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In module one I learned about the aspects of management, the types of managers, manager roles, managing skills and the history of management. This module will benefit with my life and future career because it helped me understand the basic element of managing a buisness.

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In this video it explains the definition of management and also explains that are four functions which are Planning, Organizing, controlling, and leading just like module one explained. I find this video interesting because it pretty much summed up Module One in a cute video and it also helped me understand the topic more breifly.

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In this Module we learned the different levels of management and this Picture shows the three different types of management, Upper Management, Middle Management, and Lower Management. This Picture helped me visualize the different types of management making It easier to memorize.

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This website explains the primary functions and explains an overall overview of business management. I found this article helpful because it helped me understand the primary functions in a more thoroughly manner.

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Definition of Management

Management's primary function is to get people to work together for the attainment of an organization's goals and objectives.

Learning Objectives

Recognize the difference between traditional, team, and servant management.

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Management processes include planning, organizing, directing and controlling.

An important aspect of management's function is the allocation of finite resources.

Resources can be human, financial, technological or natural.

There are different management styles: Traditional, team, and servant.

Key Terms

system: A whole composed of relationships among the members.

resource: Something that one uses to achieve an objective. An examples of a resource could be a raw material or an employee.

Management: An Overview

Management is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Since organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to manage oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others.

Management functions include: Planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal.

There are several different resource types within management. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of:

Human resources

Financial resources

Technological resources

Natural resources

Different type of Management Styles

There are different types of management styles, and the management process has changed over recent years. The addition of work teams and servant leadership has changed what is expected from managers, and what managers expect from their employees.

Traditional Management

There is a hierarchy of employees, low level management, mid-level management, and senior management. In traditional management systems, the manager sets out expectations for the employees who need to meet goals, but the manager receives the reward of meeting those goals.

Team Managment

In a team management arrangement the manager is a guiding hand to help the members of the team work together to solve problems but doesn't dictate policy and the entire team receives the reward of meeting those goals.

Servant Management

With this approach, the manager helps supply resources the employees need to meet company goals. In servant leadership, the organization recognizes employees as experts in their field and work to help them work efficiently.

No matter which type of management style is used by an organization, the main objective of managers is to help employees reach company goals and maintain company standards and policies.

The Need for Management

Management is needed in order to facilitate a coordinated effort toward the accomplishment of an organization's goals.

Learning Objectives

Explain the purpose of management

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.

Good managers are needed to keep their organizations on track by ensuring that everything that's being done is ethically geared toward providing what customers want.

Good management is needed to inject motivation, creativity, discipline, and enthusiasm into areas in which they either don't exist or they're not necessarily wanted.

People who work for managers must realize that it is their job to make their managers value them.

Key Terms

entrepreneurship: The art or science of innovation and risk-taking for profit in business.

The Purpose of Management

The purpose of management is to serve customers. Yet, if one looks through most management books for a definition of management, 99.9 percent of the time the word customer will not be mentioned. This is astonishing because serving customers in order to obtain a profit is the crux of every business organization. Equally remiss is the fact that most definitions of management neatly filter out service in their descriptions of management.

Good managers constantly streamline their organizations toward making a sale. In other words, good managers are needed to keep their organizations on track by ensuring that everything that's being done is ethically geared toward providing what customers want. In this regard, a good manager is responsible for reducing waste and ambiguity, keeping costs down, and motivating others to do the same. In the same vein, good managers regularly take educated risks and exercise good judgement (the basis of entrepreneurship). These risks include:

Trying new things;

Successfully adjusting to constant change;

Developing subordinates (good managers aren't afraid of letting other people shine and, in fact, they encourage it);

Improving their own skills.

The Need for Management

Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Since organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action (including design) to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. Therefore, management is needed in order to facilitate a coordinated effort toward the accomplishment of the organization's goals.

Since most managers are responsible for more work than one person can normally perform, a good manager delegates and integrates his or her work (or the work of others). A manager does this by acting as a clear channel of communication within the business that he or she serves. Good management is needed to inject motivation, creativity, discipline, and enthusiasm into areas in which they either don't exist or they're not necessarily wanted.

The various functions of management are classified as:

Planning

Organizing

Staffing

Leading/Directing

Controlling/Monitoring

Motivation

Management is also responsible for the formation and implementation of business policies and strategies.

