The Fundamental Role of Management

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What is the fundamental role of management? In my experience, the role of management is to outline the strategy, communicate the strategy, and remove any roadblocks to achieving that strategy — which is mostly about continual operational improvements. Much like an organization’s operational excellence strategy, we as individuals need to be constantly looking for ways to improve our own roles. Change is a fact of life — and one of three constants in life (along with taxes and death). To succeed in collaboration overall and to help end users stay engaged and productive, you will need to establish healthy habits and best practices.

Within the daily operation of your business, the fundamental role of management is to watch for and mitigate risks — and yet the level of engagement of end users is rarely a risk mentioned in most organizational planning sessions. Engagement should be one of your primary organizational metrics. Clearly defined governance and consistent communications are at the core of end user engagement issues. If you’re experiencing serious issues with end user engagement, the first step is always to get a clear picture of where things are today — and be honest about what you see. Only with awareness can you begin to take the right steps forward and build out healthy collaboration practices within your organization.

Once you have the ability to view and understand your operational indicators, and to generate scenarios and contingency plans based on these strategies, you will be positioned to efficiently and effectively plan for obsolescence, as well as develop new product and feature strategies – and unlock unrealized revenue that had otherwise been lost within the shuffle of deficient lifecycle planning.

The result of changing your operational activities toward a productivity focus means a higher return on investment (ROI) for the platform overall, because it will have a direct impact on platform usage. And when more people are using the platform, your company will get more out of the platform. You’ll see these benefits through faster employee on-boarding and training, more business output and stronger platform usage — all of which means a faster realization of the financial investments you’ve already made in the Microsoft stack. But remember that there is no end to your operational focus. Your business is constantly changing, the technology is constantly changing, and your end user needs are also constantly changing.