Thursday, August 4, 2011

Discourse 325. Al-Mustapha and the Mysterious Deaths

Discourse 325 By Dr. Aliyu U. Tilde Hamza al-Mustapha and the Mysterious Deaths I had my suspicion right from the beginning regarding the deaths of the three biggest politicians in the Nigerian political landscape of the 1990s Maj. General Shehu Yaradua (rtd), General Sani Abacha and Chief Mashood Abiola. The big three died mysteriously and suddenly within the spate of exactly seven months. It all started on December 8, 1997 when Shehu Musa Yaradua died in prison where he was serving a life sentence for his involvement coup plot. The then government said that his death was natural while the opposition claimed that he was killed by the agents of the then President, General Sani Abacha. Shehu was the politician to beat in the country. He had the strongest political structure that cut across the countrys regional, ethnic and religious divides. Though I was not surprised of his involvement in a coup plot given his notoriety as a power schemer, however, I doubted the oppositions claim that Abacha assassinated him. If Abacha had wanted to get rid of him, I thought, the President had enough alibi in Shehus conviction as a coup plotter. Two, Nigerians will attest that Abacha was not a coward by any measure. Three, the opposition to date has not presented any credible evidence to substantiate its claim other than speculation. Four, the person who was alleged to have administered him the lethal injection was never convicted even after the demise of his supposed sponsor. He is still a free person. Incredible. One. Then exactly six months later, on June 8, 1998, the country was told that the night before, President Abacha has died of cardiac arrest which was caused by eating a poisoned apple served him by an Indian lady. Of course that was not a natural death. Mysteriously, the Indian lady was never arrested or convicted. Nothing about her was heard again. And surprisingly too, the death was never investigated by his successors. The body was rushed to his hometown of Kano and immediately burial without any autopsy conducted. His wife, Hajiya Maryam, was to later look at Jerry Useni in his face and tell him, You killed my husband. Two. Then almost exactly a month later, on Tuesday, July 7, 1998, Chief Abiola, the widely acclaimed winner of the cancelled June 12, 1993 presidential election was announced dead. The cancellation of that election had for years generated heat in the polity. After declaring himself President, Abiola was imprisoned in 1994 by the President Abacha. He died just after being released from prison by the successor of Abacha, President Abdulsalami Abubakar. Before he could even return to his family, he was invited to the State House for a meeting with US delegation where he suddenly died after being served with a tea. That is all Nigerians knew. They cried foul. But the government, together with US officials, said it was a natural death caused by cardiac arrest, again. The family protested, demanded for an autopsy by overseas doctors to which the government yielded. But nothing came out of it. The family went silent on the matter. Surprising too was the sudden silence of protest voices from the champions of Abiolas mandate, who had accused him of cowardice. Three.

Nigerians, gullible as ever, ascribed the serial deaths to God, whom they accuse of every death. However, I did not see the hands of God here, even then. Without the benefit of hindsight, anyone who reads the scenario would be compelled to arrive at the same conclusion. Those behind it were careful in concealing the truth from Nigerians by virtue of their high positions in the land. Until now, perhaps. The bombshells dropped by Hamza al-Mustapha in a Lagos High Court in the past three days are likely to give the world a glimpse into the myth behind these deaths. He is one person whose footprints were not washed away by the waters of the conspiracy. Al-Mustapha, as he is popularly known, was arguably the second most powerful person in the country during the period of Abacha presidency. His claim that he helped Abdulsalami to become the President after Abachas death can hardly be disputed because he was in a position to do so, being in control of the security of the Presidency and given the fact that Abacha loyalists were heading major military command positions in the country. Naively, instead of staging a coup, he acceded to installing Abdulsalami and remained in the country. Abiding by the tradition of power, few months later, President Abdulsalami arrested AlMustapha, who was later accused, among other things, of assassinating Kudirat Abiola, the wife of Chief Abiola, on 4 June 1996. Since 1998, Al-Mustapha has been in custody where, he believes, successive administrations have tried to keep him at bay by frustrating any progress in his trial. As it is turning out now, after thirteen years, he has decided to fight back using the arsenal of information he has as a former security chief. Al-Mustapha has also told the court that large sum of money - $200m, 75 Sterling Pounds and N500m was used to buy the silence political leaders of Chief Abiolas from ethnic group the Yoruba. The money was withdrawn on the directive of the President Abdulsalami from the Central Bank of Nigeria. Two days ago, he tendered to the court a document signed by Abdulsalami to support his claim. He also submitted a tape to be played today in the court showing the Yoruba leaders visit to the Presidency, into which, according to AlMustapha, they went looking angry but from which they came out smiling. It is difficult to dispute Al-Mustapha on his claims. Using money to settle people is a common practice in managing security matters in Nigeria. An ambiguous vote called security vote exists in every government in the federation, whether local, state or federal. So Al-Mustapha is not at all sounding Greek to the ears of Nigerians. The truth-value of his statement is very high. It can be proved otherwise only if the money can be traced to the Liberian peace keeping mission it was officially meant for. Opinion leaders from the Southwest have challenged Al-Mustapha to mention the names of the beneficiaries. We do not know how much is in the video right now. However, I do not expect to see the distribution of the monies there physically. Nigerians are discrete in deals like this. We await the speculations, denials and counter-denials that would follow. It will also be difficult to deny the claim that his continuous incarceration is a instigated by fear. If he has such implicating evidences, his imprisonment is a natural, if not a merciful, consequence in the game of power. He is lucky to be alive, so far. Abidina Coumassie, the

