There are many skill combinations and methods that go into molding a successful management student or professional. You can remain assured that all managers go on learning new things and developing new skills on course of their career and emerge as better leaders. You can follow traditional approaches to management as well as look to adapt new trends in order to succeed. Whichever way you choose; it needs to result in success on part of your company or team.
Bettering communication
People need to possess really good communication skills in order to succeed in management sector. Using good communication, you can also motivate employees to a large extent and create a really strong team. It is best if you start tackling one new problem, each day. Different actions that you take will help in improving skills as a manager. Once you start tackling problems on a regular basis, your own skills will start to improve dramatically, in ways that you may not have even imagined.
Leadership and some tips
Managers and management students lead a very busy and hectic life. Therefore, a list concerned with some to-do things or some quick tips regarding what to do in a day really helps. These constant reminders help you grow as a manager greatly. There are many different categories in which management tips can segregate into. There are tips for managing businesses as well as improving leadership and motivating members of your team. All these little things actually help in creation of a bigger enterprise.
You need to realize that being a leader means many different things. The kind of focus that you have regarding issues can also change depending on the need of the hour. You can follow models, better read about roles of leaders. The evolution of such roles can also be studied as you dig deeper and deeper into topics that go hand in hand, including strategy used vision of future etc.
Keeping a glossary
Managers find work in many different industries. There are quite a few terms that you will encounter on a regular basis in management sector depending on the industry you work in. terms such as turnovers, benchmarking is common to almost all sectors. People need to realize that even if you are very familiar with different terms, it is considered to be good for you to review them time and again and keep its relevance intact in your mind.
Analysis associated with cost-benefit
Managers need to make decisions almost every day. There are certain tools or things that aid in making these decisions easily, one among these things is cost-benefit analysis. You need to learn how to run one of these analyses. This analysis is mostly used for taking financial decisions. However, it can help you to take any decision very easily. You need to find the answer to one simple question, whether the benefits of your decision exceeds the costs.
Customer satisfaction and management
It does not matter whether you are selling much generalized products to regular people. You must have a specialty product that is used only by a handful of companies. Even if all clients for your products are internal in nature, you need to ensure that they always remain satisfied. If you find that these people are not completely satisfied, then you need to find a suitable cause behind it. In this way you can fix issues. Making surveys has been considered to be a direct way of asking about these issues.
Maximizing effectiveness
A lot of planning as well as organization goes into making of a successful manager. Only after these things are done, can you expect maximum effectiveness of your services. This kind of planning needs to be done unfailingly, every day. You can be new to a role or have a lot of experience, it is always wise to review some of the basics and keep going back to them from time to time. Here also you will be showing a certain kind of efficiency.
Project management
Project managers are known to focus daily on resources such as time, money and scope associated with a particular project. Project management is actually a little different from general management. This is because, while you oversee a project, there is one objective that you need to really focus upon. Key features associated with this kind of job are required to be known in order to efficiently manage resources.
Pareto’s principle
Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist gave forth an idea that 80 percent of any job can be credited to 20 percent of a certain driving factor associated with it. For example, if in a company, 20 percent of the employees belong to the salesforce, then these people will be directly associated with sales of 80 percent products belonging to that company. Similarly, it may be observed that 20 percent of these products turn out to be defective in nature, which will consequently result in 80 percent headache for a manager. This principle has of course evolved over the years and also has certain limitations, you need to study it in details and see how it is relevant even today.
Interview questions
You need a foresight and predict all question types that may be asked on course of an interview. You must realize that your answers will be interpreted by those interviewers and views regarding your character and way of thinking will be formed. You may be asked questions strictly adhering to business or some trick question that usually confuses candidates. Managers will always look to be surrounded by best of talents; hence tough questions are asked to build an extremely efficient team.
Performance indicators
There are certain indicators associated with performance that may be used to measure progress made by an individual. This success is also seen as success of the unit of your company. Performance of individuals will always be measured, irrespective of revenue being generated. You need to show that you are succeeding in those avenues where it really matters.