Trends in Management

Modern trends in management favor agile, iterative processes that focus on innovation, software development, and social impacts.

Learning Objectives

Understand the evolving nature of management perspectives and strategies

Key Takeaways

Key Points

Management is a constantly evolving field, with a wide variety of formal and informal approaches and perspectives.

While new management perspectives are emerging everyday in manufacturing, technology, software, and social entrepreneurship, some of the most notable new perspectives are in software development.

Scrum and agile management styles focus primarily on iteration and the capacity to build non-hierarchical work structures that empower growth and innovation without the rigidity of traditional management.

Social entrepreneurship is a recent emergence in management, in which entrepreneurial management styles are being taken to the non- profit and community development sectors.

Key Terms

iteration: The process of repeating a process in pursuit of incremental improvement.

Scrum: A management philosophy predicated upon a feedback-driven iterative evolution of process.

Management is a rapidly evolving field. Even now startups all over the world are trying out new, innovative ways of looking at how to align their resources, how to make decisions, and what managerial approaches (or lack of managerial approaches) might yield the best culture for growth. It's an intriguing time for management, and experimentation is constant.

When looking at new management approaches, it's useful to consider the area in which these organizations operate. Software, non-profit, and entrepreneurship are all seeing substantial deviations from standard corporate management approaches.

Software

The two big words in software management over the past decade or two have been Scrum and Agile. Each of these approaches is a management philosophy equipped for rapid construction, iteration, and implementation.

Scrum has been around since the late 1980s, but not particularly prevalent until the early 21st century. Scrum is defined as a feedback-driven empirical approach that highlights transparency, inspection, and adaptation. In terms of values, scrum discards traditional hierarchy and promotes commitment, courage, focus, openness, and respect in a team -oriented, objectives-driven environment. In terms of structure, you'll find three groups:

Development Team - This will be your functional specialists, all collaborating on a daily basis to construct a facet (or perhaps the entirety) of a new piece of software. In scrum, this is quite often cross-functional.

Scrum Master - A facilitator, this individual focuses on removing impediments and acting as a buffer between the team and external distractions (usually integration with other teams). The scrum master will also assess progress holistically, and ensure alignment with the scrum mentality.

Product Owner (PO) - The PO focuses on being a voice of the customer and the representation of stakeholders in the team environment. Stakeholders, in this context, represent anyone with an interest in the output of that team (primarily organizational owners and other teams). The PO is not a manager, but instead a bridge between the team and the external environment they operate in.

Social Entrepreneurship

Utilizing the ever-evolving perspectives of start up companies and entrepreneurs, non-profit organizations and other community-oriented groups have begun replacing traditional management approaches with a more grassroots perspective. A key metric to a social entrepreneur isn't profit but community impact, usually in areas such as poverty alleviation, health care, education, and community development. This management style is small, focused, innovation-driven, and non-hierarchical.

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Management's primary function is to get people to work together for the attainment of an organization's goals and objectives. Recognize the difference between traditional, team, and servant management. Key Points Management processes include planning, organizing, directing and controlling. An important aspect of management's function is the allocation of finite resources.

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Module Two: Ethics and Corporate Social Responsability 

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Module Two: Ethics and Corporate Social Responsability 

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Reflecting on Module Two made me realize how corporate social responsibility, economic performance, business ethics, is managed. It made me notice that if I am ever an owner of a company it is a great idea to have a vast variety of diversity.

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Tony Hsieh the CEO of Zappos is a great example of someone who understands business ethics and that diversity is what makes his company so successful.

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Module Three: Management within a Global Organization

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Module Three: Management within a Global Organization

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In this Module I learned all about how making a business go global can be more work then I thought it was going to be. It made me realize and understand why big organizations decide to have their factories in other countries.

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In this module it takes about the differences in business ethics. I found this video interesting because it explains business ethics and helps me understand the principles of ethical decision making.

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Business Ethics: Corporate Social Responsibility

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As Module Two speaks on social responsibility in this video Rachel explains how social responsibility is changing and how it is managed.

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The Era of Corporate Social Responsibility is Ending | Rachel Hutchisson | TEDxWilmington

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I found this article interesting because it gives you information about what countries are better to start your global organization in.

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Let's talk about this. A global manager is defined by the work he or she is doing, frequently within a company with global presence or operations. A global manager is responsible for managing teams of employees or business operations across diverse cultures and time zones, which calls for new skill sets and capabilities.