publisher that was to publish the evidence earlier was not that lucky. He was poisoned to death, according to Al-Mustapha. If there were any evidence to prove his guilt, as many commentators have argued, successive regimes would not have wasted time to convict him. In any case, if the hand behind the scenes is obscure, the beneficiary of these assassinations is known former President Olusegun Obasanjo. He would not have been president were any of the big three living Shehu Yaradua, Abacha or Abiola. He was lucky that the mysterious hand that has worked throughout his life, saving him from death in different coups and shoving him into power, has remained until now. Let us have a look at the skill of this mysterious hand. Obasanjo, then in his twenties, had just returned from a military training course in India. According to him, he was sharing bed with Nzeogwu when the latter plotted and executed the January 15, 1966 coup in which many prominent northern political leaders including Prime Minister Balewa, the Premiers of northern and southern regions Ahmadu Bello and Samuel Akintola were gruesomely murdered along with many northern military officers. Immediately after the coup, Obasanjo ran to Maiduguri, for safety, and hid in the house of Alhaji Maidaribe. He later claimed that he did not know anything about the coup. Then in 1975 Obasanjo, along with General Murtala Mohammed, TY Danjuma and other officers toppled the Gowon regime. Obasanjo became the Deputy Head of State. However, only six month into the regime, Murtala, the Head of State, was assassinated in a coup attempt. Obasanjo, again, disappeared, this time briefly. After resurfacing, he reluctantly accepted to become the Head of State. It is widely believed in Nigeria that the CIA had a hand in the assassination of General Murtala (www.dawodu.com/cia1.html http://www.dawodu.com/cia1.html, www.naijapals.com/modules/naijapals/politics/the-cia-innigeria http://www.naijapals.com/modules/naijapals/politics/the-cia-in-nigeria, www.pointblanknews.com/authbioofabiola.html http://www.pointblanknews.com/authbioofabiola.html). Allegations have also been made by a tabloid in the UK, according to an edition of Hassan Sani Kontagoras Hotlline magazine over a decade ago, that Obasanjo had a hand in the assassination. (Unfortunately, I am not able to quickly lay my hands on the reference but I will give its citation on this blog as soon as I access it) After handing over power to civilian president in 1978, Obasanjo retired from the military and enjoyed the position of an elder statesman. He was involved in many international initiatives on the African continent. One of them, according to www.nigeriatoday.com http://www.nigeriatoday.com, is Founder and Chairman of Africa Leadership Forum and Chairman, Board of Directors, Africa Leadership Foundation, Inc, New York. He held those positions until 1999 when he became President of Nigeria, covering the time when the deaths of the big three took place between 1997 and 1998. I cannot substantiate the widely held belief that the CIA funds the foundation. However, a visit to the official site of the foundation www.africaleadership.org/partnership.html http://www.africaleadership.org/partnership.html - reveals that it is funded by UNDP, USAID, The World Bank, Rockefeller Foundation, The Mac Arthur Foundation, and 13 other strong international partners. And in 1995, he was convicted by a military tribunal in the coup plot against the Abacha government, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment until President Abdulsalami Abubakar freed him after Abachas death in 1997. Immediately he was released, he was sold the idea of running for the Presidency. He showed

