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In new businesses, "management" is often
considered "whatever needs to be done just to keep things afloat".
However, for your business to grow and remain healthy, you must master
certain basic skills in management and leadership -- skills that will
help you avoid the crisis situations where you have to do "whatever it
takes to stay afloat". The basic skills include problem solving and
decision making, planning, meeting management, delegation,
communications and managing yourself.Those basics are also the
foundation from which to develop more advanced practices in management
and leadership. When organizational personnel struggle, it's often
because they've forgotten the basics -- not because they aren't
implementing state-of-the-art techniques in management and leadership.
NOTE ABOUT THE LARGE SIZE OF THIS MODULE: This module references
numerous basic skills that leaders and managers must master in order to
be effective in their organizations and their lives. These skills can
be practiced throughout this program and in other areas of learners'
lives. Readers who are interested in gaining broader contexts of
management and leadership can review optional readings suggested in the
"Materials for Review" section below.
NOTE ABOUT ORDER OF MODULES: Therefore, it is common to start
management training programs with an overview of the board of directors
(if the program includes focus on corporation, which are governed by
boards of directors) -- the board of directors is legally charged to
govern a corporation. However, in this program, this learning module
about basic skills in management and leadership is presented before the
learning module about boards of directors. The reason for this order of
modules is as follows. Frequently businesses are started by someone
with a strong vision for a new product. That person often goes on to
become the first chief executive of the new business. Typically, that
person also takes a very strong role (often the leading role) in the
initial organization and development of the board of directors.
Therefore, modules in this program are organized to help the founder
(and often the first chief executive) to effectively apply basic skills
in management and leadership when organizing the board of directors.
NOTE ABOUT LEARNING SUPERVISION -- Supervision is a major aspect of
managing and leading. There are certain roles and responsibilities --
and experiences -- that are highly unique to the role of supervision
and highly critical to the success of the organization. Therefore, the
topic of staffing and supervision will also be addressed in an upcoming
module in this program.
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