Read Summary on Planning Tools

For Forman College Business School readers: You can read a summary by me and my Griffin group [griffin stands for 'who is new' and indeed an object of mockery, as it those new British Indian Civil Servants were] on Chapter # 9 of Managment by S. P. Robbins. At this link.

Lessons In Entrepreneurship

You don't want to do things entrepreneurs must not do. Perhaps, more than this you don't want to fail. However, if this 'want' be replaced by 'fear, becoming "I don't fear failure", is an essential traits of entrepreneurs. In the following article-link you'll find why fearing not failure is an 'essential' mark of entrepreneurs, and those who do fear are not your peers. Here is the link. 

 Author* lost his major business, and his father told him:   

"You're fortunate to have failed. You now have the opportunity to learn how to turn bad luck into good luck. If you can do that, you'll have a life of more and more good luck."  

 Roberts teaches in this short article that there are three simple immutable things an entrepreneur must stick to:   1) Not to blame (you know it). 2) Make New partners (says, best when you're doomed and you hate them. He says there are good people in perilous moments). 3) Learn from your mistakes. 

___________________________

Notes:

* Website: richdad.com. Robert, author of the Rich Dad series of books, is an investor, entrepreneur and educator whose perspectives have changed the way people think about money and investing.

What on Earth is a Manager?

Who Are Managers?

Managers coordinate and oversee the work of other people so that organizational goals can be accomplished. His job is helping others do their work. His duties are not merely restricted to coordinating.

• Top Managers (executives, who make nonprogrammed new decisions; establish plans & goals)
• Middle Managers (all levels the extreme two)
• First-line Managers (who work in field make programmed decisions)

What Is Management:

What managers do is management. Formally speaking, management is coordinating and overseeing the work activities of others so that their activities are completed efficiently and effectively.

• Efficiency: -- getting the most output from the leasat amount of input; doing things right
• Effectively: -- doing those work activities that help the organization reach its goals; doing right htings

What Managers Do?

Functions

• Planning -- defining goals, establishing strategies, and developing plans
• Organizing -- arranging and structuring work
• Leading -- working with and through people
• Controlling -- evaluating whether things are going as planned

Roles

• Interpersonal -- figurehead (symbolic figure), leader (responsible for motivation of subordinate), liasion (maintains self-developed network of outside contacts and informers)
• Informational -- monitor (seeks and receives information to understand organizationa and enviornment), disseminator (transmits information within organization), spokesperson (transmits information to outsider)
• Decisional -- entrepreneur (searches for opportunities and reforming plans), disturbance handler (corretcs disturbtive events affecting organization), resource allocator, negotiator

How Manager's job Is Changing

• Changes impact manager's job - changing technology, increased security threats, increased emphasis on ethics, increased competitiveness
• Importance of customer (customer responsive organization'scan only please the customer)
• importance of Innovation (nothing is more risky than not innovating for manager. A normal strategy of a small organization is that they must issue a new brand with three weeks. They are doing so only for mere survival)

What Is an Organization Where Manager Works?

Def: Organization is a deliberate arrangement of people to accomplishsome specific purpose. Traditional organization are being replaced by contemporary organization beacuse the world is in change.

It has three elements: Distinct Purpose (goals or set of goals); Deliberate Structure (structure is their to unable people to do work); People (a persoan working alone is not an organization). When they all overlap each other, lo! an organization is formed.

Why Study Management?

Even if are majoring in marketing, finance, accounting, sciences or art, we can explain to you the need of looking at management from its own view-point. We would like appreciate management on these basis:

• The Universality of Managment: the reality that management is needed in all types and sizes of organizations, at all organizational levels, in all organizational areas, and in organizations in all countries around the globe.
• The Reality of 'Work': either you manage or be managed; either you act or be acted upon.
• Chanlleneges and Rewards of a Manager

Begin with The End in Mind

Habit 2.

Begining in mind is having a different perspective on life.

All things are created twice.

We create them first in our minds, and then we work to bring them into physical existence. By taking control of our own first creation, we can write or re-write our own scripts, thus taking some control and responsibility for the outcome. We write or re-write our scripts using our imagination and conscience.

