Developing managerial skills poses a complex learning problem. A skill is a capability for a smooth sequence of coordinated behavior that is effective relative to its objectives, given the context in which it occurs. Thus, the ability to serve a tennis ball well is a skill, as is the ability to engage in competent carpentry, drive a car, operate a computer, solve a mathematical equation, or judge which job candidate to hire. Managerial skills have three essential features:
Thus, although we would like to be able to explain "how the skill is really done," we typically cannot. We can communicate a framework, but a great deal of filling-in remains to be done by students after the resources of language are exhausted. "How-to-do-it" books and instruction provide only a starting point for the acquisition of management skills. Given the description of what to do, students still face the major task of learning how to do it. Consequently, instruction in a skill typically consists in large part of the imposition of a discipline of practice: much of the filling-in involves laborious trial-and-error search. Verbal instruction is predominantly in the form of critique of practice.
In MGT 2000, a primary objective is to improve your skillfulness in giving mangerial advice. Managerial skillfulness entails the ability to develop effective, possibly innovative, action strategies that impact personal and organizational effectiveness positively. Managerial skillfulness results from repeated solution attempts followed by an assessment of the results. The main objective of the course is to provide an environment that fosters the development of your managerial skillfulness. By the end of the course you will have increased your ability to apply management concepts in managerial situations, and will have sharpened your skills as they relate to problems organizations and managers face, and communicating your advice on managerial problems.