MANAGEMENT BASICS FOR MBA

MANAGEMENT BASICS FOR MBA

PLANNING

ORGANIZING

LEADING

CONTROLLING

DESIGNING

INNOVATION

˗     CREATIVE

ETHICS

MOTIVATION

HIRING

˗     DEFINING THE AVAILABLE JOB

˗     REQUIRED SKILLS OR EXPERTISE

˗     PAYING EMPLOYEES WHAT THEY'RE WORTH

˗     HIRING PROCESS

TEAMS

EMPOWERMENT

˗     GOAL-PROGRESS

˗     MEETING

˗     INFLUENCING

˗     DELEGATION

Management, in most organizations that have enough employees to Merit it, is split into three levels each with its own unique set of responsibilities and functions:

1)     Top management: the chairman of the board, President, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Operating Officer (CEO), Chief Information officer (CIO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), vice presidents and other Executives comprise an organization's highest ranking management team.

Top management usually creates an organization's vision and key goals, communicates them to other managers and workers and monitors the organization's progress towards meeting them.

2)     Middle management: department managers, Deputy project managers, brand managers, assistant plant managers and many other kinds of managers (who report to top management make up the middle management level).

Middle management must create the plans systems and organizations to achieve the company's vision and key goals. Middle Managers generally report to top managers.

3)     Supervisors

Going by an amazing array of titles, supervisors are the employees closest to the front line workers and therefore often closest to the organization's customers and clients. Supervisors execute the plans developed by middle managers and monitor worker performance on a day-to-day basis. Supervisors generally report to Middle managers

Remember! As every MBA student learns during the course of his or her studies, four traditional functions of management exist. In today's Fast and Furious world of global business However, these traditional roles are undergoing significant change. To be successful, managers must learn to adapt to this new world of work. Today's workers are taking on roles that were once reserved for managers. This shift in the traditional roles of managers and workers has led to incredible productivity gains in Progressive companies.

 

PLANNING

Organizations need goals. Goals reflect what's most important to an organization, and they make it easy for managers to prioritize work and the allocation of resources (such as people, money and capital equipment). Management's key jobs include developing organizational goals and then planning the strategies and tactics that the organization will use to reach these goals.

 

ORGANIZING

Organizing is the allocation of resources (such as people money and Capital Equipment) to achieve an organization's goals. Managers allocate through organizational charts, Staffing plans and budgets.

As many of you have probably noticed, managers spend endless hours developing new and exciting Staffing and organizational configurations, only to change them again in six months. Why? Because doing so is part of the job. Today's organizations must be faster and more flexible than ever before. The days of the old-fashioned rigid organizational chart with its built-in bureaucracy and hierarchy are fast disappearing. In its place, Our self-managing work teams, cross-trained workers, virtual employees, flexible work schedules, hot groups and more. This makes organizing more challenging for managers of course.

One key to success in an increasingly competitive Global Marketplace, is the ability to adapt to rapidly changing business conditions and to do so quickly and completely. Putting new organizational plans into place as you strive to adapt is the job of managers.

 

LEADING

Leading employees means inspiring them, motivating them to higher levels of performance and directing their efforts. Managers have a wide variety of positive motivational tools at their disposal including the following: communicating a vision, rewarding and recognizing, encouraging, personally thanking employees. They also have negative motivational tools such as disciplining, threatening, coercing.

Today, simply being a manager isn't enough. Organizations need their managers to also be leaders to inspire employees and to encourage them to give their very best every day of the week.

 

CONTROLLING

Control is the process of monitoring and evaluating activities to ensure that a company's goals are being achieved. To plan, organize and lead, isn't enough. For managers to be effective, they must also review the organization's progress toward achieving its goals. This review indicates whether plans and goals need to be updated, modified or scrapped altogether.

Whether the organization as designed is up to the task and whether the manager's efforts at leading employees are having the desired impact. Picture this all common scenario: as managers review weekly departmental financial reports, they quickly realize that the reorganization they so painstakingly designed is in having its desired effect: sales are down, costs are up and employees morale is heading south. Something has to be done and soon the time to plan another management off-site meeting has arrived.

 

DESIGNING

Designing a better organization one of the four traditional roles of managers is organizing. A manager must continuously improve systems and processes to make them more efficient, more effective and less costly. Because the environment of business is always changing: new employees, new technology, news sources of supply, new competitors, managers have to be aware of the need to restructure their organizations to keep them competitive.

In the marketplace as you work to design a better organization, be sure to consider the factors in the following sections:

·        Division of labor

The very first step in organizational design is assigning specific employees to specific jobs. This is commonly called division of labor. In a one-person organization, say a home-based public relations agency, only one person completes all the jobs that need to be done: the business owner types the letters, answers the phone, places advertisements, designs promotional materials for clients, write press, releases schedules clients for media, interviews and radio and television appearances, does the accounting, pays the bills and even takes out the trash.

As soon as the sole owner and worker hires an employee however, he or she can make the operation more efficient through effective division of labor. The new hire can take on tasks that the owner isn't so good at or that require a lot of work but don't generate revenues: perhaps typing letters and answering phones. This way, the owner can concentrate his or her efforts on the tasks that he or she is best at, such as: the landing new customers and designing publicity campaigns and that have a better cash return on the investment of his or her time.

When you assign a specific job to an employee, ensure: that the duties of the job are clear and that the boundaries are well defined; the job isn't too complex or too simple for the particular employee; you give the employee the authority to execute the job without management interference; the job is kept interesting by varying tasks goals and approaches; the employee is well trained to do the job.

Although division of labor has a time-honored place in modern business, today's most successful organizations are going a step further: their cross-training employees in the jobs of their co-workers. Employees who know one another's jobs are more flexible and the organizations they work for can be much more responsive to changing market conditions or to the challenges of competitors. At the very least, a flexible employee can fill in for an absent worker. Also cross-trained employees often have higher morale because the varied tasks make their jobs more interesting.