And, the new global manager is almost everyone working as a manager today.

Whether you're working for a local, national or international company, you're working across cultures, languages, regions or countries. You have to be savvy at quickly assessing needs, reading others and ensuring interactions are successful to meet deliverables and accomplish your goals.
There is a New Global Environment!
Business today is conducted in an almost borderless, boundary-free marketplace, made of multiple countries, cultures, languages, ethnicities and time zones. The number of companies with international offices and plants continues to grow as people from a broad range of countries move and settle in new locations.

Technology connects all of us 24/7 to geographic locations about which we've only just begun to learn. In truth, you've probably already noticed that the number of people you work with or come in contact with on a daily basis, has changed. Your employees and co-workers may well have backgrounds that are very different from your own.

There are three significant reasons for this.

Let's start with the most obvious. The first: An increasing number of U.S.-based companies are doing business internationally. For example, more than sixty-eight percent of the top 250 U.S. retailers have foreign operations, according to a report published by Deloitte. And, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO), global trade growth is projected to stay above-trend. This growth in international operations is expected to continue.

Finally, the third reason for the new global environment is that more American managers work for companies that are headquartered outside the United States. Companies like Burger King, Budweiser, Medtronic, Purina, McDermott, Seagate Technology, Good Humor, Frigidaire, and Actavis/Allergan are among the iconic U.S, company names that have moved headquarters from the United States to other countries in the past few years, according to a report by CNBC.

In the new global environment, managers work with teams of people from different cultural backgrounds, locations, and levels of experience. This rapidly changing global environment, with diverse customer demands, new markets, and digitalization means managers need to react quickly in situations of extreme complexity and ambiguity.
Mastering the Art of the New Global Manager: OAR and 4DCulture Tools
As I explain in my new book, The New Global Manager, to be a successful New Global Manager, you'll need to incorporate a combination of skills and new tools--like the OAR process. Use the three following steps, Observe/Ask/React, to quickly assess any situation more accurately.

The basic rule for OAR is that when someone behaves unexpectedly, instead of responding immediately you stop, and Observe. What did they do or not do that surprised you? When another person's behavior doesn't match your expectations, it's time for the second part of OAR. It's time to Ask Questions. Once you've gathered more information, then React.

Another tool New Global Managers are employing is called 4DCulture. When you know you're going to be in a situation with someone whose culture is different from your own, you should do some homework. The 4DCulture tool will help you analyze the cultural forces that may be in play. The tool gives you a way to make your first determination about how you're going to act and then to ask the questions and analyze the situation so that you do better.
The New Global Environment is all around us.
Suffice it to say, immigration and globalization trends will not reverse any time soon. They will drive the environment you work in every day. Advances in technology further stir the pot, making it more likely that you will have frequent contact with people with diverse norms, perceptions, and values. You will, of necessity, need to develop a global mindset and perfect your global management skills. This is an exciting and challenging time for all of us.
Ten Never Fail Strategies for The New Global Manager:

1. Check your assumptions at the door

2. Slow down, speak clearly, and use slang sparingly and carefully

3. Add 'in country X' to indicate you are thinking globally

4. Memorize five facts about another country or culture

5. Act like an anthropologist: Observe and listen

6. Seek out global news sources

7. Travel adventurously, but take precautions

8. Ensure everyone contributes in meetings

9. Give constructive feedback but consider the receiver

10. Alternate meeting times to accommodate time zones.

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New Global Managers: Tools and Tips You'll Need to Be Successful

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Let's talk about this. A global manager is defined by the work he or she is doing, frequently within a company with global presence or operations. A global manager is responsible for managing teams of employees or business operations across diverse cultures and time zones, which calls for new skill sets and capabilities.

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I picked this article because it explains Both the pros and cons about making your organization into global organization.

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As the economic spotlight shifts to developing markets, global companies need new ways to manage their strategies, people, costs, and risks.

Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. McKinsey Global Institute research suggests that 400 midsize emerging-market cities, many unfamiliar in the West, will generate nearly 40 percent of global growth over the next 15 years. The International Monetary Fund confirms that the ten fastest-growing economies during the years ahead will all be in emerging markets. Against this backdrop, continuing advances in information and communications technology have made possible new forms of international coordination within global companies and potential new ways for them to flourish in these fast-growing markets.

