Managers and the importance of management

Managers are responsible for directing and guiding the running of organisations towards the achievement of their set objectives. As business leaders, they must possess sufficient technical and professional expertise to efficiently and effectively oversee the tasks that enable the company to function properly, with a view to achieving the highest possible productivity. However, a company is not limited solely to achieving results and profits, because its most precious asset is its human resources.

A leader must possess the necessary expertise, but also the gift of leadership; ingenuity, but also humility; power without arrogance; the ability to make decisions without intolerance; and must combine balance with the willingness to acknowledge mistakes.

In this regard, a company’s management team must fulfil a dual role within the organisation’s operations, which are becoming increasingly complex, demanding and competitive. On the one hand, they must attend to employees—as individuals—with rigour and promptness, engaging with their concerns, meeting their needs and fostering individual proactivity and creativity, with the aim of maximising their potential both as individuals and as a team. On the other hand, they must manage, with operational efficiency, all aspects of production processes relating to wealth creation (consumer goods or the provision of services).

In today’s competitive world, management must be geared towards running the company as a whole, where employees feel valued, where the opinions, suggestions or recommendations of staff are heeded at middle and senior management levels, and where the working environment fosters a healthy atmosphere of harmony and cooperation, both between individuals and across departments.

The organisational structure of companies today should not be governed by rigid frameworks; on the contrary, it must be flexible, placing decision-making not only within the executive team but also at other levels of the organisational chart, whilst also involving other bodies within the management structure.

This flexibility relates to the speed with which decisions must be taken and the very dynamics of the times, which demand immediate responses to specific problems concerning the very functioning of the company. Modern management must be agile so that a company’s operations can be mobilised with genuine, rather than merely virtual, speed.

To this end, managers must, in their day-to-day management, remain alert to changes and strive to maintain the direction and motivation needed to achieve the company’s objectives. The relationship between management and the operational functioning of the organisational structure involves reconciling the effective maintenance of efficiency levels with the personal aspirations of staff, making work more productive and communication more fluid, minimising friction as much as possible, and fostering participation through a sense of corporate belonging.

Thus, management depends, first and foremost, on the company’s pool of executives, whose primary function is to achieve organisational goals and who are responsible for the company’s success or failure; however, they are not solely responsible for the outcomes of management; rather, every individual within the organisation, regardless of their position, must be focused on the company’s success, carrying out the administrative tasks necessary to achieve the best results. All employees of a company, together with the management team, form part of a working team in which each individual represents a vital link in business management.

So, how does management impact organisations?

Management is essential in organisations for gaining competitive advantages and achieving success, as it is through management that business guidelines are communicated, responsibilities are assigned to each employee, and compliance with set objectives is monitored. Over time, the environment in which organisations operate changes; market demands increase as a result of the continuous evolution of society and technology, and only those organisations that implement effective management will be able to make the most of their resources to become increasingly competitive, utilise existing innovations and technologies, and achieve growth; otherwise, they will not be sustainable in the long term and will fail.