In his famous article, "Skills of an effective administrator", Robert Katz, a famous and proficient writer, manager and consultant, defies the conventional wisdom of looking for "the ideal executive" by looking at his/her traits. Looking at the skills, which can be developed and are not necesarily inherited, constitutes a better approach. In fact, Katz claims, looking at skills will allow us to focus on "what managers do" rather that "who managers are".
Then Katz define three skills which are essential for administrative work. These are technical, human and conceptual skills.
Technical skills imply "an understanding of, and proficiency in, a specific kind of activity, particularly one involving methods, processes, procedures or techniques of the specific discipline"
Human skills are "the executivies´ability to work effectively as a group member and to build cooperative effort withing the team he leads. This skill is demonstrated in the way the individual perceives (and recognizes the perceptions of) his superiors, equals, and subordinates, and the way he behaves subsequently".
Conceptual skills involve "the ability to see the enterprise as a whole; it inclludes recognizing how the various functions of the organization depend on one another, and how changes in any one part affect all the others, and it extends to vizualizing the relationship of the individual business to the industry, the community and the political, economical and social forces of the nation as a whole. Recognizing these relationships and perceiving the significant elements in any situation, the administrator should then be able to act in a way which advances the overall welfare of the toal organization.
The relative importance of the three skills defined above, vary according to the different responsibility levels that a manager could have.
Technical skills are extremeley important at a lower-level management position.In the other hand, in higher levvels, in which the manager moves further and further from the actual physical operation, they become less important.
Human skills have been proved to be very important at the three levels of management. However, its emphasis varies from level to level: Low level managers need them to have the motivation and colaboration from their subbordinates. Middle level managers need them to communicate decissions appropiately. High level managers need them for the appropiate coordination of all functions.
Conceptual skill´s importance increase proportionately with the managerial level. At high level management they becomes absolutely crucial for the sake of the manager´s job and the organization as a whole.
Implications and application:
The three skills model that Kats provide us, points out the need to, instead of focussing our efforts towards knowledge and traits (as we´ve traditionally been doing) focusing them on the development of the three managerial skills. The article also provides a couple of notes on how to develop this skills in young executives and the reforms that should be done in undergraduate curriculum.
References:
Katz, R.L. (1974,September) Skills of an effective administrator. Harvard Bussness Review
jueves 8 de marzo de 2012
The manager´s job (Henry Mintzberg)
"If you ask a business student
or graduate what a manager does, he or she will probably tell you that they plan,
organize, coordinate and control". This idea comes from the classic view
of management, introduced by French industrialist Henri Fayol in 1916.
Surprisingly, after all this year, and outstanding amount of change in the business
world, (including the essence of managerial job) the theory wasn´t convincingly
challenged or replaced until recently, when it was challenged by Henry
Mintzberg.
Mintzberg, an internationally renamed academic and
author on business and management, says that in order to determine what
managers really do, we can part from three types of roles: interpersonal,
informational and decisional.
Interpersonal roles are:
-Figurehead: involves
ceremonial duties. It is an immediate consequence of the manager´s authority.
E.g.: A manager giving the New Year´s speech or inviting an important costumer
for lunch
-Leader: hiring, training, retaining
and motivating tasks
-Liaison role: the manager
makes contacts outside the vertical chain of commandment
Informational roles are where managers
spend at least 40% of their contact time. In fact, receiving and communicating
information are the two activities to which the managers devote the most. The three roles that they perform
while performing this tasks are:
- Disseminator:
manager passes some privileged information directly to subordinates who would
otherwise have no access to it
-Spokesperson; manager sends
information to people outside the unit. E.g.: to the local newspaper
- Monitor: managers are perpetually
scanning the environment for information.
Information becomes then, the input for decisional roles. Four roles that describe the
manager as a decision maker are:
Entrepreneur: seeks to
improve the unit and adapt it to the environment through innovation
Disturbance handler: responds to
pressures, these are usually unplanned and negative changes.
Resource allocator: decides who will
get what resource from the organization. It involves allocating time,
structure, money, material and authorizing projects.
Negotiator: considerable time spent here
The integrated job
Managers perform all of these roles and activities in
their jobs. As we have seen, these go far beyond Fayol´s model. A managerial
job´s essence is the complex task of balancing and synergizing these roles. So,
what managers really do? Ceremonial duties, networking, monitoring
and communication of information, decision making towards plan and unplanned
change and allocation of resources.