some reluctance, if I will recall well, and pleaded for time to make consultations. Finally, after Abiola was done, he had no difficulty accepting the offer. He became the President in 1999. Nigerians will recall how every step was taken to ensure he became the President, including the prevention of anyone from the northern part of the country from contesting in all the three registered political parties. Thus, Abdulsalami administration nurtured his journey from prison to the Presidency. Always a lucky guy! As President, Obasanjo ensured that Hamza Al-Mustapha remained in prison. Pleas made to his successor, Umaru Yaradua, to release him were rejected, presumably either for what AlMustapha knows or because the late President was still nursing the belief that the Major, when he was the Chief of Staff to Abacha, had a hand in the death of his elder brother, Shehu Yaradua. To complete the work of that mysterious hand, President Yaradua also died of cardiac arrest, opening the gate of opportunity for his successor, who was appointed to the Vice Presidency by Obasanjo, to become the President. It is clear this hand has been helping Obasanjo either through coups or cardiac arrests. Mhm. Na wa! I am not sure whether Al-Mustaphas bombshell can conclusively demolish the mountain of obscurity regarding the role of prominent officials in the deaths of the big three of Nigerias 1990s and the political imbroglio that characterized those seven months. However, one thing is certain: either he remains alive in prison or his revelations will instigate yet another mysterious death which Nigerians will not find hard to fathom. Criminals usually forget something behind that implicates them. Major Hamza Al-Mustapha may just be one such thing. 4 July 2011

The Art and Science of Management

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One of the enduring questions in the field of management is whether it is an art or a science. Webster's College Dictionary defines an art as "skill in conducting any human activity" and science as "any skill or technique that reflects a precise application of facts or a principle." Reflected in the differences in these definitions is the use of precision in science, in that there is a particular, prescribed way in which a manager should act. Thus, management as a science would indicate that in practice, managers use a specific body of information and facts to guide their behaviors, but that management as an art requires no specific body of knowledge, only skill. Conversely, those who believe management is an art are likely to believe that there is no specific way to teach or understand management, and that it is a skill borne of personality and ability. Those who believe in management as an art are likely to believe that certain people are more predisposed to be effective managers than are others, and that some people cannot be taught to be effective managers. That is, even with an understanding of management research and an education in management, some people will not be capable of being effective practicing managers.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE MANAGEMENT AS A SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

Practicing managers who believe in management as a science are likely to believe that there are ideal managerial practices for certain situations. That is, when faced with a managerial dilemma, the manager who believes in the scientific foundation of his or her craft will expect that there is a rational and objective way to determine the correct course of action. This manager is likely to follow general principles and theories and also by creating and testing hypotheses. For instance, if a manager has a problem with an employee's poor work performance, the manager will look to specific means of performance improvement, expecting that certain principles will work in most situations. He or she may rely on concepts learned in business school or through a company training program when determining a course of action, perhaps paying less attention to political and social factors involved in the situation. Many early management researchers subscribed to the vision of managers as scientists. The scientific management movement was the primary driver of this perspective. Scientific management, pioneered by Frederick W. Taylor, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, and others, attempted to discover "the one best way" to perform jobs. They used scientific processes to evaluate and organize work so that it became more efficient and effective. Scientific management's emphasis on both reducing inefficiencies and on understanding the psychology of workers changed manager and employee attitudes towards the practice of management. See Exhibit 1 for a summary of the principles of scientific management.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE MANAGEMENT AS AN ART PERSPECTIVE

