Let’s end this posting session with an overview of the course. I like the idea of giving a unconventional way of teaching. That’s good for a change. It’s not easy to give an update twice a week. Writing an essay is not something you do at certain times. But posting is obliged. It keeps you thinking about the next step of the essay though. Even if that means that you have to post sometimes without any progression in writing the essay. I found the challenges particullary useful. The unannounced challenge wasn’t fair to people working. The last challenge took a lot of time. It is judged by movie quality. Not very important for this course, in my opinion. Above that they took a lot of time, which I would rather spend on writing the essay. In the end I think this way of giving a course is a nice try. It makes you think about the course and the essay, which is good. Let’s just hope the essay goes well too.
Have a good one!
in order to get a fitting conclusion it is about time to compare my compare the results of my liturate research to the results from the empirical research. as was expected: the liturature focusses on the differences between the three roles. when you look at the these roles in terms of comparable characteristics, it’s not that difficult to seperate one from another. quite different from the answers in my interviews. one of the common answers was that a good manager is a good leader as wel. maybe because being a leader isn’t really a function in a company. so people automatically focus on the managers they know. the question now is how to put this all together in my writing..
Next few day I will conduct my interviews with various managers. I will ask the following question (and ofcourse try to get them to spill as much valuable information as possible):
- What is your job description?
- What are your main responsibilities from day to day?
- What is your influence/ impact in high level decision making in the organization?
- How do you make sure your task get fulfilled?
- How do you make sure your staff helps you reach your/ their goals. Do you communicate the vision, or do you communicate goals, manage in detail or let them free in their execution etc.
- What characteristics/ capabilities does a person need to fulfill the task related to your job.
- Do you posses al these characteristics; which do you not posses?
- How do you cope with any personal shortcomings?
- Can you learn these characteristics (in general), is one able to become the right man for the job? Can one learn to take over your role?
- What has changes in your tasks/ responsibilities; how did you cope with that? Were you able to change? What did you do concerning issues of you character etc. you couldn’t change?
- What changes will there be in the future in your task/ responsibilities, how will you be able to cope with this or change?
- What and how have you contributed to positive change in the organization?
- In what kind of environmental and organizational circumstances do you perform optimal (fast moving environment, large complex org etc.)?
- If you had to choose, do you think you are a, b or c (give a description of the 3 styles)?
In this post I will try to summarize our blogging procedure and how we all developed though it. I think it will clear up a bit the educational objective of using weblog as a teaching method for this course.
During the first week we were writing in a quite formal way. There was some finding that was mainly related to what we‘ve already knew through previous study, comments were also around the same topic. Trying to find out how to approach this quest.
Empirical research has proven to be a popular topic on this blog writing about our thoughts on how we are going to approach our research and posting about relevant findings.
We grew into using it as a communication platform. We could share thoughts, comments and guidance about our quest. By using this blog we learned how to write for a layman with the approach to combine academic writing and real life.
I think we all gained a lot from using this blog. Take time to read though it and you will find something that others thought of and you did not. We will all now write our individual essay based on our findings and sharing.
Good luck to all of you!!!
In the 3 preceding challenges, I was quite clear to me what the educational value of it was. I think that we have learned about the value of both desk research and empirical research, and of course about the importance of using the results of this research to define what you actually are talking about. Let’s figure out what we have learned from challenge 4.
First of all, I had great fun shooting the movie. But if it was all about fun, I bet we would attend class somewhere in a bar near the Leidse Plein. This is not the case (would be interesting though – hint, mr. Wolters…). Except for fun, I bet we all have learned something about camera handling, editing and the horror of posting a 250 megabyte file (which was the fact for the undersigned). But does this really matter. We all will at certain point have to do something with media. This will probably happen in our personal life when we have to file our digital pictures, edit your brothers third marriage video or delete some embarrassing video of you, someone has posted on youtube. But I don’t really see the link with management studies.
Is it then that we got an insight on the dynamic happenings in an organization? I hope we already have a bit of insight on this, since we all have side jobs and maybe have done internships. So these 5 minutes of film don’t really contribute that much to that.
But then, is it about being creative? This assignment sure demanded creativity and ad hoc knowledge about something completely unknown to us. First of all, probably nobody actually handled a camera before, let stand edited a movie. Secondly, who actually has a video camera? An at last, who has time to spend a day (or some) in an organization to film and make sure the people don’t mind you filming them. Well, what we have learned then (and is actually relevant) must be about creativity. How to deal with something unknown and deliver a product out of nothing which does offer some value to your fellow students and shows that you have made an effort to make it look good. I’ll bet in reallife management, people would demand stuff we didn’t expect all the time.
