Management and Marketing

Sometimes as a student, you need a bit of extra help to keep up with your course. I recommend you check out the range of professional support services that can provide just that – including essay writing services, dissertation writing services, coursework writing services, Proofreading, marking, editing and critiquing. Don’t sit there and struggle – your course is an investment and you owe it to yourself to get help when you need it.

Another site I want to recommend while I remember is Business Balls: http://www.businessballs.com/

Some articles that I’ve found really helpful that were also recommended to me:

McGregor’s XY theory: http://www.businessballs.com/mcgregor.htm

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs if you ever need a good explanation to send to someone or a refresh yourself! : http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm

Personality styles and types: http://www.businessballs.com/personalitystylesmodels.htm

Bruce Tuckman’s team formation: http://www.businessballs.com/tuckmanformingstormingnormingperforming.htm (the first time I read about this was on a different site though – try http://www.teal.org.uk/et/teampro.htm)

I hope to have the chance to write up my thoughts on these properly at some point but thought I’d start off by sharing the links.

Here’s a really interesting blog on engineering management from the former director of engineering at Facebook:

http://www.algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management.html

The posts are relevant for not just engineering but business in general.

This week we were looking at the decision of whether to promote an existing employee to manager or recruit someone new to take the position. I took some time to draft up a list of management and leadership skills, as a starting point for identifying what we should be looking for from our managers.  Here’s my list – it’s a draft and by no means complete – I’m hoping to refine it over the next few months depending on the feedback I get from other managers.  In my view, most managers would need at least a basic understanding in each area and some would need both an advanced understanding and the ability to apply/train.  So you could set a target level for each manager and then record the level they are currently at, to give them training goals.

Technical skills

• Process or technique knowledge and proficiency in discipline managed.

Management skills

Resource management

• Financial resources (how money will be spent to get the work done, accounting for these expenditures)
• Material resources (obtaining and seeing to the appropriate use of equipment, facilities, and materials needed)
• Personnel resources (obtaining and seeing to adequate staffing levels)
• Time management (managing own time and other peoples’ time)
• Physical office management

Finance management

• Budget management (planning, monitoring, controlling)
• Finance process management
• Forecasting
• Finance decisions (deriving/using financial info to assist with decision making)
• Cost benefit analysis
• Breakeven analysis (should this go in operations?)
• Funding
• Measuring and managing organisational performance
• Tax
• Cash flow

(more…)

I’ve used this set of appraisal questions many times, with a good response. Employees are given the questions in advance and don’t have to answer every single one – they work like prompts.

• What do you like/dislike most about your job right now?
• Is anyone or anything making your life at work difficult? How can this be resolved?
• Do you feel there’s anything you’re struggling with that you could train on?
• Is there any way you want to expand your range of skills that could benefit the department/company?
• Is there anyone in the department/company who you feel you could help perform better? (yes that includes me!)
• What motivates you most?

(more…)

I’m amazed how much money people are given in their marketing budgets with goals like ‘increase the Company’s revenue’. Managers must have money to throw away! No goal is worth setting unless it is a SMART goal.

SMART stands for : Specific – Measurable – Attainable – Realistic – Timely.

My number one rule for setting goals is not to pluck them out of thin air – look at current figures and trends to find realistic goals. You should always aim to beat what would happen, had you not embarked on the project.

Specific – A specific goal has a much greater chance of being accomplished than a general goal. To set a specific goal you must answer the six “W” questions so far as they are applicable:

• Who – Who is involved?
• What – What must be accomplished?
• Where – Identify a location
• When – Establish a time frame
• Which – Identify requirements and constraints.
• Why – Specific reasons, purpose or benefits of accomplishing the goal. (more…)