BUSMGT711 Chap.1 What Managers Do and Why Management Matters
What Managers Do and Why Management Matters
The opening topic asks what managers contribute when wealth comes from knowledge rather than physical production. It weighs the evidence that people leave poor managers rather than poor jobs, the estimated economic cost of weak management, and the wider social stakes of responsible business.
It then tests three common myths against Google's Project Oxygen, where technical expertise ranked last among eight qualities of top employees, and closes on observable habits of good managers that carry straight into your simulation team.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The changing sources of wealth and the future of work
- 02
Why employees leave managers rather than jobs
- 03
Three myths about what managers do
- 04
Project Oxygen and the case for interpersonal skills
- 05
Four observable habits of good managers
- 06
What New Zealand job seekers value most
- 07
Linking management behaviour to the simulation team
Worked example · free
Answer a myth-busting question with evidence
- +0.5Recognise the factor: the claim repeats the myth that managers do not really have to act, only plan.
- +0.5Ground it: Project Oxygen found coaching, communicating and supporting colleagues outranked technical expertise among the qualities of top employees, and each of those is active, daily work.
- +0.5Illustrate it: a team leader who holds one-on-one conversations each week and redistributes tasks when someone is overloaded is doing management, not delegating thinking.
- +0.5Reiterate: because the evidence describes doing rather than detached planning, the classmate's view underestimates what managers contribute.
Key terms
- Project Oxygen
- Google's internal study of employee data that ranked interpersonal qualities above technical expertise among the traits of its top employees.
- Soft skills
- Interpersonal and cognitive capabilities such as coaching, listening, empathy and critical thinking that the course argues are hard to master.
- Social loafing
- A member's tendency to contribute less effort when working in a group than when working alone.
- Alternative workforce
- Workers engaged outside traditional permanent employment, such as contractors, freelancers and gig workers.
- Work-life balance
- The fit between paid work and personal life, ranked first by New Zealand job seekers in the survey discussed in class.
What Managers Do and Why Management Matters FAQ
Why does a management course start with myths about managers?
The myths explain why poor management persists. If people believe managing is easy, needs no real effort or only requires being pleasant, they stop developing the skills that matter. Clearing those beliefs away early makes room for the evidence on coaching, listening and fair allocation of work, which later topics on teams, motivation and leadership build on directly.
What did Project Oxygen actually find?
Analysing employee data from Google's founding in 1998 through 2013, the project ranked eight qualities of top employees. Technical expertise in science and engineering came last. The higher qualities were interpersonal and cognitive: coaching, communicating and listening, understanding different viewpoints, empathy, critical thinking, problem solving and linking complex ideas across fields.
How should I use statistics like the 82 percent figure in a written answer?
Treat a statistic as support for a factor, not as the factor itself. State the point first, for example that poor managers drive turnover, then cite the survey finding as evidence, then show the mechanism with a team or business example. A number dropped in without that chain demonstrates memory rather than understanding of the relationship.
Assessment move
Build a one-line summary of each Week 1 idea before moving on: the shift from making things to knowledge work, the three reasons management matters, the three myths, the Oxygen finding and the four habits of good managers. For each idea, write one sentence that names it, one that explains it in your own words and one that connects it to something you have seen in a workplace or in your simulation team.
That three-sentence pattern is the habit later topics reward. Next, practise turning statistics into evidence. Take the 82 percent turnover figure and the estimate of more than 400 billion dollars lost to poor management, and draft short paragraphs where each number supports a clear claim rather than standing alone. Then audit your own management skills against the Oxygen list.
Choose one quality you already show, such as listening, and one you find difficult, such as coaching, and note a concrete situation from your team that demonstrates each. These notes become ready-made examples for experience-based questions.
Finally, revisit this chapter after Weeks 2 and 5. Social loafing and fair allocation reappear in team and motivation theory, so mark where the Week 1 ideas link forward and add those links to your single A4 page of notes in compressed form.
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