis. The managers in this scenario face encumbrances when it comes to outsourcing limited capital. They are hence constrained to expand most of the operations of the company.
Poor managerial skills and styles.
Most managers do not know which roles to delegate and they end up doing all the duties at the expense of the skilled employees in the organization. Moreover, when assigning roles to the employees, they do it wrongly leading the mismatch of expertise in the organization. The overall result is the downfall of the organization arising from the employees armature employees duties which they have not experience in.
A weakness could exist in the finance, marketing or the advertising department. Lack of skills to spot and identify the weakness will continue to dwarf the efforts of the company to grow. Lack of technical skills to run the structures and machineries by employees may thwart the efforts of the company to operate on them. Since managers are entrusted with the role of identifying potential sources of raw materials, expertise to operate on the equipments, it may be difficult for managers to obtain raw materials or even spare part of machinery and materials for production.
Opposition to change.
Change is inevitable and is a fundamental aspect of historical revolution. Change cannot take place in vacuum but change in structure, technology and people. The rapidly changing external environment fuelled by advancement in technology and increased information processing power brought about the digital technology is a great threat to the managers. Most of the convectional services have been replaced with automated services have gradually replaced the self services. A lot of banking nowadays is usually done online. What’s more? The internet provides a platform for purchasing books online and watching television online.
The setback of these all is that the effort by managers to bring about changes is often met by massive opposition as most employees do not readily embrace unless it directly benefits. This is probably due to the fact that change brings about uncertainty and indeed it does. Managers experience a hard time trying to incorporate change in the organization in terms of adopting new production methods, new advertising means for outdoing competitors and new pricing methods as well.
Ethics.
Cases of corporate lying, misrepresentations, financial manipulations have been widespread in recent years. Though most managers try their level best to maintain a high code of conduct, few succeed in incorporating the same through the employees in the organization. This can partly be explained by variation in the cultural attitudes towards time and productivity. Many employees behave in a certain manner due to the existence of vast culture. It is left to the manager to oversee that the ethics and interest of the company is not compromised. This however, is usually a daunting errand to managers.
Hostile and unpredictable political climate.
The work of manager is to preside over the company. They are the stewards of the corporation. However, frequent changes in government regulations and policies brought about by politics are a major blow to the managers. It becomes difficult to operate organizations where the employees perceive different political views. Politics brings about corruption, ethnic discriminations as well as bias among different departments in the organization.
On the other hand, changing of laws and regulations of banks and taxes is a great setback especially to managers running organizations with different branches. These rapid fluctuations lead to problem in the reporting and comparing operations.
3. Describe the skills that are important for managers to have to be successful under these existing conditions today.
Effective managers are those that are skillful. It is only the skillfu...