1) How do you feel about having management responsibilities in today’s world, characterized by uncertainty, ambiguity, and sudden changes or threats from the environment? Describe some skills and competencies that you think are important to managers working in these conditions.
2) Assume that you are a project manager at a biotechnology company, working with managers from research, production, and marketing on a major product modification. You notice that every memo you receive from the marketing manager has been copied to senior management. At every company function, she spends time talking to the big shots. You are also aware that sometimes when you and the other project members are slaving away over the project, she is playing golf with senior managers. What is your evaluation of her behavior? As project manager, what do you do?
3) Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, tweeted for the first time in September 2012, prompting this response: “@JeffImmelt how come my grandfather got on twitter before you?” Do you think managers should use Twitter and other social media? Can you be an effective manager today without using new media? Why?
4) Why do some organizations seem to have a new CEO every year or two, whereas others have top leaders who stay with the company for many years (e.g., John Chambers at Cisco)? What factors about the manager or about the company might account for this difference?
5) Think about the highly publicized safety problems at General Motors (GM). One observer said that a goal of efficiency had taken precedence over a goal of quality within this company. Do you think managers can improve both efficiency and effectiveness simultaneously? Discuss. How do you think GM’s leaders should respond to the safety situation?
6) You are a bright, hard-working, entry-level manager who fully intends to rise up through the ranks. Your performance evaluation gives you high marks for your technical skills, but low marks when it comes to people skills. Do you think people skills can be learned, or do you need to rethink your career path? If people skills can be learned, how would you go about doing it?
7) If managerial work is characterized by variety, fragmentation, and brevity, how do managers perform basic management functions such as planning, which would seem to require reflection and analysis?
8) A college professor told her students, “The purpose of a management course is to teach students about management, not to teach them to be managers.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Discuss.
9) Discuss some of the ways that organizations and jobs have changed over the past ten years. What changes do you anticipate over the next ten years? How might these changes affect the manager’s job and the skills that a manager needs to be successful?
10) How might the teaching of a management course be designed to help people make the transition from individual performer to manager in order to prepare them for the challenges they will face as new managers?