I hope all of us managed to turn in their assignment before the deadline, and have learned the above from this assignment. I’m sure I have learned that, and furthermore, I had great fun doing it.
Last Wednesday I interviewed one of the founders of Slik BV. Slik BV is a multimedia company based in Rotterdam. In this post I report on this interview. When I finished reporting on all three interviews, I will put the answers together and try to see some (dis)similarities between their answers and what they believe they are (manager, entrepreneur or leader).
1. What does a day in your work look like?
I manage, produce and visit. With management I support my employees, plan (together with the staff in a meeting where we prioritize), brainstorm with my partners about how to deal with projects or problems, give internal and external feedback and tell people what (not) to do. I also produce, I like to be part of the action. I work on the design of our products and search engine optimalization.Last but not least I visit clients. The information I get form those visits I hand on to the work floor.
2. How would you describe your role in the organization? (Why did you choose this role? For what reason did you agree on this role?)
I’m the free out loud strategy thinker. I think abstract, have the chopper view. I let the technically skilled people fill in the details. I did not choose this role, it kind of happened organically. There are three partners, everybody rolled into what he’s best at.
3. How do you get thing done within the organization? And how do you get your employees do get their things done.
The story has to make sense. If all parties see the use of an idea, things get done. This means I have to convince my partners and employees with solid arguments and we have to discuss ideas in meetings. We are all very critical, so your idea has to be thought through well. This also happens with clients, the goal is always to deliver the best solution.
I could get things done with employees by telling them to. In general this rarely happens. If I have an idea and they come to me with a better one, we’ll go with that idea. Things also get done with employees by recording procedures which says what to do (these concern mostly technical matters). I don’t go in details when telling employees what to do, that’s not efficient. I provide information and guidelines on an abstract level and give them room to fill in the spots.
4. What’s your role in the decision making process of the organization?
When it comes to clients, I decide whether to contract a cleint or not. Of course the three of us created a strategic focus on clients, so this wasn’t solely my call. I also ask for advice with the technical and financial service if we can handle a client. All strategic decisions are made by the three partners, it has to be unanimous. Expertise does give the upper hand in discussions. These meetings can be very heavy.
5. Do you see room for improvement in and around your company? What did you do the accomplish this?
A lot. Because we grow a lot, there’s a lot of room for improvements in the formalization of the processes, this way we can work with scales more. We listen to clients a lot, get bugs out of systems that clients discovered and try to recognize patterns in this, then we make structured plan how to prohibit this kind of errors in the future. We are a combination of trial and error, and thinking ahead with formalization. We meet somewhere in the middle.
To accomplish improvements I give input in the knowledge system, then we meet, place it on the priority list, discuss about it, convince other parties, test it, and if everybody is enthusiastic, it’s ‘accomplished’. It also happens that we skip all these ‘formal’ procedures when there is a really good idea and everybody immediately feels it and goes into action. That’s what we like to call chemistry. A bit impulsive behavior can bring lots of good things.
6. How do you incorporate the company strategy in you daily work?
The strategy determines what I do. It’s implicit present, it’s part of my personal system. The strategy of this company is an expression of how I see things, it reflects my vision. I want to help people, so we want to help client and make them happy. Therefore client satisfactory is very important with us.
A more specific example is that we want to grow 100% every year. That means I have to get clients very actively and that there is a situation of constant overload. This has consequences. The contracts we get need to be worked with in an much more efficient and structured way and have to overlook details sometimes.
7. How do you bring across the company strategy/mission/vision to your employees?
The employees and partners are close together, the strategy is the climate of the company. The employees are shaped to this or are already fit when they come in. We do sometimes remind each other of it when somebody is working outside our vision. Mostly it’s informal, between the lines. While doing it, deciding which ideas are good or not, we know what we stand for.
We thrive for perfection and to be the best, so we act like that ourselves and only accept the best solutions, recruit the ‘right’ people, be a role model. Show your employees that you yourself are learning too and critical to yourself.
8. What do you have to be capable of to perform your job? What competences
You ave to be curious, be able to think (abstractly), be sociable, be alert, know what’s new, have a lot of knowledge so you can give good feedback and technical skills. Very important is that you want something really bad and are willing to act like it and be persistent. You also have to be capable of dealing with uncertainty. Being able to come to an original solution in an unknown situation that adds value to a market is a more creative competence you need. Not letting your knowledge narrow your view to new things a necessary to keep an open mind, which you need when you have my job.
