Management: A Futuristic Vision.

As quoted by Peter Drucker: "Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things". In today’s era, where the world is connected and no man tends to remain aloof from this network, a manager cannot afford to merely do what he is supposed to, in fact the difference is, where he performs an extra effort, in generating the performance more than what is desired from him, by motivating his employees as a leader.

The management is not limited to the art of managing the resources, but has extended its wings to fight its battle consistently to maintain its position. Gone are the days when companies could maintain their strategies to remain inimitable as they were the only ones who thought differently. Today, every moment, companies are trying to implement some “out of the box” strategy to attract new customers and retain existing ones and hence increase their profit margins as compared to their competitors. As followed by HCL Technologies: “Employees first and Customers second” is the new trend followed by most of the companies, especially the ones in service industries. Today, a manager needs to focus on the consistent satisfaction of employees and should devise new plans, in order to foster commitment during the metamorphosis process of an employee’s life within an organisation. Recruiting competent employees with the required KSA (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities) is the first step towards it. All the functions irrespective of the specialization of a manager, requires a manager to himself be motivated and then in turn pass on the “hat” (Motivation) to his followers.

In order to attain competitive advantage, firstly, companies need to adopt the art of anticipation. Individually, each one of us possesses this art and consciously or sub-consciously, we do indulge in such practice in our day to day life, but in an organisation, where there are people with different needs, motivation levels, principles and values, integration becomes challenging. Anticipation, according to me, is the best tool by which success can unquestionably be attained. The only fact covering this term is to be both positive as well as negative, as we can control our internal factors (like our resources, manpower etc.) but external factors do remain outside our scope. Secondly, while anticipating one needs to be hungry too. Hunger about Information is the key which needs to be followed in the path, with keeping our senses always in incoming mode so that no information (whether required or not) passes by, without touching our brain. Thirdly, as followed by many leading companies like HCL Technologies, Infosys, TCS, companies need to be value-driven. No matter what is the kind of work, an organisation needs to be aware about its values as a whole and values of each employee too. Fourthly, each employee needs to be allowed to express his/her opinion, irrespective of his position in the company. This would increase the flow of new ideas, which might lead to the modification of an existing product/service or innovation of one. Fifthly, a manager should be more considerate to his organisation than to himself. His relationship (according to me) with an organisation is like that of a husband and wife. Though, problems might happen, the relationship would be stronger when there is transparency, openness, understanding, commitment and focus on one goal: “Prosperity”. Sixthly, too many goals hamper ones brain. Hence, focused approach is required, so that a problem can be handled in depth and the cancerous issue can be cut as and when it occurs.

To conclude, the decision of, the future of management lies not only with the leader, but with each entity connected to the organisation, beginning from key stakeholders to the society with which it is interlinked. Thereby, if it needs to succeed, it needs to consistently rethink what was the reason of its existence and work towards the attainment of it, else they would remain as mere plans, as Peter Drucker said, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work”.

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