Managing People - Managing a Business E-Book

Fredmund Malik

• Herausgeber: Campus Verlag
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: Die Malik ManagementSysteme
• Sprache: Deutsch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 136

Beschreibung

Management is no matter of ideology, nor is it a question of fashion. Management is a craft - the universal and most important discipline of the 21st century. Fredmund Malik, the leading expert in the field of general management, provides you with the knowledge it takes to be a successful executive and manager, in any position, within any organisation. Fredmund Malik cuts straight to the core tasks of management, exposing its errors, misunderstandings and uncertainties with surgical precision. He shows what constitutes management - and, above all, what does not. His standard model for right and good management demonstrates how good management works, relating to the leadership of people as well as businesses. Fredmund Malik's theory is system-oriented and can thus be applied regardless of time or place. It is designed to work in all areas and industries of any society, irrespective of changing trends or national and cultural differences. Taking as his point of departure the consistent traits displayed by complex systems - phenomena that executives and managers are likely to address on a daily basis - Malik sets the standard for sound management in a knowledge-based economy. Read more about the Malik Management Systems: Management Is a Craft The Principles of Effective Management Tasks of Effective Management Tools of Effective Management The Malik Management System and Its Users The General Management Functions Management For a New Era Instructions for Self-Organization Sovereignty and Leadership through Master Control Free Download Cybernetics: Background of the Malik Management Systems

Leseprobe

Fredmund Malik

Managing People - Managing a Business

Outline

Management is no matter of ideology, nor is it a question of fashion. Management is a craft – the universal and most important discipline of the 21st century. Fredmund Malik, the leading expert in the field of general management, provides you with the knowledge it takes to be a successful executive and manager, in any position, within any organisation.

Fredmund Malik cuts straight to the core tasks of management, exposing its errors, misunderstandings and uncertainties with surgical precision. He shows what constitutes management – and, above all, what does not. His standard model for right and good management demonstrates how good management works, relating to the leadership of people as well as businesses.

Fredmund Malik’s theory is system-oriented and can thus be applied regardless of time or place. It is designed to work in all areas and industries of any society, irrespective of changing trends or national and cultural differences. Taking as his point of departure the consistent traits displayed by complex systems – phenomena that executives and managers are likely to address on a daily basis – Malik sets the standard for sound management in a knowledge-based economy.Read more about the Malik Management Systems:

Management Is a Craft

The Principles of Effective Management

Tasks of Effective Management

Tools of Effective Management

The Malik Management System and Its Users

The General Management Functions

Management For a New Era

Instructions for Self-Organization

Sovereignty and Leadership through Master Control

Cybernetics: Background of the Malik Management Systems

Information about the author

Prof. Dr. Fredmund Malik is an orderly professor for corporate management with a teaching license from the University of St. Gallen, an internationally renowned management expert, the founder and chairman of Malik Management, and the creator of the Malik Management Systems® framework. He is also a bestselling and award-winning author of over ten books, including classics like "Managing Performing Living" and "Strategy of the Management of Complex Systems" (in German language), as well as a columnist for opinion-forming media and one of the most distinguished thought leaders in the area of management. As a board member and chairman of several governance bodies at renowned world market leaders, Malik also has broad first-hand knowledge of international corporate governance practice. In the 1990s, Malik was the first macroeconomic thinker - and for a long time the only one - to point out the damaging effects of neoliberalism to society as a whole. He was also the first to criticize the Anglo-Saxon business administration theory with its one-dimensional fixation on shareholder value, which Malik identified as one of the main causes of the global financial crisis. Thanks to his cybernetic methodology and toolset, Malik was one of the first to realize the imminent danger. As his tools enabled him to read the warning signs early on, Malik and his team developed innovative solutions to manage the complexity of today's major challenges. With his cybernetic-based management theory, Malik has been setting standards for Right and Good Management.

His numerous distinctions and awards include the Cross of Honor for Science of Art from the Republic of Austria, 2009, and the Heinz von Foerster Award for Organizational Cybernetics from the German Cybernetic Society, 2010.

What Management Is Not

“The deeper the problem that is ignored,

the greater the chances for fame and success.”

Heinz von Foerster, Cybernetician and philosopher1

Many people think management is the art of attaining wealth, fame and power. Those are the categories in which PR people and the media often report on management. They have about as much in common with professional management as does a low-budget thriller with the realities of police work.

There is much confusion about what management is, what it should be, and what it must not be. As management gains importance, countless definitions, concepts and ideas have emerged. Most of them are not only useless, they are also absurd and misleading. Some demonstrate a total lack of expertise in the field.