References:
London Management Center (lmc) - Mintzberg´s ten
management roles; the manager´s job; Folklore and fact by Henry Mintzberg-
Harvard Business Review (March 1990)
What do succesful managers do (according to Fred Luthans)
It is a natural desire for every
manager to achieve what, according to their parameters and desires could be
called success. It is also a common misconception that success will come as a
consequence of competence and effectiveness.
Why is this so? According to a
study directed by Fred Luthans, only 10% of managers were both, successful and
effective. Furthermore, effective managers have a different set of activities
and priorities than successful managers.
The study mentioned above involved 292 managers from
all levels and industries. In order to turn two subjective variables (success
and effectiveness) into objective ones, they gave measurable definitions to
both of them. He measured success in terms on how high in the hierarchy managers
have achieved to be, compared to the number of years they were working. In the
other hand, he measured effectiveness in terms of 1) getting the job done
through high quantity and quality standards of performance and 2) getting the
job done through people, which requires their satisfaction and
commitment.
What do successful managers do? Successful
managers spend most of their time in networking activity, more specifically
socializing and politicizing. One of the representatives of this group said:
“I find that the way to get around here is to be
friendly with the right people, both inside and outside the firm...the other
formal stuff around the office is important but I really work at this informal
side and have found it pays off when promotion times rolls around"
Exactly in the opposite side of activities are the
effective managers, who spend most of their time in human resource management
activities (in which, interestingly enough, successful managers spend the least
of their time) and the least of their time in networking activities.
Implications of the study
These results leave us with two major implications:
1)in order to solve the companies ‘performance problems that we see today,
companies must make sure to promote effective managers 2) the strong
correlation between effective managers and human resource activities shows us
that they must be prioritized over other managerial tasks in order to achieved
the so desired effectiveness
References:
Fred Luthans, "Successful vs. Effective Real
Managers", Academy of Management Executive, 1998, 2: pg 127-132
Love & marriage
Every young woman kingdom tried on
the glass slipper. But it was Cinderella whose foot fit the slipper perfectly!
The prince asked her to marry him, and Cinderella became a princess at last.
Could you guess what phrase comes after it? I know you could! AND THEY LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
Those phrases could make us all
sigh, until we see what we call reality: fifty percent of marriages divorce
(the rate is even higher when they are second and third marriages). The woman
fighting for the rights her possessive husband won´t give her, the man waiting
for a woman that would have been infidel and that probably won´t change; how
many cases can we mention? Anyhow, we can´t deny the necessity for true love,
or well, some love at least. In her poem “Love is not all”, Edna St. Vincent
Millay compares
love with basic necessities. While at the beginning being apathetic, saying she
will give love for peace or food, she finishes with the stanza “I do not think I would”. I think
that statement reflects the position many of us have. Probably we think: Love
is not all! I don´t want to suffer for it! I don´t need it! And here we are
crying out in the intimacy of our hearts for having it. That´s why we wonder
and keep wondering: What´s true love
exactly? Does it even exist? And if it does, is it worth the suffering it causes
to find it?
Philosophers, writers, geniuses,
presidents, and probably every human being had made each own effort on defining
love. One of Webster´s dictionary´s definitions says “unselfish loyal and benevolent
concern for the good of another”. Another dictionary defines it as deep,
tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward a person… [With]…a
sense of underlying oneness. And according to an extremely wise man I admire: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not
boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but
rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always
perseveres. Love never fails.” We can´t define love in just one term, probably
who hasn´t risked for the adventure of loving can´t understand it. But the one
that has loved even fearing to loose it all, knows how it is. The people that
had done so could identify love in the smile of a friend, in the tenderness of
a mother, in the innocence of a child, in the simplicity of giving, in the eyes
of the old couple that seem happy just to stare at each other´s eyes seeing him/her
as if it was the first time she/he does.
Have you ever
wondered what happened in the fairy tales after the last phrase? Have you
wondered what happens when the Prince Charming wakes up with the beautiful
princess that´s now without her makeup and not teeth brushed? Have you ever
seen an old couple walking trough the street? Isn´t it a miracle when you see
the pure sweet eyes the old man has for her wife? If you´ve had the blessing to
ask an old man how he would recognize her wife in the dark, probably he would
answer “by her hands”. How is that stage after the fairy tales´ phrase called?
Marriage. And it could be as storm full as miraculous depending on the capacity
the couple have for loving each other.
