Subject for study: Managerial Skills Working on the text.

Ex.1. Read and translate the text paying particular attention to the words in italics. Use a dictionary if necessary.

Six Skills for New Age Executives.

Most business schools teach six fundamental managerial skills that supposedly insure success in today's business world:

•set goals and establish policies and procedures

•organize, motivate, and control people

•analyze situations and formulate strategic and operating plans

•respond to change through new strategies and reorganizations

•implement change by issuing new policies and procedures

•get results and produce respectable growth, profitability, and return on investment

While these may have worked in the past, declining American pro­ductivity and competitiveness prove they no longer suffice. To achieve corporate excellence in the dynamic future, managers must learn to transcend the past with what we call the New Age skills:

•Creative Insight

•Sensitivity

•Vision

•Versatility*

•Focus

•Patience

These skills help New Age executives to harmoniously orchestrate strategy and culture. You do not need to be born with these skills, but you do need to work at acquiring and developing them.

Creative Insight: Asking the Right Questions. Insight, which involves adapting a variety of critical perspectives, forces executives to strike at the heart of a problem*, not just at its visible symptoms. Executives lacking insight see either the forest or the trees, but never both. With­out insight, executives waste valuable resources because they don't get at the roots of problems and are therefore unable to design successful solutions. By asking the right questions, you obtain the key to the in­creased insight that informs superior strategies.

Sensitivity: Doing Unto Others. If, in the final analysis, people are an organization's greatest asset, then New Age managers must under­stand how to bind them together in a culture wherein they feel truly motivated to achieve high goals. Face-to-face communication, ongoing training and development, creative incentive programs, and job security all display the sort of sensitivity that nurtures strong cultures. Every strong culture derives from management's sensitivity. Without it, em­ployees feel unmotivated, underutilized, and even exploited.

Vision: Creating the Future. Leaders who develop clear vision can mentally journey from the known to the unknown, creating the future from a montage of facts, figures, hopes, dreams, dangers, and oppor­tunities. By applying the art of meditation to organizational introspec­tion, you gain a deep understanding of a business and its environment.

Versatility: Anticipating Change. A difficult skill to master, versatil­ity presumes that some goals other than immediately pressing business problems should concern you. Unless you aggressively pursue interests outside your field, you will never be able to comfortably adapt to change.

Focus: Implementing Change. Everything that happens in your or­ganization either contributes to or erodes its efforts to implement change and keep strategy and culture in harmony. Focus enables leaders to invest available resources toward implementing successful and lasting change. How do you acquire focus? By eliminating unfocused activities and understanding the steps to successful implementation. Once you categorize your activities, you can select one of three alter­natives for action: eliminating, modifying, or adding to your work.

Patience: Living in the Long Term. Executives must rise above the thoughts and actions of others and commit themselves to the long-term perspectives of their enterprises. If you believe in your firm's long-term purpose, you must be patient enough to see it through.

Since New Age executives find themselves in so many different types of organizations, and since any given organization evolves through fairly predictable stages, you'll employ these skills in different combina­tions and with varying levels of emphasis, depending on the situation. Therefore, you must bear in mind while learning these skills that no single one ever works alone but that each depends on mastery of all the others.

Can you master and apply these skills overnight? No. As we cau­tioned earlier, New Age executives can't rely on quick fixes*, magic formulas, and cure-all theories*. It takes just the same kind of dedica­tion, hard work, and pure grit* to create excellence as it does to win a twenty-six-mile marathon.

* Versatility - разносторонность, универсальность

* to strike at the heart of a problem - дойти до самой сути проблемы

* rely on quick fixes - полагаться на готовые решения

* cure-all theories - ”чудодейственные” теории

* pure grit - большая сила воли

Ex.2. Say what you have learned about:

1. classical fundamental managerial skills;

2. the reason for accepting the New Age skills;

3. the activities each new skill requires from the executive.

Ex.3. Think and answer.

1. Why will executives employ the New Age skills in different combinations with varying levels of emphasis?

2. Can every manager master and apply these skills? Why?

Ex.4. a) Read the dialogue.

Remember:

stringent — cтpoгий

to decline — падать, сокращаться

to impose — вводить, облагать

to make an estimate — cocтавить смeтy

The Director of a company discusses with the Product Manager the market position of some of their products.

Director: Well, Mr. Fox, I'd like to hear your evaluation of the present position of our major product on the market.

Manager: The situation on the market nowadays is generally characterized by much more stringent requirements to chemical products, due to growing environmental pollution control. In this connection we'll probably have to give up using raw materials containing phosphates for our production, since the demand for such products is gradually declining.

Director: The situation seems really serious. What are your suggestions in the circumstances?

Manager: In the first place, we'll have to work out a new chemical composition for our products and carry out a number of tests, which is a regular procedure for new products. Then some serious changes will have to be made in our technology.

Director: I'm afraid, the change-over to new products will re­quire a lot of expenses.

Manager: No doubt, but the new investments will certainly be repaid. And we should not forget that in future there may be no demand for phosphates-based products at all. Some countries have already imposed state re­strictions on the production of such materials.

Director: Well, I'll get our planning department to make an estimate of our expenses and submit it for approval. Now, let's look at the problem from another point of view. I understand, new products will be positioned on the market at higher prices.

Manager: The new materials will certainly be more expensive. But we'll get products of much higher quality, which will be in great demand on the market and may be sold at higher prices.

Director: The new products will require a wide advertising campaign to support them on the market. Have you given thought as to how it should be arranged?

Manager: I believe we could use both — press advertisements and tele- and radio-advertising. But it's not my line, actually.

Director: No, but I just wondered. I will instruct our adver­tising department to think it over and come out with their suggestions.

b) Say what you have learned about:

1. the present position of chemical products on the market;

2. the suggestions made by the Product Manager;

3. the expenses connected with the change-over to new products;

4. the profits the company may get;

5. the advertising campaign to support the new products.

c) Reproduce the parts of the dialogue where the Director and the Pro­duct Manager discuss:

1. the position of their major product on the market;

2. the change-over to new products;

3. the sales support for the new products.

d) Think and answer.

1. Why is the demand for products containing phosphates de­clining at present?

2. What expenses will the change-over to the new products re­quire?

3. Why is it necessary to run an advertising campaign for a new product?

Lesson 3

Unit 1