New Management Competencies

For all managers human skills are becoming increasingly important.    In a survey of managers on their views of how the Internet has affected management, for example, the majority considered communicating effectively, retaining talented employees, and motivating workers to be essential management skills for the Internet world.  Although these abilities have always been important to managers, they take on added significance today, particularly when employees are dispersed and working in a virtual environment.

Today's best managers give up their command-and-control mindset to embrace ambiguity and create organizations that are fast, flexible, adaptable, and relationship-oriented.  Leadership is dispersed throughout the organization, and managers empower others to gain the benefit of their ideas and creativity.  The model of managers controlling workers no longer applies in a workplace where employee brainpower is more important than physical assets.  Moreover, managers often supervise employees who are scattered in various locations, requiring a new approach to leadership that focuses more on mentoring and providing direction and support than on giving orders and ensuring that they are followed.

Rather than a single-minded focus on profits, today's managers must recognise the critical importance of staying connected to employees and customers.  The Internet has given increased knowledge and power to customers, so organizations have to remain flexible and adaptable to respond quickly to changing demands or competition.  In some e-commerce organizations, managers have almost totally ignored profits in favor of building customer relationships.  Although all organizations have to be concerned with profits sooner or later, as managers of numerous failed dot-coms learned, the emphasis these companies put on developing customers and relationships is a reflection of trends affecting all organizations.

Team-building skills are crucial for today's managers.  Teams of front-line employees who work directly with customers have become the basic building block of organizations.  Instead of managing a department of employees, many managers act as team leaders of ever-shifting, temporary projects. 

Success in the new workplace depends on the strength and quality of collaborative relationships.  Partnerships, both within the organization and with outside customers, suppliers, and even competitors, are recognized as the key to a winning organization.  New ways of working emphasize collaboration across functions and hierarchical levels as well as with other companies.  E-business models that digitally link customers, suppliers, partners, and other stakeholders require managers to assess and manage relationships far beyond the confines of the traditional organization.

An important management challenge in the new workplace is to build a learning organization by creating an organizational climate that values experimentation and risk taking, applies current technology, tolerates mistakes and failure, and rewards nontraditional thinking and the sharing of knowledge.  Everyone in the organization participates in identifying and solving problems, enabling the organization to continuously experiment, improve, and increase its capability.  The role of managers is not to make decisions, but to create learning capability, where everyone is free to experiment and learn what works best.

Crisis Management

Managing Crises and Unexpected Events

Dealing with the unexpected has always been part of the manager's job, but our world has become so fast, interconnected, and complex that unexpected events happen more frequently and often with greater and more painful consequences.  Crisis management is an emerging need that places further demands on today's managers.  Some of the most recent thinking on crisis management suggests the importance of five leadership skills.

1. Stay Calm
2. Be visible
3. Put people before business
4. Tell the truth
5. Know when to get back to business

Stay Calm.  A leader's emotions are contagious, so leaders have to stay calm, focused, and optimistic about the future.  Perhaps the most important part of a manager's job in a crisis situation is to absorb people's fears and uncertainties.  Leaders have to suppress their own fears, doubts, and pain to comfort others.  Although they acknowledge the danger and difficulties, they remain rock-steady and hopeful, which gives comfort, inspiration,and hope to others.

Be Visible.  When people's worlds have become ambiguous and uncertain, they need to feel that someone is in control.

Put People before Business.  The companies that weather a crisis best, whether the crisis is large or small, are those in which managers make people and human feelings their tip priority. 


Tell the Truth.  Be straightforward with employees and the media.

Know When to Get Back to Business.  Although managers should first deal with the physical and emotional needs of people, they also need to get back to business as soon as possible.  They company has to keep going, and most people want to be a part of the rebuilding process, to feel that they have a home with the company and something to look forward to.  The rejuvenation of the business is a sign of hope and an inspiration to employees.  Moments of crisis also present excellent opportunities for looking forward and using the emotional energy that has emerged to build a better company.

Crisis management is an important aspect of any manager's job, particularly in today's turbulent times.  This is a challenging time to be entering the field of management.  Throughout this book, you will learn much more about the new workplace, about the new and dynamic roles managers are playing in twenty-first century, and about how you can be an effective manager in a complex, ever-changing world. 

The Learning Organization

Management and the New Workplace


The world of organizations and management is changing rapidly.  The primary characteristic of the new workplace is that it is centered around information and ideas rather than machines and physical assets.  In the  new workplace work is free-flowing and flexible.  Empowered employees are expected to seize opportunities and solve problems as they emerge.  The workplace is organized around networks rather than rigid hierarchies, and work is often virtual.  The valued worker is one who learns quickly, shares knowledge, and is comfortable with risk, change, and ambiguity.

Forces on Organizations


The most striking change now affecting organizations and management is technology.  Organizations are increasingly using digital networking technologies to tie together employees and company partners in far-flung operations.  One of the biggest technological advances is the Internet, which is transforming the way business is done.

The internet and other new technologies are also tied closely to globalization, another force that is significantly affecting organizations.  Customers today operate globally and they expect organizations to provide worldwide service.  Managers must understand cross-cultural patterns, and they often work with virtual team members form many different countries.  Generational diversity is another powerful force in today's workplace, with employees of all ages working together on teams and projects.  Also, Generation X employees are having a profound impact on the workplace.

