MANAGEMENT : Tasks, Responsabilities, Practices
In this society, management - its tasks, its responsibilities, its practices - is central; as a need, as an essential contribution, and as a subject of study and knowledge. (page 6)
Management has to organize work for productivity, it has to lead the worker toward productivity and achievement. (17)
We will have to learn to look on people as resource and opportunity rather than as problem, cost, and threat. (30)
We wil have to learn to lead rather than to manage, and to direct rather than to control. (30)
Managers will have to learn to build and manage innovative organizations. (31)
Management development to adapt the organization to the needs, aspirations, and potential of the individual. (35)
An institution exists for a specific purpose and mission, a specific social fumction. In the business enterprise this means economic performance. (40)
Business management must always, in every decision and action, put economic performance first. (40)
The second task of management is to make work productive and the worker achieving. (41)
Business enterprise (or any other institution) has only one true resource : man. (41)
The third task of management is managing the social impacts and the social responsibilities of the enterprise. (41)
Business exists to supply goods and services to customers, rather than to supply jobs to workers and managers, or even dividends to stockholers. (42)
Management always has to consider both the present and the future; both the short run and the long run. (43)
Effectiveness is the foundation of success - efficiency is a minimum condition for survival after success has been achieved. Efficiency is conerned with doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things. (45)
Without understanding the mission, the objectives, and the strategy of the enterprise, managers cannot be managed, organizations cannot be designed, managerial jobs cannot be made productive. (48)
The customer is the foundation of a business and keeps it in existence. (61)
The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. (64)
The customer never buys a product. By definition the customer buys the satisfaction of a want. (84)
The best structure will not garantee results and performance. But the wrong structure is a guarantee of nonperformance. All it produces are friction and frustration. The wong organiszation puts the spotlight on the wrong issues, aggravates irrelevant disputes, and makes a mountain out of trivia. It accents weaknesses and defects instead of strenghs. The right organization structure is thus a prerequisite of performance. (519)
Organization design and structure require thinking, analysis, and a systematic approach. (523)
Structure follows strategy. (523)
A business should always analyse its organization structure when its strategy changes. (532)
Key activities should never be subordinated to nonkey activities. (535)
Revenue-producing activities should never be subordinated to nonrevenue producing activities. (535)
Support activities should never be mixed with revenue-producing and result-contributory activities. (535)
Activities that make the same kind of contribution can be joined together in one component and under one management, whatever their technical specialization. (541)
Activities that do not make the same kind of contribution do not, as a rule, belong together. (541)
Identifying key activities and analyzing their contributions defines the building blocks of organization. (542)
A decision should always be made at the lowest possible level and as close to the scene of action as possible. (545)
The most common and the most serious symptom of malorganization is multiplication of the number of management levels. (546)
Equally common and equally dangerous is an organization structure that puts the attention of key people on the wrong, the irrelevant, the secondary problems. (547)
Organization should put the attention of people on major business decisions, on key activities, and on performance and results. (547)
Too many meetings attended by too many people is a symptom of poor organization. (548)
The ideal is the organization which can operate without meetings. (548)
An excess of meetings indicates that jobs have not been defined clearly, have not been structured big enough, have not been made truly responsible. (548)
An organization in which people are all the time concerned about feelings and about what other people will like or will not like is not an organization that has good human relations. On the contrary, it is an organization that has very poor human relations. Constant anxiety over other people's feelings is the worst kind of human relations. (548)
Overstaffed organizations create work rather than performance. They also create friction, sensitivity, irritation, and concern with feelings. (549)
It is a symptom of malorganization to rely on "coordinators," "assistants," and other such whose job it is not to have a job. (549)
It therefore should be emphasized that organizational changes should not be undertaken often and should not be undertaken lighty. (549)
Reorganization is a form of surgery; and even minor surgery has risks. (549)
No organization will ever be perfect. A certain amount of friction, of incongruity, of organizational confusion is inevitable. (549)