Practicing managers who believe in management as an art are unlikely to believe that scientific principles and theories will be able to implemented in actual managerial situations. Instead, these managers are likely to rely on the social and political environment surrounding the managerial issue, using their own knowledge of a situation, rather than generic rules, to determine a course of action. For example, as a contrast to the example given previously, a manager who has a problem with an employee's poor work performance is likely to rely on his or her own experiences and judgment when addressing this issue. Rather than having a standard response to such a problem, this manager is likely to consider a broad range of social and political factors, and is likely to take different actions depending on the context of the problem. Henry Mintzberg is probably the most well-known and prominent advocate of the school of thought that management is an art. Mintzberg is an academic researcher whose work capturing the actual daily tasks of real managers was ground breaking research for its time. Mintzberg, through his observation of actual managers in their daily work, determined that managers did not sit at their desks, thinking, evaluating, and deciding all day long, working for long, uninterrupted time periods. Rather, Mintzberg determined that mangers engaged in very fragmented work, with constant interruptions and rare opportunities to quietly consider managerial issues. Thus, Mintzberg revolutionized thinking about managers at the time that his work was published, challenging the prior notion that managers behaved rationally and methodically. This was in line with the perspective of management as an art, because it indicated that managers did not necessarily have routine behaviors throughout their days, but instead used their own social and political skills to solve problems that arose throughout the course of work. Another scholar that promoted the notion of management as an art was David E. Lilienthal, who in 1967 had his series of lectures titled Management: A Humanist Art published. In this set of published lectures, Lilienthal argues that management requires more than a mastery of techniques and skills; instead, it also requires that managers understand individuals and their motivations and help them achieve their goals. Lilienthal believed that combining management and leadership into practice, by not only getting work done but understanding the meaning behind the work, as effective managerial behavior. Thus, he promoted the idea of the manager as a motivator and facilitator of others. This manager as an artist was likely to respond differently to each employee and situation, rather than use a prescribed set of responses dictated by set of known guidelines. Another proponent of the management as art school of thought is Peter Drucker, famed management scholar who is best known for developing ideas related to total quality management. Drucker terms management "a liberal art," claiming that it is such because it deals with the fundamentals of knowledge, wisdom, and leadership, but because it is also concerned with practice and application. Drucker argues that the discipline (i.e., the science) of management attempts to create a paradigm for managers, in which facts are established, and exceptions to these facts are ignored as anomalies. He is critical of the assumptions that make up the management paradigm, because these assumptions change over time as society and the business environment change. Thus, management is more of an art, because scientific "facts" do not remain stable over time.

Exhibit 1 Frederick W. Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management

1. Managers must study the way that workers perform their tasks and understand the job knowledge (formal and informal) that workers have, then find ways to improve how tasks are performed. 2. Managers must codify new methods of performing tasks into written work rules and standard operating procedures. 3. Managers should hire workers who have skills and abilities needed for the tasks to be completed, and should train them to perform the tasks according to the established procedures. 4. Managers must establish a level of performance for the task that is acceptable and fair and should link tit to a pay system that reward workers who perform above the acceptable level.

ART AND SCIENCE IN MANAGEMENT RESEARCH

Noted researcher Thomas Kuhn, in his book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, addresses issues associated with the state of current scientific research and the opportunities for scientific discovery. Kuhn, in his previous editions of this text, drew distinctions between mature and immature fields of study. In mature fields of study, many of the central questions of that field have been answered, and strong consensus exists among researchers regarding the fundamental assumptions of that field. Conversely, in immature fields of study, there is still a great deal of debate on major questions in the field, and gains in knowledge come sporadically. In many ways, management is an immature science. While its foundations in psychology, sociology, and other related areas give it a long and rich history, the nature of the areas of study renders it immature. That is, due to the difficulties of studying human behavior in a number of disparate settings, the study of management is still very young when compared to other fields of research (e.g., in the physical sciences). In fact, many scholars have argued that the social sciences (e.g., management research) suffer from envy of the physical sciences, in which "truths" are able to be determined through research. As such, social sciences researchers may strive to create a more "scientific" approach to their fields in order to grant them more legitimacy. Despite its relative immaturity, some consistent answers have been developed in the field of management. In many ways this is due to the increased sophistication of management research. However, there are still a number of research gaps in management; despite our increased knowledge in some areas, there is still a great deal of disagreement and confusion in other areas. In these circumstances, the practice of management is likely to be dictated by the perspective of management as an art. Because there are no hard and fast rules in certain circumstances, individual managers' experiences and skills must guide them. Today, much of the management research conducted in academic institutions blends the notion of management as an art and as a science. Some of these trends in management research that have pushed the field in either directionnamely increased statistical sophistication and the emphasis on contextual influencesare described below.

INCREASED STATISTICAL SOPHISTICATION.

As computer technology continues to improve, the ability of management researchers to conduct sophisticated statistical analyses has also been enhanced. Powerful statistical computing packages are now readily available for desktop computers, allowing for high-

