Management is more art than science. Managing is working with and through other people to accomplish the objectives of both the organizations and its members.

Management consists of:

the rational assessment of a situation and the systematic selection of goals and purposes (what is to be done);
the systematic development of strategies to achieve these goals;
the marshalling of the required resources;
the rational design, organization, direction, and control of the activities required to attain the selected purposes;
the motivating and rewarding of people to do the work.

Concept of effective management

Though there is a great variety of different types of businesses, the general principles of effective management apply in 90% of cases. The differences in management practices are mainly in application than in principles.

Effectives management is not limited to business management only. Management is the specific and distinguishing organ of all organizations. Its functions are:

to manage business;
to lead managers and workers;
to manage work.

The task of the manager is to lead people. And the goal is to make productive and specific strengths and knowledge of each individual.

Difference between effectiveness and efficiency

There is vital distinction between effectiveness and efficiency:

Effectiveness is doing the right things: know why.
Efficiency is doing things right: know how.

Strategic management

Strategic management is not a task, but a rather a set of managerial skills that should be used throughout the organization, in a wide variety of functions. Strategic cross-functional management is central to capitalizing on functional excellence, and in order for functional specialists to make the greatest possible contribution, managers must take a broader view of their functions and understand how they fit into the web of the organizational processes and, ultimately, into the overall strategy.

The ability to implement strategies is one of the most valuable of all managerial skills. Managers intent on implementing strategy must coordinate a broad range of interconnected efforts aimed at transforming intentions into action.

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Main business purpose

Enterprises are paid to create wealth. The only valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer. The foundations have to be customer values and customer decisions. It is with those foundations that management policy and management strategy increasingly will have to start. Therefore customer values and decisions are the starting point for the actual practice of management, its policy and strategy.

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System approach to management

The system approach to management is based on general system theory – the theory that to understand fully the operation of an entity, the entity must be viewed as a system. This requires understanding the interdependence of its parts.

Business architect

Business architects develop the architecture and the business model for a business enterprise and typically have the following role-specific responsibilities:

Create a new or improve the current business model and business architecture.
- Identify and develop a business case and sustainable growth strategies.
- Create an effective and efficient organization.
- Develop new enterprise-wide business process models.
- Determine the mechanisms by which all these components will collaborate in order to fulfill its innovation, operational and quality requirements.
- Build a team and lead the implementation process.
Develop and communicate a strategy for relationships with other organizations and endeavors.
Develop business transition and communication plans, and communicate the new business architecture.

Business architect is a person that initiates new business ventures or leads business innovation, designs a winning business model, and builds a sustainable balanced business system for a lasting success. In today's knowledge- and innovation-driven complex economy, business architects are in growing demand. They are cross-functionally excellent people who can tie several silos of business development expertise together, create synergies, design winning business model and a balanced business system and then lead people who will put their plans into action.

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Managing in the new age of rampant change, knowledge enterprise, pervasive globalization and increasing complexity

Rapid change that is sweeping through every aspect of business today prompts you to rethink the way you do things. Although the traditional management model has evolved quite a bit, it is still geared to a rigid structure and command-and control mentality. This model was well tailored to an environment where change was slow and evolutionary rather than rapid and revolutionary. It helped organize processes and foster a sense of accountability, order, and discipline. What it lacks is flexibility making the company irresponsive to continuous external and internal changes. We have reached a limit to what can be accomplished using traditional management approaches, but by changing the way we manage, that constraint can be removed. This is not to say that the basics of traditional management should be ignored, but they are just not enough to get the job done any more.

To compete successfully in the global arena, you must create new act as an entrepreneur and create new business models – rethink, re-plan, strategize, innovate, and learn continuously. Once reliable guides for managerial action no longer exist. In an environment virtually bereft of the old rules of conducting business there is no safety net. Every process, procedure, rule of thumb, and standard ratio is being challenged, reengineered, and morphed into a new form. This fundamental change has brought a daunting new reality to the challenge of growing and managing businesses.

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Leadership – the new managerial task

In the new era of rapid changes and knowledge-based enterprises, managerial work becomes increasingly a leadership task. Leadership is the primary force behind successful change. Leaders empower employees to act on the vision. They execute through inspiration and develop implementation capacity networks through a complex web of aligned relationship.

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Creative problem solving

One of the key functions of the corporate leader is problem solving which takes up a lot of executive time. An effective executive can solve problems and make decisions with a high level of competence. Your ability to deal with problems creatively and effectively is the key determinant of your success as a manager and a corporate leader.

