Management Ch. 1 — Leading Edge Management

Daft, Management 15e. 75 cards across all six learning objectives: new manager competencies, the four management functions, efficiency vs effectiveness, technical/human/conceptual skills, new manager challenges, and Mintzberg's ten roles.

Define management (the textbook definition).

Attaining organizational goals in an effective and efficient way through planning, organizing, leading, and controlling organizational resources.

Exhibit 1.1: name the five management principles that are shifting, and the shift for each.

Overseeing work: controller to enabler/facilitator. Accomplishing tasks: supervising individuals to leading teams. Managing relationships: conflict and competition to collaboration, including social media. Leading: autocratic to empowering, sometimes self-managing. Designing: maintaining stability to mobilizing for change, including AI and remote work.

What does a manager who acts as an enabler rather than a controller actually do day to day?

Shapes the culture, systems, and conditions of work, then gives people freedom to move the organization forward. Collaborates, removes obstacles, provides learning opportunities, and offers feedback, coaching, and career guidance instead of management by keeping tabs.

Why are team leadership skills now considered crucial?

Because most work is done in teams rather than by individuals.

What is gen AI?

A learning system that generates original high quality text, images, and other content based on the data fed into it. It is trained on enormous volumes of text and images, finds patterns in language, and responds in natural language.

What did McKinsey estimate about gen AI's reach, and where is the impact felt first?

Gen AI could automate up to 70 percent of business activities across all occupations over the next decade. The biggest initial impact is improving jobs rather than eliminating them, since dull repetitive tasks get delegated to the technology.

Give two examples from the chapter of AI already doing managerial or creative work.

A major Swedish bank uses a virtual assistant to answer customer questions in natural language. Pandora generates personalized playlists from user preferences. A furniture designer can feed AI design criteria and get hundreds of chair designs back, which sparks further ideas.

What did the Wall Street Journal's gen AI business plan experiment show?

The AI handled structure, logic, relevant detail, creativity, and key elements well. The output was a strong start but still needed humans for sufficient detail and personalization.

Define remote work.

Doing your job from a location different than a central office.

Trace the arc of remote work: what went right first, then what went wrong?

Early on employees gained autonomy, flexibility, work-life balance, and job satisfaction, while management gained cost savings on office space, a larger talent pool, digital upgrading, and rising productivity. After a year or two productivity sank, communication and collaboration gaps opened, culture and trust weakened, and fewer in-person meetings meant fewer innovation sparks.

Define hybrid workplace and give the typical arrangement.

Employees work part of the week in the office and part of the week remotely. The typical arrangement is three days per week in the office.

Why did the hybrid workplace emerge as the compromise?

Managers could no longer physically see their team members and were not ready to accept permanent remote work with less control and influence. Hybrid preserves some employee autonomy and work-life balance while letting managers rebuild culture and innovation through in-person collaboration.

How did the return-to-office push play out at Google and Amazon?

Both were early boosters of remote work, then pushed people back as productivity declined. A Google memo said absence three days a week would be noted in performance reviews. Amazon signaled no promotions for employees who refused to come in. Employee resistance spread widely, and in one month of 2023 about 600,000 US workers faced return-to-office mandates.

What did Laxman Narasimhan do on becoming Starbucks CEO, and why?

He spent 40 hours training as a barista, worked the drive-through and register, and planned to keep working four hours a month in stores, expecting senior leaders to do the same. Starbucks had admitted its customer service had declined, and staying connected to frontline employees was a top priority amid a unionization push, supply chain delays, and outdated payment technology.

What does the Uber and Travis Kalanick story illustrate about management style?

His bold, competitive style drove rapid expansion but instilled an aggressive, combative culture. Deception of regulators, accusations of stealing a rival's technology, and discrimination and harassment charges damaged Uber's reputation and cost it market share. Dara Khosrowshahi replaced him with a mandate to build a more collaborative culture.

What is the transformation the world of management is undergoing?

Managers must do more with less, engage employees' hearts and minds rather than just physical energy, treat change as natural rather than stability, and inspire a vision and cultural values that let people build a collaborative, productive workplace.

Name the four management functions in order.

Planning, organizing, leading, controlling.

Define planning.

Identifying goals for future organizational performance and deciding on the tasks and use of resources needed to attain them. It defines where the organization wants to be in the future and how to get there.

What is the chapter's planning example at Tesla?

