Prof. Maurizio Poli, in his interview, said that one cannot be an effective manager unless he/she is comfortable with numbers. But he missed out on a point that an effective manager is one who can see beyond numbers. A manager should spend more time in understanding and improving people and process than analyzing numbers.
Also with the technical advancements of this century, managers spend less time on the mechanical aspects of accounting or preparing reports. They work on cross functional teams, and communicate with people throughout their organization .They are expected to have a working knowledge of all the domains of business. For this they need not be comfortable with numbers, they just need to understand their business functions and processes.
Organizations have achieved operational excellence even before the advent of big data and analytics. This can be supported by Toyota story .The firm focused on the process and the numbers followed.
To conclude, if a manager has got a working knowledge of all the domains in his business, he can always see the bigger picture and think strategically .This makes him effective even if he is not comfortable with numbers.
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