By Hans Stoisser (Malik Management Centre St. Gallen for Africa).

Management is the mass profession of today. Almost any brainworker is – at least partially – also a manager.

Let us distinguish between our tasks as an expert in engineering, biotechnology, architecture, or marketing and our “management tasks”. Designing power plants, developing new medicines, designing transport infrastructure concepts, or designing a new marketing campaign requires expert knowledge.

But organizing the set up of the power plant or the production of a new medicine, or executing a marketing campaign requires our know-how as a manager. What makes the difference?

Management as a profession
In our globalized world all modern societies are turning into knowledge societies. The importance of knowledge when designing a modern power plant is unquestionable.

But it is not this specific “expert knowledge” itself that turns a new power plant into existence. Expert knowledge in itself has no practical meaning as long as it is not being used to produce concrete results. To do so, action is needed. And to do so effectively, management is needed.

How you manage, might be different in China, Europe, or South Africa. How you relate to hierarchies, how open you communicate, or how direct you tell your boss that you don’t appreciate what he or she is doing, all this is dependent on a society’s culture. But what you do in order to achieve results is everywhere the same!

In China, as well as in Europe or South Africa, you have to set objectives, you have to organize, or you have to take decisions. Thus, the content of management is not dependent on any culture and is all over the world the same.

Management has to be seen as a profession or a craft. It is actually the profession of achieving results. Or, more in detail, “management is the control, design and development of complex systems for the purpose of converting resources into benefits”. (Fredmund Malik).

As any profession or craft management is defined by four elements: by its specific tasks, its tools required to fulfil these tasks, specific principles which provide guidance, and by the accountability or responsibility which relates to the consequences of our doing.

Management Tasks
We consider five basic tasks to be taken into account when defining management: Providing objectives, organizing, taking decisions, monitoring, and developing people. These tasks can be taught and can be learnt. A person who performs them is a manager. A person who does not is not a manager.

Management Tools
As in any profession, a manager needs tools to carry out his or her tasks. One of the most important tools of a manager is a “meeting”. Yes, we take it as a tool to achieve a certain result, in management a meeting is not a social gathering.

Personal working methods, written reports, appraisal interviews, or the method of systematic abandonment are other management tools. All management tools can also be taught and, of course, have to be trained.

Management Principles
Talking about the basic principles of management means talking about effectiveness. Doing the “right things” in order to transfer certain resources into expected results. Management principles are based on insight into the profession and can be taught.

The more difficult and complex the situation is the more important the application of the basic principles is. Well defined management principles provide the practically “genetic code” of effective management and effectiveness in general.

Responsibility
Assuming responsibility means standing by what you do and sometimes by what you don’t do. For assuming responsibility a basic framework can be created, side-conditions defined. But assuming responsibility can – in the end – not directly be taught. It requires a personal decision of oneself.

Management has to be learnt
Management matters to every person in modern societies. Without basic management skills you cannot be successful in modern societies.

“Everything depends on the ability to manage professionally: performance, career, respect, power and income and, in the end, health, satisfaction and a fulfilled life – in business, but also in all society’s other institutions.” (Malik) But management can be learnt.

Meanwhile a basic consensus on what is right and good management exists. It is based on the early research of Peter Drucker, the Austrian-born mastermind and inventor of the profession and on cybernetics, the science of steering and control. Thus, right management can be learnt and has to be learnt, systematically and thoroughly.

From Management to Leadership
True leadership is first of all based on effective management. Being effective by mastering the basic principles of effectiveness and mastering the fulfilment of essential management tasks is a first and essential step.

But then, true leadership needs more. It needs the fundamental personal decision to take responsibility – to “respond” – for your doing, achieved results and generated consequences out of it, for the doing, results, and consequences of your department, or your company.

True leaders will never claim the success of their doing on their own, always on their team or company. And true leaders will always respond to failures of their team or company by themselves personally.

Hans Stoisser is co-founder of Effective Management. Effective Management is a brand of ECOTEC South Africa (Pty) Ltd., the official Partner of Malik Management Centre St. Gallen for Africa.

Malik Management Centre St. Gallen has been the leading institution for Executive Education and Management Consultancy in Europe for the last 30 years. With around 300 employees and offices in Vienna, Toronto, London, Berlin and Shanghai, the Malik Management Centre St. Gallen, under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Fredmund Malik, has been leader in General Management for more than 30 years. Within the group of companies, experts do pioneer work in Management Cybernetics, contributing to a consolidated Management Theory and an effective Management practice.

Imsimbi Training and Malik Management Centre are running a Management Training Course for middle managers in Johannesburg from the 2nd - 4th December 2009. For bookings tel: 011 678-2443.