Management Is Both an Art and Science
In this discussion with regards to the statement: "Management is both art and science. It is the art of making people more effective than they would have been without you. The science is in how you do that" (Reh, online). I agree with the statement as employees need guidance to improve processes and increase business outputs.
Take a hospital front office as an example. The front office team is responsible for welcoming and greeting patients, giving appointments, registration of patients, billing, collecting outstanding dues and the closing of the day’s duties. They do not look into how to improve the processes and increase the number of patients with the least waiting time within the process.
A manager is employed to improve these processes by using the following basic management principles of plan, organise, direct and monitor. Using the example above I also agree with the following statement when in the planning stage: "The 80/20 Principle asserts that there is an inbuilt imbalance between inputs and outputs, causes and consequences, and effort and result. It states that a minority of causes, inputs or effort usually lead to a majority of the result, outputs or rewards. A few things are important; most are not. […] To achieve progress and multiply your output, you must give power to the 20% of resources that really matter in terms of achievement, and get the remaining 80% up to a reasonable level." (Kotelnikov, V., n.d.).
Identify within the team the strengths and weaknesses of each employee and as to who understands all the processes and who you can as team leaders. This is minimal input with maximum output. This will also be able to give you valuable information as to what problems they are facing with regards to the systems and processes. Then you would indentify out of the rest of the team and organise them into the areas in which they are more proficient.
From there you will assess the process flow to understand where the bottle necks are and
Take a hospital front office as an example. The front office team is responsible for welcoming and greeting patients, giving appointments, registration of patients, billing, collecting outstanding dues and the closing of the day’s duties. They do not look into how to improve the processes and increase the number of patients with the least waiting time within the process.
A manager is employed to improve these processes by using the following basic management principles of plan, organise, direct and monitor. Using the example above I also agree with the following statement when in the planning stage: "The 80/20 Principle asserts that there is an inbuilt imbalance between inputs and outputs, causes and consequences, and effort and result. It states that a minority of causes, inputs or effort usually lead to a majority of the result, outputs or rewards. A few things are important; most are not. […] To achieve progress and multiply your output, you must give power to the 20% of resources that really matter in terms of achievement, and get the remaining 80% up to a reasonable level." (Kotelnikov, V., n.d.).
Identify within the team the strengths and weaknesses of each employee and as to who understands all the processes and who you can as team leaders. This is minimal input with maximum output. This will also be able to give you valuable information as to what problems they are facing with regards to the systems and processes. Then you would indentify out of the rest of the team and organise them into the areas in which they are more proficient.
From there you will assess the process flow to understand where the bottle necks are and
References: 1. Kotelnikov, V., n.d. [Online] Reference notes from readiness program: learn citing and referencing – Harvad System. Available from: University of Liverpool/Laureate Online Education VLE (Accessed: 02 July 2010).