Planning, Decision Making And Problem Solving

Imagine you are hired by a new start-up company. You are tasked to recognize and explore a new business opportunity of creating a new product or service for your company. As part of your new business vision, you will create a business plan describing all keys elements of the business opportunity which will ultimately be presented to an executive team in a venture capital group for possible funding and execution.

Good management and leadership are essential for organizations to operate and additionally for the businesses to prosper. When businesses are well administered, they can function successfully and they can function effectively. Managers have exceptionally effective and strong plans, mangers have systematized structures, organizations, and they also assess effects. When businesses are appropriately directed, they acclimate to modifications in the situation and cultivate cultures that encourage obligation and improvement. Mutually good management and good leadership are essential to maintain organizational performance.

It feels as if we rarely have situations with sufficient data to make decisions clear and absolute. Maybe those situations do occur frequently, but because they are obvious, we don’t even register them as decisions. Leadership hinges on effective decision making and judgement calls. That includes gathering information for analysis when available, but also recognizing how not to be caught in analysis paralysis. Effective leaders constantly evaluate the situation, recognize the benefits, risks, and constraints and move forward. Nothing impedes an organization more than inability to commit to a path forward.

Understanding the difference and similarities between managers and leaders can be enlightening. Managers develop and manage plans that impact the strategic vision of an organization while leaders set strategic visions for the organization. Managers establish plans, support strategic plans, and organizational objectives. Managers also evaluate and track the achievement of tactical plans that have been assigned to specific staff. While on the other hand leaders motivate staff to achieve the object and task set forth. Managers serve as problem solvers. Managers are the people who assign resources to groups. On the hand leaders serve as persuasive change agents.

Imagine you are hired by a new start-up company. You are tasked to recognize and explore a new business opportunity of creating a new product or service for your company. As part of your new business vision, you will create a business plan describing all keys elements of the business opportunity which will ultimately be presented to an executive team in a venture capital group for possible funding and execution.

One way to establish the difference between management and leadership is the fact that leadership is simply one of the many things that a manager should have. In fact, this should be one of the priorities of a manager. But aside from this, a manager also needs to be highly knowledgeable in administrative tasks, because this also comprises a huge part of their job. Specifically, a manager has four major functions to do: Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. All these functions have been proven to be essential in any kind of management process, and serve as the main foundation of all organizations (Bateman & Snell, 2009).

Decisions: Leaders need the intuition to make the right decisions to lead a company or others in a positive direction.

Leadership and management are needed to convert challenges into opportunities. A manager can be seen as a ‘person who has the responsibility, control and influence over a person or group of people and their activities’. Leader = ‘being a person’s reason for doing something’

Managers make many decisions every day. Thankfully there are many tools available to a manager as they make these decisions. Tiffany is a General Manager of a franchise in the quick service restaurant industry. She is faced with decisions dozens of times in one day. A large portion of the decisions that she is faced with are made to solve structured problems, however, sometimes an unstructured problem does arise that she needs to address. As well as solving problems Tiffany must also make plans to in order to have structure and organization to achieve the goals set forth by herself and the company that she works for. Looking at some of the decisions that Tiffany has had to make recently it can been seen how she goes about solving

In the article, “Think Like an Owner!” by Sally Alexander West dissects the best piece of career advice she has received. At the time of being promoted to a supervisor position in the finance department West was nervous about her new leadership role. To help boost her confidence her boss said, “Just act like you own the place.” The meaning behind the recommendation was not only behavioral but a way of thinking. In the article, West presents five aspects of thinking like an owner: customer focused, persistence, the long view, responsibility, and sharing the vision. These ideas are found in successful business owners and prove to be the foundation of great leaders.

Management decisions and control are the focus of the chapter. The first concept was decision making, which simply is the process of choosing a course of action regarding the business. In the book, we are shown a 9 stage process which entailed problem perception, problem identification, problem formulation, search for alternatives, evaluation of alternatives, choice of alternatives, start of operation, implementation and control. Last summer when I interned with the Golden State Warriors there was a person whose designated job was to make decisions on what the office was going to have for lunch; and at the same time there was the CFO who sat with teams everyday making decision regarding the teams move from Oakland to San Francisco and used

In general, we are familiar with the quote managers do things right while leaders do the right things. In essence, the analytical versus the holistic approach of leadership addresses these two separate and distinct functions within an organization. For instance, a manager focuses on the daily operations of an organization with an emphasis on team delivery, budgeting, and supervising the employees. Contrarily, leaders within an organization focus their time on improvements and innovation. In particular, leaders can perform this function since they are not culpable for routine tasks and mired in the minutia. As a result, there is a misnomer that managers are leaders and leaders remain managers, but they are not exclusive. Therefore, being a manager and a leader requires different abilities and dispositions.

I believe you learn about leadership by acting as an example. You should be prepared to do the things you are asking others to do by getting on your hands and knees, if need be, and get your hands dirty. This engraves a picture into the mind of an employee or subordinate to what type of a manager you are. In this paper, I will cover the role a manager plays in an organization describing four functions of management: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. I will then describe three traits: conceptual, human, and technical, which an individual must possess to become a successful manager within an organization and how they fit in with the four functions.

In today’s ever changing economy, society’s idea of management is becoming increasingly more difficult to sustain with the continuous demands of the position. A successful manager must have a certain level of expertise and problem solving techniques to carry out the daily tasks required. Over the years, there have been various ideas on what management is, such as planning, organizing, leading and controlling.

Management is one of the most important human activities and has critical impact on life, growth, development or destruction of an organisation. In an organisation, managers with any rank or status should understand their basic duties i.e. maintaining a sustainable conductive environment where people can fulfil their commitments and objectives through collaborative approach. (Akhtar, 2011) A manager is responsible to achieve the business’s goals, visions and objectives by planning, organising, leading and controlling. Dubrin (1994) stated that in every organisation each member of staff must plan, organise, make decisions, and control the resources they need to accomplish the results expected