speed analysis of complex statistical models. Additionally, new statistical modeling techniques, such as structural equations modeling, have gained footing in management research. Thus, management researchers are now better able to empirically test more complex research hypotheses, and management as a science is perpetuated. The improvement in researchers' ability to analyze statistics more quickly has resulted in an increase in information about theories of management. Practicing managers may now know of certain relationships that have received strong support through decades of empirical research. Such "truths" may become guiding principles that practicing managers see as ideal solutions to a variety of situations. For instance, numerous empirical studies over several recent decades have supported the relationship between appropriate goal setting and higher work performance. This relationship has been tested in a variety of situations, with a number of contextual influences present, yet the statistical relationship holds in nearly all of them. Thus, a practicing manager may see this body of empirical research and, in a work situation, see the benefits of goal setting on performance as a scientific ideal. He or she may then implement goal setting in a number of practical situations, bolstered by the confidence afforded by decades of research supporting such actions. Meta-analysis, in particular, is a methodological procedure that has contributed significantly to the study of management. Meta-analysis is a statistical technique that allows a researcher to combine findings from multiple studies, correct for errors in study design, and determine an "average" statistical relationship among variables. Meta-analysis first gained a foothold in management research in studies of the validity of selection techniques for different jobs in different organizations. Before the application of meta-analysis to research on the validity of different selection techniques, there was a belief in the situational specificity of these selection methods. That is, studies of the accuracy of selection techniques in predicting subsequent job performance had such disparate results that academics concluded that validity of a standardized test, for example, would differ dramatically in each selection situation (e.g., with different job applicants, in different organizations, in different geographic regions). This myth was dispelled, however, with the application of meta-analysis to the results of the collected body of research on the validity of selection methods. The use of meta-analysis established that the differences in findings were due primarily to limitations of research design, such as small sample size, unreliability of measures, and other correctable problems. When meta-analysis was applied to this group of studies, they were combined to determine that validates of selection techniques were general across jobs and organizations. Thus, the use of meta-analysis helped to establish that cognitive ability tests and structured interviews were highly valid selection methods in nearly every job. Meta-analysis has now been applied to many different areas of management research, including training, recruitment, fairness, and many other topics. Additionally, there have been a number of refinements to the statistical corrections used in meta-analysis. This increased acceptance of and use of meta-analysis in management research supports the notion of management as a science. Meta-analysis provides for "truths" in managementrelationships between variables that hold strong regardless of the people or situation involved. For instance, one consistent finding is that structured selection interviews, ones in which applicants are asked the same set of predetermined questions, and in which responses are evaluated using the same criteria, are a more valid predictor of future job performance than are unstructured interviews, in which applicants are asked different questions and responses are evaluated using different criteria. Meta-analysis has been used to establish this finding,

and thus a practicing manager may use this information as a scientific "fact" when conducting selection interviews.

CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES.
While improvements in management researchers' ability to conduct statistical analysis in their studies has promoted the notion of management as a science, in some ways it has also promoted management as an art. Because of the capability to statistically analyze and interpret larger, more complex models of behavior, researchers are now testing models with this increased complexity. In particular, there is an increased emphasis on contextual influences. That is, rather than focusing solely on how behaviors are linked to outcomes, many researchers now include individual, social, and political variables in research models to have a richer understanding of behavior. Thus, there are more complex recommendations that can be made from recent research, rather than basic "truths." For example, one of the most prominent areas of contextual research in recent years is in person-organization fit. Person-organization fit is a part of the attraction-selection-attrition model that suggests that certain types of individuals are attracted to particular organizations, selected by those organizations, and either adapt to become an effective part of the organization, or leave if they do not fit with the organization. Person-organization fit (p-o fit) is the notion that the particular skills, attitudes, values, and preferences of an individual employee should fit with those of the organization in order for that employee to have high job satisfaction and performance. The p-o fit model indicates that this fit is likely to be as important as an assessment of applicants' abilities when hiring. Previous models of selection emphasized a strict interpretation of applicant skills, with the use of valid selection tests as most important. However, the p-o fit model indicates that, even if skills and abilities have been appropriately measured, that hiring the applicant with the best skills is not always the best course of action, but that hiring an individual who fits into the culture of the organization could be more advantageous. This move towards including contextual influences in management research models promotes the notion of management as an art. Rather than indicating that there are specific principles and guidelines that can guide management practice, it suggests that managerial behavior should change based on the social and political context of the situation.

ART AND SCIENCE IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Management education and development, which attempt to prepare today's managers for organizational challenges, are guided by both the notion of management as an art and as a science. The approach to management education and development is likely to differ dramatically depending on the belief one has as to the nature of the practice of management. The perspective of management as an art assumes to some extent that a manager has a disposition or experiences that guide him or her in managerial decisions and activities. Thus, with this perspective, many managers may be successful without any formal education or training in management. The perspective of management as a science, however, would indicate that management skills can be taught through an understanding of theory and principles of management. Many of today's educational institutions and workplaces blend the

