Instructions

Read the following passage carefully to answer these questions given below it. Certain words / phrases are printed in bold to help you locate them while answering some of the questions.

Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. The most important aspects of management include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling and problem solving. Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances, Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles. This distinction is absolutely crucial for our purpose here. Successful transformation is 70-90 percent leadership and only 10-30 management. Yet for historical reasons, many organizations today do not have much leadership. And almost everyone thinks about the problem here as one of managing change.

For most of this century, as we created thousands and thousands of large organizations for the first time in human history, we did not have enough good managers to keep all those bureaucracies functioning. So many companies and universities developed management programs and hundreds and thousands people were encouraged to learn management on the job. and they did. But people were taught little about leadership. To some degree, management was emphasized because it is easier to teach them leadership. But even more so management was the main item on the twentieth century agenda because that is what was needed. For every entrepreneur or business builder who was a leader, we needed hundreds of managers to run their ever-growing enterprises.
Unfortunately for us today, this emphasis on management has often been institutionalized in corporate cultures that discourage employees from learning how to lead. Ironically past successis usually the key ingredient in producing this outcome. The syndrome, as I have observed it on many occasions goes like this: success creates some degree of market dominance which in turnproduces much growth. After a while keeping the ever larger organizations under control becomes primary challenge. So attention turns inward and managerial competences are nurtured. With a strong emphasis on management but not leadership, bureaucracy and an inward focus take over. But with the continued success the result mostly of market dominance, the problem often goes unaddressed and an unhealthy arrogance begins to evolve. All of these characteristics then make any transformation efforts much more difficult.

Arrogant mangers can over evaluate their current performance and competitive position, listen poorly and learn slowly. Inwardly focused employees can have difficulty seeing the very forces that present threats and opportunities. Bureaucratic cultures can smother those who want to respond shifting conditions. And the lack of leadership leaves no force inside these organizations to break out of the morass

Question 2

Which of the following is similar in meaning of the word “smother” as used in the passage?


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