Management is art and it is science:

It is the art of making people more effective than they would have been without you.
The science is in how you manage to do that.

There are basic pillars:

• Goal to achieve: define the target and figure out the best way to get there.
• Analyse : What are your resources ? What can you get? Compare strengths and weaknesses of individuals. Look at all the probable scenarios and evaluate your different plans and develop what seems to be the best option. Don’t forget to ask the people doing the work for their input and also think of the worse case scenario.
• Plan: Good management starts with good prior planning and the track record of accomplishments are part of your success.
• Organize: Do the legwork to make sure everything needed to execute the plan is ready to go, or will be when required. Check back to make sure that everyone understands their role and the importance of their contribution to the overall success. Conveying motivation is the key of your future success.
• Direct: Tell people what they need to do and coordinate the actions.
• Monitor: You have to keep an eye on your staff, checking that everything is going according to the plan; you might have to step in to adjust the plan whenever necessary.
• Don’t relax your attention: Problems will come up: someone will get sick or be dismissed; an element won’t be delivered on time; our accounting department won’t have paid an invoice on time, etc. That is why you need to have a contingency plan developed in the first place. You, as the manager, have to be always aware of what’s going on so you can make the adjustments required.

Management is an iterative process:

When something is out of sync, you need to fix it, organize the resources to make it work, direct the people who will make it happen, and continue to monitor the effect of the change.

Managing is necessary:

Managing people is not easy but can be a very rewarding experience.
Like any other skill, management is something that you can improve with study and practice.

Are managers linchpins?

“Management 101″ says any organization other than a small, family-run business should have as corporate policy to ensure there are no linchpins in the organization… Well, I would say that good managers are linchpins while bad managers are flat tires which can lead to accidents!

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The Geneva University Hospital system (HUG) is opening a school for robotic abdominal surgery in a bid to become a center of excellence for new medical and operating table techniques.

Robots are used in micro-invasive surgery, which does not require large sutures. This type of mini surgery means patients are not cut wide open, with their organ(s) exposed, like in Emergency Room.

The Da Vinci robot, built by the private company American Intuitive Surgical, is used in abdominal and urological surgery. The first training courses at the specialized center took place under the direction of Prof. Philippe Morel of the visceral surgery group at the HUG.

The Geneva University Hospital is seeking to train roughly 80 surgeons per year with the new technique. To this end,

they’ve bought another robot and will be teaching the procedure using two cadavers.

Some critics of the university hospital system are saying the cadavers are actually ex-patients from previously unsuccessful operations.

Robotic surgical procedures allow via a doctor to prepare his operation in fine detail using a simulation program in the robot.

From the patient’s perspective, the technique reduces the possibility of errors or complications and reduces the overall cost of the procedure (as well as reducing the number of days spent in hospital), pleasing both the Insurance companies who get lower bills, and patients who have less anxiety over inebriated surgeons.

Geneva has larger ambitions with the program, hoping to become a sort of hi-tech center for robotic surgical techniques. Serge Serro, the president of Federation des Nouvelles Technologies, points out that Romandy has specific competencies in micro technologies and which he believes can be leveraged, along with fruitful associations with other university hospitals.

The HUG has invested several million francs in the new robotic equipment, which has high-resolution 3-dimensional vision and provides highly detailed medical imaging, most of which was financed by gifts from patients to the HUG.