---
title: "Management is a Technical Skill: Ten Essential Tools, Clearly Explained!"
description: "To achieve high efficiency in management, a manager must be familiar with and skillfully use the following tools: Tool A: The STAR principle for recruitment interviews. Recruitment interviews are an important part of a manager's work. Every successful manager must possess excellent interview skills to recruit suitable people into the team, placing the right person in the right position to create high performance. The STAR principle refers to Situation, Task, Action, and Result."
author: "New Distribution"
publisher: "New Distribution"
email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com"
telephone: "+8615854817671"
published: "2015-12-11"
language: "en"
canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/management-is-a-technical-skill-ten-essential-tools-clearly-explained-393cd48e/"
markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/management-is-a-technical-skill-ten-essential-tools-clearly-explained-393cd48e.md"
original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/umOqs0lrTxjeImbMRzbHLQ"
translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E7%AE%A1%E7%90%86%E6%98%AF%E4%B8%AA%E6%8A%80%E6%9C%AF%E6%B4%BB-%E5%8D%81%E4%BB%B6%E5%BF%85%E5%A4%87%E5%B7%A5%E5%85%B7-%E9%97%A8%E6%B8%85-393cd48e.md"
attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/management-is-a-technical-skill-ten-essential-tools-clearly-explained-393cd48e/"
usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt"
---

# Management is a Technical Skill: Ten Essential Tools, Clearly Explained!

> To achieve high efficiency in management, a manager must be familiar with and skillfully use the following tools: Tool A: The STAR principle for recruitment interviews. Recruitment interviews are an important part of a manager's work. Every successful manager must possess excellent interview skills to recruit suitable people into the team, placing the right person in the right position to create high performance. The STAR principle refers to Situation, Task, Action, and Result.