There are individual success stories. IBM expects to earn 30 percent of its revenues in emerging markets by 2015, up from 17 percent in 2009. At Unilever, emerging markets make up 56 percent of the business already. And Aditya Birla Group, a multinational conglomerate based in India, now has operations in 40 countries and earns more than half its revenue outside India.

But, overall, global organizations are struggling to adapt. A year ago, we uncovered a "globalization penalty": high-performing global companies consistently scored lower than more locally focused ones on several dimensions of organizational health. For example, the former were less effective at establishing a shared vision, encouraging innovation, executing "on the ground," and building relationships with governments and business partners. Equally arresting was evidence from colleagues in McKinsey's strategy practice showing that global companies headquartered in emerging markets have been growing faster than counterparts headquartered in developed ones, even when both are operating on "neutral turf": emerging markets where neither is based (see " Parsing the growth advantage of emerging-market companies ").

Over the past year, we've tried to understand more clearly the challenges facing global organizations, as well as approaches that are helping some to thrive. Our work has included surveys and structured interviews with more than 300 executives at 17 of the world's leading global organizations spanning a diverse range of sectors and geographies, a broader survey of more than 4,600 executives, and time spent working directly with the leaders of dozens of global organizations trying to address these issues.

Clearly, no single organizational model is best for all companies handling the realities of rapid growth in emerging markets and round-the-clock global communications. That's partly because the opportunities and challenges facing companies vary, depending on their business models. R&D-intensive companies, for example, are working to staff new research centers in the emerging world and to integrate them with existing operations. Firms focused on extracting natural resources are adapting to regulatory regimes that are evolving rapidly and sometimes becoming more interventionist. Consumer-oriented firms are facing sometimes-conflicting imperatives to tailor their businesses to local needs while maintaining consistent global processes.

Another reason no single model fits all global companies is that their individual histories are so different. Those that have grown organically often operate relatively consistently across countries but find it hard to adjust their products and services to local needs, given their fairly standardized business models. Companies that have mainly grown through M&A, in contrast, may find it easier to tailor operations to local markets but harder to integrate their various parts so they can achieve the potential of scale and scope and align a dispersed workforce behind a single set of strategies and values.

Although individual companies are necessarily responding differently to the new opportunities abroad, our work suggests that most face a common set of four tensions in managing strategy, people, costs, and risk on a global scale. The importance of each of these four tensions will vary from company to company, depending on its particular operating model, history, and global footprint. (For more on the implications of these uneven globalization efforts, see " Developing global leaders.") Taking stock of the status of all four tensions can be a useful starting point for a senior-management team aiming to boost an organization's global performance.

Strategic confidence and stretch

Being global brings clear strategic benefits: the ability to access new customer markets, new suppliers, and new partners. These immediate benefits can also create secondary ones. Building a customer base in a new market, for example, provides familiarity and relationships that may enable additional investments-say, in a research center.

But being global also brings strategic challenges. Many companies find it increasingly difficult to be locally flexible and adaptable as they broaden their global footprint. In particular, processes for developing strategy and allocating resources can struggle to cope with the increasing diversity of markets, customers, and channels. These issues were clear in our research: fewer than 40 percent of the 300 senior executives at global companies we interviewed and surveyed believed that their employers were better than local competitors at understanding the operating environment and customers' needs. And barely half of the respondents to our broader survey thought that their companies communicated strategy clearly to the workforce in all markets where they operate.

People as an asset and a challenge

Many of the executives we interviewed believed strongly that the vast reserves of skills, knowledge, and experience within the global workforce of their companies represented an invaluable asset. But making the most of that asset is difficult: for example, few surveyed executives felt that their companies were good at transferring lessons learned in one emerging market to another.

At the same time, many companies find deploying and developing talent in emerging markets to be a major challenge. Barely half the executives at the 17 global companies we studied in depth thought they were effective at tailoring recruiting, retention, training, and development processes for different geographies. An emerging-market leader in one global company told us that "our current process favors candidates who have been to a US school, understand the US culture, and can conduct themselves effectively on a call with head office in the middle of the night. The process is not designed to select for people who understand our market."