notion of management as a science and an art in their approach to preparing employees for management. Primarily, formal management education for practicing managers, such as with bachelors and masters degrees, emphasizes the science of management. Management education in today's universities primarily emphasizes management as a science. Textbooks are used in management courses for bachelors' degrees, and these texts emphasize many of the consistent findings of many decades of management research. And, as these degrees increase in popularity, it is likely that more practicing managers will have a set of established management ideals with which they operate. While formal management education may promote management as a science, many development efforts support the notion of management as an art. To cultivate management talent, organizations offer mentoring, overseas experiences, and job rotation. These activities allow managers to gain greater social and political insight and thus rely on their own judgment and abilities to improve their management style. Much of mentoring involves behavior modeling, in which a protg may learn nuances of managerial behavior rather than a set of specific guidelines for managing. Overseas experiences are likely to involve a great deal of manager adaptation, and the general rules by which a manager might operate in one culture are likely to change when managing workers in other countries. Finally, job rotation is a technique that requires a manager to work in a variety of settings. Again, this encourages a manager to be flexible and adaptive, and likely rely more on his or her personal skill in managing. The foundations of management as an art and management as a science are evident in today's educational institutions and work organizations. Management as a science was primarily influenced by researchers in the area of scientific management, such as Frederick Taylor, and continues today in much of the empirical research on management issues. Management as an art has been influenced by scholars such as Henry Mintzberg and Peter Drucker, and is often evident in complex theories of management. Many scholars and practitioners blend art and science to more effectively cultivate managerial talent. This is evident in recent theories of management, research in workplaces, and education and development of managers.
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basics of management components of management

What is management? What do managers do? How do I manage?

These are standard questions that most of us in the management profession have been asked more than once. And questions we asked once in our careers too. Here, then, is a basic look at management, a primer, Management 101 from my perspective. Art and Science Management is both art and science. It is the art of making people more effective than they would have been without you. The science is in how you do that. There are four basic pillars: plan, organize, direct, and monitor.

Make Them More Effective Four workers can make 6 units in an eight-hour shift without a manager. If I hire you to manage them and they still make 6 units a day, what is the benefit to my business of having hired you? On the other hand, if they now make 8 units per day, you, the manager, have value. The same analogy applies to service, or retail, or teaching, or any other kind of work. Can your group handle more customer calls with you than without? Sell higher value merchandise? Impart knowledge more effectively? etc. That is the value of management making a group of individual more effective. Basic Management Skill #1: Plan Management starts with planning. Good management starts with good planning. And proper prior planning prevents well, you know the rest of that one. Without a plan you will never succeed. If you happen to make it to the goal, it will have been by luck or chance and is not repeatable. You may make it as a flash-in-the-pan, an overnight sensation, but you will never have the track record of accomplishments of which success is made. Figure out what your goal is (or listen when your boss tells you). Then figure out the best way to get there. What resources do you have? What can you get? Compare strengths and weaknesses of individuals and other resources. Will putting four workers on a task that takes 14 hours cost less than renting a machine that can do the same task with one worker in 6 hours? If you change the first shift from an 8 AM start to a 10 AM start, can they handle the early evening rush so you don't have to hire an extra person for the second shift? Look at all the probable scenarios. Plan for them. Figure out the worst possible scenario and plan for that too. Evaluate your different plans and develop what, in your best judgement, will work the best and what you will do if it doesn't.
TIP: One of the most often overlooked management planning tools is the most effective. Ask the people doing the work for their input.

Basic Management Skill #2: Organize Now that you have a plan, you have to make it happen. Is everything ready ahead of your group so the right stuff will get to your group at the right time? Is your group prepared to do its part of the plan? Is the downstream organization ready for what your group will deliver and when it will arrive? Are the workers trained? Are they motivated? Do they have the equipment they need? Are there spare parts available for the equipment? Has purchasing ordered the material? Is it the right stuff? Will it get here on the appropriate schedule? Do the legwork to make sure everything needed to execute the plan is ready to go, or will be when it is needed. Check back to make sure that everyone understands their role and the importance of their role to the overall success. Basic Management Skill #3: Direct Now flip the "ON" switch. Tell people what they need to do. I like to think of this part like