To achieve high efficiency in management, a manager must be familiar with and skillfully use the following tools:
**Tool A: The STAR Principle for Recruitment Interviews**
Recruitment interviews are an important part of a manager's work. Every successful manager must possess excellent interview skills to recruit suitable people into the team, placing the right person in the right position to create high performance.
The so-called STAR principle is the acronym of **Situation, Task, Action, and Result**.
The STAR principle is a conversational procedure involving substantive content during interviews, and any effective interview must follow this procedure. When talking with candidates:
First, understand the candidate's previous work background, learning as much as possible about the management and operation of their previous company, the characteristics of the industry, and the market situation of that industry—this is the so-called **background check (Situation); then focus on understanding the specific tasks (Task) of the employee; how each task was carried out, what actions (Action) were taken, and what the results of those actions were (Result)**.
Through these four steps, you can basically control the entire interview process, making judgments about the candidate's work experience, knowledge, and skills through strategic conversation, and recruit more suitable talent.
The STAR principle is a good tool in recruitment interviews, containing many detailed techniques. Managers should continuously explore and improve their ability to use it in recruitment work.
**Tool B: The 6W1H Principle for Clear Responsibilities**
Clear responsibilities are the basic criterion of management. Any management starts from management positions, and its basic requirement is clear responsibilities and explicit rights and obligations.
However, in actual management, phenomena of unclear responsibilities and ambiguous rights still exist widely. As an efficient manager, you must think more deeply about this issue and effectively solve it, making employees clear about their responsibilities, fulfilling their duties, learning self-responsibility and self-management, and freeing managers from busy routine work.
To make job descriptions more accurate and responsibilities clearer, managers must be familiar with the crucial 6W1H principle. The so-called **6W1H** is:
**1. Who—Who is the responsible person for the work?**
**2. For whom—Who is the work serving and reporting to?**
**3. Why—Why do this work?**
**4. What—What is the work (mainly the content)?**
**5. Where—Where is the work location?**
**6. When—What is the time limit for the work?**
**7. How—What methods and procedures are used to complete the work?**
Only by answering the above questions one by one can employees be clearer about their work, more willing to take responsibility, more daring to take responsibility, and continuously improve through work. Then, you can also spare more time to think about planning and development, take the initiative in work, and make future work more forward-looking.
**Tool C: The SMART Principle for Management by Objectives**
Management by objectives is a good means to turn a manager's work from passive to active. Implementing management by objectives not only helps employees work more clearly and efficiently, but also sets goals and assessment standards for future performance appraisals, making assessments more scientific, standardized, and ensuring openness, fairness, and impartiality. After all, without goals, you cannot assess employees.
Setting goals seems simple; everyone has experience setting goals, but if it rises to the technical level, managers must learn and master the SMART principle.
The so-called **SMART** principle is:
**1. Goals must be specific (Specific);**
**2. Goals must be measurable (Measurable);**
**3. Goals must be attainable (Attainable);**
**4. Goals must be relevant to other goals (Relevant);**
**5. Goals must have a clear deadline (Time-based);**
Whether setting team work goals or employee performance goals, they must comply with the above principles; all five principles are indispensable.
The process of setting goals is also a process of continuous growth of one's abilities. Managers must work with employees to continuously improve performance capabilities in the process of setting high-performance goals.
[Special note: Some explain this principle as follows]
—**S stands for Specific**, meaning performance appraisal should target specific work indicators, not be vague;
—**M stands for Measurable**, meaning performance indicators are quantifiable or behavioral, and data or information to verify these indicators is obtainable;
—**A stands for Attainable**, meaning performance indicators can be achieved with effort, avoiding setting goals too high or too low;
—**R stands for Realistic**, meaning performance indicators are real, provable, and observable;
—**T stands for Time-bound**, focusing on the specific deadline for completing performance indicators;
**Tool D: The PDCA Principle for Effective Management**
This is a principle for product quality control, but it can not only control the process of product quality management, but also effectively control work quality and management quality.
The so-called PDCA is the acronym of **Plan, Do, Check, and Adjustment**.
No matter what work, it cannot be separated from the PDCA cycle. Every work needs to go through four stages: planning, executing the plan, checking the plan, adjusting the plan, and continuously improving.
For managers, this is a tool to effectively control the management process and work quality. Adopting PDCA can make your management develop in a virtuous cycle. Through implementation and skillful use, managers will surely improve efficiency in work, more effectively control work, and achieve greater success.
**Tool E: The MKASH Principle for Manager Professionalization**
Modern management requires managers to be professional. People will not trust you just because of a letter of appointment, but are more willing to maintain your authority and accept your leadership because of your professional level. Only by continuously professionalizing your performance can you improve management efficiency, create excellent management teams, and create a team culture of high performance.