8. Could anybody (with similar educational level) learn to perform the role/function you have within the organization?
No. You have to be capable of thinking abstract and be long term strategically. Curiosity, wanting to make money, wanting to be an inventor, be passionate and act like it. These are competences and personality traits that only few have.
9. In what (internal and external) circumstances do you perform best?
I create my own ‘zone.’ A zone with little distraction and no loose ends. I formalize a lot. Out of my head, on paper and then execute. I also make sure that my worst is still good enough. My basic skills are good, even on a bad day. I also perform well under pressure, adrenaline and stress make me very efficient and creative. When it comes to clients, sometimes there is this X-factor or chemistry, then I’m at my best. But the more I deal with clients, the more I can ‘force’ it to go well, so the x-factor becomes less important.
11. To who do you have to account for and who to you? What’s you place in the hierarchy?
I’m on top of the hierarchie together with my partners. We check upon each other and ask employees for their advice when we need their expertise on a matter. We have a responsibility to our clients, we work with them as if partners. It’s very informal, like our organization, flat and informal. We discuss a lot, argumentation is on top of the hierarchy you could say.
12. Do you consider yourself to be a entrepreneur, manager, leader or maybe all three?
I don’t consider myself to be a leader because w have no hierarchie. I don’t think of myself a having great charisma or the X-factor of a great leader too. I do in some situations notice that I tend to talk a lot and people listen to it, more than the other way around. What I’m trying to say here is that I think you are only a leader is you are considered to be one by others. So maybe clients think of me as the leader of the compan because I am the ‘face’ of Slik for them, I deal with the clients.
I do consider myself to be an entrepreneur. I take initiative, risks, see long term potential/opportunities, see if an idea will work or not. I am able to respond to the environment, make strategy out of it and act like it.
I am a manager because I organize, delegate, create overview, give feedback, support, evaluate, control, explain. I consider a manager to be a business leader. A leader is natural, a manager is a about skills.
This will be my last blog and I want to use it to reflect on this course and what we might have learned. The last few weeks where very busy, partly due to the workload of management studies. The lectures by Mr. Wolters where nice to attend, I like the way he involves the student and keeps everybody alert during this lectures.
This way of education was new for me and has surprised me positively, I think more university teachers could use it as an example to make the education more attractive and improve the commitment of the students. The challenges where not that difficult and a nice way to earn points, only the two surprise attacks where a nightmare. These unexpected challenges and especially the quick response challenge are too much for most students that have a job next to their study. The argument that it is a fulltime education is not really convincing to me, because the workload can be fulltime but every student is free to plan these 40 study hours a week as he wishes (also in the weekend). The blogging on the internet has been more or less a obligation to, this was not really funny. It is true that one can learn a lot of their fellow students, but this is more effective in a lecture face to face instead of on the internet. I hope that these blogs will help me write my final assay, there is a lot of information on it so now I’m glad that we have done this. Although the confrontation lectures have proven to be more useful until now.
In general it was a nice course in which I have seen a new way of education, and learned that in business life one has to be creative and have a great discipline to achieve its goals. One of my most important questions is what did we learn about management studies and is this interesting in a master track business administration? I don’t believe that this course has made me more valuable to future employers. In the process I’ve read a lot of new information that was interesting and the contact hours where inspiring. Now I face my final challenge, the writing of my assay!
I am still looking for a good structure for my final assay, we are going to discuss this in the final confrontation lecture next Monday I’ll assume but I will share my ideas with you now.
First I want to add some text out of the course manual that may be important in writing our assay:
Write an essay that answers your Quest-ion satisfactory, i.e. ‘your grandmother’ knows more now. The essay contains a summary of your thoughts, doubts, discussions, findings etc. you encountered during your Quest. It should ‘prove’ that studying management makes sense, i.e. you have shown that by studying the (academic and empirical) field of management you are able to come up with a well founded, well argumented answer to the Quest-ion.
Specific requirements:
• Individual assignment
• 15 to 20 pages (excl references & appendices), 12 pt Times Roman, 1.5 line spaced
• Includes findings from – relevant – Challenges
• Includes findings, overview & discussions of your own Quest-ion weblog (i.e., desk research, field research, discussions,
confrontations etc.)
