Conn. Volunteer Fire Department. There are many facets to business management. For our 101 course, we'll concentrate on management structures . Centralized vs. distributed Most small business owners, ISPs included, start off small, with just about everyone answering to them. Employees, on the other hand, need to realize that they may not be able to get a decision as quickly as they might have in the past.
Good management is based on stable reporting relationships.
The point of departmentalization is to increase productivity, not decrease it. But if they're designed incorrectly, management structures can quickly put up too many hurdles, and slow a company down. In a three-level chain of command, with Employee, Manager, and Manager's Boss, you want to make sure that any work that tasks Manager's Boss wants Employee to do are actually assigned to Employee by Manager, not Manager's Boss. Point is, employees shouldn' t take orders directly from their boss's boss, and the boss's boss shouldn't delegate directly to the employee. When you set up distributed management structures, you need to think about span of control .