INTRODUCTION

In new businesses, "management" is often considered "whatever needs to be done just to keep things afloat". However, for your business to grow and remain healthy, you must master certain basic skills in management and leadership -- skills that will help you avoid the crisis situations where you have to do "whatever it takes to stay afloat". The basic skills include problem solving and decision making, planning, meeting management, delegation, communications and managing yourself.

Those basics are also the foundation from which to develop more advanced practices in management and leadership. When organizational personnel struggle, it's often because they've forgotten the basics -- not because they aren't implementing state-of-the-art techniques in management and leadership.

NOTE ABOUT THE LARGE SIZE OF THIS MODULE: This module references numerous basic skills that leaders and managers must master in order to be effective in their organizations and their lives. These skills can be practiced throughout this program and in other areas of learners' lives. Readers who are interested in gaining broader contexts of management and leadership can review optional readings suggested in the "Materials for Review" section below.

NOTE ABOUT ORDER OF MODULES: Therefore, it is common to start management training programs with an overview of the board of directors (if the program includes focus on corporation, which are governed by boards of directors) -- the board of directors is legally charged to govern a corporation. However, in this program, this learning module about basic skills in management and leadership is presented before the learning module about boards of directors. The reason for this order of modules is as follows. Frequently businesses are started by someone with a strong vision for a new product. That person often goes on to become the first chief executive of the new business. Typically, that person also takes a very strong role (often the leading role) in the initial organization and development of the board of directors. Therefore, modules in this program are organized to help the founder (and often the first chief executive) to effectively apply basic skills in management and leadership when organizing the board of directors.

NOTE ABOUT LEARNING SUPERVISION -- Supervision is a major aspect of managing and leading. There are certain roles and responsibilities -- and experiences -- that are highly unique to the role of supervision and highly critical to the success of the organization. Therefore, the topic of staffing and supervision will also be addressed in an upcoming module in this program.