"A poet but didn't know it"

The following is my intent to define management,

it’s time well spent because it’s a good learning supplement.

Hmm…how to start, what to list, where to depart, which way,

so many things in midst of the art of managing…it’s hard to say.

The first thing to exist must be the ability to make a decision,

sometimes it must be made quick without sacrificing too much precision,

it can be an elaborate process to make a good decision,

it may require a manager to have a strong, preexisting vision.

But what good is vision without the support of every division,

especially in a company with decentralized supervision,

management’s vision must be popular and supported, or it will be faced with certain revision.

Good management is awareness to a large extent,

of the state of affairs in the world, and of the environment,

awareness of circumstances economic, cultural, and political,

to overlook any one of these could be a mistake most critical.

Each one of these factors has the great power to influence,

verify this in professor Kurpis’s slides on the model of congruence.

What makes a manager great is not found in a pill,

it’s a combination of human, technical, and conceptual skill, sometimes

it’s about the examples that are set and the values they seek to instill, sometimes

it’s about emotional intelligence and the promotion of goodwill.

Management is also about ensuring good work quality,

about not spending too much time on matters of frivolity.

Management involves ethics, of course about ethics there is much we could say,

let’s contemplate what’s considered the right and the wrong way,

let’s not ignore the disturbing trend found in business, especially today.

All too often it’s about “terminal value”, disregarding the means and only concerned with the ends,

a once great economy will fail you, if we only focus on receiving short term dividends.

Just because your superiors will support you, for doing favors for their friends,

doesn’t mean bad decisions won’t catch up with you in the end,

a good manager’s conscience rightly contends, that a questionable action should not be taken,

unless he/she wouldn’t mind if the public found out, including family and friends.

Over to the cousin of ethics, I now digress,

without a sense of social responsibility society will become a great mess.

A possible benchmark to measure a manager’s capability,

Is his/her regard for corporate responsibility, that is,

If they’ve achieved economic profitability and basic legal responsibility,

they’re in the “zone of compliance”,

if they’ve given back to the community and consistently display civility,

this may give a manager the ability to form a strategic alliance.

Research suggests this to be more a fact than fiction,

when this is the way managers act, they’re in the “zone of conviction”.

A trend in management today which gives me a particularly positive feeling,

one which any manager should embrace, it’s the shattering of the glass ceiling,

the status quo of years past, society has not yet finished repealing,

there is still more room for reform in the work place, this, research is still revealing.

But good managers will show an appreciation for diversity,

such a work force is especially valuable, especially when faced with innovative adversity.

Managing workforce diversity can at times be very hard,

but such a workforce helps a company achieve their balanced score card.

Perhaps most important to consider is the ability to be a leader,

without this , the stability of an entire nation may teeter,

there are many styles of leadership, from autocratic to democratic,

leaders have to be able to make “nonprogrammed” decisions, these are never automatic,

to lead and sometimes go against the grain, can be a difficult dance while maintaining propriety,

to lead our nation out of its current circumstance, will require leadership--of a spectacular variety.

To adequately define management could easily take half a day,

for the sake of brevity I’ve only these last things to say:

Management is many things, it is custom tailored to each condition,

Management requires many things, from strong cognition to ambition,

Management precludes many things, from wrongful omission to violation of volition (“V”).

Management offers many things, it’s a never ending expedition.