One of our recent surveys showed how hard it is to develop talent for emerging markets at a pace that matches their expected growth. Executives reported that just 2 percent of their top 200 employees were located in Asian emerging markets that would, in the years ahead, account for more than one-third of total sales. Complicating matters is the fact that local highfliers in some key markets increasingly prefer to work for local employers (see " How multinationals can attract the talent they need "). Global companies are conscious of this change. "Local competitors' brands are now stronger, and they can offer more senior roles in the home market," noted one multinational executive we interviewed.

Scale and scope benefits, complexity costs

Large global companies still enjoy economic leverage from being able to invest in shared infrastructure ranging from R&D centers to procurement functions. Economies of scale in shared services also are significant, though no longer uniquely available to global companies, as even very local ones can outsource business services and manufacturing and avail themselves of cloud-based computing.

But as global companies grow bigger and more diverse, complexity costs inevitably rise. Efforts to standardize the common elements of essential functions, such as sales or legal services, can clash with local needs. And emerging markets complicate matters, as operations located there sometimes chafe at the costs they must bear as part of a group centered in the developed world: their share of the expense of distant (and perhaps not visibly helpful) corporate and regional centers, the cost of complying with global standards and of coordinating managers across far-flung geographies, and the loss of market agility imposed by adhering to rigid global processes.

Risk diversification and the loss of familiarity

A global company benefits from a geographically diverse business portfolio that provides a natural hedge against the volatility of local growth, country risk, and currency risk. But pursuing so many emerging-market opportunities is taking global companies deep into areas with unfamiliar risks that many find difficult to evaluate. Less than half of the respondents to our 2011 survey thought these organizations had the right risk-management infrastructure and skills to support the global scale and diversity of their operations.

Furthermore, globally standard, exhaustive risk-management processes may not be the best way to deal with risk in markets where global organizations must move fast to lock in early opportunities. One executive in an emerging-market outpost of a global company told us "a mind-set that 'this is the way that we do things around here' is very strongly embedded in our risk process. When combined with the fact that the organization does not fully understand emerging markets, it means that our risk process might reject opportunities that [the global] CEO would approve."

Understanding these tensions is just a starting point. Capturing the benefits and mitigating the challenges associated with each will require global companies to explore new ways of organizing and operating.

About the author(s)

Martin Dewhurst is a director in McKinsey's London office, where Suzanne Heywood is a principal; Jon Harris is a director in the New York office.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of Kate Aquila and Roni Katz to the development of this article.

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As the economic spotlight shifts to developing markets, global companies need new ways to manage their strategies, people, costs, and risks. Managing global organizations has been a business challenge for centuries. But the nature of the task is changing with the accelerating shift of economic activity from Europe and North America to markets in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

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I picked this article because it explains what business and decision making means and how planning and decision making should be done.

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Planning and decision-making, organizing, leading and controlling are all interrelated.

Planning and decision making is the most important step of all managerial functions.

There are many relationships between decision-making and planning.

Definition of Planning

Planning managerial functions where managers are required to establish goals and state the ways and means by which these goals are to be attained.

Therefore planning is taken as the foundation for future activities.

Or in simple terms; planning is deciding in advance what is to be done. Planning is the thinking of doing.

Management every time has to look for planning long-range and short-range future direction by estimating and evaluating the future behavior of the relevant environment and by determining the enterprise's own desired role.

Plans have two basic components: goals and action statements. Goals represent an end state the targets and results that managers hope to achieve.

Action statements represent the means by which an organization goes ahead to attain its goals. Planning is a deliberate and conscious work by means of which managers determine a future course of action for attaining a specific goal.

To a manager means planning is thinking about what is to be done, who is going to do it, and how and when he will do it.

Planning also required thinking about past events and about future opportunities and impending threats. Planning process finds the organizational strengths and weaknesses.
Read: Managerial Skills: 5 Skills Managers Need (Explained)
Definition of Decision-making

Decision-making is the process of identifying a set of feasible alternatives and choosing a course of action from them. Decision-making is a part of planning.

Decision-making is an intermediate-sized set of activities which begins with an identifying problem and ends with choice making or decision giving.

Management is the constantly influencing organization's action and decision-making process is central to doing it.
Read: 4 Purpose Organizational Goals Should Serve for Enterprise
In the decision-making process, a manager identifies a specific situation and finds the threats and opportunities that it offers.

Then the manager must find the available alternatives to tackle the situation.

This is where planning comes in.

