According to Business Dictionary.com “manager is an individual who is in charge of a certain group of tasks, or a certain subset of a company. A manager often has a staff of people who report to him or her”. In Apple company role of the manager is quite the same. However, if we take into account Apples one of the brightest figure Steve Jobs who co-founded Apple company and had been leading his company for a long time, it becomes obvious that manager role in Apple company is much bigger than might be considered for the computer company. Steve Jobs accomplished all tasks that can be derived from manager definition as well as had a very strong leadership skills that actually shaped today’s requirements for managers on Apple.com. Today, manager’s functional role in Apple is to achieve goals that are set in front of their teams, plan ways of accomplishing tasks as well as motivate people in their team to do their best.
Expectations of Role
Evaluation of How Manager Fulfills Role
Steve Jobs in his interview to biographer Walter Isaacson once told “I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I tell people to their face”. This principle seems to be working nowadays in Apple Company. According to the research carried by Carmine Gallo (Forbes.com, 2012) Apple managers always keep evaluating their employees and themselves by giving their feedback on daily basis.
Planning Challenges Manager Might Face
The most crucial fact during planning process is availability of information. Lack of information can lead to wrong decision making that can be followed by consequences such as company’s decrease in profits, decreasing level of productivity and etc. So, the first challenge that manager can face during planning is collection of information. Manager’s main task during planning process is to cut the uncertainty in the future company by analyzing company’s past and present resources and how they can be applied in order to achieve goals. However, Apple’s approach differs in some ways. Apple introduced several devices that changed music, phone-making and computer industries. Steve Jobs as a leading manager showed that developing a sophisticated and functional product can bring huge revenues and further development of the company. Apple was able to develop high-end product by concentrating all its efforts in one place. Steve’s task as a manager was to collect right people into a team, motivate them and to develop main concept of the project. As we see today, he had accomplished these tasks very well.
Comparison of Planning Challenges to those of 25 Years Ago
Manager’s role in companies has been changing constantly over the past quarter-century. Planning challenges had experienced changes as well. Today, companies exist in even more strong competition than 25 years ago. In order to stay ahead of the game today companies should react and adapt to the changes that that industries face today at a very high speed. Apple now is in race with much more companies than it was 25 years ago. Samsung, Google and Apple’s old competitor Microsoft are now fighting for the position of market leader today. However, some things are now easier to do now. With the development of the Internet technologies companies now have more flexible instrument to collect data about their customers’ preferences. Managers now can plan more flexible policies based on that information. Web-stores such as Amazon.com or eBay.com are the great examples of this trend. They offer products to their consumer similar to the items that consumers were looking for previously. However, main manager’s planning challenges are still have a lot in common. Managers are responsible for the developing company’s strategy, motivating people to cooperate and resolving many other challenges that may face during planning process. Except the fact that managers should do all this work faster that their colleagues did 25 years ago.
Conclusion
References:
Business Dictionary.com (2013).Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/manager.html#ixzz2lABchhHX
Carmine Gallo (2012, October 7). Three Surprising Questions Apple store Asks about Every Job Candidate.
Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/07/10/three-surprising-questions-apple-store-asks-every-job-candidate/
