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quiz 10 - basic management and business quiz - questions & answers
free trivia quiz questions and
answers - for team-building, team games, learning and fun
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situation.
quizballs 10 - basic management and
business quiz - free quiz questions and answers
Information relating to these subjects is on the
main businessballs
website. A search tool is at the foot of the home page.
Which of these is a 'soft' skill? Analysing,
Monitoring, Budgeting, Counselling? Counselling. ('Soft' skills typically
involve people and communications).
Integrity is essential in all functions, but is
it most crucial in supervision, management, or leadership? Leadership.
(Leadership which lacks integrity can bring down an entire
corporation).
Staff performance appraisals work best if they
are strictly an annual event - true or false? False. (A person's performance
and progress and project work, etc., benefit enormously from more frequent
appraisal discussions than once a year. Informal appraisals can be conducted as
frequently as is helpful. Obviously the more frequent, the less formal, which
is another benefit.)
Which tends to produce the highest percentage
gross profit: mature high-volume products or new low-volume specialised
services? New low-volume specialised services. (Mature markets tend to be more
competitive which compresses pricing and margins. Mature products also have to
be priced competitively to enable volume distribution, and to resist threats
from newer better solutions. High-volume production requires competitive
pricing in order to the maintain volumes necessary to support related large
scale investment. Additionally customers and buyers are more informed and
price-sensitive in mature markets.)
For effective time management what's the best
frequency for checking your email inbox: constantly, every hour, two or three
times a day? Two or three times a day. (Constant interruptions and distractions
are extremely unhelpful for all proactive work, especially thinking,
communicating, creating, planning, project managing, etc. Many organisations
have developed the weird practice of continuous email checking or alerting, but
that doesn't make it right. It's a question of managing your environment rather
than let it manage you.)
It is said that "If you can't measure it then you
can't..." what? Manage it.
Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of what?
Needs.
What does MBO or MBO's stand for? Management By
Objectives.
A subordinate has raised a personal issue with
you by email which is causing him/her obvious distress - what's the best means
of communicating from this point: email, phone, face-to-face, text, letter?
Face-to-face (in private). (It's extremely difficult to understand people - and
to be understood - without face-to-face spoken communications. This is because
tone of voice and body language, especially facial expressions, carry more
meaning than words in all but obvious unemotional communications.
Putting interviewees under a lot of pressure at
job interviews is generally helpful to the process of finding out about the
person - true or false? False. (The purpose of interviews is to discover as
much as possible about the person. When people are under pressure they clam up
and/or mask their true characteristics. Interviews are artificial and
pressurising enough without deliberately making them any more so.)
Experiential learning is most beneficial to
people who have a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learning style preference?
Kinesthetic (Also spelled Kinaesthetic. A person who prefers this style favours
'hands-on' learning. For effective teaching, training, development, etc., using
an appropriate style of learning for the learner is as important as the
learning content itself.)
Which is likely to motivate an enthusiastic
capable team member most: doubling their target, agreeing additional
responsibility, a bonus payment, a new car? Agreeing additional responsibility.
(None of the others actually changes anything sustainably and purposefully in
terms of what the person does, which crucially is linked to true achievement
and growth.)
What's a simple way to find out the causes if
staff turnover (number of people leaving) has gone through the roof in the last
two months? Carry out exit interviews with the people leaving and ask them.
(People are at their most revealing when the ties have been cut. Added to which
you are not dealing with rumour or opinions as might surface in staff surveys.
Instead, exit interviews deal in facts, and enable very useful analysis if
conducted with a reasonable number of leavers. Incidentally, staff turnover is
normally shown as a percentage arrived at by dividing total leavers by total
workforce. As a very broad guide, anything over 20% staff turnover in a year
suggests serious problems. Anything less than 10% per year suggests
stagnation.)