Modern managers must be professional and high-efficiency managers.
The so-called **MKASH** principle is:
**1. Motivation:** Motivation is like the axle of a car's wheel, at the core. The size and strength of motivation determine the speed and condition of the wheel's rotation.
Motivation influenced by a positive attitude will accelerate the wheel's rotation, thus accelerating the manager's success; conversely, motivation influenced by a negative attitude is not only detrimental to the manager's growth but may also have a great destructive effect.
Therefore, it is necessary to correctly understand the stimulating effect of positive motivation on success, continuously adjust one's mindset, face work and challenges with positive motivation, continuously motivate and surpass oneself, and achieve set goals and visions under the guidance of positive motivation.
**2. Knowledge:** In the era of the knowledge economy, managers must first possess professional knowledge for the job, and should be more professional than subordinate employees. Professionalization must be based on specialization.
To do any work, the first thing is to have the professional knowledge to deal with that work. To do it well, you also need other related knowledge to form a complete knowledge system to support the development and expansion of work.
Only by continuously acquiring professional knowledge can managers achieve professionalization, gain recognition in fierce competition, and obtain more development opportunities and space.
**3. Skill:** Skill is a necessary means for managers to carry out work.
With only knowledge and no skills, it is difficult to move forward. Imagine, if a manager lacks communication skills, how can he communicate with others and carry out work? Without interpersonal skills, how can he cooperate with colleagues and establish harmonious relationships with subordinates?
Skill training should be raised to the same level as knowledge, highly valued, continuously transforming knowledge into skills and abilities.
**4. Action:** Is it enough to have good motivation, professional knowledge, and skilled abilities? Obviously not.
High-efficiency managers must also have the ability to act quickly and strong execution. Some people are excellent in all aspects, with high knowledge and strong abilities, but they cannot achieve outstanding work performance. The reason lies in the lack of action ability.
Tom Peters said, "Quickly making plans and taking action should become a cultivation." To become a professional talent, you must change the work style of hesitation, indecision, and procrastination, take serious action on things you are sure of, prove everything with action, and continuously improve your execution.
**5. Habit:** Habit determines destiny; this statement is not exaggerated at all. Good habits give people a good impression and feeling, and can greatly help you succeed.
Professional talents must have good habits. Whether in life or work, always pay attention to your habits, change bad habits, and develop professional behavioral habits, so that your every move reflects your professional demeanor.
**Tool F: The 8 Essential Elements for a Proposal: 5W2H1E**
**What—The purpose and content of the proposal.**
**Who—The people related to the proposal.**
**Where—The place for implementation.**
**When—The time of the proposal.**
**Why—The reason and prospects of the proposal.**
**How—The methods and operation of the proposal.**
**How much—The budget of the proposal.**
**Effect—Predicting the results and effects of the proposal.**
It is especially worth mentioning that attention should be paid to the significance of How much and Effect to the entire proposal. If you ignore the cost input of the proposal and do not pay attention to the prediction of the implementation effect, then this proposal is not a successful one. A proposal with only 5W1H cannot be called a proposal; it can only be called a plan.
In this step, we can also propose as many solutions as possible to the problem. Commonly used methods include:
**· Fishbone Diagram Method**
It uses graphics to find the causes of problems from six aspects. These six aspects are **5M1E: Management, Man, Method, Material, Machine, Environment.**
1) Define the problem characteristics
2) Draw the problem diagram
3) Draw the small causes under the big causes
4) Find the main cause, take it as the problem characteristic, repeat the above steps until the cause is very clear, and the solution can be easily formed.
**· 5W2H Method**
**The 5Ws are:**
**1) Why: Why do this work?**
**2) What: What is the content?**
**3) Where: Where to do it?**
**4) When: When to do it?**
**5) Who: Who will do it?**
**The 2Hs are:**
**1) How: How to do it?**
**2) How much: How much time or other resources will it take?**
**Tool G: One of the Common Methods for Competitive Intelligence Analysis: SWOT Analysis**
**Strengths: Advantages**
**Weaknesses: Disadvantages**
**Opportunities: Opportunities**
**Threats: Threats**
Significance: Helps you clearly grasp the overall situation, analyze your advantages and disadvantages in resources, seize opportunities provided by the environment, and prevent possible risks and threats, which is very important for our success.
**When conducting SWOT analysis, the main contents include the following:**
**I. Analyze Environmental Factors**
Use various research methods to analyze the various environmental factors of the company, namely external environmental factors and internal capability factors. External environmental factors include opportunity factors and threat factors. They are favorable and unfavorable factors that directly affect the company's development from the external environment, belonging to objective factors, generally classified into economic, political, social, demographic, product and service, technological, market, competitive, and other categories; internal environmental factors include advantage factors and weakness factors. They are positive and negative factors existing in the company's own development, belonging to active factors, generally classified into management, organizational, operational, financial, sales, human resources, and other categories. When investigating and analyzing these factors, not only should the company's history and current situation be considered, but also its future development.
