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.