This confusion is one of the main drivers of deep-rooted misunderstandings, misapprehensions and ambiguous interpretations of management. It is also one of the main reasons why the advancement of this topical area progresses so slowly, if at all, and why there are so many recurrent trends and fashions. Another, highly expensive consequence is the alarming ineffectiveness of much of the existing management training, for it is a prerequisite for any training, no matter what kind, that the subject matter is unmistakably clear.

A good way to get started is by clarifying what management is not, thus helping to clear up some of the many widespread misunderstandings. My own understanding of what management is not has resulted from three decades of studying management in theory and practice; it has undergone thousands of revisions during that time and proven its worth over and over again. As we are not dealing with laws of nature here but with choices to be made in every organization for the sake of clarity, there is no obligation for readers to adopt my views. Those disagreeing with my suggestions are free to make their own choices, according to whatever seems more useful to them. These choices may be better or they may be worse. At any rate, the riskiest of all conceivable options is to not make exceedingly clear what management is and what it is most definitely not.

Management Is Not Status, Rank, and Privileges

If you understand management to mean rank and status, you will never be a good manager. Status and privileges are possible side effects rather than core elements of management. In most cases they can even interfere with professionalism. They are temptations which can easily result in extravagance, ego trips, and a general lack of contact with reality.

Management must be understood from the point of view of its function. It is about fulfilling tasks, performing, making a contribution. No contribution is made simply by being important. Personality cults have no place in management. Whoever aspires to achieve fame will be better off trying his luck in the world of entertainment.

Management Is Not Business Administration

In German-speaking countries, one of the most popular misconceptions is that Betriebswirtschaft – the discipline of business administration – and management (or management theory) are the same. This is wrong. And every new generation of business administration graduates contribute their share to the dissemination and strengthening of this erroneous belief.

Business administration and management are two entirely different things. Knowledge of business economics alone is never sufficient to manage a company. Rather, it requires additional skills which to this date have not been introduced to the academic discipline of business administration.2

While a certain degree of knowledge of business economics is without doubt important for managing a commercial enterprise, it is not that relevant for the management of other types of organization. For instance, marketing is important for every commercial enterprise buta minor issue for most hospitals (with the exception of certain fashionable clinics). Cost accounting is important for hospitals but less so for political parties. Production, logistics, purchasing, and research and development are functions not every type of institution requires. Indeed they have little significance for banks and insurance companies, and none at all for a multitude of other organizations.

In short, all organizations need management, but few need business administration. As a matter of fact, those that do are in the minority. For many, a business administration way of thinking would be downright harmful, as, for example, in the case of philharmonic orchestras.

Management Is Not Limited to Commercial Enterprises

The equating of management with business economics is attributable to the basic belief that management is predominantly or exclusively relevant for the world of business – that is to say, that mainly, or solely, commercial enterprises need to be managed – and also to the belief that management evolved in the business sector. At the same time, representatives of other organizations, sometimes condescendingly, tend to consider management something purely business-related and thus profane and materialistic. They do not realize that what they do is essentially also management, even though applied to another field.

Management is a universal societal function. It is needed in all societal institutions. The names used for it in each particular case are meaningless. For instance, the principal of a university is a manager with regard to a major share of his or her tasks – even if he or she may not like to see it that way. The same is true for the director of an opera house or an orchestra, for top-level government officials, principals of schools, and head physicians in hospitals. What matters is the function, not its name. This is something that top people outside the business world often fail to understand, which is why they frequently fail to get appropriate training.

Management did not evolve in the business world – this is only where its impact is most visible, and where the difference between right and wrong management can best be observed. One reason is that in commercial enterprises there is access to data that does not exist in other organizations. Many things can be measured that cannot be quantified in other sectors. Here, the impact of management errors and mistakes manifest themselves in facts and figures, and become evident much earlier than they would in many other organizations. This does not necessarily mean that in those other organizations management mistakes will always go undetected – rather, a possible dysfunction is revealed in other ways: in a hospital, for instance, it may be a patient operated on the wrong leg; in schools it may be an increase in violence among students.

Management Is Not Management of People

A rather widely held belief is that management is about managing people. It is a misconception, and its root cause lies in the fact that the term “management” is often used in the sense of managing individuals, groups or teams, not in the sense of managing entire organizations. The logical consequence is that management training is often understood to deal solely with management of people, and thus the major emphasis is put on psychological issues. Communication, too, is perceived to refer to the communicative interaction between people – although, in fact, this is where the fewest problems lie. The greatest challenge regarding communication is its organization: when to communicate what to whom; who needs to be told what when and by whom? These questions cannot be answered by psychological means – they require solid, system-driven general management.

