How to be a successful administrator

Can a person —whether an ordinary one, an employee in the state, or an employee in the private sector— be a successful administrator?

The answer is in affirmative when two basic conditions are fulfilled:

First: When there is a self-readiness or a desire to become an administrator.

Second: When a person acquires several administrative skills of scientific nature, understands them perfectly, and applies them easily.

I want to say that these two conditions are integrated, where one of them cannot do without the other and fulfilling one of them without the other breaks the equation.

We cannot imagine a successful and a good performance just by having the ability without desire and the opposite is correct. Therefore, an individual has to fulfill both conditions together to guarantee the required administrative performance through the full awareness of some facts; of the most important are the following:

♦ Administration is knowledge and art. It is a theory and an application. It is the art of applying science. It is the study and practice of knowledge that was applied perfectly.

♦ The scientific experience for a successful administrator is to recognize administrative professions that form the administrative process, which the administration specialists and researchers differed about, but the minimum limit agreed upon between them is four elements which are: (planning, organizing, directing, supervision).

♦ A suitable individual in an appropriate work and in specific time: A principle that is applied through describing and classifying professions and actions. Consequently, choice should be made according to the objective and scientific criteria, away from the different effects.

♦ Time is a production element but it is an element which cannot be stored, so what has passed cannot be restored. Consequently, it is the core of the successful administrator's work who is supposed to manage time and record all aspects of its wasting.

♦ A successful administration is the administration which consolidates efficiency and effectiveness. Efficiency is the well-mastering of using resources of an organization by all its elements; humane, material and financial. As for the effectiveness in the organizational work, it means the ability to achieve its outlined goals. Efficiency and effectiveness mean, in short, that administration should take right actions in a proper manner.

♦ In order that an administrator to be successful in his work, he needs a set of humane skills which represent the following:

• Personal competence in bearing responsibility and decision making that serve the public interest within the limits of duties and authorities.

• Having the ability to objective criticism and justice in dealing with others.

• To be a role model to employees in behaviors and commitments.

• Having the ability to convince and manage arguments and dialogues.

• Having self-confidence and having confidence in the abilities of others.

• Having the ability to establish social networks with others.

• A set of personal traits such as patience, humbleness, flexible constructive thinking, continuous reading, the ability to explain ideas, having patriotic spirit and deep religion.

♦ There are ethical values that an administrator should believe in, apply, and get used to them as part of his personal behaviors; of which are:

• Having good-manners and integrity.

• Having humane morals and keeping the secrets of his employees.

• Not resorting to the application of contradictory criteria toward the individuals of his administrative group.

♦ A successful administrator needs an amount of scientific, social and human culture. Culture gives you access to understand and realize the administrative reality with all its elements, characteristics and variables to find the best approaches, styles and mechanism to change the reality in which he lives to a better one. So, a successful administrator has to get methodological self-education to grasp the real foundations of a successful administration, sound administrative organization and achieving the organizational goals precisely in short time and with minimum cost.

♦ An administrator should have a set of administrative skills. Administration is not only one system but a set of systems related to communication, management meetings, incentives, discipline, information, public relations, administrative decision making and other systems that form the core of administration.

♦ A successful administrator is also the leader who gains the trust of his employees and has faith in their capabilities. Advice and respect to others' opinions are the most prominent means that form an administrative leader. Through practicing objective criticism, free dialogue and the passion for knowing the truth leadership is made.

The final word is: Time passes whether in fruitful achievements or in vain. There are many administrators who like to live in ivory-towers, believing that they possess the power which allow them to do what others cannot do. This kind of people will remain prisoners of their own behaviors and beliefs and will not advance a step and when they die, nobody will remember them.

A successful administrator is the model of a sound man who cares only for the public interest and leads work as a captain of a ship who delivers it to safety.