Management Principles, Leadership and Ethics cheat sheet

Key terms

Working definition

The process of planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling the efforts of organisation members and of using organisational resources to achieve stated objectives efficiently and effectively.

Henri Fayol

To manage is to forecast and plan, to organise, to command, to coordinate and to control.

Mary Parker Follett

The art of getting things done through people. The definition is examined because it locates management in influence rather than in personal execution.

Peter Drucker

Management is a multipurpose organ that manages a business, manages managers, and manages workers and work. Drucker's contribution was to insist that the first duty is to define the business's purpose in terms of the customer.

Efficiency and effectiveness

Efficiency is doing things right, obtaining maximum output from minimum input. Effectiveness is doing the right things, achieving the objectives that matter. An organisation can be efficient at the wrong activity, which is the more expensive of the two failures.

Technical skills

Knowledge of and proficiency in a specific field: engineering, accounting, laboratory testing. Most important at first-line level, where the manager supervises people doing the work.

Human (interpersonal) skills

The ability to work with, understand, motivate and lead people individually and in groups. Important at every level, and the skill whose absence ends most managerial careers.

Conceptual skills

The ability to see the organisation as a whole, to understand how its parts interrelate, and to diagnose complex situations. Most important at top level, where decisions are about the whole rather than a part.

Managerial performance

The measure of how efficiently and effectively a manager achieves the objectives set for their unit.

Organisational performance

The measure of how efficiently and effectively the organisation as a whole achieves its objectives.

Efficiency

The ratio of output to input. A measure of resource use, not of value.

Effectiveness

The degree to which objectives are achieved. A measure of value, not of cost.

Productivity

Output per unit of input, the commonest single measure of efficiency, and the measure on which Kenya's competitiveness against regional peers is usually assessed.