Managing effectively

Recent surveys of maintenance management effectiveness indicate that one-third, 33 cents out of every dollar, of all maintenance costs is wasted as the result of unnecessary or improperly carried out maintenance. When you consider that US industry spends more than 200 billion dollars each year on maintenance of plant equipment and facilities, the impact on productivity and profit that is represented by the maintenance operation become clear. 

In the McCoy table of recommended concentrations of boiler salines, the guidelines for pressures from 100 to 900 psi apply to conventional field-erected boilers with moderate rates of heat transfer, say, 50,000 Btu/hr/ft2. At high rates characteristic of packaged boilers, large amounts of insoluble material cannot be managed effectively by any dispersant presently available. 

Preventive—Applying measures to reduce the frequency of occurrence of an event, including enhancing process safety management effectiveness. 

Fitzgerald GJ, Scow KM, Hill JE. Fallow season straw and water management effects on methane emissions in California rice. Global Biogeochem. Cycl. 2000 14 767-776. 

Janzen HH, Campbell CA, Izaurralde RC, Ellert BH, Juma N, McGill WB, Zentner RP (1998a) Management effects on soil C storage on the Canadian prairies. Soil Till Res 47 181-195... 

Wander MM, Traina SJ, Stinner BR, Peters SE (1994) Organic and conventional management effects on biologically active soil organic matter pools. Soil Sci Soc Am J 58 1130-1139... 

In the current, price-sensitive environment, which is the hallmark of modem healthcare and certainly new drug development, expenses necessary to support clinical research are a major concern for sponsors. Both fixed and variable costs can be managed effectively compared to complete in-house development budgets. As product development costs are a significant element influencing pharmaceutical pricing, the role of innovative CROs is expected to grow. 

Hickman, K. R., D. C. Hartnett, R. C. Cochran, and C. E. Owensby. (2004). Grazing management effects on plant species diversity in tallgrass prairie. Journal of Range Management 57(1) 58-65. 

Witt C, Cassman KG, Oik DC, Biker U, Liboon SP, Samson MI, Ottow JCG. 2000. Crop rotation and residue management effects on carbon sequestration, nitrogen cychng and productivity of irrigated rice systems. Plant and Soil 225 263-278. 

For morale, the Away Day hzis had a curious effect. The staff are sceptical of its ultimate purpose and, at the same time, relieved that their concerns have been aired to a wider and, hopefully, receptive audience. It says, at the end of Chapter 1 of this book .. . it is hard to see how anyone could reasonably be described as having managed effectively if they did not actually achieve anything. My achievements so far in managing my new responsibility have been both tangible and psychologic. ... 

This is followed by guidance on how you might think through your own personal approach to managing effectively. Some principles are culled from action learning as a way of setting in motion an experience of managing effectively for yourself. 

The chapter concludes with my own views on what managing effectively might comprise. 

For it is not just external circumstances that are unique so also is each manager. Effectiveness is not something out there to be picked off the shelf and applied. It is the result of the interaction between, on the one hand, each manager s unique motivation and capabilities and, on the other, the opportunities and constraints present in the situation he or she is managing. 

Six views on what it means to manage effectively are presented below. They have been selected because in each case the writer has attempted to come to grips with the meaning of effectiveness as well as what needs to be done to attain it. Each view is presented in a separate box accompanying the text. 

It is fortuitious that there should be so much diversity of view. The objective in a book on learning from experience is not to synthesize all the existing views and provide you with one theoretical ideal of effectiveness to emulate. Rather it is to enable you, drawing on your own experience, to become a better judge of what effectiveness means for you and your particular circumstances. The fact that the boxes accompanying the chapter reflect so mjiny diverse views of effectiveness should impel you to think through your own stance for managing effectively. 

Rosabeth Moss Ranter s use of the metaphor of business athletes (see Box 1.3) to epitomize management effectiveness very much reflects the emergence of intrapreneuring man-... 

Malcolm Leary and associates address the processes of managing effectively in a rather different way. They note that... 

Straddling inputs and outputs are of course the processes of managing, as indicated in the central section of the diagram in Box 1.6. This diagram gives a useful picture of the totality of managing effectively. 

It may be illuminating to conclude this brief overview of what constitutes managing effectively with a list of the responses of a group of middle managers employed in a large manufacturing corporation to the question What is effectiveness here Their responses, shown in Box 1,7, are a mix of things they... 

To gain a comprehensive experience of managing effectively you need to manage a task or project from initial conception of the idea through to its realization in an accomplished goal or outcome, as shown in Figure 1.1. 

The issue for readers of this book is whether you undertake a complete project of the kind depicted in Figure 1.1. Certainly, in order to gain a complete experience of managing effectively you would need to do so. On the other hand, you could treat the book as another piece of background reading on management. 

The concern of many readers may simply be to learn how to manage effectively their compartmentalized share of the whole. Others may feel their work is too closely tied to the management of routine or recurring operations for them to be able to get Involved with the development of innovation or the management of change. 

Reflect on previous experiences of managing effectively to distil further learning from them. However, reflection on past experience will not advance your development to anything like the extent that would be possible were you to undertake a new stretching challenge. 

While ignorance or incompetence may undermine your ability to manage effectively, the possession of knowledge or skills can be no surety of being effective. 

Drawing the threads of this chapter together, to manage effectively you need to ... 

Have a purpose to accomplish, and actually to accomplish it - it is hard to see how anyone could reasonably be described as having managed effectively if they did not actually achieve anything. The purpose needs to be a worthwhile one, combining corporate and personal aspirations. 

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