• Includes review of compulsory track paper (integrated in the paper, not separated from main text)
Until now I’ve gathered a huge pile of information and have made some notes during this process, now I have to structure it and use this information to write the assay. This will be the biggest challenge. For now I think that the following structure is the most suitable:
Summary
Introduction
Theory
Empirical findings
Analysis
Conclusion
There is still a lot of work to do, I was wondering of someone could give me an advice on how to include the relevant findings out of our challenges and how to integrate the compulsory track paper. This togethe with the relevance of studing management is the most difficult part of writing the assay..
Let’s get started!
October 12th, 2007 by jbn214 in Manager · 3 Comments
Today you can sit in front of your computer searching for almost everything, talking to people everywhere and your iPod is plugged into your stereo whit music that you‘ve just found online. You have a online webcam to control your employees in Kuala Lumpur and with one button touch you can hire and fire people just as you want to have it. (Well I don‘t have any employees just to make a point)
I‘ve been writing my essay and also trying to search for more information about our quest. There are lots of information available but how can we decide what are the right one from the wrong or misleading? There is always the threat of information overload to stop you from finding the solution.
Ten years ago I worked for one summer in Norway. I did not have the internet and mobile phones where just breaking through as a common thing to have. The only source of information was through phone conversations from home and trying to read or watch the news. I did not have an IPod just a fantastic CD player with stacks of CD‘s all over the place. Life was indeed simple but getting information much harder then today.
This leads me to the topic of management. What I found out is that one off the most important things that a manager does is to watch the environment and communicate changes to others in the company to be able to adapt to it. Manager has to be focused on executing the vision laid down by others but also flexible to address the changing environment.
Finally I think that we have paid little attention to management on this blog. If you need more information about management then it’s very interesting what they’ve managed to find on SO10.
For fun “management theory summed up in one cartoon”
Hi everybody,
This week I conducted three interviews. This interview is with the CEO/owner/founder of Mendix BV. An international software development company.
When I was working out the interview I noticed that the respondent associated entrepreneurship mostly with risk and passion into action and the desire to grow, management with formal skills that can be learned and leadership with informality and (getting people to go along in your) vision.
The interview:
1. What does a day in your work look like?
It starts at 7:30. I have 4 to 5 meetings a day, with clients and internal. Maintain a lot of external contacts, make sure things get done within the company. I make 70 to 80 hours a week.
2. How would you describe your role in the organization? (Why did you choose this role? For what reason did you agree on this role?)
I am one of the three founders/owners. I am mainly responsible for external activities. I do the marketing and sales and make the partnerships (work). I put the company in the market as a brand. As soon as a clients sign, I pass it through to other people inside th company.
I got into this role quite naturally. Every partner does what he does best, I turned out to be best in marketing and sales. I am a good spokesperson and make contacts easy and think it’s fun to do, so this role was an obvious choice.
3. How do you get thing done within the organization? And how do you get your employees do get their things done.
As an owner I get things done because I want it. Important to note is that everything I do or get done, I do as a CEO of Mendix. Which means I’m also tight to the strategy and vision, people have to be willing to follow me. And of course I meet with my co-owners about important decision.
I believe in empowerment. Let people be part of your vision, believe in it and back you up. I give them a lot of freedom within our vision, which motivates them. To have a vision I have to know what I want and why and make sure everybody knows. I have to ‘teach’ them what I want/believe in, there is an expression ‘you can give somebody a fish and he will eat it, you can also teach somebody how to fish and he will eat fish the rest of his life.’ People have to think of it as if it was there own idea, have to share the stake/interest.
4. What’s your role in the decision making process of the organization?
Between the partners there are 3 roles. R&D, services and sales. Within all these ‘departments’ I have an important say. With Sales it is a 100%, withing the other 33,3%.
I have three meetings a week, 1 sales, 1 service and one management meeting. Except for the management meeting, the meeting are for everybody. Everybody says what he wants to say, it’s really flat and therefore can be quite heavy. An decision acceptable for everybody is usually the outcome.
5. Do you see room for improvement in and around your company? What did you do the accomplish this?
I see a lot of room for improvement, that’s what entrepreneurship is about and can be quite frustrating. It’s irritating to see what’s not there yet, because you know where you want to be in a year. But being a entrepreneur, in the meanwhile I am working on what I want. It’s fun to constantly improve things, t gives me energy. Improvement is a constant process that needs a constant drive.
