Practical Management (course)

"Practical Management" (al-Idara al-'Amaliyya) is a recorded training course by Tareq al-Suwaidan. Opening it, he says he gave it this name because in his long years of training in management he noticed that the field has a theoretical side and an applied side, and that many people want from the theories what can actually be applied; so he gathered in this course what can be taken and used at once. ^{1 2 3} The Assabile archive holds five of its lectures; their files are named the first, second, fourth, fifth and sixth lectures, so the third lecture is not in the archive. ⁴

In the first lecture he listed the course's topics: actually writing a strategic plan, in an unconventional way, on a single page, with the mission, the vision, the indicators, a five-year plan and an annual plan; ^{3 5} leadership, which he said occupies him because he teaches it and because he runs a leadership training centre for young people where he has tested which theories work and which do not; ⁵ the practical difference between leadership and management, with equations by which trainees can measure their own practice, and the analysis of leadership personalities; ^{6 7} changing organisations and individuals, and what someone who takes over a struggling institution should change in the short and the long term; ^{8 9} and a personal plan by which a person orders his life, one decision-making method that can be applied at once, and then creativity and teamwork as time allowed. ^{9 10 11}

He said at the start that he had come back from Canada on the Thursday, and that he had found there a new leadership book called Know How, published in 2007 the week before, which he bought, read and summarised for the trainees. ^{7 12} This is his statement; the archive gives no recording date.

• First lecture: an introduction to management, the history of its theories, and strategic planning — management science, strategic planning, division of labour, motivation theories, Islamic management ¹³
• Second lecture: the vision as the most important part of strategic planning, then the mission, indicators, business units and family companies — vision and mission, performance indicators, strategic business unit, family companies ^{14 15}
• Fourth lecture (archive episode 3): leadership and its roles, the Pareto law, the laws of monkeys, situational leadership and DISC analysis — leadership, Pareto law, the monkey laws, situational leadership, DISC analysis, experience and service ¹⁶
• Fifth lecture (episode 4): motivation, the decision matrix and organisational change — motivation, decision matrix, organisational change ¹⁷
• Sixth lecture (episode 5): managing life and time, teamwork and meetings, and the nominal group — life management, time management, teamwork, nominal group ¹⁸

In the course he draws on figures from the history of management and beyond, among them Sun Tzu and his The Art of War, Adam Smith, Frederick Taylor, Henry Ford, Elton Mayo, Abraham Maslow, Vilfredo Pareto, Jack Welch, William Oncken and Kenneth Blanchard with their The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey, Stephen Covey and Abdul Rahman al-Sumait. ^{13 16 17 18}