Musk framed Tesla's ultimate goal as eliminating global dependence on fossil fuels and reaching production of 20 million vehicles a year. A major mechanism for that goal is a factory in Monterrey, Mexico to produce EVs more affordable than any car Tesla currently sells.

Define organizing.

Assigning tasks, grouping tasks into departments, delegating authority, and allocating resources across the organization to accomplish what the organization is trying to do.

How does Amazon illustrate organizing?

Amazon reorganized its vast fulfillment network from shipping items coast to coast into self-sufficient geographic regions, placing common items closer to customers to deliver faster and more cheaply.

Define leading.

The use of influence to motivate people to achieve organizational goals. It means creating a shared culture and values, communicating goals throughout the organization, and infusing employees with the desire to perform at a high level.

How did Sergio Marchionne demonstrate leading at Fiat Chrysler?

He spent about two weeks a month in Michigan meeting with sales, marketing, and industrial operations teams to share plans and motivate people toward ambitious goals. He skipped the 15th-floor executive suite for an office near the engineering center, delegated real decision authority, and held weekend meetings with executive teams around a U-shaped table.

Define controlling.

Monitoring employees' activities, determining whether the organization is moving toward its goals, and making corrections as necessary.

What is the recent trend in controlling, and what has not changed?

Companies place less emphasis on top-down control and more on training employees to monitor and correct themselves. The ultimate responsibility for control still rests with managers.

How does the early Instagram story illustrate controlling?

The co-founders needed someone to maintain order and stop wasted time and resources as the company expanded. When Marne Levine was hired as COO the company did not even have a budget, and uncoordinated teams were adding employees and making resource commitments independently. Creating a formal budget was one of her first tasks, and the added control let Instagram launch features faster.

Exhibit 1.2: describe the process of management from input to output.

Resources go in (human, financial, raw materials, technological, information), pass through the four management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, and produce performance (attaining goals, products, services, efficiency, effectiveness).

Whose ideas were simplified into the four management functions, and who do the functions apply to?

Peter Drucker's. They apply not only to top executives like Mark Zuckerberg at Meta or Mary Barra at GM, but equally to a local restaurant manager, an airport security team leader, and a primary school principal.

Define organizational effectiveness.

The degree to which the organization achieves a stated goal, or succeeds in accomplishing what it tries to do. It means providing a product or service that customers value.

Define organizational efficiency.

The amount of resources used to achieve an organizational goal, based on how much raw material, money, and people are needed to produce a given volume of output.

Define performance.

The organization's ability to attain its goals by using resources in an efficient and effective way.

Can efficiency and effectiveness both be high at once, and what is the trap?

Yes, both can be high in the same organization. The trap is that severe cost-cutting to improve efficiency, whether through technology or old-fashioned frugality, can sometimes damage effectiveness.

Why is management easy to undervalue?

Management work is often intangible and unseen, so it can look disconnected from the real work of the organization. Yet without good management no organization achieves operational excellence.

What does the fall of WeWork illustrate?

WeWork was one of the most promising US start-ups of the early 2010s, but in 2019 it turned out to be worth 40 billion dollars less than its presumed value. Senior leaders excelled at creating hype but failed at operational excellence. It declared bankruptcy in 2023.

What did the Bloom and Van Reenen study of Indian textile factories show?

Improved middle management practices were introduced in 20 factories and compared with untrained factories. After four months of training in better management methods, the test factories cut defects by 50 percent, boosted productivity and output, and improved profits by 200,000 dollars a year.

How does Block, Inc. illustrate efficiency that also raises effectiveness?

Block lets any smartphone act as a point-of-sale terminal that accepts credit cards. Small businesses that once turned customers away because they could not afford card fees can now process cards, so customers get to pay how they want and businesses capture sales they would have missed.

What does Ford illustrate about inefficiency?

Ford reported poor financial performance because of deeply rooted corporate inefficiencies, with annual costs roughly 7 to 8 billion dollars too high relative to competitors like GM and Stellantis. Even after cutting 3,000 US and 3,800 European jobs, entrenched costs remained, limiting Ford's ability to invest in an electric, high-tech future.

What is the ultimate responsibility of managers with respect to performance?

To achieve high performance, which means attaining organizational goals by using resources both efficiently and effectively. Not one or the other.

Name the three categories of management skills.

Conceptual, human, and technical.

Define technical skills.

