In a tiny business, the manager will have to attend to marketing, finances, accounting and other incidentals in addition to day-to-day operations. Thus the one-man artifacts-maker will not only have to make the artifacts but also market it, manage finances and keep accounts. As the size of the business gets larger, the role also changes.
Business Managers in Small and Large Organizations
As the tiny business grows to a "small" business the volume of work often becomes too large for one person to cope with, and the business manager has to delegate work to others. Delegation involves giving clear instructions and also ensuring that delegates will execute instructions properly.
The CEO's of large businesses have even more complex roles. They have to coordinate the functioning of an enterprise that might be operating from widely dispersed locations. The CEO will be leading senior managers, who will be at the head of a managerial hierarchy with additional levels of managers between them and the operating employees.
CEO's of large businesses also have to ensure good PR for the business. Large entities are highly visible and the general public, as well as competitors, will be watching them constantly. The public might turn against the business, and competitors damage it, unless public relations are good.
Functional Business Managers
The business manager role can also vary depending on whether the manager is a general manager (CEO) responsible for making decisions affecting all functions, or a functional manager focusing on a special area such as marketing, production, warehousing or human resources. Subject expertise becomes more important than top level coordination or public relation skills in these cases.
The Issue of Coordinating Business Management
Larger businesses coordinate their operations by developing functional plans that are consistent with each other. For example, production managers develop production plans that support the sales estimates of the sales department. The procurement plans of purchasing department, in turn, seek to ensure timely availability of required supplies to execute the production plans.
Planning has to be followed by implementation that involves organizing, motivating and control. Managers prepare to-do lists of specific tasks to execute the plans that fall under their responsibility. Some of these tasks might involve considerable organizing, such as assembling facilities and employee teams.
Where tasks are assigned to others for execution, business managers have to make sure that these others are properly trained, and given the required resources, to carry out the tasks properly. The assignees must also be motivated to give their best (or at least to do the work competently).
Finally, business managers must ensure that actual performance is indeed in line with the plans. For this, goals and milestones must be set; performance must be measured and then checked against the goals and milestones. This process is what we call control. It is control at all levels from shop floor and field sales to the corporate headquarters that ensures achievement of corporate goals.
Business Managers Have to Cope with Constant Change
Businesses operate in a dynamic environment. New technologies and products appear, public tastes and competition levels change, governments enact new business regulations and natural disasters destroy business facilities, for example. Managing change is one of the key skills needed of a business managers.
Business plans have to cope with the changes. Sales levels and product mix can change and production and purchasing managers have to revise their original plans to be in line with these changes. Changes can happen not only at these top levels but also at the detailed to-do list levels. An employee might fall sick leaving a key task unattended, for example.
Business managers have to cope with all these changes and also many uncertainties. They will have to cope with unexpected calls on their time, upsetting earlier schedules. The harried and unpredictable nature of managerial work requires a high level of maturity and time-management skills to handle. Keeping goals in sight in the midst of all the pressures and confusions is the critical managerial task.
The business manager plays different roles depending on the size of the business. In larger organizations, there can be functional managers focusing on specialized areas like marketing and finance, in addition to general managers responsible for corporate level business management. Managers discharge their roles through planning, organizing, motivating and control. They also need considerable maturity and time-management skills to cope with the pressures and uncertainties of the dynamic business environment.
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