Management and Marketing

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.

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

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