The new manager!

Management is not a profession, it is not an academic discipline. It is at root a craft.

Many people drift into management with little or no guidance or real support. Firms do themselves a disservice by this. A new manager may one day be a great manager; give them the best start so real talent is not discarded by poor early experiences.

What is needed is not academic study, although that can help with the technicalities of the role, but as a craft, or a practice, it is best served by a combination of mentoring by senior staff and coaching in a group of people in a similar position.

This coaching setting thrives on the classic approach to adult education:discussion, reflection and guiding input. Where it touches on technical matters, it serves to introduce them conceptually and identify their applicability.

 Here's how the program goes.

1. The firm and its world

• The function of the firm, a model of the firm's activity,
• Why firms do projects, a model of the project
• The life-blood of business and its language: accounting and analysis
  
• Budgeting

2. Framing management

• The range of the manager's work, relationships and functions
• Based on work by Prof. Henry Mintzberg of McGill University

3. Modelling the manager!

• Introduction to a model for thinking about, doing and evaluating management
• Application of the model to the role

4. Getting action

• Structured approaches to identifying, planning and taking action
• Introduction to several planning and inquiry methodologies

5. Communicating

• Communication context
• Patterns of communication
• Communication effectiveness

6. Your own productivity

• Your own workflow
• Managing your activity
• Keeping track of obligations
• Meetings
  

7. Conducting the team

• Team dynamics
• Model of team action
• Working with teams

8. Operations

• The scope of operations management
• Production formats
• Manager's operations
• Statistical Process Control
• Lean and Critical Chain approaches.
  

9. Projects

• The nature of successful projects
• Projects in the business
• Project approaches
• Risk in projects: structured, probabilistic and qualitative
  

10. Decisions and change

• Making decisions effectively
• Decisions and the model of the firm
• Probabilistic and natural decision making
  
• Challenges in change