Who Are Managers?

Another note of Management book that I’ve read. I just want to keep it here. Please feel free to read it and enjoy!

##

WHO ARE MANAGERS?

A manager is someone who coordinates and oversees the work of other people so that organizational goals can be accomplished. A manager’s job is not about personal achievement—it’s about helping others do theirs work.

In a traditional organization hierarchy, we knew there are;-
- Non-managerial employees;- organization members who worked directly on a job or task and had no one reporting to them.
- First line Managers;- it is the lowest management level, manages the work of non-managerial level. It often has supervisor, district manager, department manager, office manager, or even foreperson title, but it might be different in different company.
- Middle Managers;- include all levels of management between first line level and top level of organization. These managers manage the work of first-line managers and may have titles such as regional manager, project leader, or division manager.
- Top Managers;- who are responsible for making organization-wide decisions and establishing the plans and the goals that affect the entire organization. These individuals typically have titles such as chief executive officer, chairperson, chief operating officer, executive vice president, president, or managing director.

Not all organizations get work done by this traditional pyramidal form, such as in my office we have pyramidal such as;- non staff level—consist of admin, secretary, receptionist, etc, staffs level are;-coordinators, specialists, supervisors (some supervisors are recognize as first line managers), junior manager, middle managers, senior manager, COO, CEO, Director, etc. The hierarchy is not the same among the department. It is simplified based on each department’s needs.

What is management?

Simply speaking management is about what managers do—generally. This term could be determine as;- management involves coordinating and overseeing the work activities of others so that their activities are completed efficiently and effectively.

What are management functions?

Basically these are;- planning, organizing, leading or directing, and controlling. Some others use;- planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling, but others use;- planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling. You can choose the best for you.

-Planning
1. Defining goals
2. Establishing strategy
3. Developing plans to coordinate activities

- Organizing
1. Determining what needs to be done.
2. How it will be done.
3. Who is to do it.

- Leading/Directing: Motivating leading, and any other actions involved in dealing with people.

- Controlling: Monitoring activities to ensure that they are accomplished as planned, and sometimes it need correction work performance act.

Management Role

This term refers to specific categories of management behavior;-

• Interpersonal roles;- managerial roles that involve people and other duties that are ceremonial and symbolic in nature. These include figurehead, leader, and liaison. The example of these roles are;- greeting visitors, signing legal documents, performing virtually all activities that involves subordinates, acknowledging mail, doing external board work, performing other activities that involve outsiders.
• Informational roles;- managerial roles that involve collecting, receiving, and disseminating information. For example;- reading periodicals and reports, maintaining personal contacts, holding informational meetings, making phone call to relay information, holding board meetings, giving information to media.
• Decisional roles; managerial roles that revolve around making choices, such as organizing strategy and review sessions to develop new programs, organizing strategy and review sessions that involves disturbances and crises, scheduling, requesting authorization, performing any activity that involves budgeting and the programming of subordinates’ work, participating in union contract negotiations, etc.

Management skills

A manager’s job is varied and complex. They need certain skill to perform the duties and activities associated with being managers. Basically managers need three essential skills;- technical skills—job specific knowledge and techniques needed to proficiently perform specific tasks, human skills—the ability to work well with other people individually and in a group, conceptual skills—the ability to think and to conceptualize about abstract and complex situation.

Here are the specific list of management skills that needed in these era;-
1. Acquiring power
2. Active listening
3. Budgeting
4. Choosing an effective leadership style
5. Coaching
6. Creating effective teams
7. Delegating (empowerment)
8. Designing motivating jobs
9. Developing trust
10. Disciplining
11. Interviewing
12. Managing conflict
13. Managing resistance to change
14. Mentoring
15. Negotiating
16. Providing feedback
17. Reading and organization’s culture
18. Running productive meetings
19. Scanning the environment
20. Setting goals
21. Solving problems creatively
22. Valuing diversity

Those all related to the management functions in a specific way. Such as acquiring power is needed in organizing and leading functions, budgeting is needed in planning and controlling functions, etc.

Since the organization become more demanding now, and then the managers should have willing to extra work and learn more to improve their skills.

How the manager’s job is changing?

Managers have always had to deal with changes in inside the organization or more wide; outside the organization even their organization is not so demanding. Changes that impact to manager’s job are such as;- changing technology which is impact to organizational boundaries, virtual workplace, more mobile workforce, flexible work arrangements, and empowered employees, increased security threats—risk management, work-life personal life balance, restructured workplace, discrimination concerns, globalization concerns, employee assistance, increased emphasis on organizational and managerial ethics will impact to values (redefined values), trust (rebuilding trust), accountability (increased accountability), increased competitiveness—the impact of this change are;- customer service, innovation, globalization, efficiency/productivity.

##
That’s it for now. I will be back with other notes someday.

Note;-
- Efficiency: doing things right, or getting the most output from the least amount of inputs.
- Effectiveness: doing the right things, or completing activities so that organizational goals are attained.