A company has a turnover of £11m. Its 'cost
of sales' or 'cost of goods sold' (COGS) is £6.3m. Its overheads
including fixed costs, depreciation (write-down of capital items) and any
interest charges (on borrowings) are £3.5m. What is the company's
percentage gross profit and percentage net profit before tax, and is this
profit % for a company very high, very low or somewhat typical? 42.7% and
10.9%, and it's somewhat typical. Explanation: Gross profit is Turnover less
COGS (£11m less £6.3m) = £4.7m. Percentage Gross Profit (or
'gross margin') is £Gross Profit divided by Turnover (£4.7m
÷ £11m) = 42.7% . Net Profit before tax is Gross Profit less
Overheads (£4.7m less £3.5m) = £1.2m. Percentage Net Profit
is £Net Profit divided by £Turnover (£1.2m ÷
£11m) = 10.9%. Anything around 10% is a typical sort of net profit
percentage achieved by businesses and corporations, although this perspective
is just a simple hypothetical 'P&L' (profit and loss account) and takes no
account of balance sheet or cash aspects, which together with the P&L
provide the three main measures of business performance.
What acronym is useful when delegating a task to
someone or agreeing an objective? SMART (Specific, Measurable,
Agreed/Achievable, Realistic/Relevant, Timebound) - or extended to SMARTER
(Specific, Measurable, Agreed/Achievable, Realistic/Relevant, Timebound,
Ethical/Enjoyable, Recorded. It is important that 'agreed' is part of
delegation process.)
If you assume responsibility for a mature,
high-achieving confident team, which of the following is generally the best
approach to take: stamp your authority on the group; introduce some new ideas
of your own; give them space and make yourself available if needed; or look for
ways to cut costs? Give them space and make yourself available if needed. (A
mature, high-achieving confident team can virtually run itself - which is every
team-manager's aim. Why go backwards? If you start micro-managing or
interfering you will waste your time that you could have otherwise used on
strategic creative developments and opportunities, and you will upset the team
members. Your priority is to understand the team so as to help them develop,
ideally including the development of a successor for yourself. This will enable
you to move on to your next opportunity.)
What's the relevance of hobbies on a person's CV?
A person's hobbies often indicate their strengths, potential and character,
aside from and beyond what might be suggested by their work experience and
qualifications. A person's hobbies also give you the chance to get them talking
about things they feel passionate about, by which you can often discover more
about someone than discussing their work or qualifications.
What can 'closed' questions be used for? Getting
yes/no answers; getting commitment (or 'closing' in selling); clarifying,
qualifying and filtering. Ask a closed question if you need a short quick
answer. If you want information and to listen and learn then ask 'open'
questions (who, how, what, where, etc).
When planning the running order for a meeting is
it generally best to put the big important items first or last or in the middle
between smaller things? Big important agenda items should always go last - if
you put them first you risk not having time left for all the small things,
which could otherwise have been polished off quite quickly and easily,
especially because people will be keen to get to the juicier items afterwards.
Also people tend to do more posturing early in meetings - to 'have their say'
even if they have nothing to say - which causes more problems for the big
issues than the small ones. Later on in meetings, the dynamics and the emotions
will typically have settled down a bit, which makes it easier to deal with the
bigger issues. If there are other factors (guests with limited time
availability for example) you'll need to schedule accordingly, but generally
it's best to cover the small things first. Ensure you leave adequate time for
the big items later, which means strictly managing the time used for the early
small things.
When conducting appraisals or counselling
sessions it's best to sit at your desk with the other person facing you on the
other side, so as to reinforce your authority - true or false? False. (Similar
to job interviews - you want the other person to be relaxed and comfortable,
not threatened. Desks create barriers; so sit around a low coffee table
instead. Sitting directly opposite facing each other is a confrontational
arrangement; it's best to sit at an angle of between 90-120 degrees; or think
of 12:15 or 12:20 on the clockface. Using any method to reinforce or impose
authority will increase emotions, which undermines the value of the
communications.)
quizballs 10 - free basic
management and business quiz
questions only
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