·        Departmentalization and cellular manufacturing

In traditional organizations, after managers hand out individual jobs to employees, the managers then determine whether they can group any jobs into logical divisions called departmentalization. For example: the managers group every employee assigned a sales oriented task with other sales oriented employees to form a sales department; employees who have an accounting function: payroll, accounts receivable or accounts payable, come together to form an accounting department and so it goes throughout the organization. This method however is the old way of doing business: it put up organizational walls that led to massive production inefficiencies.

A newer method of structuring manufacturing concerns using manufacturing cells: cellular manufacturing, consists of closely linking work steps in a specific process. For example: if 20 work steps are involved in completing a piece of work (work in this case meaning making a product in a plant or processing paper in an office) cellular manufacturing places the people and the machines they use next to each other in a work cell. In a traditional manufacturing organization, these 20 work steps would have been accomplished in different functional departments spread throughout the business. Perhaps in different buildings, cities states or even countries.  

Thankfully this cellular approach also works for other types of businesses. Flexible work teams now comprise many functions within organizations and some  entrepreneurial type businesses aren't based on departments at all.

·        Span of control

Span of control refers to the number of employees reporting to a particular supervisor or manager. A narrow span of control consists of only a few employees, a wide span of control includes many employees.

One of authors once indirectly managed a staff of more than 200 employees, working at some 45 locations nationwide. For instance, if each employee had reported directly to him, his task would have been almost impossible. He would have spent almost every working hour on the phone, answering questions, walking workers through problems and discussing customer requests. Narrowing the span of control made author's job feasible: only four employees reported directly to him (three project managers and an administrative assistant) and each of the project managers managed a group of 10 or more site supervisors. This arrangement freed up the author to focus on the big picture: marketing to new customers keeping, current customers happy and ensuring that the company effectively utilize staff throughout.

Remember!  The tendency these days is to flatten organizations by widening the span of control and decreasing the layers of management, the hierarchy organizations, also rely more on employee teams to take on many of the roles formerly performed by managers.

Why flatten an organization? The flattering organization the fewer layers of management and less management leads to less bureaucracy and quicker decision making. The fewer layers of management the more money available to spend on more productive activities such as: the company picnic.

 

INNOVATION

Corporations today are spending millions of dollars hiring consultants and enrolling in workshops, all to create a culture of innovation within their organizations. Innovation depends on the creative efforts of an organization's employees. In today's fast-changing technology driven global marketplace, innovation isn't just something nice to have. It's essential. However, too many years of corporate conformity have made creativity a rare and valued commodity.

Smart managers are constantly on the lookout for new ways to release the hidden creativity in their existing employees. Why having a culture of innovation is important for your organization and what you can do to make your culture more creative.

ü  Recognizing why innovation is important

For a business owner or manager, asking if innovation really matters is sort of like asking if it matters whether earth's atmosphere has oxygen. Without innovation, organizations and people stagnate. They fall behind the competition and they eventually become irrelevant. Ever wonder why you see all those advertisements for a new and improved products that have actually been around for a million years? Innovation.

The people who produce thai detergent, coca-cola sodas or campbell's soup for example, know that they can't rest on yesterday's successes to thrive and to grow in the future companies must constantly innovate. There are five specific types of economic innovation

¾    The introduction of a new good product

A company can introduce a completely new product unfamiliar to customers or add new qualities to an already existing product. Think about all the advertisements for new and improved laundry detergents or cheeseburgers that taste better.

¾    The introduction of a new method of production

Innovation can come about through the adoption of a new way to manufacture a product which may or may not be based on new technology or scientific discoveries. For example: automobiles used to be mostly assembled by hand, today robots have taken on many duties formally assigned to humans.

¾    A new market in a country where the market hasn't previously existed

This includes the opening of a new market into which the particular branch of manufacture of the country in question hasn't previously entered. Whether or not this market has existed before, the conquest of a new source of supply of raw materials or half manufactured goods (this type is irrespective of whether the source already exists or must be created). An example is the discovery of petroleum-rich tar sands in canada: new ways of extracting the material from the ground required the introduction of innovative new approaches to oil production.

¾     the carrying out of the new organization of any industry

For example, a company can create a monopoly position or break up a monopoly position. Both at t and microsoft at various times in their respective histories had to innovate new ways of doing business as a result of government and court mandated curbs on their monopoly power.

If you were to spend any time in an mba program, you'd probably find out that the academics who specialize in innovation have gone well beyond schumpeter's five basic types of innovation. The following list presents some of the more specific types of business innovation you are likely to encounter:

1)     Business model innovation

Innovation in the way business is done usually resulting in the creation of new value. Dell's model of building personal computers to order rather than stockpiling them in a warehouse is a business model innovation that revolutionized the personal computer market and gave customers their computers quicker and at a lower price and at least until recently it brought the company great success. Remember!  Business environments change and businesses must too.

2)     Marketing innovation

Innovation in marketing methods specifically in the area of product, price, place, promotion and customers. Google's innovation of adwords the pay-per-click online advertising program has generated billions of dollars in revenue while filling a vital need for advertisers to access online customers in niche markets.

3)     Organizational innovation

Innovation in the design and execution of business structures practices and models which may involve innovation in other business areas as well. The internet for instance, enables people to do business anyplace anytime which results in entirely new organizational practices and structures that are independent of traditional fixed office space and hierarchies.

4)     Process innovation

Innovation in production or delivery methods. Henry ford's widespread application of the assembly line to automobile production, revolutionized the industry and it made automobiles affordable to most anyone.

