Business Management Essay

According to Joss (2001),a set of rules or strategies are used to control and direct by an organization effectively and efficiency, manpower is involved to work together in an organization to achieve a common mission continuously. Different skills are required and performed by a manager, such as leadership skills, organizational skills, etc. Particular person, in an organization, should shoulder the responsibility and produce results is called manager. Managers require specific experience and qualification, to make any important decisions and lead their teams to accomplish a goal. Management are classified into four levels, they are top managers, middle managers, first-line managers and non-managerial employees respectively. (Oxford, 2009; Joss,2001) Functions of management: There is a cycle of four functions of management before achieving the stated mission, they are planning, organizing, leading as well as controlling. Planning is one of the functions that preparing and evaluating what and how they can improve to do even better. They can plan for the desired achievement or integrate their current structure. Organizing is a way to utilize resources and guide the manpower in a specific way, since investment and employees are very crucial for successful organizations. Leading is the best way to influence and coordinate the workers, as the managers ‘’motivate† their ‘’ left-right hands†. Motivation means the managers inspire and persuade them to do their best in a happy way. Controlling is the final step amongst four functions. The managers monitor the current productivity and correct the mistakes or ways they perform. (Tripathi and Reddy, 2008) Q2: According to Mintzberg (1990), the managers are grouped into ten roles by three main categories. They are Interpersonal roles, Information roles and decisional roles. Analyzing a manager – Richard Branson: When I reviewed the functions, roles and skills, there is no denying I admire a manager – Richard Branson a lot, who is the founder and director of Virgin Group. He is approximately 63 years old now, he experienced nearly 47 years in different categories of business. They are record stores, air travel, soft drinks, radio, clothing, holidays, etc. The reason he could own business in different sectors, because he performs different managerial skills and roles, mainly use interpersonal skills and conceptual skills. (Branson,2007) Although Richard Branson did not have any huge plans at the beginning, he performed the function of planning to define the missions for his business, especially his airline. He wants to make his airline growth with revenue, to drive the passengers to their destinations and the employees are satisfied to stay and work for the companies. (Virgin Atlantic, 2013) For the interpersonal skills, he has very good relationship with his own employees. ‘’To be a good leader you have to be a great listener.† said by Richard Branson. No doubt, he doesn’t only require employees to treat the customers well, but also openly listen to the employees’ ideas, in order to correct the existence problems and bombing new ideas for future integration. He creates new business by communicating with workers. Even though Branson has more than 200 cabin crew, he still spends time with them, listen to their requests. Because he thinks it would be the best way leading them to work in a delighted environment is a business, solving the obstacles would not be the only situation. (Branson,2012) For the conceptual skills, he has unique business sense of sustaining and integrating his business. For instant, before he established Virgin Atlantic, he was doing the business of Virgin Music successfully. A lawyer persuaded Richard to invest in airlines; he was taking risks of promising, as he has no experience. However, he analyzed every risk, strategies and possibility of earning money after making up his mind; he even performed the function of organizing that thinking of the year plan and finding out the reasons why the competitors offered the market prices that low. Until now, Virgin Atlantic is the second largest airlines in the UK. (Branson,2009) In reality, most of the businessmen may not accept this challenge, because they want to ensure the risks are lower than the returns before taking any plans. Richard Branson used to equip himself with different financial perspectives; therefore, he can make a right decision quicker than a normal businessman and this shows that he was performing decisional roles. (Branson,2009) Although Richard Branson has a lot of insight of different perspectives, he would sometimes face the failure. He would like to compete with Coca-Cola and Pepsi for launching Virgin Coke. Nevertheless, he underestimated his competitors, as the location distribution is crucial to drinks industry. Therefore, he performed his function of controlling and the skills of managing changes, to correct the mistakes they made. He changed the location from the USA to Bangladesh and was being the best cola drink there. (Branson,2009) Q3: Reflection of myself: It is possible that everyone would possess managerial skills, including myself. I do possess human skills, conceptual skills and technical skills. However, no matter what my job position is, the degree of owning these skills is not the same. If I need to rank three of them, interpersonal skills would have the strongest degree. I have communication skills and leading function. As I have to deliver the responsibility to other committees and negotiate with suppliers to reduce our costs; therefore, my communication skills have been greatly improved by being figurehead and negotiator. Besides, I need to help keeping a good relationship with the external world. Additionally, I have the function of organizing and the skills and roles of decision-making as well. Being the leader in a team, I have to allocate works to my teammates; as a result, I need to organize all the plans before delivering to anyone. Besides, I faced a lot of obstacles, which are in sudden. If the original plan is not working, I need to perform the function of controlling, to think of another most suitable plan immediately. My conceptual skills should be enhanced, such as predict the future economy situation accurately or invest any properties in a smart way, as integrating our business is the most significant part of upholding current and achieving goals. I would like to be the top manager in next five years or more, who will own at least few shops. Knowing how to calculate the expected return rate and risk would be the first step. Therefore, I would like to learn how I could buy any properties without using my own money, but using the earned profits to invest and earn new profits. It seems my thoughts can be easily accomplished in words, but different skills are involved. Therefore, I should start understanding the bankers’ thought and how is the banking systems working, and then I could negotiate with them fluently. Because loans from the bank may be the ‘’helping hands† of my first business. However, my technical skills are not good enough. Lacking of the knowledge of advanced technology and particular software, my technical skills should be enriched as well. Although technical skills are very crucial to some managers, I will not put a lot of effort on learning them. Because first-line manager can be hired for monitoring the daily processing systems; yet, I should learn how to use software to read the financial statement and make proper decision for expanding my business. Additionally, I should briefly know the transactions processing as well, to prevent the employees from making their own interests. Last but not least, employees are the assets of my company; I should learn how to use the best resources and people with the lowest costs to boost the productivity and achieve my goals. In conclusion, management is very crucial to an organization. As people cannot entirely perform all the functions, roles and skills in a specific position, managers are required to shoulder their responsibility continuously to help achieving the defined mission. Besides, reflecting our strengths and weaknesses would be other criteria to run successful business. Bibliography : †¢ Branson,R. , 2007. Business the Richard Branson Way: 10 Secrets of the World’s Greatest Brand Builder. 3rd Edition. Great Britain : The Random House Group Limited. †¢ Brason,R. , 2009. Losing My Virginity : The Autobiography. Great Britain : The Random House Group Limited. †¢ Branson,R. ,2009. Business Stripped Bare. Great Britain: The Random House Group Limited. †¢ Branson,R. , 2012. Like A Virgin : Secrets They Won’t Teach You At Business School. Great Britain : The Random House Group Limited. †¢ Joss,R.L.,2001.Management. Australian Journal of Management, [e-journal] 26,p.89, Available through : London School of Economics and Political Science < http://www2.lse.ac.uk/library/home.aspx> [ Accessed 2 February 2013]. †¢ Oxford, 2009. Dictionary of Business and Management. United States : Oxford University Press. †¢ Tripathi,P.C. and Reddy,P.N. ,2008. Principles of Management. 4th Edition. India : The McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Limited. †¢ Mintzberg,H. ,1990. Mintzberg on Management : Inside Our Strange World Of Organization. United States of America : The Free Press. †¢ Virgin Atlantic,2013. Our Mission Statement. [online] Available at:< http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/allaboutus/missionstatement/index.jsp> [Accessed 13 February 2013].