Management does include management of people, but it is much more than that. Wherever people fail to understand that management must be applied to the institution as a whole, all their efforts are doomed to fail. For one thing, management of people is not simply about managing people but about managing people in organizations – which is different from people in their private lives. Likewise, organizations are often dealt with unilaterally if it is not understood that management refers to organizations made up of people. In short: what is often overlooked is that organizations and the people that constitute them are mutually dependent.

What we are dealing with is the management of people in organizations, and the shaping of organizations made up of people. And this is precisely what makes everything so difficult. In and by itself, each of these tasks would be relatively easy to solve; yet both in conjunction with one another are rather difficult to handle. This leads us to yet another problem: if people management is not viewed as having an inextricable connection with the functional requirements of organizations, the risk is that issues relevant to people’s private lives will be transferred to the organization – where they will be out of place in many cases. This phenomenon is reflected in large parts of motivation theory, but also in the question of whether a profession should or can be expected to be fun. Conversely, principles that are crucial for people in organizations (as organizations cannot function without them) are inconsiderately transferred to people’s private lives, where they do not belong and may even do harm.

In my experience, three quarters of the training programs on people management are useless or even misleading, as they leave such ambiguity, confusion, and existing differences unconsidered.

When management is understood to be people management, the result is a certain prevalence of psychological factors with partially detrimental effects. Management problems are mistaken for psychological problems; solutions are sought in the field of psychology. Efforts focus on so-called “difficult” employees although the “normal” ones – those without problems – are by far in the majority, which causes problems of bias. Those in functions of responsibility forget that their task is not to change, diagnose, and therapeutically treat people, but to accept them as they are and make use of their strengths. The bottom-line result is a massive disorientation, as everything is seen in purely psychological categories and the whole thing moves further and further away from what good management actually is. Management means adapting organizations to human nature, not the other way round. Whoever practices good management will also need psychology – but of a very different kind, as people-oriented organizations do not develop neuroses or provoke avoidable conflicts.

Management Is Not Doing Business

20 years ago, only few people outside English-speaking countries knew and used the term “management”. Today it has worldwide currency, and apart from having lost its original meaning it has gained numerous others, including some rather absurd ones.

For instance, the term “management” is often used when referring to business transactions – including everything from the activities of honorable merchants to downright shady deals. As a result, even such crucial differences are veiled in contemporary usage of the term.

Many think that by studying the subject of management they will learn how to get better bargains. That, however, has nothing to do with management. These people would probably be better off attending a sales training. Of course companies need to do business, but that is not what we refer to in business management theory when we use the term management; rather, we refer to managing the company that does business. “Doing business” and “managing a company” are two things that need to be clearly distinguished. The latter requires management – the former hardly does.

When it comes to making a deal, management might even be an obstacle. Why? Because management requires thinking in greater dimensions and longer time horizons. From this perspective a short-term business deal may appear counterproductive, for instance, if it is inconsistent with overriding strategic goals. Just think of a business sellinga bad product, which will drive customers to the competition and, in the longer term, cause an erosion of trust in the brand or company.

Management Is Not Entrepreneurship

The perception just described, of management being about doing business, is closely related to another one: of management training helping you become a better entrepreneur, or simply become an entrepreneur. This is another thing management cannot accomplish (nor, by the way, can a course of study in business management,).

Being an entrepreneur – initiating a business venture and taking the associated risk – is not the same as being a businessperson, and it is not identical to managing a business. That does not mean that both skills cannot coincide in one person – which does happens occasionally though only in rare cases.

This is another differentiation which is often neglected. It is drowned in the maze of arbitrary conceptions, terms, and interpretations – although there are dozens of examples from day-to-day experience that should make the difference clear. It is usually most evident wherever entrepreneurs fail to pass on their business to the next generation: it either goes down with them or it is sold. It takes management to make one’s business independent of oneself.

Being successful as an entrepreneur is difficult enough. The real challenges, however, emerge with the next step, the business’s next development phase. It may be right and true when it is said that an entrepreneur must have certain personal qualities, but that has nothing to do with what the business needs in order to be independent of him or her.

My suggestion to distinguish between entrepreneurs and managers also refutes the theory so adamantly upheld, according to which profit is seen as being the chief motivation for entrepreneurs: what an entrepreneur wants is usually different from what a business needs. This is where we must clearly differentiate. It is also the reason why management is not the same as entrepreneurship.