By planning; manager finds these alternatives by testing and measuring their effectiveness. They identify the pros and cons of each alternative.

After that, the managers must use their decision-making skills for selecting one path of action. Decision making is the core of planning. Unless a decision has been made, a plan cannot be implemented in the field.

So we can say that planning and decision-making, both are interrelated. Decisions can be made without planning but planning cannot be done without making decisions. Planning can be defined as the process of selecting a future course of action.

Decision-making defined as the process of selecting a course of action from the alternatives.

They need to be accurate for the welfare of the organization.

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Relation between Planning and Decision Making

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Planning and Decision Making are most important managerial functions, and there are many relations between them. Planning is the thinking of doing. Decision-making is a part of planning. Planning is the process of selecting a future course of action, where Decision-making means selecting a course of action.

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Module Four: Planning and Decision Making

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Module Four: Planning and Decision Making

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In module four I learned how to properly organize an organization in a more proficient way where I can use for the rest of my life.

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I found this video interesting because it compares real life context with the topic, organizational structure and processes.

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Rethinking the structure of corporations | Michael Yaziji |TEDxLausanne

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In this video it explains how it is creating a borderless world for organizations and how going global is not a bad idea.

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Module Five: Organizational Structure and Processes

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Module Five: Organizational Structure and Processes

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In this module I learned how to properly structure organizations by using graphs, and techniques.

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I found this video interesting because it helped me understand the right way to handle decision making.

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I found this video interesting because it explains the definition of organizational structure in an organization where I can visualize it.

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This diagram shows the different levels of importance in HR

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I picked this picture because it shows a diagram of SWOT. SWOT helps both, decision making and planning. It helps you conduct an organization.

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Module Six: Managing Human Resources and Communications

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Module Six: Managing Human Resources and Communications

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In this module it talked about how human resources and communication place a big role in an organization. Human resources are in charge of employment and communications. With out them there would be no organization.

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I found this video interesting because it shows the importance of Human Recourses in a creative and fun way.

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In tis module I noticed how important to be a good leader in order for your organization to be successful.

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I like this video because it explains how it is okay to feel uncomfortable so be motivating to others.

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Get comfortable with being uncomfortable | Luvvie Ajayi Jones | TED

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Martin Luther King Jr. is a great example of great leadership. He was both motivated by the people and motivated the people, which made him successful.

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This article explains the importance of human resources in a business.

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Leaving communications to the professionals can be a strategic move that benefits the business.

Sometimes, a company's biggest hurdle to effectively communicating with employees is a lack of attention to properly managing the content or distribution of the message. Consider the following examples of communications gone wrong:

Many employees at a major Midwestern energy company first learned of the organization's merger plans not from internal corporate sources-such as HR, a corporate announcement or their individual managers-but from a radio news broadcast they heard while driving to work.

When a small publishing company implemented a peer evaluation process for employees, the first time many heard about it was when co-workers started making casual comments about having received "a survey about you." HR expected managers to tell their employees; managers thought HR would "take care of it."

Do such communication "glitches" have a negative impact on employee trust, commitment and loyalty? Many communications and HR professionals say yes.

Those opinions are backed up by a study by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a global consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. The study, " WorkUSA 2000," surveyed 7,500 U.S. workers at all job levels and in all major industry sectors about their attitudes toward their workplaces and their employers. Results showed a clear link between organizational success and a management culture that encourages employee involvement and communicates effectively with employees.

Clearly, there is a cost to failed and inadequate communication initiatives. And there is an incentive to manage communication efforts so as to maximize their effect. But who should do the managing? Human resources, which is the organizational function most concerned with employee needs? Or the internal corporate communications department, whose members are the company's professional communicators?

Many HR and communications professionals contend that communication efforts should be centralized-and separate from HR.

The Pluses Of Being Apart

One person who favors separation of the functions is Garry Griffiths, executive vice president of HR for American Management Systems, a business and information technology consulting firm in Fairfax, Va. Griffiths says: "Too many organizations fall into the trap of considering internal communication a function of HR. It is not. It's a strategic business partnership."

The "HR machine," Griffiths says, "is like an iceberg. Most of what takes place is underwater and doesn't do any good for anybody unless it's communicated." That communication, he maintains, should be the purview of professional communicators, not HR staff members.

