MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES

The Marketing manager of AMK Enterprises, Roopali Deshmukh (Deshmukh) stepped out of the conference hall in a pensive mood after an important meeting called by the CEO. The meeting was attended by the heads of various departments in the company and was convened to discuss the targets for the coming assessment year. Deshmukh had a formidable sales target to achieve and wondered how she would be able to meet those seemingly impossible goals. This fear was further aggravated by the fact that the productivity levels of employees in the company had been falling. Deshmukh was under tremendous pressure from the management to improve the performance of her team. She also had to deal with the decreasing levels of employees’ morale in her 24-member team. As a first step, Deshmukh informed her team members about a meeting that she planned to hold the next day. She then drafted a plan of action that she intended to discuss with her team.

The next day, Deshmukh began the meeting by informing her team members about the corporate meeting she had attended. She then said, “We have a difficult task ahead for this year, and your participation and involvement is essential to achieve the goals”. She then invited suggestions from her team members regarding the role to be played by each of them. The meeting then progressed on to setting of individual targets for by each team member as, it was felt that this would help in accomplishing the organizational goals. Specific goals were, therefore, set and agreed upon by all the team members. The team aimed to increase the organizational profits by 18% over the next six months. They sketched out a plan of action to achieve the targets set for the team and decided that they would meet once every two months to monitor their progress.

Two months later, the team met again and received their progress. Deshmukh also