Everything You Need for an NVQ in Management

Julie Lewthwaite

Description

All the relevant management techniques and principles are explained in a clear, practical style, structured around the recently revised National Occupational Standards for Management and Leadership, and conforming to the requirements of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. After reading this book students will be well prepared and have everything needed to compile the portfolio of evidence and achieve the qualification.Everything you Need for an NVQ in Management is also an extremely useful and comprehensive encyclopaedia of management techniques and principles for those not wanting to gain a qualification. It is written specifically for supervisors and junior managers, middle managers and senior managers working within medium and large organisations who wish to increase their knowledge and understanding of business and further their careers, whether or not they are working towards a specific qualification. It would also prove useful to those running and working in small businesses and to business studies students in schools and colleges.

Sujets

• Gestion et management

Informations

• Publié par: Thorogood Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 25 septembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781854187994
• Langue: English

Extrait

Everything you Need for an NVQ in Management
2nd edition

Julie Lewthwaite
Thorogood Publishing Ltd 10-12 Rivington Street London EC2A 3DU Telephone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] Web: www.thorogoodpublishing.co.uk
© Julie Lewthwaite 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed upon the subsequent purchaser.
No responsibility for loss occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of any material in this publication can be accepted by the author or publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 1 85418 704 X
978 185418704 8
Acknowledgements
Whilst anything that is unclear, ambiguous or incorrect is my sole responsibility, I owe a debt of thanks to a number of people for their help in ensuring that this book was completed.
First and foremost a huge thank you to Steven Miscandlon for invaluable research assistance, insightful suggestions, eagle-eyed proofreading skills and boundless encouragement, for all of which this is a much better book.
My sincere appreciation also goes to Angela Spall and the team at Thorogood for their continuing hard work and support.
I gratefully acknowledge the permission granted to reproduce the copyright material in this book.
I have made every effort to contact copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. Should any have been inadvertently omitted please accept my most sincere apologies; I would be grateful to be notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
Introduction
Running a profitable business is easy, isn’t it? Say you sell widgets: you buy 100 widgets for £1 each then sell them for £2 each. Money for jam!
Except that doesn’t take into account how you find manufacturers of widgets and select the one you will buy from, and you need to be sure people are not only still buying widgets, but are buying the type of widget that you are selling. And what about price? Making 100 per cent profit sounds great, doesn’t it? Double your money!
Except that doesn’t take into account the cost of office and storage space, advertising your widgets so that people know they can buy them from you and at what price, and delivering the widgets to your customers. This all eats into the £1 per widget you stand to make. And what if it should cost more? If all those costs added up come to £1.10 per widget, then for every one you sell, you lose more money.
You’ll need people to help you, too: people to answer the telephone, take customer orders, deal with queries, process payments, pay the widget supplier, even clean the windows… and what if those people aren’t very good at what they do? What do you do then? You can’t just sack them… can you…?
Suddenly it’s not quite so easy.
As managers, we need to be able to call upon a range of skills, some that we will use every day and others that we will call upon less frequently. Management theorist Henri Fayol identified five functions of management: planning, organising, commanding, co-ordinating and controlling. Henry Mintzberg identified three main roles, which he termed interpersonal (dealing with people), informational (gathering and disseminating information) and decisional (making decisions).
The work of management theorists and experts provides us with a framework that helps us to understand the function of management and the role of the manager. Once something has been analysed and broken down, it can be understood and learned.
Management training and qualifications
A wide range of management and leadership training and qualifications are available to people within the UK. They range from academic through professional to vocational, although that is in no way an order of relevance or importance. Even group learning and conferences very often result in participants being issued with a certificate.
The Management Standards
In amongst these opportunities for learning and development are three types that relate to the National Occupational Standards for Management and Leadership, as defined by The Management Standards Centre (MSC). (The MSC is the Government recognised standards setting body for the management and leadership areas. Other bodies exist for other areas of development.) These are National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), Scottish Vocational Qualifications (SVQs) and Vocationally Related Qualifications (VRQs).
The Standards are statements of best practice that describe the activities and functions of management and leadership at various levels. The Standards cover the core functions of management, breaking each down into areas of competence that are then described in detail as units of competence. Units are similarly broken down into the required outcomes, behaviours, knowledge and understanding that must be demonstrated to illustrate mastery.
The Standards cover the following qualifications: Level 2 NVQ/SVQ in Team Leading; and, Levels 3, 4 and 5 NVQ/SVQ in Management.
Arguably the real strength of the Standards is that they aren’t simply a range of statements compiled by people who only know management in theory. Their development is based on extensive consultation with actual managers who are facing, on a daily basis, exactly the same challenges as you face in your job. In other words, they analyse and break down the function of ‘management’ so that we can understand it and, more importantly, learn how to do it effectively.
Just because your job title may be ‘team leader’ or ‘supervisor’, don’t think you aren’t a manager. Broadly speaking, managers control three things: people, things and tasks. If you control any or all of these things, then you are a manager. Similarly, it makes no difference whether you work in the corporate, not-for-profit or health sector; the role of the manager and the function of management is the same.
If you are interested in NVQ/SVQs in management you can download the full suite of Management Standards and the qualifications structure for all levels from the MSC website ( www.management-standards.org )
About the book
Title notwithstanding, it is hard to imagine a single resource that could, in itself, cover absolutely everything you could wish to know about a subject like management. However, what the book does aim to do is to give an introduction to and a broad understanding of a topic and then offer suggestions for places you can go to find more information on any subject that you need or wish to know in more depth. Taken in that context it lives up to its title wholeheartedly.
Throughout the book you will find frameworks to help you to get to grips with different topics. You will be encouraged to take a step-by-step approach, both to build confidence in your ability and to maximise your chances of success. You will also find that the basic approach is always the same: assess what should be done, make a plan, implement and monitor the plan, then review the experience.
We will be looking very much at an ideal world within the pages of this book. Much management theory and writing revolves around what should happen. Let us not forget, however, that managers deal with what does happen, and very often our best intentions to plan, implement, and monitor progress are foiled by things outside of our control. However, just as learning any skill thoroughly and by the book enables you to know what you must do and what you can omit when necessary, so it is with management. That knowledge also gives you a pretty good idea of what the outcome will be when you try something new. Yes, you may find yourself taking a risk, but it will be a calculated risk.
I have, in the layout of the book, kept in mind the structure of the standards as developed by the MSC.



There is inevitably some crossover between sections but as far as is practical I have kept information within these boundaries. You will find at the start of each chapter a list of the units to which the information in it relates along with a list of other chapters that contain complementary information. The appendices also show how the chapters relate to the Standards, and vice versa.
How to use this book
I love books. They are wonderful things to own and to spend time with and some become very dear companions over the years. They can see us through hard times, impart wisdom, make us think and make us laugh. Some books, like this one, are also tools to be used.
A friend of mine recently made me a gift of some books. He apologised for having marked up the text in one of them, which he tells me does habitually. Far from spoiling the book for me, it made the experience of reading it so much richer. I loved seeing the points he had pulled out to emphasise and comparing his reading to mine – I was also impressed by just how neatly he had marked up the pages. (Both that and his handwriting put me to shame!)
With this book, you will very likely not start at the beginning and read all the way through to the end. Whilst you can if that suits your needs best, I think it is more likely that you will dip in to find whatever is useful to you at the time. To support that approach, each chapter has been written, as far as possible, to stand alone. Whichever approach you take, I would encourage you to write notes in the margin, highlight and underline sentences and paragraphs, dog-ear pages – whatever will help you to quickly find the in