In the face of these transformations, organizations are learning to value change and speed over stability and efficiency.  Managers must rethink their approach to organizing, directing , and motivating workers.



The Learning Organization

The learning organization can be defined as one in which everyone is engaged in identifying and solving problems, enabling the organization to continuously experiment, change, and improve, thus increasing its capacity to grow, learn, and achieve its purpose. In the learning organization all employees look for problems and help solve them.

To develop a learning organization, managers make changes in all the subsystems of the organization. Three important adjustments to promote continuous learning are shifting to a team-based structure, empowering employees, and sharing information.

Team Based Structure.  An important value in a learning organization is collaboration and communication across departmental and hierarchical boundaries.  Self-directed teams are the basic building block of the structure.

Employee Empowerment.  Empowerment means unleashing the power and creativity of employees by giving them the freedom, resources, information, and skills to make decisions and perform effectively.

Open Information.  Easy access to information is crucial to make a learning organization work.


Managing the Technology-Driven Workplace


The shift to the learning organization goes hand-in-hand with the current transition to a technology-driven workplace.  Ideas, information, and relationships are becoming more important than production machinery, physical products, and structured jobs.  New electronic technologies also shape the organization itself and how its is managed.  Knowledge management refers to the efforts to systematically find, organize, and make available a company's intellectual capital and to foster a culture of continuous learning and knowledge sharing so that a company's activities build on what is already known.  A complete knowledge management system includes not only the technology for capturing and storing knowledge for easy access, but also new management values that support risk-taking, learning, and collaboration.  Today's most successful managers cherish people for their ability to thing, create, share knowledge, and build relationships.

Leadership Versus Management

There are distinctive qualities associated with management and leadership that provide different strengths for the organization.

Leader Qualities                                                 

• Visionary
• Passionate
• Creative
• Flexible
• Inspiring
• Innovative
• Courageous
• Imaginative
• Experimental
• Initiates change
• Personal Power

Manager Qualities

• Rational
• Consulting
• Persistent
• Problem-Solving
• Tough-minded
• Analytical
• Structured
• Deliberate
• Authoritative
• Stabilizing
• Position Power

Management and leadership reflect two different sets of qualities and skills that frequently overlap within a single individual.  Ideally a manager develops a balance of both manager an leader qualities.

Five Rules For Making Hiring Decisions

1. Look at a number of potentially qualified people.




2. Think hard about what each candidate brings to the position and the organization.



3. Have a variety of people get to know the candidate-as a person.



4. Discuss each of the candidates with several people who have worked with them.



5. After the hire, follow up to make sure the appointee understands the job.

How to Brand Yourself

1. Create a Robust Online Presence.  Create a blog!!

 

2. Flaunt High-Quality Affiliations.  If you have well-known connections, flaunt them and leverage them.

 

3. Give Public Speeches.  Start with Rotery and the local Chamber of Commerce and work your way up to associations, conferences and in-house gigs for major corporations

 

4. Appear on T.V. Create a media kit (with you bio, some writing you have done, and some topics you can comment on and send them to tv producers.  You can follow them on twitter and strike up a conversation.

 

5. Win Some Awards.

 

6. Publish a Book.

 

What other techniques do you use to brand yourself?

How to manage Generation Y

1. Set Clear Expectations. Let them know the rules about dress code, work hours, and use of technology.
2. Offer Flexibility. If Generation Y's don't feel like they can balance their work and personal lives, they will leave quickly.
3. Leverage their Strengths. Generation Y's enter the workforce excited, passionate and with lots of great ideas. If you can find a way to utilize their skills and channel their energy, you will experience productive results.
4. Show them Respect. Resist the urge to brush them off because of their age and show them the respect everyone deserves.
5. Communicate. Be proactive and establish communication guidelines early in the relationship. This will help to avoid mis-communications down the road.

Top ten ways to get promoted

1. Do your job well. You need to excell in your current role and do much more to climb the corporate ladderr.

2. Get noticed. Find ways to get in front of senior people in ways that display your good qualities and makes your memorable.

3. Volunteer. Take on additional responsibilities both inside and outside your department. This shows your willing to get involved and gets you noticed.

4. Discuss your ambitions with your manager. Make sure your boss and your boss's boss know you want to get promoted. You can do this in a quite and professional way. Do not threaten or demand. Have a discussion where you ask the question, "What do I have to do to get promoted?" Develop a plan.

5. Work well with people. Find ways to work effectively with other people and your more likely to be seen as management material.

6. Contribute ideas. Make positive, constructive suggestions for how things could be done better. It will single that you are someone that can think about bigger issues. It show that you welcome rather than fear change.

7 If your cannot move up, move across. Move across to different area of the business at the same level so you can learn new skills and make new contacts.

8. Have a plan. Sets goals for yourself and measure progress against them. If you need to acquire skills or more education, in order to advance, then make plans to do so. If your turned down for a promotion, ask why. If you cannot meet your goals at your current organization then look elsewhere.

9. Get a mentor. Mentors can be great sources for information and career guidance as well as spread the good word about you.

10. Create a career opportunity. After studying the needs and challenges of an organization, if you see an area that has been neglected write a proposal for the position.