Good Management Practices

Management is a function of coordinating people’s efforts in an organization/business to meet goals/objectives by effectively using the available resources. Management is vulnerable to pressure, and it operates on interpersonal, subjective environmental and institutional levels (Deslandes, 2014). It also means making things work through other people (Jones, 2013). Management is an act that requires skills and the use of the right practices to propel a firm into the right direction. The success of a business depends on the management because they are the people who set goals and missions of a company, as well as interpret them to the rest of employees to understand what is expected of them. A manager also sets the means of achieving the goals through the establishment of the code of conduct for workers, norms, routine and assigning tasks to different individuals or groups based on their skills and trustworthiness. A manager can appoint supervisors or departmental heads to oversee the performance in their respective departments (Bloom, Eifert, Mahajan, McKenzie, & Roberts, 2011). Managers can either lead their firms to prosperity through good practices or make them collapse through evil practices. It is, therefore, important for them to handle the organizational matters with care and set a precedent for the rest of the workers to make a firm actualize the set goals and mission. Below are the examples of good managerial practices that are suitable for businesses.

Leadership is of paramount importance, and this implies blazing a trail for others to follow (Bloom, Genakos, Sadun, & Reenen, 2012). Subordinate employees adopt the expression of managers’ state of the mind, both verbally and non-verbally, and this determines the respect, accorded to him/her by the junior employees. It is, therefore, important for the managers to lead by example through being responsible for the environment they create at work and through shaping the same by the way they conduct themselves, entailing the demeanor, posture, punctuality, as well as the statement of protocols and values of working as a team. It is also crucial for managers to practice what they say and this implies leading by example or adhering to the rules they set, to win the support of junior workers. For instance, managers cannot acquire respect by their position, but they can only earn it through their practices, and that implies complying with the organizational rules for others to emulate them.

The managers can also adopt the use of incentives to provoke and motivate workers to perform their tasks better (Bloom et al., 2012). It is crucial to motivate employees through rewards/incentives, such as promotion, and gifts. On the other hand, the use of sanctions/denial of some privileges persuades workers to perform in a manner that is favorable to a firm. When a manager rewards a person who meets what is expected of her, this acts as a motivation to an individual to keep up, while, at the same time, challenging others to work better in the pursuit of such benefits. The endeavor of every person to work hard to earn a prize leads to the increased overall firm performance. Apart from rewards, expressions of gratitude through positive comments also shows some appreciation that motivates the said worker and makes him/her feel appreciated, boosting the morale. However, it is worth to note that all employees are not talented in the same way, and thus the management can avoid the use of sanctions and instead focus on retraining or allocating poor performers the tasks that they can do better.

It is good for the management to practice monitoring as a control function in their organizations (Bloom et al., 2011). One of the essences of management is minimizing losses and maximizing the earnings. Managers, therefore, are ought to embrace the efficient and effective use of resources through monitoring to avoid wastage. Through monitoring, a person on the lead can ensure that each unit of resources allocated is utilized to the maximum to minimize the costs of operation, as well as the environmental deterioration. It also facilitates the identification of alternatives to ease the burden of high costs of organizational operations.

Performance appraisal/measuring performance is also crucial for businesses in various ways (Bloom et al., 2012). The managers should keenly observe their employees and evaluate their performance regarding results weighed against their salary plus other employment benefits. To increase the profitability of a business, the workers output must exceed their wages/salary. However, the manager should not appraise the workers for selfish gains, but he/she should instead balance the needs of a company to those of employees. For instance, if an individual seems to be of high worth in a firm and performs very well, it is advisable for the management to offer a salary increment to compensate a person for his/her efforts, as well as encourage others to follow the steps.

Target setting is crucial to a firm, and every manager should practice the same (Bloom et al., 2012). A competent manager must be able to set a projected output that becomes the scale for measuring a firm’s performance through comparison of the same with the actual performance. The target encourages hard work and helps in designing the improvement measures to meet the expectations. Targets also aid in the allocation of resources to minimize wastage or the provision of inadequate resources. The failure to meet the set targets helps the management to establish where the improvements are necessary and facilitate the development of firm strategies.

Marketing is an essential managerial practice to sell a business in the eyes of the public (Bloom et al., 2012). For a firm to prosper, there is the need for popularity/ publicity in the eyes of the clients. For instance, the public has to know what a firm produces, and it should be of good quality to improve the competitiveness of a business in the free market. The management has to improve the quality of products/services to adopt effective advertisement strategies, such as branding, promotion and offers among others to win more customers and increase the sales that lead to higher profitability. The marketing strategies should be sophisticated to wrestle the potential clients from the hands of other firms/ competitors.

Innovativeness, such as the lean manufacturing, is essential in a firm to streamline the operations (Bloom & Reenen, n.d.). Managers must know when and where to take risks, and it is also advisable to give employees some degree of freedom, so that they can work out on some issues on their own or introduce new ideas to a firm and by doing so, they end up being resourceful, creative and innovative. The innovativeness leads to the introduction of new products or the improvement of the already existing ones. Additionally, innovativeness lowers the operation costs through the adoption of more economical means of production through the mechanization of processes, as well as the introduction of the software technology.

Managers need to document processes, as well as their improvements (Bloom & Reenen, n.d.). The central task relies on information from the past, and this is what makes it easy for a person on the lead to analyze the trend, as well as the costs in the processes of service delivery or the production of commodities. For instance, when a manager refers to the production processes and examines the improvements, as well as their associated costs and the impact on output, he/she is in a position to gauge the development and decide, whether it is worth it or not. From the same information, the manager can be in a position to identify the areas that require improvement to promote the success of a firm. Information is also crucial because a manager can refer to the information documented by his/her predecessor to identify the position of a company, as well as the areas that require adjustments.

Managers must promote communication in a firm, implying the communication of the goals, rules, and the mission of a company to employees. Additionally, it is worth giving feedback to employees, informing them whether they are on the right track and on the areas they need to improve. Additionally, a person in the lead must create an environment that promotes communication between the workers, as well as between them and the management for addressing the grievances of everyone. By doing so, the manager creates a healthy working environment, where everyone has a right to be heard, and, thus, no one seems to be a slave.

The backbone of firms/businesses lies in the hands of managers, as they are the ones who choose the pace, as well as the direction of their organizations. Good managerial practices are essential for the success of the respective firms, and thus, managers need to be cautious and precise in their work. Among the required management practices in companies are: leadership by example, the use of incentives/rewards, monitoring as a control function, and performance appraisal/evaluation of workers. Additionally, target setting/projected outcome, marketing/selling a firm and its products, innovativeness, such as lean manufacturing, documentation of processes and improvements and communication and issuance of feedback are also important for managers and their respective firms.