What´s true love and
is it worth it? In a summary, love is devotion, compromise and sacrifice. Love is
a daily decision: a decision to forgive,
a decision to love, a decision to be there, a decision to put my loved one´s
happiness before mine. Love makes you belong to someone, gives you a purpose, and
makes it all complete. Not only a couple love, but a friend´s love, a mother´s
love. Whether life is or
is not worth the pain of being lived, or, rather, whether it is worth the pain
and the pleasure of being live depends, first and foremost on one’s capacity
for love.1 .Just as our fast-food society fights with the concept
that there are no shortcuts for any place worth going2, it
categorizes marriage as antique and makes cheap and easy the meaning of true
love. Anyhow true love is as rare as worth it. Who haven´t loved haven´t lived.
RESOURCES:
2.
Beverly
Sills
Fictional newspaper article
After days
of investigation, the police ended looking. Yesterday it was discovered that
the disappeared child never existed. The struggle of the Hamilton family for
finding Charles ended when they new he was a product of their child John´s
vivid imagination. After four days of intense research they discovered that the
person John was talking about was his imaginary friend.
It all
started last Thursday. John Hamilton, a six year old kid was going to his
psychologist to make an attention test. He said to Mary, his mother, that his
friend Charles was going with him and that both will play in his house later.
Anxious to know who was this so-called friend John met in school, at least she
guessed so, she acceded. When she came to pick him up, she was shocked not to
see Charles. When she asked what happened with him, John told her with tears he
had disappeared while going to buy a Coke. Deeply worried, she asked for the
kid´s last name at what John answered “I don´t know”.” Do you know him from
school?”- She asked. “No, I met him at the park and then he started coming to
my house”- he answered.
Mary
couldn´t know whether the tale of her kid was true or not. She worked until 8
o´clock, time in which his little friends would be at home preparing to sleep.
Frightened, she called the police and notified the neighbors. Nobody knew
anything about Charles. Four days later, yesterday, John was jumping with
intense happiness “Charles is back”- he screamed. His parents asked him “Where
is him? How do you know that?” and he answered “Next to me. Don´t you see him?”
That
brought his dad, Albert, memories of the imaginary friend he had as a child. He
had believed in him as vividly as John does. Sweetened by the innocence of
their child as much as embarrassed to admit it was all a huge mistake, they
called the police and notified the neighborhood of the incident.
“I didn´t
knew what to do”- declared Mary. “I wanted to laugh, wanted to cry. I was
amazed by the imagination of my kid. It´s a funny, embarrassing story to tell
because we actually believed everything he said and acted by impulse and with
fear. At least this experience will make us to pay Johnny more attention while
he tells us something. We won´t like to make any mistake like this ever again.”
– she said as she laughed on the experience.
Flannery O Connor´s biography
Strong,
original, drawn with hard outlines and in a peculiarly modern style, at once
bizarrely comic and completely serious; that´s how Wise Blood, Mary Flannery O´
Connor´s first novel is described. This author could express grace in terms of
violence, make you laugh with a story that you know is deep, philosophical and
extremely serious. She had inherited
lupus, a painful and wasting disease; however, she spoke about disease before
death as a blessing, as a huge way of learning. I think that way of thinking
illustrates a lot the way she thought
about the other situations of life. She was a disciplined writer totally
devoted to God, who in each character and story taught with subtlety (but
remarkably) about Him. With violence she expressed her disagree with a secular
culture that usually excluded God from itself. Even though that violence was misunderstood
for some and that she just lived 39 years, her way of writing and living
inspired many books, comments and lives.
She was
born in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925, the only child of Edward F.
O'Connor and Regina Cline O’Connor. His father was sick of lupus, disease she
later inherited, and he died when she was just 15 years old. O'Connor
graduated from Georgia State College for Women in Milledgeville with a degree
in social science in 1945. A fellowship enabled her to attend the honorable Writers'
Workshop at the State University of Iowa, from which she received a Master of
Fine Arts degree in 1947.She wrote two
novels: Wise
Blood (1952)
and The Violent Bear It Away (1960),
and two collections of short stories: A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other
Stories (1955) and Everything That Rises Must Converge (published posthumously in 1965). Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, prize named on his honor, is a
prize given annually to an outstanding collection of short stories. There´s no
doubt that this woman who was diagnosed with inherited lupus
at his short 25 years, was strong enough to succeed and left her mark.