An example of a bigger improvement was how we coped with our fast growth. The structure didn’t fit our size anymore. We (the owners) totally flipped the structure and moved offices, hired managers, made protocols and drew out processes. Now everything runs smoothly again.
6. How do you incorporate the company strategy in you daily work?
My primary task is to translate the strategy to operations. Every decision is a reflection of the strategy. A strategy is long term, because of that not every employee will understand every decision I make. This means I have to explain my decisions to my employees and motivate them to work with it. This is the people management side of my job. Also our goal is to grow 300% every year. This means I have to hire middle management and fit it into the company structure. I pick my clients based on this goal (only big once, and invest a lot in relations with clients). The capacity is always on overload, therefore I have to work with partners a lot to use their resources, which make us flexible too. Sometimes overload also makes it necessary to work with emergency solutions like putting software developers on clients.
7. How do you bring across the company strategy/mission/vision to your employees?
Everything that is being done in the company is tested to the strategy, this way it becomes part of the culture. People know where we stand for, they work with it the whole day everyday. And of course we have hats, t-shirts and a company song ;)
8. What do you have to be capable of to perform your job? What competences
You have to be able to ignore risks. You have to be that rational to be a professional in your choices. Never let your personal state or stake be part of this. You should also be able to see your job as a hobby, the time you spent on it is for yourself, but the decisions for the company. You also have to ‘dare’ to think big and act like it. Make your decisions that help you reach your goal. You also have to come across as a trustable person, you have to be able to convince people of your idea/product, you are the company (the first few years), so they invest in you.
9. Could anybody (with similar educational level) learn to perform the role/function you have within the organization?
No. Entrepreneurship is a trait, cannot be learned. A lot of people are afraid to take risks, or don’t have that trustable relaxed emanation that an entrepreneur needs. Management for example you can learn because it’s more about skills. Like planning, organizing, discipline, delegate, patience. Of course you have to be able to deal with stress, think abstract and be social. But it’s less focused on the personality traits than entrepreneurship.
10. In what (internal and external) circumstances do you perform best?
I am at my best in an environment where people are independent and take initiative. I’m not a good manager, so telling/explaining what to do and supporting aren’t my best competences. Motivating to be independent is. So if people wait for, I’m not performing at my best, if I’m in an environment of initiative and independence I do.
11. To who do you have to account for and who to you? What’s you place in the hierarchy?
I’m on top of the hierarchy. Everybody has to account to me. If I see something that I think is not correct, I check it out and if necessary repair it, or I have a meeting and discuss the matter. If the person has good arguments to do things his way, I let him. I make sure I see everything that happens withing Mendix and I step in when necessary. This is 50% of my work by the way. 30% is strategy/vision and 20% is sales.
In practice the accountability it is mutual. The employees need to have faith in Mendix, and therefore in its strategy and me. If not, I’m responsible. It’s a team spirit.
I have to account to my partners and the venture capitalist (vc). We discuss problems, offer solutions. We’re all in it together, that’s how we treat each other too. As equal, full partners of the company. We don’t have a contract which says who is allowed to do or say what.
12. Do you consider yourself to be a entrepreneur, manager, leader or maybe all three?
All three.
I’m an entrepreneur because I take risks, if somebody says there’s 90% change of failure I immediately see a 10% change of succeeding, which is huge. I’m personally responsible for Mendix. If Mendix goes bankrupt, so will I. I also have the attitude and ability to see thing that aren’t there yet, put it into action, get people to come along. I have the ambition to built on my idea/vision. This is very important and takes a bit of creativity and being innovative. If you don’t want to grow or built as a company owner, I don;t consider you to be an entrepreneur.
I’m a manager because I also have a formal role and responsibility in the company of implementing the vision, lead up to employees, formal authority. I have to do meetings, check upon employees, control, do projects, have to prioritize. These are things that have a lot of repetition in it, which I don’t like. I less at being a manager, because I’m always busy. A good manager has nothing to do, an entrepreneur is a entrepreneur 24 hour a day.
I’m a leader because people follow me without me using authority. It’s informal. I also dare to take impopulair decisions because this is in line with my vision. A leader takes sides and gets respect for taking it. It’s better to be hard and honest, than soft and don’t have a clear vision. It is important though to have people backing you up, but it’s not a group decision, I make the decision. I make sure my people get the feeling it’s theirs and get them to go along in my thinking. As a leader it’s also important you let your people free, to learn, to make mistakes and take initiative.