5)     Product innovation

Innovation in products specifically a product or service that's new or significantly improved over whatever is in current use. Product innovation may touch on one of the following areas among others:  functional characteristics, works two times faster; smell new fresh scent performance works better than the other brand; technical abilities now cleans grass stains too; ease of use, look how easy it can be.

6)     Service innovation

This is the same as product innovation but is specific to services.

7)     supply chain innovation

Innovation in the sourcing of input products from suppliers and the delivery of output products to customers. Walmart revolutionized its supply chain creating efficiencies that put it far ahead of the competition and vaulting it into the position of the world's largest retailer.

 

CREATIVE

So you've decided that having a more creative and Innovative workplace wouldn't be such a bad thing. Either that, or you read that having one is necessary. Now what? Here are four sure ways you can up the creativity and Innovation quotient in your organization:

1)     Institute fluid and situational hierarchies

Fluid situational hierarchies quickly adapt to fast-changing environments. You want to be able to morph to fit tomorrow's needs instead of constantly playing catch-up with structures based on yesterday's needs. You can do this by being flexible, non-bureaucratic, attentive to shifts and markets and ready to respond to changes in the environment quickly and decisively.

2)     Value and Foster communication skills

Throughout the organization, communication is the lifeblood of any organization. When channels of communication are open and unfettered throughout an organization, information can travel quickly across operational boundaries from Frontline employees to management and Back Again.

3)     Solve problems by letting 1000 flowers blossom

This phrase is attributed to former Chinese leader Mao seitung. Smart leaders Empower people throughout their organizations to come up with ways to meet core organizational objectives: they let the chaotic environment determine the winners through the process of natural selection; they monitor workers very carefully, have rigorous criteria to evaluate them and kill off the failures fast; making it perfectly clear that they're killing off the failures and not the people who worked to create a solution. For instance, the original IBM personal computer was developed by a team of 12 employees who were given carte blanche to develop a revolutionary new product as quickly as possible. They were even given Express authority to ignore standard company policies when necessary to get the job done.

4)     Value and make use of improvisation

Just as musicians open up the gates to their personal creativity when they improvise the playing of their instruments, employees can Channel their personal creativity and strengthen. Their capacity to think on their feet by improvising as they seek solutions to solve problems. This means: looking beyond the tried and true in considering Alternatives that may not have been tested before. Remember! Innovation can be incremental; it occurs steadily on a step-by-step basis. Think gradual improvements in automobile fuel efficiency or radical, involving a large and sudden leap. Whether incremental or radical, Innovation can have a significant and positive impact on the fortunes of the businesses that Foster it.

 

ETHICS

Ethics are the standards or beliefs and values that guide, conduct behavior and activities. In other words, a way of thinking that provides boundaries for your actions. In its most common usage, ethics is simply doing the right thing and not just talking or thinking about doing the right thing, but really doing it.

When you have high ethical standards on the job, you generally exhibit some or all of the following qualities and behaviors: honesty, integrity, impartiality, fairness, loyalty, dedication, responsibility, accountability. Remember! Ethical behavior starts with each person. Just because someone else is doing something that's unethical morally, wrong or illegal, legally wrong, doesn't mean that you should do it too. When you behave ethically whatever your position within an organization, others will follow your example and behave ethically too. And if you practice ethical conduct, it will reinforce and perhaps improve your own ethical standards.

As a leader, it's up to you to set a good example of ethical and honest behavior for your employees to follow. This means: working within the rules of your organization, not breaking the law and treating people fairly and honestly. People make ethical choices on the job every day. How do you make yours? Here are six keys to making better ethical choices:

1)     Evaluate circumstances through the appropriate filters. Filters include such things as: culture, laws, policies, circumstances, relationships, politics, perception, emotions, values, bias and religion.

2)     Treat people and issues fairly within the established boundaries. Fair doesn't always mean equal.

3)     Create an environment of consistency for yourself and your working group

4)     Seek counsel when any doubt is present, from those who are honest and who you respect.

5)     It's one thing to have a code of ethics. It's another thing altogether to behave ethically in all your day-to-day business transactions, and relationships.

6)     Each individual comes into a workplace with a unique sense of ethical values based on upbringing and life experiences.

In addition to the ethics that people bring with them, organizations and their leaders are responsible for setting an example of high ethical standards.

 

MOTIVATION

Why do people do what they do? Understanding personal motivation on the job has been a source of endless speculation on the part of legions of business theorists, academics and social psychologists. And as any good mba knows, you can point out about as many theories of motivation as you can stars in the sky. Remember! Regardless of which particular theories of motivation they ascribe to, experts generally agree that there are two primary sources of motivation on the job: (1) intrinsic motivation, which comes from forces within an individual. Examples include the pride that comes from doing a job well, the satisfaction felt when beating a deadline and the excitement derived from being part of a high performing team; (2) extrinsic motivation, which comes from forces outside an individual. Positive examples (carrots) include receiving a cash bonus for doing a particularly good job on a project and being publicly recognized by the boss in a staff meeting. Negative examples (sticks) include receiving a reprimand from the boss or getting fired.

Of these two sources of motivation, most experts in the art and science of motivation consider intrinsic motivation to be the strongest. If for example: you absolutely love your job and feel great satisfaction when doing it, intrinsic motivation; a cash bonus or a pan on the back, extrinsic motivation, will have little or no impact on your job performance (certainly not in the long run).  You'll still be motivated to do your job anyway. Similarly, if you absolutely hate your job, no amount of money or words of encouragement will make you like it more or improve your performance over the long haul. Well, million dollars may help, just a bit but not for long.

Therefore, matching the right employees to the right jobs and setting realistic attainable goals are absolutely critical tasks for managers. By completing them, you leverage the power of intrinsic motivation within each and every employee and rely less and less on extrinsic motivation (the carrots and sticks) to keep them engaged in their work.