Unisys Corp.-a worldwide information technology company based in Blue Bell, Pa.-is one of many organizations that prefer to keep HR and internal communications functions separate. Eight years ago, when employee communication was housed in HR, Shirley Robinson was part of the HR team and reported to Dave Aker, senior vice president of worldwide human resources. Today, Robinson is vice president of internal communications and reports to the vice president of corporate communication. She coordinates communication for all functions at Unisys, including marketing, IT, legal and finance as well as HR.

Separating the communication and HR functions has benefited HR, says Aker. "We get connected to the other channels of communication in the company. When we're talking about advertising or branding or public relations, the employee message is considered and incorporated as well. We in HR benefit from the leverage of the various channels that are used by the employee communication organization, as opposed to the single approach we were taking before."

Kurt Halvorson, chief administrative officer at Omaha-based Ameritrade, the online securities brokerage, says that when communication staff members report to HR, the arrangement may strengthen communication to employees at the expense of underemphasizing the organization's other communication needs.

At Ameritrade, HR-which reports to Halvorson-and corporate communications director Donna Kush have long had informal links but separate reporting structures. Following a 2001 corporate reorganization, they remain apart but now are linked by a dotted line on the organizational chart.

Despite the separate structures, corporate communications now has a closer relationship with HR-as well as other key areas of the organization. The new relationship helps to ensure consistency of "voice" with all stakeholders, according to both Kush and Halvorson, and has proven efficient.

"It's much more effective to have corporate communications separate from HR," says Halvorson, because "there are so many other important liaisons with areas like finance, with marketing and with the CEO."

Like others, Halvorson sees a benefit in keeping HR and communications separate. "There's a kind of innate different perspective that each brings to the process," he says. "Donna will see things that I'm myopically blind to because I deal with them all the time. Similarly, Donna will bring things to me from the communications side and say, 'Can I get an HR perspective on this?' I think there's a nice balance and a nice benefit there in terms of the professional oversight that we can each provide the other's group."

Both Halvorson and Kush say each side respects the other's expertise and both sides work together to achieve the company's mission. "The fact that we sit about 25 steps from each other helps quite a bit," Halvorson adds, "and that's not by accident; that's by design."

Says Charlene Wheeless, senior vice president of global communication and marketing at American Management Systems: "We all can get so focused on the work that is right in front of us that it's very helpful to have that partner that can take a step back and say, 'Let's look at this in terms of the business strategy.' "

Clarity and Consistency

Consultant John G. Clemons, president of Clemons Communication in Leesburg, Va., has done company communications both ways-through HR and as part of a separate communications function. He says that when the communication function operates through HR, "communication has a tendency to not be as pure because HR is introducing their own perspectives into the communications." It's difficult for the communication professional in this situation to "provide pure, unfettered, uncluttered communications," he says.

"Quite honestly," Clemons continues, "I believe it works better, and there is a better alignment, when the communication function reports directly to a senior communicator."

Scott Mall of Alpharetta, Ga., also believes HR and internal communications work better when they are separated. Mall, a consultant and lecturer, is a former vice president of marketing and corporate communication at Ryder System Inc., a transportation management company based in Miami.

Mall says that when he joined Ryder in 1999, he found a fragmented communication function, where, for example, investor relations reported to the CFO and the employee communication function reported to HR. Before he left Ryder in 2002, all communication functions, including employee communications, reported to him. The reason for centralizing communication was "to control the message with all audiences," says Mall.

But the unified communication function still worked to help HR, says Mall. "We worked closely with the VP of benefits and acted as her communications advisers, helping her with messages and documents and ensuring that the printed materials had the same look and feel as other employee communications." That consistency and attention to detail, says Mall, is a critical part of "internal branding."

Professional communicators can work most efficiently, says Mall, when they are able to take the same general messages and craft them to meet the needs of various audiences. The basic content remains the same, he says, but the focus and the language may shift depending on whether the message is going to employees or some other audience.

That's important because employees make up just one of several important potential audiences that a company may need to address. (Others include current customers, prospective customers, shareholders, regulators, legislators, media and the external community.)

When Separation Isn't Feasible

Of course, not all organizations can keep communication functions apart from HR. Organizations in which employee communication reports through HR may simply need to find ways to ensure a broader perspective and close alignment with other organizational communication functions.

