Effective Management Skills
Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more. In August 2013, Steve Ballmer abruptly announced that he would step down as chief executive of Microsoft as soon as his replacement could be found. Thus began one of the most important CEO searches in the past decade.
At the time Microsoft was the third-most-profitable company in the United States and the fourth most valuable. Nevertheless, this well-respected global technology giant did not seem to have a plan for replacing Ballmer, even though he had, according to most informed observers, underperformed for years. With a workforce of 100,000, Microsoft surely could have identified other promising candidates in senior management roles, not to mention outsiders, who would be ready to step in for Ballmer.
Instead, Microsoft seemed to start from the very beginning, concentrating mostly on external candidates. Eventually, Microsoft announced that an insider, Satya Nadella, would become the third CEO in its history. We now know, that despite the erratic succession process, Nadella was an excellent appointment. He moved Microsoft away from a “know-it-all” culture and towards a more open, collaborative “learn-it-all” culture (Fernandez-Araoz, Nagel, and Green, 2021).
As a member of Microsoft’s Learning and Development department, you have been asked to produce a 2000 word report on ‘Effective Management Skills’. This report should aim to provide valuable guidance to Microsoft’s managerial training programmes.
The overall purpose of the report will be to identify and introduce the importance of management skills, as well as the key principles related to managing and developing people within the organisation. Your report should also discuss the value of understanding diversity and address key principles and concepts such as motivation, decision making and problem solving within the organisation.
You will also make suitable recommendations on how the organisation could use the principles identified to improve the management skills of their new managers, ensuring that the organisation has suitable successors for the future.