Every professional has a deep well of intrinsic motivation. It's your job to help your employees find and tap into the well. If you want someone to do a good job, give them a good job to do. The best approach is to try a variety of different approaches, experiment until you find the approach that works best in your particular situation. Every employee is different, the key is to keep trying until you hit upon an approach that works best for each one of your employees.

 

HIRING

Creating the very best products and services requires having the very best employees to produce them and the most effective way to have the best employees on staff is to recruit and hire only the best. Instead of hiring average employees and hoping that they develop into exceptional employees, why not take the time and effort to hire only the finest employees from the start? This section shows you how.

 

DEFINING THE AVAILABLE JOB

Before you place an advertisement in the newspaper, post a job notice on the bulletin board at work and submit a job opening on the internet career search site, you must create a detailed job description. A job description explains the duties and responsibilities of a particular position and defines the special requirements or skills that the ideal candidate needs.

Here are some specific elements that every job description should contain regardless of the position:  

·        Job title; the name of a position, for example: mail, room clerk, programmer, sales, analyst;

·        Department or division, specifies the department or division in which the specific position is located. For example: in the accounting department or the operations division;

·        Responsibilities, the list of responsibilities isn't just a one or two sentence;

·        Summary of a job's, most important duties it should include every task included in the position;

·        Tip.

Writing a complete description of a position's responsibilities isn't a simple job. If you want to create a thorough job description, follow these simple steps:

(1)   Ask your employees exactly what they do, every single thing.

(2)   Compare your employees lists against what you think they should be doing.

(3)   Compile your final list of responsibilities within this section in a narrative or paragraph format or as a bulleted list.

 

REQUIRED SKILLS OR EXPERTISE

As a person need specific skills to do this job, perhaps experience with spreadsheet programs or the ability to build wooden forms for pouring concrete building foundations for instance. This part of the job description should include the skills expertise and number of years of experience required, required licenses or certifications.

Some jobs require the acquisition of specific licenses or certifications: messengers most likely need to have valid driver's licenses; certain kinds of accounting positions may require a cpa (certified public accountant); stock brokers may need to provide a series 7 or 63 license or both.

Don't put a requirement in this section unless it's truly essential to doing the job. Otherwise, you may be exposing yourself and your company to an ugly lawsuit. Also job descriptions that are too exact, may prompt lawsuits. Be sure that your explanations contain wording or clauses that allow you to expand tasks as necessary the most famous of these clauses and other duties as assigned works for many companies. But be sure to get advice from your legal counsel before including this terminology. Tip if you've never prepared job descriptions before or if you just want an easy way to deal with them, i suggest automating the process.

 

PAYING EMPLOYEES WHAT THEY'RE WORTH

All people from managers down to entry-level workers. Believe that they deserve to be paid what they're worth. But how do you know if each person in your organization is being paid what he or she is worth?  One way you can determine worth is by looking at the salaries of employees in similar positions in your geographic area or by determining the relative value of your employees’ contributions to your organization.

Remember! Paying employees what they're worth is particularly important when the job market is tight and unemployment is low.  If you aren't offering competitive pay rates and salaries, you'll have a tough time attracting the best employees to your firm and keeping them.

Other elements of an overall compensation package such as health benefits, retirement plans and stock options are also important and can enter into a candidate's decision about whether to accept a job offer. So you can't forget to include them. So how do you figure out how much to pay your employees?

First, you want to develop an overall compensation philosophy for your organization. This philosophy will become the guide for compensation decisions for all your employees:

·        Are you going to make your basic salaries simply competitive with the going rate for employers in your area or higher?

·        Are you going to establish a structured pay scale for specific jobs in your company or are you going to send salaries on an individual basis based on the quality and potential of the person filling the job?

·        To what extent are the monetary rewards you offer: your employees going to take the form of salary performance bonuses or benefits are salaries based on how well people perform or on other factors such as how long they stay with you or what credentials they bring to the job?

·        Are you going to award bonuses on the basis of individual performance, tie bonuses to company results or use a combination of the two?

After you've developed an overall compensation philosophy, you can decide how much to pay your employees. For example: if you want to base salaries on the going rate within your geographical area, your first step is to do a wage survey to determine exactly what those going rates are for. Each position within your organization wage information is available from a variety of sources including the internet state employment, offices chambers of commerce local business, newspapers and magazines and employment consulting firms.

 

HIRING PROCESS

It would be nice if you could simply snap your fingers and automatically hire the best and brightest employees whenever you wanted them. But the process isn't quite that simple. In fact, if you're serious about hiring the best employees to work in your firm, the hiring process is a lot of work. But the good news is that the rewards of making a good hire are tremendous and long lasting. These rewards include increased productivity, improved morale, better customer satisfaction, increased revenues, increased profit.in the following sections we explain the key steps in the hiring process and offer advice on how to conduct the process the right way, every time.

WHERE DO YOU GO TO FIND THE VERY BEST EMPLOYEES?

To some extent, the answer depends on the kind of position you have to fill and the kind of candidates you're seeking. To increase the chances of getting your message in front of the right people, first decide what kind of person you want to hire and then choose the most effective method for communicating your opportunity to that person. You can choose from a variety of ways to advertise a job opportunity to a targeted set of candidates. Here are some of the most commonly used methods:

·        The internet. The internet has exploded as a resource for those seeking work and for those doing the hiring. Hundreds of websites cater to people seeking and offering jobs. Many such websites are specific to different kinds of opportunities. For example here are some of the most well-established job hunting sites: monster.com, jobs.com, careerbuilder.com, jobs.net, craigslist.org, indeed.com, guru.com.