That's what Joyce LaValle and Amanda Henson have done at Atlanta-based Interface Inc., a global carpet and textiles manufacturer. LaValle is senior vice president for human services, and Henson, who reports to LaValle, heads the internal communications function.

Recognizing that Henson's close alignment with the HR function could isolate her role from the rest of the organization, LaValle came up with an innovative approach-a "virtual team" of individuals assigned by each business unit to work on the internal communications team.

"Traditionally," says Henson, "you have people who are responsible specifically for communicating to the company. But here we've pulled other people together who have jobs in marketing and we've added internal communication-and accountability-to their job responsibilities."

Team members gather weekly via a conference call, Henson says, and that results in critical sharing of information. She says the structure has helped her stay connected and learn about the various business units and their individual communication needs.

Keys to Successful Partnership

As the relationship between Henson and LaValle shows, with a little creativity and effort, it can work well when internal communicators report to HR. For such situations, HR professionals and internal communicators offer these tips that can help ensure both functions work effectively together and achieve their strategic potential:

Make structure secondary. It's critical to focus on communication needs and make the formal structure secondary, says Brad Whitworth, communications manager for Hewlett-Packard's Personal Systems Group in Cupertino, Calif. Whitworth has been responsible for internal communications both within an HR structure and through a separate channel. Regardless of how your organization is set up, he says, "the challenge is to put the organizational structure in the background and put information needs first."

Mall agrees. Companies that don't have a centralized structure like Ryder's should focus on the message, he advises. "Forget about where the function resides, but use the communication staff and their expertise to help develop the entire package-the message, how the message is going to be delivered and what the message will look like."

Share values and vision. Referring to both HR and corporate communications, Halvorson says: "Make sure that you share the same corporate values, the same core values and the same professional standards around what's important to the organization."

Says Wheeless: "Communication is all about engaging the employees in achieving the company's business objectives. Communication and HR are strategic business partners, so everything that we do and everything we put in place is all toward the same goal of achieving the business objectives."

Talk and listen. "You really can't say enough about having good communication," says Kush, emphasizing that it must exist among team members as well as team leaders. "Within our teams there is a lot of integration and really good communication. Team members have to understand each other's roles very well."

Clemons agrees. "To have an effective partnership, you have to be willing to be flexible, to listen attentively, to understand each other's perspectives and viewpoints, and to come to a mutual agreement on a communication solution that will benefit all parties involved."

Ensure mutual, professional respect. Aker admits that he and his HR colleagues at Unisys probably don't have the background or expertise to do the job of employee communication as effectively as the communication experts he works with, and Robinson appreciates Aker's respect for her function.

"I really can't overemphasize the value of having that endorsement from Dave's level," says Robinson. "That makes a statement to all of his direct reports that we are part of the team and not outsiders to be brought in at certain points along the project."

Kush and Halvorson agree. Corporate communications, says Kush, would never attempt, for example, to define HR benefits. And HR would not attempt to craft its own employee messages without the aid of corporate communications colleagues.

"It's all about influencing, persuading and capturing hearts and minds," says Griffiths. "You need a professional communication cadre whose job it is to do that, in the same way it's HR's job to formulate policies."

Aker adds: "You may be a good communicator, but that doesn't make you a communication professional. That's an eye-opener. We all fancy ourselves great communicators, but the truth is we can all benefit from the professional communication perspective."

Lin Grensing-Pophal, SPHR, is a Wisconsin-based business journalist with HR consulting experience in employee communication, training and management issues. She is the author of Human Resource Essentials: Your Guide to Starting and Running the HR Function(SHRM, 2002).

Web Extras

WorkUSA 2002. Weathering the Storm: A Study of Employee Attitudes and Opinions (Source: Watson Wyatt Worldwide)

WorkUSA 2000. Employee Commitment and the Bottom Line (Source: Watson Wyatt Worldwide)

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Leaving communications to the professionals can be a strategic move that benefits the business. Sometimes, a company's biggest hurdle to effectively communicating with employees is a lack of attention to properly managing the content or distribution of the message.

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What is Operations Performance Management?

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Operations Performance Management (OPM) systems act to improve the responsiveness, throughput, quality, cost, and efficiency of production or service systems. OPM typically includes process optimization, operations intelligence, and forecasting, and often involves technologies such as modeling, process data collection, visualization, and analytics.

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Module Eight: Controlling Performance and Operations

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Module Eight: Controlling Performance and Operations

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