Importance of communication for success discussed here
If due to any reason, a breakdown of communication is observed, then it becomes really difficult for managers to address different issues. A very common phenomenon of sitting through boring PowerPoint presentations where a presenter would be reading out points from slides has been observed multiple times by people. Therefore, using only texts in slides is not at all a good indicator of communicating; your audience will lose interest by large degrees if this continues.
Tricking down effect
On course of a presentation, nobody including presenters wish to look stupid. If you as a leader or manager do not come forward and lead your team out of such a mess, then boring presentations continue unabated. If you do not do so, then this kind of poor leadership, will trickle down to basal levels and result in low levels of customer satisfaction. Therefore, other than managing impressions you also need to step out of your comfort zone at times and manage situations. Leadership within a company should never be compromised owing to communication breakdown.
Finance and communication
Almost all managers, understand risks associated with improper financial management. However most of them do not seem to give due importance to maintaining communication skills for growth. If important information does not get circulated within companies owing to poor communication, then you can understand how devastating it can be for that company’s fate. If you wish to implement certain changes in a company, then it is important to communicate such information to employees from beforehand or stand a chance of facing their resistance.
Continuous process
On course of any kind of communication, message, both verbal as well as non-verbal I nature gets exchanged. These exchanges must remain continuous in nature for betterment of a company; they can also take various forms over time. For example, mediums for such communications can include emails, PowerPoint presentations or even posters being put outside offices. Agreed that posters or presentations can become a one-way communication mode, hence they are needed to be used according to the situation.
Creating an open culture
There should be an element of trust and openness on course of communication in a particular company. Students of management need to take note of this very carefully, for all their future endeavors. A certain amount of diligence is also required on course of framing of messages as well as collection of feedback.
Running businesses
The way in which communication takes place across different cultures of organization, becomes detrimental to functioning of that organization. Transparency and trust are two words that you have to always remember if you wish to run a business successfully. It is not necessary that communication always takes from the top level to bottom. If required, the reverse of this can also take place, including cases of airing grievance or demands of a section of any organization.
Talking about self
In field of management, time and again you have to explain people about your role in an organization, your viewpoint and such other things. If you wish to transform into a leader, and reach the epoch of management, then you have to obviously let go of inhibitions and face all kinds of questions. You may have to often get out of your comfort zone and address certain issues.
Importance of setting up budgets
There are many functions of developing a budget and managing finances of a company. Through a budget it will become clear to you about all costs involved in operations. As a result of this you can set many important activities into motion. Money which is to be spent and that which is to be collected as revenue is stated very clearly in budgets. Line items show you what are the inputs required for getting on with further business. There are further personnel costs as well as administrative costs that are required to be met to sustain all aspects of an organization.
Managing risks
Risk management is something, which is becoming increasingly important or companies to keep a track of to run businesses successfully. Therefore, they form an important part of the education of any management student. By use of risk management, capacity of an organization is increased. Outcome from different company projects will be greatly improved if proper care is taken regarding this aspect of management. Costs associated with operations as well as scheduling of activities in a project is done properly and hence risk of failure is minimized.
Characteristics of risk management
Different risk management activities are usually seen to commence at the beginning of every project. Different plans are developed for risk management and that process continues till the end of that project. This kind of risk management is not at all a standalone process but is often combined with other functions of that project. You will see that implementation of risk management is responsibility of all stake holders in that project. Everyone participates very actively in these projects.
Identifying risks
The process of risk identification is extremely comprehensive in nature. It must be ensured that these risks do not creep up at any later point of time during that project. Lots of techniques can be used for this identification, including brainstorming. Historical as well as empirical data is used on course of such processes. The final output is a comprehensive list of possible risks.
Analysis of risks
Different
measures those are required for safeguarding of business is taken care of while
analyzing risks. It can be termed as usage of information the frequency of
occurrence of certain events and how big their consequences would be. In risk
evaluation, estimated risk is compared to certain risk criteria and magnitude
of risk is determined.
Author Bio: Nancie L Beckett has been associated with the field of management, finance, accounting for a long time. Therefore, she shares with her students a wide variety of knowledge from her working years. She has done an MBA from Harvard Business School and has held various managerial posts in her career.