Managing is all about perceptions

Managing – setting goals, communicating, teamwork, motivating, etc. – is all about perceptions. The essence of managing is coming to grips with people's perceptions.

Management team

Four quite different types or person are required to fulfill the role of chief executive successfully: thought man, action man, people man, and front man. Those four temperaments are almost never found in one person. The one-man top management job is a major reason why businesses fail to grow... The management has to be a discipline, an organized body of knowledge that can be learned. The necessity of building a management team is central in the concept of leader effectiveness.

A critical aspect of every manager's job is managing oneself. Aim to improve your skills in each of the five manager's essential functions – setting objectives; organizing the group; motivating and communicating; measuring performance; and developing people – and assess your progress throughout the learning process.

Enterprise-wide business process management (EBPM)

Running a business without an enterprise business process plan is analogous to preparing for a big game with only a roster of key players, no play-book and no practice... Business process thinking is predicated upon the central belief that it is fundamentally the complex, cross-departmental, technology-enabled business process that create value for customers and shareholders.

EBPM is a deliberate and collaborative approach to systematically – and systemically – managing all of a company's business processes. A process-managed enterprise supports, empowers and energizes employees, encourages their initiative, enables and allows its people to perform process work.

This predication assumes that every significant management activity should begin with an analysis of customers' needs and have, as an intrinsic objective, the shared understanding of the key business processes or organizational capabilities that are critical to satisfying those needs.

Kaizen - the Japanese concept of effective management

Kaizen strategy calling for never-ending effort for improvement at all organizational levels, is the most important Japanese management concept and the key to the country's competitive advantage. It concentrates at improving the process rather than at achieving certain results. Such managerial attitudes make a major difference in how an organization masters change and achieves improvements.

Advanced Management Program (AMP)

The Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program (AMP) puts elite members of the business world through a rigorous nine-week, $44,000 training session, taking them to a level of excellence and success that sets them apart from many others. AMP emphasizes the three pillars of managerial excellence:

Despecialization, or cross-functional excellence: looking beyond the micro issues and achieving powerful synergies by balancing competing values and integrating the specialized skills and experiences of their team members.
Externalization: considering the forces operating outside your vertical industry position and finding effective solutions for achieving business objectives in collaboration with the full range of external forces.
Leadership: being open to new ideas, insights, and revelation; engaging in a constant dialogue with employees, advisers, consultants, vendors, customers, and competitors to discover better ways of accomplishing corporate goals, and also to become more proficient in pursuing and achieving objectives.

Decentralization and delegation

The main principle of decentralization is telling people what is to be done, but letting them achieve it their own way. The leader should concentrate on his or core competence areas and only do the tasks that nobody else can do. Other tasks should be delegated.

Managing for results

The effective business focuses on opportunities, rather than problems. Every successful business requires a goal and spirit all its own. As a results-driven executive decision-maker, you must must analyze systemically your business results areas, the interferences to draw upon, and the strategies to plan and implement to move your enterprise forward.

The only place where meaningful management results can be won is the outside world. Managing for results is expansion of Management by Objectives (MBO) into the marketplace. It is the theory and practice of how to produce results on the outside, in the market and economy.

To achieve these results, you should develop a solid, sound, customer-focused, and entrepreneurial strategy, aimed at market leadership, based on innovation, and tightly focused on decisive opportunities.

Coaching – the new managerial task

Effective managers need to coach. Coaching aims to enhance the performance and learning ability of your employees. Coaching at work involves providing feedback, effective questioning and consciously matching your managerial style to the player's readiness to undertake a particular task. The coaching approach, a generosity, born of maturity, opens the door to a new way of interfacing with your organization, and makes people want to follow your lead, accomplish your mutual goals. The more you give in terms of coaching, mentoring, empathizing - the more you will achieve in terms of measurable business goals.

Managers will find some coaching skills easy to integrate because they're either experienced in using them or they innately have this skill. However, there will be skills that they find difficult to put into practice and they need their own coach to best support them with this.

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Cross-pollinate your ideas with others

In the new economy driven by systemic innovation, new ideas arise from cross-pollination – complex interactions between many individuals, organizations and environmental factors. Winning innovative solutions are inspired and developed in the process of cross-pollination of ideas, rather than narrowly focused search.

Ask searching questions to be a successful manager

Don't ask one or two questions and then rush straight towards a solution. With an incomplete understanding of the problem it is very easy to jump to wrong conclusions.

Ask open-ended questions that elicit a wide rage of answers:

'Why' questions to discover the roots of the problem.
'How' questions to discover different routes to significant improvement.

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