Text 6 – Goal-setting

Management by Objectives is a system which was first described by the American Peter Drucker in his book. Since then, MBO has attracted a great interest from the business world, and its principles have been applied in many of the world`s largest companies.

A special feature of MBO is that the subordinate participates with his or her manager in developing objectives. At the first stage, the subordinate and his or her manager define the job separately. They also rank the tasks in order of importance. Then they meet and discuss their differences of opinion. In the end, they both have a clear idea of what the job involves.

At stage two, the subordinate and his or her manager examine each task and try to decide how well or badly it is being performed.

Developing objectives comes next. The subordinate and manager try to develop goals which are challenging but realistic. The objectives probably spell out results that must be achieved. There wiil be dates by which the subordinate must achieve goals.

Finally, the subordinate sets about achieving the goals. From time to time, they meet to discuss progress.

So, there are many benefits of MBO. The system helps the subordinate to see clearly his role in the organization and the tasks he must carry out. He has a say I how his job is performed, and what his goals should be. As a result he feels more responsible and motivated.

Text 7 – The management of time

In any business, it is important that managers should be effective. They must be able to achieve their objectives, and to “get the right things done”. Most days, they are doing number of tasks, some fairly trivial, others highly important. They find that they do not have enough time to devote to the really important jobs. Besides, sometimes they are under such pressure that they forget which jobs are important.

The manager also faces another difficulty. He finds that other people take up a lot of his time, so that he has little time of his own.

Effective managers learn how to manage their time. They cut out unproductive activities. They never forget that time cannot be replaced.

Before being able to control his time, the manager must find out how he is actually using it. He must know where it goes. The best way to do this is to record how he uses time. The usual method is to log the tasks he performs.

Once the manager has an accurate picture of how he uses time, he can analyse the time log. This will help him to re-think and re-plan his work schedule.