·        Newspaper advertisement want ads. The newspaper is traditionally the first place where employers think of looking for new employees and it's often the first place that job seekers go to look for new employers. But is placing an advertisement in your local newspaper the optimum way to find the people you are looking for? Maybe yes maybe no. Perhaps the best candidate for the job will see your advertisement but you may miss many other terrific candidates both locally and outside of your immediate geographic area.

·        Business and personal networks. You have networks of contacts both in your business and in your personal life, your friends and professional contacts can be excellent sources of job candidates. People in your networks know about your business and the kind of people you want. So they're unlikely to send you candidates who would reflect badly on them.

·        Associations. You can find all kinds of industry and professional associations out there: from the association for computing machinery (acm) to the society for human resource management (shrm) to the american bar association (aba), each one has its own specialized membership population. Most associations have their own job referral services which they offer to their members as a free benefit of membership. Many associations also post job listings on their websites which may be available only to association members as a benefit of membership.

·        Employment agencies. Although you may be required to pay to use their services, employment agencies including temporary agencies executive search firms and so-called headhunting firms can be terrific sources of job candidates. Many companies use temporary agencies to dry out new employees on a short-term risk-free basis. If a temporary employee doesn't work out, your organization can simply send the employee back to the agency and ask for another person. If a temporary employee does work out, you can hire the person directly from the agency sometimes for no fee. Be careful when using employment agencies! Some agencies prohibit a company from hiring a temporary employee for a specified period of time after his or her temporary employment stint or if they do permit it they may charge an exorbitant fee to do so.

·        Inside your organization. One of the best sources of top quality job candidates is looking within your own organization. The beauty of internal candidates is that you usually can get very candid references on their job performance, from their co-workers and past and present supervisors. Another plus is that internal candidates are familiar with company policies and procedures, as a result they can transition into their new position quickly.

Don't overlook this rich resource of job. Candidates remember recruiting is very much a numbers game: the larger your pool of candidates, the greater your chance of finding the employee who's just right for your organization. Unless you're specifically targeting only one candidate or a small group of candidates, cast your recruiting net as widely as you possibly can. The time, money and effort you put into finding the best candidates up front will pay off after you make the hire.

INTERVIEWING CANDIDATES

The interview is one of the most critical and often the most dreaded parts of the hiring process. For job candidates the interview presents an opportunity to answer detailed questions about their experience and to give their potential employers a glimpse of what kind of employees they will be. For employers, the interview presents a unique opportunity to ask questions that go beyond the one-sided marketing pitch of most resumes and get a feel for how candidates would fit into the organization.

From the employer perspective, here are the two main reasons for interviewing job candidates:

1)     To assess the candidate's personality and determine how that personality will fit into your existing work team.

2)     To test on a real-time basis: a candidate's enthusiasm, intelligence poise and ability to think quickly.  Remember! You can't guarantee that someone who shines during an interview will work out as a new hire. Every manager has tales of stellar interviewees who got the job but didn't last long. However, a well done interview will greatly increase your chances of landing the best candidate for the job

Here are some tips on conducting an effective interview:

·        Welcome the applicant and put him or her at ease. Most job applicants are more than a little nervous when interviewing for a job and it's no wonder job interviews often make or break candidates.

·        Conduct the interview in a quiet office or conference room that's free of interruption from phones, computers and other employees.

·        Greet the candidate warmly. Offer coffee, water or a soft drink and direct him or her to a seat instead of launching right into the interview. Spend a couple of minutes breaking the ice to take the edge off the interviewee's nervousness.

·        Summarize the position. Take a minute or two to give the candidate a brief summary of the position. Include the details of job responsibilities, how the job fits into the organization, reporting relationships and expected customer interactions.

·        Ask a variety of questions:  why are you here? What can you do for us? What kind of person are you? Can we afford you? Take plenty of notes during your interview. Better yet prepare an interview form in advance to guide you through your questions and to enable you to jot down notes on your candidate's responses. This advice is especially important if you have a lot of candidates to interview or if you won't have a chance to review the candidates performances immediately after the interviews.

·        Probe the candidate's strengths and weaknesses. Chances are you picked up on some of the candidate's strengths and weaknesses when you reviewed his or her resume before the interview. Now's the time to probe the candidate further about those strengths and weaknesses as well as any others that become apparent during the interview.

·        Conclude the interview on an up note. Ask your candidate whether he or she has any other information that you should consider in your decision process, give the candidate a chance to explain that information.

·        Thank the candidate for his or her interest in the job, no matter how well or how poorly the interview went and give the person some idea of when you'll be making a decision or whether you'll be conducting an additional round of interviews. Don't make any sort of promises such as: you're definitely the best candidate, will be making you an offer for sure. Not only are you setting yourself up for a potential lawsuit if you don't follow through on your promise, but also the next candidate you interview may be even better than the last.

CHECKING REFERENCES.

Although many employers are wary about providing reference information about former employees and understandably so, some employers have been sued for giving bad references. It's still very much worth your time to check out all available references. You just never know what kind of information will turn up in your investigation. You may uncover info that will have great bearing on whether you extend a job offer to a candidate. Reference checks most often occur after the initial round of interviews when the employer narrows the list of candidates to just a few people.

When you make a reference call, don't forget that the person you're calling is doing you a big favour by telling you anything at all about the candidate. Be patient, polite, and thankful when someone provides the information you need. Here are some of the best places to dig deeper to find out how your candidate may fit in the job in your company:

·        Current and former supervisors

·        Current and former customers or clients

·        College universities and other schools

·        Networks of common acquaintances such as industry associations or professional groups

·        Public sources such as the internet or local newspapers

·        Increasingly popular are companies that verify a candidate's resume or references for a fee. If you decide to go this route, be sure that you pick an experienced reputable firm and that you notify all candidates in advance that you'll be using such a service if required to do so by your state or locality, check with your state employment office to be sure.