conducting an orchestra. Everyone in the orchestra has the music in front of them. They know which section is playing which piece and when. They know when to come in, what to play, and when to stop again. The conductor cues each section to make the music happen. That's your job here. You've given all your musicians (workers) the sheet music (the plan). You have the right number of musicians (workers) in each section (department), and you've arranged the sections on stage so the music will sound best (you have organized the work). Now you need only to tap the podium lightly with your baton to get their attention and give the downbeat. Basic Management Skill #4: Monitor Now that you have everything moving, you have to keep an eye on things. Make sure everything is going according to the plan. When it isn't going according to plan, you need to step in and adjust the plan, just as the orchestra conductor will adjust the tempo. Problems will come up. Someone will get sick. A part won't be delivered on time. A key customer will go bankrupt. That is why you developed a contingency plan in the first place. You, as the manager, have to be always aware of what's going on so you can make the adjustments required. This is an iterative process. When something is out of sync, you need to Plan a fix, Organize the resources to make it work, Direct the people who will make it happen, and continue to Monitor the effect of the change. Is It Worth It Managing people is not easy. However, it can be done successfully. And it can be a very rewarding experience. Remember that management, like any other skill, is something that you can improve at with study and practice.

Entrepreneurship
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Entrepreneurship is the act of being an entrepreneur, which can be defined as "one who undertakes innovations, finance and business acumen in an effort to transform innovations into economic goods". This may result in new organizations or may be part of revitalizing mature organizations in response to a perceived opportunity. The most obvious form of entrepreneurship is that of starting new businesses (referred as Startup Company); however, in recent years, the term has been extended to include social and political forms of entrepreneurial activity. When entrepreneurship is describing activities within a firm or large organization it is referred to as intra-preneurship and may include corporate venturing, when large entities spin-off organizations.[1] According to Paul Reynolds, entrepreneurship scholar and creator of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, "by the time they reach their retirement years, half of all working men in the United States probably have a period of self-employment of one or more years; one in four may have engaged in self-employment for six or more years. Participating in a new business creation is a common activity among U.S. workers over the course of their

careers." [2] And in recent years has been documented by scholars such as David Audretsch to be a major driver of economic growth in both the United States and Western Europe. Entrepreneurial activities are substantially different depending on the type of organization and creativity involved. Entrepreneurship ranges in scale from solo projects (even involving the entrepreneur only part-time) to major undertakings creating many job opportunities. Many "high value" entrepreneurial ventures seek venture capital or angel funding (seed money) in order to raise capital to build the business. Angel inves tors generally seek annualized returns of 20-30% and more, as well as extensive involvement in the business.[3] Many kinds of organizations now exist to support would-be entrepreneurs including specialized government agencies, business incubators, science parks, and some NGOs. In more recent times, the term entrepreneurship has been extended to include elements not related necessarily to business formation activity such as conceptualizations of entrepreneurship as a specific mindset (see also entrepreneurial mindset) resulting in entrepreneurial initiatives e.g. in the form of social entrepreneurship, political entrepreneurship, or knowledge entrepreneurship have emerged. The entrepreneur is a factor in microeconomics, and the study of entrepreneurship reaches back to the work of Richard Cantillon and Adam Smith in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but was largely ignored theoretically until the late 19th and early 20th centuries and empirically until a profound resurgence in business and economics in the last 40 years. In the 20th century, the understanding of entrepreneurship owes much to the work of economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1930s and other Austrian economists such as Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich von Hayek. In Schumpeter, an entrepreneur is a person who is willing and able to convert a new idea or invention into a successful innovation. [4] Entrepreneurship employs what Schumpeter called "the gale of creative destruction" to replace in whole or in part inferior innovations across markets and industries, simultaneously creating new products including new business models. In this way, creative destruction is largely responsible for the dynamism of industries and long-run economic growth. The supposition that entrepreneurship leads to economic growth is an interpretation of the residual in endogenous growth theory and as such is hotly debated in academic economics. An alternate description posited by Israel Kirzner suggests that the majority of innovations may be much more incremental improvements such as the replacement of paper with plastic in the construction of a drinking straw. For Schumpeter, entrepreneurship resulted in new industries but also in new combinations of currently existing inputs. Schumpeter's initial example of this was the combination of a steam engine and then current wagon making technologies to produce the horseless carriage. In this case the innovation, the car, was transformational but did not require the development of a new technology, merely the application of existing technologies in a novel manner. It did not immediately replace the horsedrawn carriage, but in time, incremental improvements which reduced the cost and improved the technology led to the complete practical replacement of beast drawn vehicles in modern transportation. Despite Schumpeter's early 20th-century contributions, traditional microeconomic theory did not formally consider the entrepreneur in its theoretical frameworks (instead assuming that resources would find each other through a price system). In this treatment the entrepreneur was an implied but unspecified actor, but it is consistent with the concept of the entrepreneur being the agent of x-efficiency.

