EXCELLENCE IN MANAGEMENT

EXCELLENCE IN MANAGEMENT

Excellence in Management is a must for everyone who has to manage and organize. It helps to solve problems and tells where one is going wrong. It offers excellent suggestions for the problems that beset managers.

Although Money, Material and Machines are the sinews of every industrial concern, Manager achieves his objectives only through PEOPLE. Hence the main job of manager is dealing with the PEOPLE – their knowledge, their pecularities and their temper. Hence it is essential to know how to get along with people for the organization to run properly. To be successful and to get results one should be always on the spot giving instructions, clarifying points, straightening out problems and seeing how things are working out. One should be kind, be sympathetic and understanding but must have steely determination to see that job/task is well done.

An Executive should make sure that his subordinates do realize that they do matter and must have a patient and constructive approach. He should remember the employee by name as calling by name will have a tonic effect. He should develop; the quality of appreciating good work done, because praise is the finesse, cheapest and possibly the best tool of management. He should show concern about the welfare of the subordinates so that they can be loyal to the organization. Pleasant words and warm feelings will deliver the results. Development of subordinates will help to form a group of able and well trained men. He should have independent thinking men around hi so that at times he can be corrected

A good Executive should stop at the point when the activity becomes obsolete and develop a new idea. He should have the courage of saying No as everyone is always wanting something from him and he should have self-control to resist such requests. He should choose his staff and create an atmosphere to develop them. He must be interested in seeing that what he can do to be effective and how much he can do inspite of constraints. When something goes wrong, he must put things in right perspective He should be flexible and learn to change his thinking. He should be adaptable to changing situations. He should be friendly but not too friendly with subordinates. He should learn to keep a secret in strictest confidence pertaining to matters which absolutely needs.

Each individual in the organization should know where his job begins and where it ends. He should also know to whom he has to report and who is his boss. One should have clearly defined responsibilities to avoid duplication of work and frustration and undermining the next higher authority. In an organization, where large number of managers ar responsible to an Executive and if each manager knows what his tasks are, then the manager is left alone to get on his tasks so that levels sof management are considerably reduced.

Communication is one of the most difficult task in any organization and upward communication is more important than communication downwards.

The centralized organization becomes unwieldly when organization grows in size. Hence there is a shift from centralized system to federal decentralization. The advantages of decentralization are that the vision and effort of individual managers of the separate sections are focused directly on results, to go hand in hand with the system called “Management by Objectives”.

WHILE DEALING WITH JUDGEMENT AND CREATIVITY of an Executive , that a decision is usually a choice between various alternatives. Before taking a decision one should take as many opinions as possible and should take a decision based on various opinions. Decision making should be delegated right down to the scene of action. Making decision is best possible training for management development. Decision should be taken at app;ropriate time as last minute decision leads to confusion resulting in the work done badly. What is needed of a good Executive is that he takes fewer but fundamental decisions instead of rapid and too many at a time. One should take generic and strategic decisions as they have highest conceptual level of understanding and are not adaptation to the needs of the moment. An effective Executive should delegate as much as he can, so that he can be free to do his real job, which is to organize plan and think ahead. He must know what tasks not to tackle and to stick to that decision. He should concentrate on few major areas where good performance can produce outstanding results. An executive should take decisions about the future of the organization and he should always look to the future. He should plan and decide things for the future-may be to give up a product-line, concentrate on important products or to change the pattern of the organization.

The focus of an Executive should always be on contribution and results rather than on work. He should concentrate on essential and important work so that his energies do not fritter away and he contribute for the improvement of the organization. An effective executive should always think out something original and contribute something new to raise the standard of everyone with whom he works. Secret of an effective Executive is to concentrate on and to develop his strength/strong points. A good Executive should never take personal consideration into account.

An executive should train his subordinates not to bring him problems but instead bring properly thought out suggestions and recommendations. For an executive to be effective it is essential that he knows exactly how he spends his time because this will only help him to realize how much time he spent on the activity which contributes to his effectiveness. A telephone can be a big time waster because of frequent interruptions and hence telephone should be kept under control.

An executive should organize the work of his department in such a way that time of his men is not spent on relatively useless matters. For effective functioning he must have long streches of uninterrupted time as much of the time is wasted in doing things/task in bits and pieces.

While dealing with Man Management, an executive should believe in talking to his men about their problems. He must learn that people are creators of habit and he must not get too much impatient when he is trying to change habits. When large number of people are working together he should be very careful in granting special to anyone member. He should not practice nepotism as it can be terribly demoralizing.

Regarding conduct of meetings, they should be arranged in such a way that matters are not interrupted and they should not last for more time. Excess meetings indicate deficient organization. When there is a problem to be solved, he should have separate meeting with only those people directly connected/concerned.

(Excerpts from the book: “Excellence in Management” by M K Rustomji)





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