·        Using the internet to research candidates. Wouldn't it be nice to get more information about your job candidates than the 400 or 500 carefully crafted words on their resumes. Well, with the power of the internet at your fingertips, you may be able to do just that. The latest generation of job seekers lives much of their lives online, so they leave online crumbs for recruiters to track down and read. We're talking about a quick and easy background investigation that you can do yourself for no cost, beyond the short amount of time it takes you to do it. Some sites that you can check out for personal information about potential candidates include the following: google.com, facebook.com, linkedin.com.

RANKING YOUR CANDIDATES

After you've completed your interviews and conducted your reference and research checks, you must rank each of your candidates against the others. The easiest way to rank is:

·        To put the name of each candidate along the left side of a piece of paper and list your hiring criteria along the top of the page.

·        You can create a grid for a hypothetical group of three candidates.

·        Rank each employee on each of the hiring criteria.

·        Go through each of your hiring criteria and assign rankings in this manner.

·        After you've ranked all the candidates and the total for each employee and note it on the worksheet. The candidate with the lowest score is the one you should consider hiring.

MAKING THE HIRE

Congratulations, now you can make your job offer to your top candidate. However before you do, be sure to check your organization's policies on hiring new employees. Some companies allow managers to make a verbal offer on the phone or in person and others insist that any job offers be in writing. Still, others insist not only that job offers be in writing but also that they undergo review by the human resources department or legal counsel before going out to candidates.

My advice is to always use written job offers. After the written job offers signed and on its way to the candidate however, i also encourage you to call him or her with the good news. The candidate may be weighing more than one offer so you want to be sure your offer gets to the candidate before any others here are.

The key elements to include in a written offer letter: job title, the candidate's name, date employment will start, terms on which employment is offered, salary full-time versus part-time, probationary period and so on.  Any conditions that must be met before hire can be made: pre-employment physical, drug test, evidence of citizenship and so on. Any action required by the candidate:  make appointment with company drug test lab sign and return offer letter and so on.

If for some reason your top candidate declines the offer, you have three main choices. You can revise your offer to answer the objections of your top candidate. You can go to the next ranked candidate on your worksheet; you can initiate the entire hiring process all over again.

 You need to weigh the pluses and minuses of each avenue. For instance, if you have just one strong candidate and your positions aren't too far apart, revising the offer may make more sense than offering the job to a weaker candidate or starting the hiring process all over. Again remember, don't allow desperation to rule your hiring decisions. Leaving a position unfilled usually is better than hiring an inferior candidate. If your first round of recruiting and interviews doesn't uncover the right candidate for the job, by all means, try it again. It's far less painful to interview more candidates than to terminate someone who doesn't work out the way you hoped.

 

TEAMS

Business teams don't just happen. As with a primordial organism, the teams evolve becoming stronger and more effective over time. If you've spent any amount of time on a team, you've probably experienced the different stages of team growth: in the beginning, team members are tentative and little real work gets done; as time passes however, the team becomes extremely cohesive and productive. Do you recognize which stage your team is in?

·        Stage one: forming

During the first stage of team growth known as forming, team members get to know one another while cautiously testing the boundaries of the team and its leadership by interacting and noting reactions or lack. Thereof participants generally are energized and excited by the prospect of getting their task accomplished. But they're a bit nervous about how the team will go forward. In this stage, the team actually accomplishes very little

·        Stage two: storming

The second stage of team growth, storming, is marked by a panic among team members as they begin to realize the difficulty of the tasks the organization expects them to accomplish. Participants become impatient about the lack of progress in the first stage. They react by arguing with one another, questioning the team's leadership and choosing sides. In this stage, progress toward accomplishing the team's goals is minimal. However, team members are learning more about and becoming more comfortable with one another.

·        Stage three: norming

During the third stage of team growth called norming, team members finally begin to accept the makeup of the team and follow the team's ground rules. Members establish roles and start supporting each other in their efforts. The fear encountered in the storming stage disappears and is replaced by the belief that the team will accomplish its goals.

·        Stage four: performing

In the fourth or performing stage of team growth, team members feel fully comfortable in their relationships with one another: they begin to have insights into the behavior and thought processes of their teammates team; members are happy with the team's progress, they should be making substantial strides toward goals and working at peak efficiency; the team is truly performing as a team: every member supports every other member and the team is pulling together to create an entity that can achieve more than any one person can do alone.

 

EMPOWERMENT

Although everyone was talking about the power of empowerment, few companies actually put their words into action. For those that did though, the result was an unleashing of employee energy unmatched in the history of business. And in the new millennium, empowerment is just as hot a concept but empowerment is much more than a management buzzword.

In business today, it's a concept that will separate the firms that thrive from those that fail. Empowering employees allows an organization to tap into the almost boundless energy and talents contained within every employee. The power is there, don't let it go to waste. Exactly how do you empower your employees? Is it good enough to simply declare your employees empowered? No it's not. You have to take several steps to give your employees the authority to make decisions that will have an impact on their work lives. The following list presents five easy tips for empowering your employees:

·        Clearly define your employees’ responsibilities. And be sure that they understand them as well as your expectations of performance.

·        Be sure that your employees have the training necessary to successfully undertake their responsibilities.

·        Give your employees the complete authority to successfully undertake all their responsibilities.

·        Treat your employees with respect at all times and trust them implicitly

·        Err on the side of giving your employees too much information rather than not enough

 

GOAL-PROGRESS

Everyone needs goals in their lives to provide Direction. Without goals, you may not be motivated to do anything in particular with your life; both at the office and away. With goals however, you give your life Direction and focus as you strive to achieve Milestones.

But although all employees need goals and companies need systems to monitor their progress, setting and monitoring goals is particularly important in team situations. Where Team Dynamics can cause loss of focus and confusion when clear goals are absent.