Mastery of the methods, techniques, and equipment involved in specific functions such as engineering, manufacturing, or finance. They also include specialized knowledge, analytical ability, and competent use of tools and techniques to solve problems in that discipline.

Define human skills.

The manager's ability to work with and through other people and to work effectively as a group member. Demonstrated in how a manager relates to others: motivating, facilitating, coordinating, leading, communicating, and resolving conflict.

Define conceptual skills.

The cognitive ability to see the organization as a whole system and understand the relationships among its parts. Knowing how one's team fits into the total organization and how the organization fits into its industry, community, and broader business and social environment. It means thinking strategically, taking the broad long-term view, and identifying, evaluating, and solving complex problems.

Exhibit 1.3: how does the skill mix change as you move up the hierarchy?

Nonmanagers and individual contributors rely most on technical skills, with less human and little conceptual. Middle managers use less technical, heavily human, and substantially more conceptual skills. The higher you go, the more conceptual skills dominate and the less technical skill matters.

Which skill matters most for frontline managers, and what does the research say about it?

Human skills. Studies find that the motivational skill of the frontline manager is the single most important factor in whether people feel engaged with their work and committed to the organization.

Which conceptual issues are senior managers facing today?

How to integrate artificial intelligence, whether to fight to bring employees back to the office, how to navigate the climate crisis, and how to engage divisive political issues.

What nearly derailed Kelly Grier's career at EY, and how did she fix it?

Overreliance on technical skills. Given a broad management role in Europe, she says her technical skills gave her undue confidence that teams would fall in line. They did not, insisting their local markets had unique needs. She began meeting local partners to learn how to best serve clients, and went on to become US and Americas Managing Partner.

What did Google's study of its own managers find?

Google analyzed performance reviews, feedback surveys, and award nominations to see what makes a good manager of technical people. Technical expertise ranked low. Nearly all of the top ten behaviors relate to human skills: being a good coach, empowering without micromanaging, creating an inclusive team environment, being productive and results-oriented, communicating and listening, supporting career development, having a clear vision and strategy, having enough technical skill to advise, collaborating across the company, and being a strong decision maker.

What does Ursula Burns at Xerox illustrate?

Conceptual skills at the top. As the first African American woman to lead a major US corporation, she needed superb conceptual skills to transform a company known for paper copies into one that could compete in a fast-changing technology industry, which required understanding the company, the industry, and the wider environment.

What does Volkswagen illustrate about failed management skills?

The diesel emissions scandal, where VW admitted using software to cheat US emissions tests, cost the CEO his job and got several senior managers fired. More recently, analysis of its software venture Cariad concluded management lacked the leadership skills to meet deadlines, and late, glitch-filled software delayed new EV launches or shipped vehicles with incomplete software.

Exhibit 1.5: what is the number one cause of manager failure and how often was it cited?

Ineffective communication skills and practices, cited by 81 percent of managers surveyed.

Exhibit 1.5: list the top causes of manager failure in order.

1. Ineffective communication 81 percent. 2. Poor work relationships and interpersonal skills 78 percent. 3. Person-job mismatch 69 percent. 4. Failure to clarify direction or performance expectations 64 percent. 5. Failure to adapt and break old habits 57 percent. 6. Breakdown of delegation and empowerment 56 percent. 7. Lack of personal integrity and trustworthiness 52 percent. 8. Inability to develop cooperation and teamwork 50 percent. 9. Inability to lead or motivate others 47 percent. 10. Poor planning practices and reactionary behavior 45 percent.

What pattern runs through the top causes of manager failure?

Most reflect poor human skills: failing to develop good work relationships, failing to clarify direction and expectations, and being unable to create cooperation and teamwork. Skill shortcomings become most visible under rapid change, uncertainty, or crisis.

What did Linda Hill's study of 19 new managers find?

Becoming a manager is not just learning a new set of skills. It is a profound transformation in how people think of themselves, a change in personal identity that requires letting go of deeply held attitudes and habits and learning new ways of thinking.

Exhibit 1.6: contrast the individual performer identity with the manager identity.

Individual performer: specialist who performs specific tasks, gets things done through their own efforts, acts as an individual actor, works relatively independently. Manager: generalist who coordinates diverse tasks, gets things done through others, acts as a network builder, works in a highly interdependent manner.

What is the most common mistake new managers make?

