Management Has Been Defined by Mary Parker Follett

Introduction

Management has been defined by Mary Parker Follett  (1868–1933) as “the art of getting things done through people". There are, of course other definitions of what is manager from leading thinkers such as Henri Fayol(1841–1925) and Peter Drucker (1909–2005). After careful self reflection I have concluded that Follett’s definition fits my own personal understanding of what the role of management is.
This leads me to a bit of a paradox….while I am a business owner, and therefore could be considered to be a business manager, I currently do not manage people on a direct basis, instead choosing to work WITH people.
It is this aspect I am considering for this report. I wish to evaluate my own management skills and become more a manager than a ‘doer’. I will be evulating my own man management skills and addressing ways to improve these with the aid of some of the leading theories in management.
I would argue that my management style is a contridiction of the theory that managers either manage by scientific process and analysis and by careful studying of all the facts at hand, against the other school of thought which suggests that other managers take a more artistic aproach to their management, they shun indepth research and make most judgements from their skill set and knowledgebase.
I would consider my personal management style, in at least my organisational rather than personnel management, to be a combination of the two poplar theories.  While I follow the scientific notion of setting up best practices and developing the most efficient way to run systems, I also follow the artistic approach of making decisions and judgement based on my own skill and judgement, rather than considerable analysis of the market. In my line of work the industry moves so fast that any data collected is soon out of date anyway.
When considering what efforts I can make to increase my management skills I have to have a degree of self reflection and say that I am more a...