What is management?

• Management means executing tasks as efficiently as possible.
• This implies making the best possible use of all resources at your disposal.
• To manage your finances, for example, you regularly review how you are using your money to get the best possible return on it.
• Similarly, management is a strategic activity - you can't invest your resources efficiently unless you take stock periodically of where you will obtain the greatest return.
• Management simply means doing things in an organized way as opposed to simply reacting, improvising and drifting.
• So, management is a way of thinking about everything you do and of applying yourself to making the most of your time and resources.
• Management is only secondarily a role in an organizational hierarchy with power over other people.
• When we classify management as a function rather than as a role, we can say that management is occurring in a self-managing team or when people manage themselves even if no one person is overseeing, supervising or controlling them.

Why is it important to compare management to investment?

• Because this way of looking at management sets the stage for saying that any improvements you want to make in how you manage must start with strategic thinking about what you want to achieve and what is the best way of getting there.
• So, what do you really need to be doing better?
• Can you really be managing if you operate solely in reactive mode, no matter how successful you have been in the past flying by the seat of your pants?
• Hence you cannot be said to be managing unless you are taking time regularly to reflect on how well you are using all the resources at your disposal (including yourself). This means periodically examining what you are doing, reviewing what should be your major priorities and getting feedback from key stakeholders.
• It's also vital to distinguish between managing and doing. Managers ''facilitate'', others ''do'' or execute. The meaning of management is the efficient execution of tasks. It's more efficient for the manager to get others to do the actual executing.
• The manager adds most value by being an effective coordinator, catalyst, broker or facilitator.
• If you do not manage people, you still need to think strategically about how to get the best return out of all resources at your disposal - your personal talents, time, energy and company resources - this includes colleagues who you might influence to do things they would not do otherwise.