Her
personality, principles and habits are admirable. She forced herself to sit for
two hours each day with no distraction for writing, even if no inspiration
came. She could work for months and then drop it all but still didn´t consider
it a waste of time. Her philosophy of transcendent was considered
unconventional and disturbing for some, about it she wrote “grace changes us and change is
painful”. Her targets while writing were optimism, self satisfaction and
self-righteousness. No
biography of Flannery O'Connor has yet been published, but there are more than
a dozen critical studies of her fiction. These include Leon Driskell and Joan
Brittain, Eternal Crossroads: The Art
of Flannery O'Connor (1971); David Eggenschwiler, The Christian Humanism of Flannery O'Connor
(1972); Dorothy Tuck McFarland, Flannery
O'Connor (1976); and Dorothy Walters, Flannery O'Connor (1973), among others. Her
stories, comforting and many times shocking, as well as her life and quotes, would
teach us a lot of lessons. While lots are yelling for different reasons, many
times not transcendental ones,; she that suffered a painful disease and a
guaranteed dead, did something about it and left something behind. I think
that´s the greatest lesson her life, always coherent with her words, could
teach us.All about dreams
¨Mr. Disney how are you today?¨- Asked one of the workers while pruning
grass. ¨Fine¨’ Said the man that
apparently was seated in a park seat seeing space, without even looking at his
worker. ¨Excuse me Mr. Disney¨’ said the
curious worker ¨What are you looking at?¨ ¨I am looking at my mountain¨ -
Disney answered.¨ ¨I can see my mountain exactly in this place¨. Walt told his
architectures about this mountain and while he was talking they were writing
and then they draw the plans. He died before ¨Space Mountain¨ was constructed.
In the ceremony in which it was dedicated the governor, the mayor and also
Walt´s widow was there. One of the young executives stood up and presented her
saying ¨We are so sorry that Mr. Walt Disney is no here today for seeing this
mountain but we are so glad that his wife is here¨. Mrs. Disney walked to the
podium stared at the crowed and said ¨I must correct what this young man had
said, Walt had already seen this mountain, its you the ones that are seeing it
for first time¨ If we think in dreams and dreamers, I think that Walt Disney,
who made a great contribution to society that started all with a mouse, is a
great example of it. Definitions of
dreams are mixed and abstract but examples of dreams accomplished are easy to
understand and to agree with. This man said that a dream is a wish your heart
makes and that if you could dream something then you can do it and that the way
to get started is stop talking and start doing it. This man got what lots have
just in fantasies, he got the knowledge that he was on Earth for a reason, and
that the reason of his work is a lot more than money, he found happiness in
doing what he loved and his stories touched and moved to a change a lot of
hearts that start believing again because of his example.
Thinking on it, we ask ourselves, what did he get? How did he get it?
Well, he always said that what he got was a dream, a vision, hard work and the
desire to start instead of keep talking. So then, what is a dream? There are a
lot of opinions of what the word dream means, some say it is a fantasy that
does not have bases and that won´t ever be accomplish, some say it is a goal
you have, some say it is about purpose, others that we are just so sick about
reality that we find our comfort there. What I think about dreams is that they
are the prove that every human being is unique and that every human being has a
dream in his or her childhood that penetrates its heart and doesn´t let him
live happy until he makes something about it. If you ask people if they know
their purpose most of them will say ¨no¨, a dream gives it. A dream is the
desire you have that in this huge world that really doesn´t seem to care about
you, you´ll be remembered for something. A dream is a wish your heart makes,
your star that leads you to your destiny. It’s to realize that things as they
are in the moment could be better, and the desire to do the change from one to
another. Douglas H. Everett said ¨There are some people who live in a dream
world, and there are some who face reality; and then there are those who turn
one into the other¨. The last type of people are the ones that the World does
remember, are the great women and men that didn´t just keep living in a fantasy
but do something for becoming that fantasy real. There´s nothing good or worthy done ever in
the world without vision and for knowing your vision you must dream. Herman
Melville said once ¨Keep truth to the dreams of thy youth¨. And the point is,
you must keep true to them, follow them, live them, because they´ll make you
happy but also start planning, make goals for getting it. This world really
needs people that with hard work, vision and dreams do something for a change.
The richest place in the World is the cemetery because it has thousands
of book ever written, thousands of songs ever listened, thousands of plans to
accomplish what we still think is impossible. If there´s a dream burning
somewhere in your heart, and I am sure there is somewhere, do it. You are never
too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream. All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty
recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the
dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open
eyes, to make it possible. Remember that ¨ the way to get started is to quit talking and begin
doing¨
Sources:
The definitions of dreams at http://www.wordreference.com/definition/dreamand
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dream
For the story of the introduction:
the principles and the power of a vision by Myles Monroe.
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