The best business goals direct employee effort. Which includes teams toward the tasks and behaviors that are most important to an organization's long-term success. Goals also should clearly indicate when an employee has achieved them. In this section, we consider how you can set effective goals with employees and how you can monitor employee progress toward achieving those goals.

·        Setting goals

Establishing goals is a necessary part of doing business. From strategic to Tactical to operational measures, goals are Central to an organization's planning process. Basically, setting goals is the way that work gets done. There are a number of steps involved in actually setting goals:

1)     Imagine the future desired state of your organization and determine what exactly you want to accomplish: do you want better customer service? Development of new product? Faster deliveries?

2)     Write a concise measurable and achievable statement, your goal. This can mobilize employees to work toward the desired future. For example: improve customer satisfaction ratings by 20% during the next six months; or develop a new low voltage memory chip within one year or shorten the time; it takes to deliver packages from three days to two days.

3)     If necessary, break the goal into sub goals that can be assigned to the appropriate people or departments.

·        Monitoring progress toward goals

Setting goals is an important step in the process of getting things done at work. But it's only the beginning. To ensure that your organization's goals are met, you have to monitor and track specific task performances during the course of completion. Monitoring and tracking is important because you need to know if there are problems that are interfering with Goal accomplishment. The sooner you identify such problems, the sooner you can take action and avoid major problems down the road. Fortunately you have several ways to monitor your progress toward goals:

1)     Milestones

To monitor progress toward a goal, you can break a project into a series of individual tasks. The completion of which will comprise the achievement of the intended project goals. Milestones are scheduled events that indicate delivery or completion of some part of a task or goal by breaking down a project into its individual tasks. You can easily track employee performance to ensure that the project stays on schedule. Close monitoring of the project Milestones helps prevent any unfortunate surprises along the way.

2)     Charts and graphs

As your projects become more complex, using a graphical format to chart Milestones can be extremely useful. Charts and graphs make project monitoring much easier than eyeballing pages of text. With just the glance, you can quickly assess project progress and pick out problem areas that may require more management attention.

When monitoring project performance, a picture really does tell a thousand words. A variety of graphing options are available to you and your teams including the following:

¾    Gantt charts, also known as bar charts. Gantt charts are the most commonly used method for monitoring project completion graphically.

¾    Flow charts, some projects especially complex ones require more than simple Gantt charts to keep track of performance. By following the longest path in terms of operations, activities or tasks, you can determine the critical path of the project. Which determines the overall duration of your project plan. The critical path generally represents the shortest time in which you can complete a project.

3)     Software

If you manage projects as a key part of your job, be sure to take a look at project management software. Several software programs are available that are devoted to tracking projects. They provide all kinds of tools to those who need it. Including but not limited to the following: project planning and scheduling; task assignment; graphical reporting; task grouping; web publication; indeed, the business world has recently seen a veritable explosion of project management software Solutions both Standalone software programs and web-based solutions.

 

MEETING

Meetings allow not only individual employees to communicate with organizations but also the teams they work on. Although individual team members work on their tasks outside of meetings, team meetings give members the opportunity to come together to: determine the team's goals; its plans for achieving its goals; who will do what and when and so on.

You've probably experienced more than your a fair share of both good and bad business meetings. What makes some meetings terrific and others the pits. The following list presents the positive side of business meetings:

·        Meetings can be empowering. Meetings provide a forum for employees to have their voices heard. No matter their position in the hierarchy or their seniority or experience, employees in a well-run organization can even call their own meetings if they like. They don't need to wait around for someone else to do it.

·        Meetings can be a great way to communicate. When a message needs to reach a large number of people at once, a meeting is a great way to accomplish that task. Have you ever been to a company meeting where the ceo sketched out his or her vision of the future? Such meetings can be extremely inspirational and can galvanize an entire group of people to take action, to achieve the vision.

·        Smaller meetings can be just as effective. When you want a solicit employee ideas and focus employee efforts on developing solutions to problems.

·        Meetings can develop work skills and leadership. Becoming full and active participants in meetings requires employees to develop their work skills and to become leaders: when they're assigned tasks and meetings complete them and then report their progress and results in follow-up meetings, employees learn to work with others on teams and under deadline stress; meetings also give employees a chance to present their results in front of others thus boosting their self-confidence.

·        Meetings can be morale boosting. Good employees want to know what's going on in their organization and they want to feel like they're important parts of the organization's present and future. Effective managers lay out their plans for the future in meetings and engage employees in the organizational changes that will be necessary to move from the present to the future state.

Unfortunately, we also have some bad news to present about many poorly run meetings here's the negative side of meetings along with tips to make meetings better:

·        Meetings may not have focus. If you've been to a meeting that wandered all over the place from topic to topic with little or no focus. Meetings without focus rarely achieve the goals that require the meetings in the first place. The solution: keep focused on the topics at hand.

·        Companies can have too many meetings. One of the biggest complaints about meetings is that companies have too many of them. The key is to have fewer meetings and to make those meetings more efficient and more effective. The solution: fewer and better meanings.

·        Attendees may come unprepared. Unprepared attendees are unproductive attendees and unproductive attendees do little to help you accomplish the goals you've set for your organization or team. The solution require employees to come prepared.

·        Most meeting time is wasted. Research shows that on average 53 percent of all meeting time is wasted for most organizations. This percentage amounts to thousands of hours of wasted time a year. The larger the organization, the more time it wastes. You can make your team's meetings better, the power is within you: whether you're a meeting leader or a low-level participant, you don't have to tolerate meetings that accomplish little or nothing. Here are some surefire ways to ensure that you'll hold or participate in better business meetings:

¾    Be prepared

Meetings are work so just as with any other work activity. The better prepared you are for them, the better the results you can expect. For example: suppose that the topic is the next fiscal year's budget, before the meeting dig up your budget for this fiscal year and become totally familiar with it; review any budget reports that you may have received along the way.

