If you hold a management position in a corporate business, you may have listened to or read a management guru, or taken a well-known successful manager as an example. You may also have chosen to work with a management consultant. In a changing world, being open to new approaches in addition to current management trends, and catching the change, does no one any harm. What really matters is how effectively you apply the management model or method you have chosen. Because management effectiveness also means the effectiveness and efficiency of companies. For this reason, opinion leaders working on management and multinational companies — the academic world first among them — are working on models that will increase management effectiveness.

"Organizations can survive as long as they are effective and sufficient."
Management can generally be defined as the effective use of the material and human resources in an organization in line with organizational purposes. Chester Irving Barnard — the American business executive known as the author of pioneering work in management theory and organizational studies — in his 1938 book makes the existence of three important elements essential for an organization to exist. These are: individuals able to communicate with one another, the willingness to contribute to achieving the purpose, and a common purpose to be achieved. Organizations can survive as long as they are effective and sufficient. Effectiveness concerns achieving the organization's purpose, while sufficiency concerns meeting individual needs. Among the characteristic features of effective organizations, the presence of a sufficient number of individuals willing to achieve this purpose plays an important role. The boundless satisfaction of the individuals served by an organization managed with effective management criteria, the continuous rise in quality standards and the high level of job satisfaction they attain are thanks to the principles of this management approach. In such an approach, you do not force a fish to live in a tree, or a squirrel to dive into water. In businesses managed with an effective management approach, a management philosophy prevails that integrates and develops the goals of the employees and of the business.

We can say that managers with an effective management approach and perception are the most fundamental element of effective organizations. So how does one become an effective manager? Let me recall the most important piece of advice on becoming an effective executive from Peter Drucker, also known as the most enduring management thinker of the age: "Do not try to change who you are; you will not succeed that way. But work to improve the situation in which you can perform in keeping with your own nature — and work very hard at it."

A successful manager knows what their employees need in order to work effectively, stay productive and contribute to the workplace — as well as the behaviors that must be avoided in order to encourage successful employees. A manager who wants to be successful is also aware that they themselves are the most important factor in whether employees are motivated to come to work. As well as creating interpersonal relationships, they communicate "effectively" in every contact they make — face to face, in writing and by e-mail. People feel more effective, more creative and more productive alongside a team builder; therefore, an effective manager is a manager who builds teams.

The effective manager also keeps employees' career paths open by helping people develop their skills and capacities during training and on-the-job learning. On top of all this, an effective manager is first of all someone who knows themselves. They should discover their strengths, clarify with their senior managers the common goals and how to reach them, and — looking through the manager's lens — ensure that team goals run parallel to the company's goals. They should learn to use the principle of effectiveness in resource management for economic efficiency, and monitor their teams' performance. And the thing an effective manager must never forget is to ask the question: "What needs to be done?"

Author: Atakan Genç