Two Creations

First is leadership - what do I/we want to accomplish? (determines right or wrong)

Second is management - how can I best accomplish it? (efficiency)

According to Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis, "Management is doing things right; Leadership is doing the right things."

Self-Actualization:

the most effective way to begin with the end in mind is to develop personal mission statement, creeed or philosophy. It focuses on what you want to be (character), do (contributions and achievements) and on the values and principles upon which your being and doing are based. "The personal mission statement gives us a changeless core from which we can deal with external change."

'Viktor Frankel developed a philosophy called "Logotherapy". Logotherapy helps an individual detect his unique meaning or mission in life by reexamining his personal vision and values to assure they are based on principles and reality.'

Centre of Our Being:

We must reexamine the center of our life. Our center is the source of our security, guidance, wisdom and power. Making people or things outside ourselves important places ourselves at the mercy of mood swings, inconsistent behavior and uncontrollable changes of fortune. Being self-centered is too limiting - people develop poor mental health in isolation.

Principle-Centered Life:

By centering our lives on correct principles, we create a stable, solid foundation for the development of our life support factors and embrace and encompass the truly important areas of our lives. Successful relationships, achievement and financial security will radiate from the principle center.

Principles of Life:

The principles we base our lives on should be deep, fundamental truths, classic truths based on perennial wisdom.

Re-Scripting your Life:

Imagination In developing your personal mission statement, you can use your creative ability to imagine life milestones such as birthdays, anniversaries, retirement and funerals. What accomplishments would you like to celebrate? Visualize them in rich detail.

You can make your mission statement balanced and easier to work with by breaking it down into the specific role areas of your life and the goals you want to accomplish in each area.

If you find your actions aren't congruent with your mission statement, you can create affirmations to improve. An affirmation should have five ingredients: it should be personal, positive, present tense, visual and emotional.

Visulisation and Aiffirmation:

You can also use visualization techniques.

"Affirmation and visualization are both self programming techniques that should be used in harmony with correct principles."

Kinds of Mission Statements:

Mission statements can also be made for families, service groups and organizations of all kinds.

A family mission statement is an expression of its true foundation, its shared vision and values.

Organizational mission statements should be developed by everyone in the organization. If there is no involvement in the process, there will be no commitment to the statement. Organizational mission statement must be known to everyone in the organization.

The Habit of Proactivity

Social Mirrors:

In a society we believe in three deterministic explanations (that is, we lack stimulus freedom) of human inadequacy:

genetic determinism: It says, "Its a fault of your genes."

psychic determinism: "Fault of your parential upbringing."

environmental determinism: "Fault of your conditioning."

"All these 'faults' are out there. They're not in you."

Stimulus Freedom or Free Will:

But as we observe closely we will find that between stimulus and response, man has the freedom to choose.

Proactivity Defined:

Proactivity means that, as human beings:

• We are responsible for our own lives.
• We can decide how the stimulus is going to affect us
• We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen.
• Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions.
• We can subordinate feelings to values.
• We are by nature proactive.

Three Central Values of Frankl:

Victor Frankl suggests that there are three central values in life:

• the experiential (that which happens to us),
• the creative (that which we bring into existence),
• and the attitudinal (our response to difficult circumstances such as terminal illness).

Taking the Initiative:

Taking the initiative means that we can at least affirm our basic nature and create an atmosphere where people can seize oppportunities and solve examples self-reliantly.

Act or be Acted Upon:

Proacitvity is facing reality and realising the we have the power to choose a 'postive response' our circumstances.

Circle of Concer/Circle of CInfluence:

We are concerned about many things with which we have emotional involvement. It is called as our "Circle of Concern".

Things over which we can excercise some control are called as our "Circle of Influence".

Reactive people focus their time and efforts on "Circle of Concern". But, when we work on things you can do something about. We're being effective and proactive

Direct, Indirect or No Control:

Our problems fall in three areas:

• Direct Control (problems involving our own behavior),
• Indirect Control (problems involving other people's behavior),
• or No Control (problems we can do nothing about).

Habit 1,2 & 3 deal with Direct control. Habit 5,6 deal with Indirect Control. No control can be best dealt with attitude.