**II. Construct the SWOT Matrix**
Rank the various factors obtained from the investigation according to priority or degree of influence, and construct the SWOT matrix. In this process, prioritize factors that have direct, important, large, urgent, and long-term impacts on the company's development, and put indirect, secondary, minor, non-urgent, and short-term factors behind.
**III. Develop an Action Plan**
After completing the environmental factor analysis and constructing the SWOT matrix, you can formulate a corresponding action plan. The basic idea of formulating the plan is: leverage advantage factors, overcome weakness factors, utilize opportunity factors, and mitigate threat factors; consider the past, base on the present, and focus on the future. Use systematic analysis and comprehensive analysis methods to match and combine the various environmental factors, and derive a series of alternative strategies for the company's future development. These strategies include:
Minimum-minimum strategy (WT strategy), which considers weakness and threat factors, aiming to minimize these factors.
Minimum-maximum strategy (WO strategy), which focuses on weakness and opportunity factors, aiming to minimize weaknesses and maximize opportunities.
Minimum-maximum strategy (ST strategy), which focuses on advantage and threat factors, aiming to maximize advantages and minimize threats.
Maximum-maximum strategy (SO strategy), which focuses on advantage and opportunity factors, aiming to maximize both factors.
It can be seen that the WT strategy is the most pessimistic strategy, adopted when in the most difficult situation; the WO and ST strategies are bittersweet strategies, adopted under normal circumstances; the SO strategy is the most ideal strategy, adopted when in the smoothest situation.
The results of SWOT analysis have different names depending on the research object and purpose. In strategic research, it is called strategic plan; in development research, development countermeasures; in market research, market countermeasures; in management consulting, management countermeasures, etc.
Since the various factors contained in specific situations and the strategies formed by the analysis results are directly related to the time frame, when conducting SWOT analysis, you can first divide into certain time periods for SWOT analysis, and finally summarize the analysis results of each stage and conduct a SWOT matrix analysis for the entire time period. This helps make the analysis results more accurate.
**Tool H: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)**
How to conduct WBS decomposition: **Goal → Task → Work → Activity**
Decomposition principles:
Gradually refine and decompose the main goal. The lowest-level tasks and activities can be directly assigned to individuals. In principle, each task should be decomposed until it cannot be further decomposed.
Decomposition methods:
**1. Full communication from top to bottom and bottom to top;**
**2. One-on-one individual communication**
**3. Group discussion**
Decomposition standards:
**The decomposed activity structure is clear**
**Logically forms a large activity**
**Integrates all key factors**
**Includes temporary milestones and monitoring points**
**All activities are clearly defined**
Learn to decompose tasks and decompose them finely enough to have a clear picture, work in an orderly manner, and arrange time systematically.
**Tool I: Time Management - Important and Urgent**
**Priority = Importance × Urgency**
When arranging time, you should weigh the priority of various things and learn to "play the piano."
Have foresight in work and prevent problems before they occur. If you are always busy putting out fires, your work will always be passive.
**Tool J: The 80/20 Principle**
The 80/20 principle, also known as Pareto's Law, states that "80% of the total results are formed by 20% of the total time spent."
The criterion for arranging the priority of affairs according to "importance" is based on the principle of "the vital few and the trivial many." For example:
**80% of sales come from 20% of customers;**
**80% of phone calls come from 20% of friends;**
**80% of total output comes from 20% of products;**
**80% of wealth is concentrated in the hands of 20% of people;**
This inspires us to be good at grasping the main contradiction in work, sorting out clues from complex work, and using resources on the most important and urgent matters.
The above briefly describes some common work principles, but it is not in-depth. We need to continue to strengthen and skillfully apply them in work, making them effective tools to help us achieve high performance.
(Source: CEO President Think Tank)
**-END-**
Content Selection
**Reply with the following keywords to query and read related articles:**
Sales Supervisor, Second-tier Management, Regional Manager, Distributor Management, New Channels, City Manager, Competition, 2015, Manufacturer-Dealer Game, Product Slow Sales, Terminal Visit Management, Route Management, Deep Distribution, Internal Management, Sales Skills, Profit Improvement, Recruitment, Distribution, Daily Management, Team Motivation, Trade Promotion, Sales Misconceptions, New Product Launch, Township Market, New Product Pricing, Sales Target Achievement, Forcing Orders, Market Visit Inspection, Baijiu, Beer, Sales Increase, Agency Products, Cross-region Sales, KA, Terminal Visualization, New Market, Market Operation, Learning, Book Recommendations, Inventory Management, Sales Novice, Consumer Promotion, Execution, Old Products, Expired Product Handling, Model Market, Investment Promotion, New Media, Distributor Development, Performance Appraisal, Assessment, Annual Planning, Shopping Guide, Morning Meeting, Display, Transformation, Stock Pressure, Holidays, Distributor Cost Control Channel Operation, Marketing Theory and Laws, Brand Truth, Order Meeting, Team Management, Training, Work Report, Work Report.


---

## Copyright and AI use

This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL.

Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671