Management and Business Quiz (Easy)

Questions

1. Which of these is a 'soft' skill?
2. Integrity is essential in all functions, but is it most crucial in supervision, management, or leadership?
3. Staff performance appraisals work best if they are strictly an annual event - true or false?
4. Which tends to produce the highest percentage gross profit: mature high-volume products or new low-volume specialised services?
5. For effective time management what's the best frequency for checking your email inbox: constantly, every hour, two or three times a day?
6. It is said that "If you can't measure it then you can't..." what?
7. Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of what?
8. What does MBO or MBO's stand for?
9. 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?
10. 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?
11. Experiential learning is most beneficial to people who have a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learning style preference?
12. Which is likely to motivate an enthusiastic capable team member most: doubling their target, agreeing additional responsibility, a bonus payment, a new car?
13. 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?
14. A company has a turnover of £11m. Its 'cost of sales' or 'cost of goods sold' (COGS) is £3m. Its overheads including fixed costs, depreciation (write-down of capital items) and any interest charges (on borrowings) are £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?
15. What acronym is useful when delegating a task to someone or agreeing an objective?
16. 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?
17. What's the relevance of hobbies on a person's CV?
18. What can 'closed' questions be used for?
19. 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?
20. 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?

1. Which of these is a 'soft' skill?

   Analysing, Monitoring, Budgeting, Counselling
2. 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).
3. 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.)
4. 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.)
5. 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.)
6. It is said that "If you can't measure it then you can't..." what?

   Manage it.
7. Abraham Maslow developed the Hierarchy of what?

   Needs.
8. What does MBO or MBO's stand for?

   Management By Objectives.
9. 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.
10. 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.)
11. 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.)
12. 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.)
13. 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.)
14. A company has a turnover of £11m. Its 'cost of sales' or 'cost of goods sold' (COGS) is £3m. Its overheads including fixed costs, depreciation (write-down of capital items) and any interest charges (on borrowings) are £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?

    47% and 9%, and it's somewhat typical. Explanation: Gross profit is Turnover less COGS (£11m less £3m) = £7m. Percentage Gross Profit (or 'gross margin') is £Gross Profit divided by Turnover (£7m ÷ £11m) = 47% . Net Profit before tax is Gross Profit less Overheads (£7m less £5m) = £2m. Percentage Net Profit is £Net Profit divided by £Turnover (£2m ÷ £11m) = 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.
15. 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.)
16. 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
17. 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.
18. 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).
19. 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.
20. 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.)