Principles are the first element of effective management. The second are the tasks carried out by managers. They are the subject of the following section.

What we are discussing here is not managers’ activities as such. Hence, I am pursuing a totally different objective from the Canadian management writer, Henry Mintzberg, who attracted attention several years ago with his assertion that managers’ actual activities have little or nothing at all to do with what they are said to be in certain management literature, such as that by Peter Drucker. On one hand, he is right; on the other hand, this completely misses the main issue.

This section of the book will not deal with what managers actually do for the entire day, but what they should or must do if they wish to be effective as managers. The daily routine of managers includes, and in this I am in agreement with Mintzberg, much that has little to do with management or its effectiveness. Among other things, this routine includes commitments related to carrying out, or sometimes even supposedly carrying out, job-related tasks such as dealing with correspondence, negotiations, business meals, covering for others, reading the newspapers, etc.

A distinction must be made between job-related and management tasks. In the following five chapters, I will cover those tasks that I believe essentially determine the effectiveness of management, and they do so in such a crucial way that they must occupy center stage in our discussion of effectiveness: managing objectives, organizing, decisionmaking, supervising people, and developing people. Without adopting a craftsmanlike, professional approach to carrying out these key tasks it will not be possible to achieve results in any organization.

|10|What is important with relation to principles of effective management is also applicable to these tasks and the tools that will be discussed later: The what of management is the same everywhere; the how can and must occasionally be very different. If this is overlooked, there will be confusion about the content and also its inherent logic.

Due to their very nature, carrying out management tasks requires not only a knowledge of management, but also factual and special knowledge. While management tasks are the same everywhere, the factual knowledge required to carry them out is very different. What factual knowledge depends on a number of factors, for example: the purpose and activity of an organization; the industry; the geographical area in which a person is working; the size of an institution; and, last but not least, the manager’s level in the organization. All this should be obvious, but it is frequently overlooked in treatises on management, and in the general understanding of management.

For the sake of clarity here are a few examples. The first of the management tasks to be discussed is “managing objectives”. This task must be carried out in every organization. However, the substance of the objectives in a company dealing with aluminum differs from those ina pharmaceutical company; the administrative body of the Ministry of the Interior has different objectives from those of the Ministry of Defense or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and a non-profit organization that helps young people to beat drug addiction has objectives that differ from one that looks after old people in need of care.

The same applies to the different organizational levels. It is obvious that at the top level of a company, for example, which deals with strategic issues and therefore also has strategic objectives, different factors have to be taken into consideration and, consequently, the factual knowledge required at this level differs from that required at the level of a foreman in the same company who deals with very different issues.

Another question is whether the management tasks suggested and dealt with here are sufficient in principle. I would like to leave this issue open for now and discuss it at the end. For most social institutions and typical cases, the answer is yes. However, the intention here is not to create something new. Strictly speaking, the tasks that are necessary |11|and sufficient for management are well known. The efforts of certain writers to constantly invent something new are not amusing, they are annoying. The emphasis must be on a clear and precise understanding of the elements of each management task and not the creation of an endless string of new, meaningless words.

This is particularly important for the growing number of organizations that have information and knowledge as their most important resources. Even though their employees, compared to more traditional industries, have different and new types of professional tasks to carry out that also require different knowledge relating to their methods and content, the management tasks are basically the same. A change that is almost universally underestimated or ignored has taken place: In information and knowledge organizations management must be mastered as a virtuoso. What is required is not a different management buta more precise, almost perfect management. Traditional industrial and commercial organizations were, to a great extent, impervious to management mistakes; however, the new types of organization are very sensitive and only in the rarest of cases are management mistakes forgiven.

Basic knowledge of a manager’s tasks and a certain amount of experience are required to understand the following section. For each individual task there are only a few aspects that really matter. I am tempted to talk about “secrets”. However, if I am to remain true to my principles, I will have to refrain from doing so. There are no secrets. Nevertheless, this knowledge is not generally known either. The contents of this section are those practices that can be learnt from effective people – who carry out the same tasks as others, but their methods of carrying them out are different.