Page 44 - Fundamentals of Management Myths Debunked (2017)_Flat

CHAPTER 1 • Managers and Management 43
Practicing the Skill members? Did you work at developing your social astuteness,
Take each of the components of political skill and spend one maybe by starting to recognize and interpret people’s facial
week working on it as you navigate your school life and work expressions and the meaning behind those expressions? Did you
life. Keep a brief set of notes describing your experiences— make a conscious effort to be more sincere in your relationships
good and bad. Were you able to begin developing a network of with others, especially those that are not close friends? What
people you could rely on or connect with for school or work could you have done differently to be more politically skilled?
commitments? How did you try to become better at influencing Once you begin to recognize what’s involved with political
those around you? Did you work at communicating better or at skills, you should find yourself becoming more connected and
developing a good rapport with coworkers or class project team better able to influence others—that is, more politically adept.

Heartland’s Traditional Fragrances Experiential Exercise
To: Eric Kim, Training Coordinator
From: Helen Merkin, Human Resources Director
Re: Supervisory Training and Management Certification Program

The good news: our sales numbers continue to grow. The bad The second issue is how we could help our supervisors
news: it’s putting a strain on our manufacturing supervisors. achieve certification that verifies their skills, knowledge, and
They’re finding it difficult to keep our line employees motivated. professionalism. One certification program that I’m aware of is
We need to get some training in place to help them deal with the Certified Professional Manager. Please research this pro-
this demanding pace or our line employees are likely to get gram and prepare a brief (no more than half a page) bulleted
even more stressed and we may see product quality go down. list of what’s involved. And get me the information as soon as
I need you to look into two issues for me. One is a training possible. Thnx!
program that focuses on important supervisory skills. Do some This fictionalized company and message were created for educational
research and put together a list of the skills you think are most purposes only, and not meant to reflect positively or negatively on manage-
important for our supervisors to have, together with a justifica- ment practices by any company that may share this name.
tion for why you think these skills are important.

CAse AppLICATION 1
#

Managing Without Managers

potify, a Swedish commercial music service, is syn- companies like Spotify it is imperative that they can work in
onymous with dramatically changing the way consumers a fast moving way that allows changes in content to get to
Saccess and use music on a day-to-day basis. They have the customer as quickly as possible. In order to work as ef-
succeeded in moving consumers away from buying music ficiently as possible Spotify have adopted a management and
and, instead, moving them towards a model of renting the organizational structure based upon squads, chapters, tribes,
music they enjoy for a monthly fee. The Swedish music giant, and guilds. Although you won’t find theory talking about or-
launched in 2008, was developed into the business we know ganizational tribes or chapters, it does provide a useful way
today by Swedish entrepreneur Daniel Ek, who was inspired to for Spotify to organize their staff and reporting structures
create a service that would be easier and more convenient for in an industry where many are trying to remove mangers
customers to use than the now-illegal file sharing websites that entirely. 36
were popular at the time. 35 ‘Squads’ are the building
Like many technology Spotify shows that it is blocks of organizational struc-
companies, Spotify has a ture at Spotify. These small
flat organizational structure possible to thrive without teams work in a way that is
as opposed to complex hier- traditional managers! similar to a small start up busi-
archies of management. For ness. These squads sit together