Wanting to do all the work themselves rather than delegating to others and developing others' abilities. Hill's reminder is that a manager must be an instrument for getting things done through others, not the one doing the work.

Which level of manager experiences the most burnout and attrition, and why?

First-line supervisors. Many people promoted into management have little idea what the job entails and receive little training in how to handle the new role.

Besides delegation, what other expectation trips up new managers?

Expecting greater freedom to do what they think is best. Managers actually find themselves hemmed in by interdependencies, and success means building teams and networks and becoming a motivator and organizer inside a highly interdependent system.

What went wrong in Nikki Barua's first management experience?

The CEO of Beyond Barriers says she struggled to delegate and took on everyone's jobs until she was overwhelmed. She was impatient with her team and set impossible goals without empowering them, and got frustrated when the team misread expectations she had never communicated. She felt like an imposter, and sought out an admired manager as a mentor to build the right mindset and skill set.

How do most new managers learn the role, and what are organizations doing about it?

Many learn by trial by fire on the job. Many organizations now respond with new-manager training, and some are more careful in selection, ensuring candidates understand what management involves and genuinely want to be a manager.

How did Mintzberg study what managers actually do, and what did he produce?

He followed managers around and recorded all their activities. He produced a description of managerial work with three general characteristics and ten roles, since supported by other research.

What do the studies say about the pace and fragmentation of managerial work?

A London School of Economics and Harvard Business School study found CEOs average only about six hours a week working alone, with the rest spent in meetings, on the phone, traveling, and talking with others. Mintzberg found a top executive spends less than nine minutes on any one activity, and one survey found some first-line supervisors average an activity every 48 seconds.

Define role as Mintzberg uses it.

A set of expectations for a manager's behavior.

Name the three categories of manager roles and what each manages through.

Informational, which is managing by information. Interpersonal, which is managing through people. Decisional, which is managing through action.

Name the three informational roles and what each involves.

Monitor: seeks and receives information, scans the internet, periodicals, and reports, maintains personal contacts. Disseminator: forwards information to other organization members through memos, reports, and calls. Spokesperson: transmits information to outsiders through speeches and reports.

Name the three interpersonal roles and what each involves.

Figurehead: performs ceremonial and symbolic duties such as greeting visitors and signing legal documents. Leader: directs and motivates subordinates, trains, counsels, and communicates with them. Liaison: maintains information links inside and outside the organization.

Name the four decisional roles and what each involves.

Entrepreneur: initiates improvement projects, identifies new ideas, delegates idea responsibility. Disturbance handler: takes corrective action during conflicts or crises and resolves disputes. Resource allocator: decides who gets resources, sets schedules, budgets, and priorities. Negotiator: represents team or department interests in negotiations over budgets, union contracts, and purchases.

How much of a general manager's time goes to communication?

About 75 percent is spent communicating with other people.

Define first-level (supervisory) managers and their primary focus.

Managers at the first or second level of management who are directly responsible for producing goods and services. Their primary focus is facilitating individual employee performance.

Define middle managers and their primary focus.

Managers at the middle levels of the organization responsible for major departments. The focus shifts from individual performance to facilitating teams: allocating resources, coordinating teams, and putting top management's plans into action.

Define top managers and their primary focus.

Managers at the top of the hierarchy, often called C-level or chief managers, responsible for major organizational divisions and the entire organization. Their primary focus is monitoring the external environment and determining the best strategy to compete.

Define general managers and give an example.

Managers responsible for multiple functional departments that make up a self-contained division with profit and loss responsibility. Examples include a Nordstrom department store or a Honda assembly plant.

Define functional managers.

Managers responsible for an individual department with a specialized functional task, staffed by employees with similar training and skills. Functional departments include marketing, production, finance, and human resources.

Define project managers.

Managers responsible for a temporary work project involving people from various functions and levels. Because projects are temporary, team members return to their normal jobs when the project ends.

Distinguish line managers from staff managers.

Line managers are in charge of functions that directly advance the organization's core work, such as manufacturing or sales. Staff managers head departments that support the line with specialized advisory or support functions, such as legal, accounting, and HR.

Why does the chapter say a low score on the Manager Achievement self-assessment is better?

A high score signals a focus on personal achievement separate from others, which suits a specialist or individual contributor. A manager is a generalist who gets things done through other people, so wanting to be the individual winner can lead you to compete with your own people instead of developing the