Different scholars have described entrepreneurs as, among other things, bearing risk. For Schumpeter, the entrepreneur did not bear risk: the capitalist did.
Some notable persons and their works in entrepreneurship history.

For Frank H. Knight [5] (1921) and Peter Drucker (1970) entrepreneurship is about taking risk. The behavior of the entrepreneur reflects a kind of person willing to put his or her career and financial security on the line and take risks in the name of an idea, spending much time as well as capital on an uncertain venture. Knight classified three types of uncertainty.
y y y

Risk, which is measurable statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red color ball from a jar containing 5 red balls and 5 white balls). Ambiguity, which is hard to measure statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red ball from a jar containing 5 red balls but with an unknown number of white balls). True Uncertainty or Knightian Uncertainty, which is impossible to estimate or predict statistically (such as the probability of drawing a red ball from a jar whose number of red balls is unknown as well as the number of other colored balls).

The acts of entrepreneurship are often associated with true uncertainty, particularly when it involves bringing something really novel to the world, whose market never exists. However, even if a market already exists, there is no guarantee that a market exists for a particular new player in the cola category.

Entrepreneurship & SME Management

History of Entrepreneurship

The term entrepreneurship can be traced back to as early as the Middle Ages, when the entrepreneur was simply someone who carried out tasks, such as buildings and construction projects by applying all the resources at his d isposal. However, it was during the 16th century when business was used as a common term, and the entrepreneur came into focus as a person who is responsible for undertaking a business venture. In the 18 th century, early economists, for instance one known as Richard Cantillon, added that an entrepreneur bears risk as part of his work definition.

It was during the 17 th and 18th century s Industrial Revolution that business itself was becoming part of the new lifestyle , especially in Europe, where most of this development was taking place. The early economists, such as John Baptiste, John Stuart Mill, and Alfred Marshall all included entrepreneurship into the economic spectrum of the time by defining the various skills and features of an entrepreneur. These definitions vary from an entrepreneur

being responsible for employing resources in high productivity areas to earn profits, to risk bearing, and finally to an entrepreneur being responsible for organization and contro l. However, the most substantial research into entrepreneurial theory was achieved in the 20 th century, under the aegis of Joseph Schumpeter, who claims that the entrepreneur has a creative destruction innovation by replacing destroying an existing economy by a better, advance one.

Where some of the entrepreneurships emerged as a result of innovation based on new products, others were merely an expansion of existing businesses in markets that now showed areas of growth. For instance, railroads and shippin g, cargo, transport; factors that became intertwined with growth in commerce during the late 18 th century and early 19 th century. The 20th century saw the evolution of entrepreneurial history developing its most recent form and most of this research was do ne at the Center for Entrepreneurial History at Harvard. It was here that the theorist Arthur H. Cole defined an entrepreneur as an

organization builder .Within the last two decades, the concept of entrepreneurship has evolved from being a single individual to account for that of an entire organization or a corporation. In some of these modern theories, entrepreneurs also include the top tier of executives who are running a corporation.

Along with entrepreneurial theory, it is observed that the growing impo rtance of theories regarding entrepreneurship emerged side by side with historical events which integrated the entrepreneur as an essential part of a modern, capitalist society. Historical entrepreneurships, for instance, the creation of Coca Cola in the 19th century, the emergence of fast food and McDonalds during the 20 th century, Henry Ford and the initiation of the automobile industry, and Heinz, the brand which brought about a revolution in the food market with pre-packaged food; the signaling of these events on a global level brought to the attention

of society everywhere a new capitalist thought of brand creation by focusing on need creation in different societies.

For example, Estee Lauder who worked hard to change the image of immigrants and slaves in the newly formed America by selling and promoting beauty products under the guise of achieving social stature and dignity for those who were being exploited against. Since its initiation into society, entrepreneurship has been linked with innovation. Most economic and financial giants in today s world began almost a century ago in either a garage or the work station of an inventor. And admittedly, most generally emerged from America where most of the rebel minds had migrated, trying to find new ways t o earn a living.

Considering the role of women entrepreneurs it is observed that as entrepreneurship developed as a concept over the years, women entrepreneurs were not far behind. For instance, considering the American market, by 1972, 4 percent of all Am erican businesses were owned by women. In 1991, that figure reached 38 percent. It can be noticed how the evolution of business concepts led to a change even in the business hierarchy of a society, where at first women were not allowed to vote, yet only ye ars down the lane, the same society saw a great proportion of its businesses being run by women.