LEVELS OF MANAGERS

A manager is responsible for combining and coordinating the people, the technology, the job task and other resources to effectively achieve the objectives of an organisation. You may be a manager in charge of constructing a plant or managing a bank or supervising a group of life insurance agents or training a football team. In most of the situations, you have others who are your subordinates reporting to you. The subordinates themselves may be managers having subordinates below to report to them. Therefore, we talk of levels of managers in an organisation.

The First Level Managers: These managers are in direct contact with the employees, who usually produce the goods or service outputs of an organisation. They are referred to as supervisors or foremen in some organisations. You may be associated with the employees who directly produce goods or render service outputs. Hence, your may belong to the first level managers. In some government offices, the superintendent of the office supervising the work of typists, despatch clerks, etc. belongs to this category. In the industry, it is the foreman, who is in direct contact with the rank-and-file workers, producing goods or services.

The Middle Level Managers: These managers are those with a number of responsibilities and linking or connecting activities. They direct the activities of the first level managers. For example, a district educational officer or a block development officer belongs to the middle level with the principals of schools and gram servers reporting to the district educational officer and block development officer respectively.

The Top Level Managers: The top level managers are a small group of policy makers responsible for the overall strategic management of the organisations. It is the responsibility of the top managers to develop the objectives and strategies of the organisation. It is the top management that must sense the demands of the political, social and competitive environments on the organisation. A President or a Chief Executive or a District Magistrate are examples of top managerial level.

THE MANAGERIAL SKILLS AT VARIOUS LEVELS

These skills refer to the personal ability put to use by the manager in specific position that he or she holds in the organisational hierarchy.

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MANAGEMENT SKILLS

An effective manager needs skills to plan, control, organise, lead, and finally to take decisions. In each case, a manager must exercise a unique set of skills.

1. PLANNING SKILLS

As part of the management process you attempt to define the future state of your organisation. You are not trying to predict the future, but rather to uncover things in the present to ensure that the organisation does have a future. Hence planning skills will include:

·         being able to think ahead;

·         ability to forecast future environmental trends affecting the organisation;

·         ability to state organisational objectives;

·        ability to choose strategies that will help in attaining these objectives with respect to future trends; and

·  ability to arrive at performance standards or yardsticks for monitoring the implementation of these strategies, etc.

With growing complexity in the operations of large organisations, managers are expected to acquire skills to interact with intermediate planning systems such as a computer.

2. ORGANISING SKILLS

As you have seen, planning specifies the future course of direction of an organisation. The organising process follows the planning process. 'While planning specifies what will be achieved when, organising specifies who will achieve what and how it will be achieved.

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MANAGEMENT PROCESSES

Four important management processes are planning, controlling, organizing and leading. Decision making is an integral part of management process as all the other four processes involve Decision making. A particular manager may be more concerned with say, controlling and organising, while another may be more concerned with planning. The degree of involvement with each of these processes may vary from manager to manager, but essentially all managers have to be concerned with these processes. We shall first take up the planning process because only when there is planning can the other processes follow in logical sequence.

PLANNING

Planning is the most basic and pervasive process involved in managing. It means deciding in advance what actions to take and when and how to take them.

Planning is needed, firstly for committing and allocating the organisation's limited resources towards achieving its objectives in the best possible manner and, secondly for anticipating the future opportunities and problems.

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MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

THE SYSTEMS CONCEPT

Every practising manager knows from experience that whatever actions and decisions he takes, in any particular area of activity, have results which extend well beyond that specific activity. The impact of decisions in some cases affect the whole organization and even external environment. A simple decision to throw out an inefficient, lazy worker can trigger off union activity which can, in extreme situations, even result in strike. The situation may become so hot that the union forces the neighbouring units also to join the strike. Thus when a manager takes a decision he never views its impact in isolation but tries to understand and anticipate its repercussions on the entire organisation and the environment. The manager understands that his organisation is a totality of many, inter-related, inter-dependent parts, put together for achieving the organisational objectives. This in a nutshell is the very essence of the systems concept.

A system is defined as a sum total of individuals but inter-related parts (sub-systems), and are put together according to a specific scheme or plan, to achieve the pre-stated objectives.

A system has the following components:

1.   A number of parts of sub-systems which when put together in a specific manner form a whole system

2.   Boundaries within which it exists

3.   A specific goal or goals. This goal is expressed in terms of an output which is achieved by receiving input and processing it to form the output

4.   Close inter-relationship and inter-dependency amongst the various sub-systems

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RESPONSIBILITIES OF PROFESSIONAL MANAGER

A firm is a social institution. Its very existence is dependent upon its harmonious relationships with various segments of the society. This harmonious relationship emanates from the firm's positive responsiveness to the various segments and its closely associated with the tasks a manager is expected to perform. The process of evolving this mutual relationship between firms and various interest groups begins by acknowledging the existence of the responsibilities of a manager. These responsibilities are towards customers, shareholders, employees, suppliers, distributors and retailers, competitors, unions, government and society.

1.   RESPONSIBILITY TOWARDS CUSTOMERS

The manager must always remember that the customer comes first. The starting point for the business firm is an understanding of the needs of the customer, and the firm's foremost responsibility is towards the customer.

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TASKS OF PROFESSIONAL MANAGER

There is a lot of confusion over the much widely used terms-professional management and professional managers. Some researchers contend there is nothing like professional management. Management is a discipline. There are practitioners of this discipline who practise management as a profession and thus are, professional managers. Just as there are doctors and lawyers by profession similarly there are professional managers. As doctors practise medicine, managers practise management. The only difference between professional managers and other professionals is that, while the latter must possess a formal degree in their discipline, a professional manager need not have a formal degree or education in management. He may have learnt the necessary skills and gained competence from his experience.

The second characteristic of a professional manager is that his primary concern is the organisation or the company with which he works. This is true whether the manager works for a private or public sector or a multinational company; whether he is the executive director or the personnel manager reporting to the executive director. The professional manager always has his company's overall perspective in his mind and all his actions are guided by the company's objectives.

The third and the most important characteristic of a professional manager is that he is responsible for performance. Managing involves collecting and utilising resources (money, men, materials and machines) in the most optimal manner for achievement of some pre-determined objectives or results. It is the professional manager's responsibility to utilise resources to produce the required results. Responsibility and performance are really the key words in defining a manager's role. Performance implies action, and action necessitates taking specific steps and doing certain tasks. Let us first take up the various tasks which a manager is expected to do to produce results.

1.   PROVIDING PURPOSEFUL DIRECTION TO THE FIRM

A manager can be compared to the captain of a ship who has first to set the course to reach the destination and then steer the ship along the course. Similarly, a manager has to, first of all, set objectives which the firm must achieve. Objectives provide the direction in which the firm must move. Having decided upon the objectives, the manager must constantly monitor the progress and activities of the firm to ensure that it is moving in the desired direction. This is the first and foremost task of every manager.

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