Question

Answer any one of five questions by Wed, 07/18. Also reply to at least one classmate on a different day by Sun, 07/22.

1. Recall your own personal working experiences and the managers with whom you have had interaction. Discuss the skills that define the best manager with whom you have worked and discuss the skills that define the worst manager with whom you have worked.

2. Would you prefer to work in an organization with a vertical structure or a flat, horizontal structure? Would your answer change if you were the CEO instead of a new hire? How would you feel about working in an inverted organization as a manager?

3. Analyze your own ability to be a manager. What skills do you have now that are already polished? What skills would you need to improve? What skills would you still need to acquire? How could you go about acquiring or improving those skills you do not have?

4. Contingency plans are important in any business. Discuss what kinds of plans your school might have in place to recover from a disaster. How would these plans differ, if at all, from those of a local business in your area? What are a few possible scenarios that would require contingency plans in your school or at a local business?

5. How does the complexity of a project impact quality control? As software projects grow to have many millions of lines of code, can that industry still achieve Six Sigma quality? What kind of tools and processes would it require?

Answer 1

Answer to 1

In my carrier of 5 years with a consulting company, I has both the best managers and the worst managers.

The best manager: Building a happy and smart team

Krishan is a manger with a vision and objective. He had a clear idea of what we are trying to achieve as a team, how he wanted his team to be run and how should we work togetaher towards a common goal.

He built a team on trust. He trusted us to get on with our work with minimal supervision, discuss what we needed opening, explains critial situations and outcomes to overcoming them and take pride in what we did.

On the other hand, we trusted him to have our backs in volatile environment, to be open and honest anout our performance as individuals and as a team.

He always created an envionment of creativity, thinking out of the box, rather than spoon feeding for the work assigned. Best things about him are:

1) Clear direction

2) Understanding our strengths, challenages and interests

3) Sufficient resources to accomplish the task

4) Regular reviews and guidance

The worst manager: Destroying the team spirit

Sumit, I found to be having all the qualities of a worst manager. He is always micromanging (taking note of evry small things you do such as staple documents, writing emails, answering phones etc). He is very authoritative, which in turn makes him desrespectful and egotistical.

For any assignment, team meetings and communication to have a clear outlook is very important. However, with him, communuication dried up and new systems and workflows were introduced without consultation. Team needs belief that team is valued and that our way of doing things are productive and appreciated. Worst things about him are:

1) Nebulus direction

2) No resources

3) Have no control over what team is doing and managenet of timelines

4) Always negative in approach