Management_Has_Been_Defined_by_Mary_Parker_Follett

Introduction Management has been defined by Mary Parker Follett  (1868–1933) as “the art of getting things done through people". There are, of course other definitions of what is manager from leading thinkers such as Henri Fayol(1841–1925) and Peter Drucker (1909–2005). After careful self reflection I have concluded that Follett’s definition fits my own personal understanding of what the role of management is. This leads me to a bit of a paradox….while I am a business owner, and therefore could be considered to be a business manager, I currently do not manage people on a direct basis, instead choosing to work WITH people. It is this aspect I am considering for this report. I wish to evaluate my own management skills and become more a manager than a ‘doer’. I will be evulating my own man management skills and addressing ways to improve these with the aid of some of the leading theories in management. I would argue that my management style is a contridiction of the theory that managers either manage by scientific process and analysis and by careful studying of all the facts at hand, against the other school of thought which suggests that other managers take a more artistic aproach to their management, they shun indepth research and make most judgements from their skill set and knowledgebase. I would consider my personal management style, in at least my organisational rather than personnel management, to be a combination of the two poplar theories.  While I follow the scientific notion of setting up best practices and developing the most efficient way to run systems, I also follow the artistic approach of making decisions and judgement based on my own skill and judgement, rather than considerable analysis of the market. In my line of work the industry moves so fast that any data collected is soon out of date anyway. When considering what efforts I can make to increase my management skills I have to have a degree of self reflection and say that I am more a manager than a leader; that is, people will follow me because they are getting paid for it rather than out of a desire to help me. This is one of the key reasons that financial motivation is my primary motivational tool; I employ a profit sharing system to empower the people I work with. This ensures that they are fairly motivated to do the job in hand but often it ends up with me having to reward them with my a far higher share of the profits that if I was in an employee/employer relationship. Owning to the more mundane nature of the tasks which I employ people to do the staff motivation is much more extrinsic than intrinsic, that is staff are doing the work because they want the money and nothing else. I need to develop my man management skills and take the work more to the intrintic level where staff have motivations other than financial to ensure the project is a success. If you consider the classic motivation pyramid, we can see that only so much motivation can be achieved by financial factors alone. Systems need to be developed so that the 'top' of the pyramid can be put into place and thusly, maximum value is gained from the employees actions