In new businesses, "management" is often considered "whatever needs
to be done just to keep things afloat". However, for your business
to grow and remain healthy, you must master certain basic skills in
management and leadership -- skills that will help you avoid the
crisis situations where you have to do "whatever it takes to stay
afloat". The basic skills include problem solving and decision
making, planning, meeting management, delegation, communications
and managing yourself.Those basics are also the foundation from
which to develop more advanced practices in management and
leadership. When organizational personnel struggle, it's often
because they've forgotten the basics -- not because they aren't
implementing state-of-the-art techniques in management and
leadership.NOTE ABOUT THE LARGE SIZE OF THIS MODULE: This module
references numerous basic skills that leaders and managers must
master in order to be effective in their organizations and their
lives. These skills can be practiced throughout this program and in
other areas of learners' lives. Readers who are interested in
gaining broader contexts of management and leadership can review
optional readings suggested in the "Materials for Review" section
below.NOTE ABOUT ORDER OF MODULES: Therefore, it is common to start
management training programs with an overview of the board of
directors (if the program includes focus on corporation, which are
governed by boards of directors) -- the board of directors is
legally charged to govern a corporation. However, in this program,
this learning module about basic skills in management and
leadership is presented before the learning module about boards of
directors. The reason for this order of modules is as follows.
Frequently businesses are started by someone with a strong vision
for a new product. That person often goes on to become the first
chief executive of the new business. Typically, that person also
takes a very strong role (often the leading role) in the initial
organization and development of the board of directors. Therefore,
modules in this program are organized to help the founder (and
often the first chief executive) to effectively apply basic skills
in management and leadership when organizing the board of
directors. NOTE ABOUT LEARNING SUPERVISION -- Supervision is a
major aspect of managing and leading. There are certain roles and
responsibilities -- and experiences -- that are highly unique to
the role of supervision and highly critical to the success of the
organization. Therefore, the topic of staffing and supervision will
also be addressed in an upcoming module in this progra