¾    Have an agenda

An agenda a list of the topics to be covered during the course of the meeting can play a critical role in the success of any meeting. It shows participants where they're going but leaves it up to them to figure out how to get there. Be sure to distribute the agenda and any pre-work in advance so participants can prepare and you can avoid wasting time.

¾    Start and end on time

Sitting through a meeting that goes way beyond the scheduled ending time would be fine if the participants had nothing else to do at work. But in these days of faster and more flexible organizations, everyone always has plenty of work on the to-do list. If you announce the length of a meeting and then stick to it, fewer participants will stare at their watches and more participants will take an active role.

¾    Have fewer but better meanings

Call a meeting only when it's absolutely necessary. Before you call a meeting, ask whether you can achieve your goal in some other way: perhaps through a one-on-one discussion a telephone; conference call or a simple exchange of email.

¾    Include rather than exclude

Meetings are only as good as the ideas the participants bring forward. Great ideas can come from anyone in an organization, not just its managers.

¾    Maintain focus

Meetings that get off track and stay off track don't achieve their goals. Meeting leaders and participants must actively work to keep meetings focused on the agenda items topics. When you notice the meeting drifting off track, speak up and push the other attendees to get it back in focus.

¾    Capture and assign action items

Unless meetings are held purely to communicate information or for other special purposes, most meetings result in action items tasks or other assignments for participants. Don't assume that all participants will take their assignments to heart and remember all the details. Instead, have someone record: every action item on a sheet of paper flip charts are great for this or you can use regular notebook paper. If some action items haven't been assigned to specific individuals for completion do, so before the meeting adjourns.

¾    Get feedback

No meeting is perfect. Be sure to solicit feedback from meeting attendees on: how the meeting went right for them and on how it went wrong; was the meeting too long; did one person dominate the discussion or attendees unprepared; were the items on the agenda unclear. Whatever the problems, you can't fix them if you don't know about them. You can use a simple form to solicit feedback or you can speak informally with attendees after the meeting.

 

INFLUENCING

Five key sources of power exist in an organization. Every employee wields one or more of these sources of power within his or her own job, and the sources can change from situation to situation. Power gives managers the ability to influence others to do what they ask of them. Which of the following sources of power do you use to get things done at work:

1)     Personal power, comes from within you. This power springs from your personality, your charisma, the strength of your beliefs and convictions and your ability to express them. For example: a hard-working frontline employee who inspires her co-workers to work harder by her example, has personal power.

2)     Relationship power, comes from the strength of your network of friends, contacts and business associates. Have you ever heard the phrase “i've got friends in high places”? An example of relationship power in an organization is the incredible power that assistance to ceos and other top managers wield. They often have as much or perhaps even more real power as the executives to whom they report.

3)     Position power, comes from your place within a company's hierarchy: a company's president has high position power; the mail room clerk has low position power.

4)     Knowledge power, comes from your experience: training, schooling and expertise in your particular job within your organizational unit and in the organization as a whole. This power includes technical prowess as well as your ability to manage the personalities of those you work with. Because computer networks and their care and maintenance have become extremely important in most organizations, information technology professionals have very high knowledge power.

5)     Task power, comes from the job itself. For example, in an advertising agency, account reps who sell new clients on the agency and who have a direct impact on bringing in revenue have higher task power than employees in the accounting department whose job it is to send out invoices and collect payments.

 

DELEGATION

No manager can do everything alone. Managers leverage themselves, multiplying the work they can accomplish many times by delegating work responsibility and authority to employees. Delegation is a great tool for managers to increase the amount of work they can get done and it often achieves better results so. Why do so many managers have such a hard time delegating work to their employees? Fear causes part of the reluctance: fear that employees can't or won't do the work as well as the managers can; some managers also feel that they're too busy to take the time to train employees to do the tasks well. Therefore simply tackling the jobs themselves seems easier and perhaps the desire to bask in the spotlight alone for completing important tasks contributes to some managers reluctance to delegate.

 in any case, delegation is the first choice for managers to get work done through others. It can be an incredibly effective tool when done right and remarkably destructive tool when done wrong. Here are six steps for delegating the right way:

1)     Communicate the task

Describe exactly what you want done, when you want it done and the end results you expect. Be clear and invite your employee to ask a lot of questions until you're convinced he or she understands what you want done.

2)     Furnish the context for the task

Most people want you to know the reasons why they should do something. Explain to your employee why the task needs to be done. Its importance in the overall scheme of things and any possible complications that may arise during its performance. Again, invite questions and don't get defensive if your employee pushes you for answers.

3)     Determine standards

We all need to know when we cross the finish line. Agree on the standards that you'll use to measure the success of a task's completion. These standards should be realistic and attainable and you should avoid changing them after performance has begun.

4)      grant authority

You must grant the employee the authority. Necessary to complete the task without constant roadblocks or standoffs with other employees.

5)     Provide support

Determine the resources necessary for your employee to complete the task and then provide them successfully. Completing a task may require money, training advice and other resources.

6)      get commitment

Make sure that: your employee has accepted the assignment; confirm your expectations and your employees understanding of the commitment to complete the task.

One of the biggest problems with delegation occurs when a manager delegates responsibility for a task but not the authority and resources necessary to carry it out effectively. Inevitably, the task becomes much more difficult to carry out than it needs to be, perhaps impossible and the employee becomes frustrated and even angry. Don't forget that we all want happy employees.

Happy employees lead to happy customers and clients. Be sure that when you delegate a task to an employee, you also give the employee the authority that must go along with it.