The Most Effective General Managers

GM is described as an organization with a dysfunctional company culture that somehow still manages to have amazing results in its work, on a global scale. The key attributes of GM, were primarily in the changes initiated by Mary Barra after the GM ignition switch recall crisis. Some of those attributes include her willingness to openly acknowledge the undesirable aspects of the GM culture and her efforts to take action towards a resolution. There are also several noticeable strengths and weaknesses within the organization. One of the biggest weaknesses is the company’s repeated inability to acknowledge that, lack of functional culture and leadership are truly the root cause of the company’s issues. Based on my reading I would describe the current behavioral organizational model as a Custodial Model. I chose this model because the managerial orientation is money, employee orientation is security and benefits and performance results are passive cooperation. All of these attributes were described in the reading.

The challenge when working with others to make a decision is that we all have our own methods of coming to a conclusion. The rational decision-making model is comprehensive in the fact that it requires the decision maker to define the problem, identify criteria for making the decision, weight the criteria, develop alternatives, evaluate alternatives and finally select the best alternative (Robbins, S.P., Judge, T.A. 2009). The challenge with utilizing this method is the fact that most of the time in real world situations, facts are either limited or missed, time compression causes an oversight on all potential alternatives and people tend to choose the easier route to make decisions (Robbins, S.P., Judge, T.A., 2009). Intuition is a powerful tool, however it can also lead to quick and potentially bad decisions (Robbins, S.P., Judge, T.A., 2009). I can recall a conversation with a leader about an employee that made an error administering a medication. The manager had not spoken with the employee or

Managers need to be able to plan ahead and to set objectives and co-ordinate the work force, delegate

Managers perform many functions and play many roles. They are responsible for handling many situations and these situations are usually different from one another.

Tannenbaum and Schmidt also identified three forces that led to the leader 's action, indicating of how these forces might influence a manager’s action in a decision-making situation;

General Motors (GM) has gone through many types of organizational decision-making and learning since its initial conception in 1908. The large American auto-maker has used the various types of decision-making models before choosing one that works the best for them. The organization has improved its decision-making over its long history. GM has done a fair job of ridding harmful cognitive biases that can drive up the cost of operating a multi-divisional car company. They instituted new organizational learning across the whole organization to regain its potential edge over the competition.

It is often said that theory must be applied hence losing about 10 managers could imply loss of much needed expertise and knowledge acquired through experience. For example, a well-seasoned manager or employee understands how to handle difficult customers something which is not taught in schools.

Alternate attributes laid out by Cohen for people in general directors are the capacity to think basically and shape occasions. The motivation behind why Cohen incorporates this contention is that in the contemporary past, open administrators have been liable to the occasions happening around the general population comforts. They have not possessed the capacity to fight these occasions and in the most cases, occasions tend to assume control over the control. He likewise contends that the picture of the general population administrators is portrayed on their ability. Cohen closes contentions by the certainty of general society supervisors and how it is vital in taking care of the issues that they face in their exercises. Cohen bases this contention with the Vietnam War (Cohen, 2013).

GM is a company which has benefitted from understanding the relationship between emotional intelligence and its’ effect on the work environment. GM hired employees for its’ new facility but nothing was getting accomplished because the workers were not getting along and nothing was being accomplished.

Garvin’s article How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management describes Google’s unique approach to management. Google prides itself with having the best, most highly satisfied employees in the industry. A majority of its employees are engineers that prefer spending time creating and building, which makes it difficult for management to exist. Many of Google’s employees are also highly independent and do not like being micromanaged. Garvin (2013) described a 2002 experiment where Google made their organization flat, eliminating engineering managers, the company realized that managers do more than just manage projects. Managers contributed to the company, “by communicating strategy, helping employees prioritize projects, facilitating

Too many managers of GM disseminate corporate information which does not serve the productive interests of individual people in the organization (Harrop, & Varey, 1998).

Managers are expected to do a multitude of things. A manager has to be a visionary and adaptive to meet the current demands of what is required of them at all level

Inefficient supervision is a quiet enemy in an organization (Groysberg and Slind, 2012). Unproductive management is a result of a break in communication. Many companies have and have been failing because of insufficient communication in the organization. The biggest one was Nokia, one of the biggest cell phone makers for over 10 years. The reason of Nokia going down was that the communication was not focused on bringing new cell phones into the market. Another company is Thai Airways, The CEO lost his job as there were communication issues between the company CEO and the board which weighed down their target to meet profits. Enron collapsed when the senior administrators neglected to meet duties, for example, "conveying proper values" and "keeping up openness to indications of issues" (Groysberg and Slind, 2012).

Alternate attributes laid out by Cohen about people in general directors are the capacity to think basically and shape occasions. The motivation behind why Cohen incorporates this contention is that in the current past, open administrators have been liable to the occasions happening around the general population comforts. They have not possessed the capacity to control these occasions and in the most cases, occasions tend to assume control over the control. He likewise contends that the picture of the general population administrators is portrayed on their ability. Cohen closes the contentions by investigating the certainty of general society supervisors and how it is vital in taking care of the issues that they confront in their exercises. Cohen bases this contention with the Vietnam War (Cohen, 2013).

For an individual to be considered an effective manager, he or she must possess a unique set of abilities, skills as well as competencies. However, it is important to note that as Hernez-Broome and Hughes (2004) point out, "while common leadership qualities or competencies characterize effective leaders, developing such core leader qualities may not be enough." Hence in addition to the usual key leadership qualities, managers must develop yet another set of critical