The Nutshell Basics of Managing and Management

You have been working for a company for a while and it is time to move up. Maybe somebody is looking at you as a replacement for a manager. Perhaps you already have a management job but are flying by the seat of your pants and don't really know what to do. Perhaps you want to find out what a manager does. Chances are that if you worked your way up, you are doing OK but probably want to do better. A thorough discussion of management in less than 1500 words is impossible but a rapid overview is definitely valuable especially if you are just starting out as a manager or are interested in becoming a manager.

Management consists of 4 basic actions. Planning, organizing, leading and controlling. When you have all the data on all four, you will be able to manage anything. Entire college courses are given in management, so this is a real ultra thumbnail view of managing.

Planning is figuring out where you want to go and getting some idea of how to get there. First you need a goal. A goal is generally a big overall type of thing like 'double the size of the company', 'take over the known world', 'build this print shop up to the point that it needs to move out of this address or has to build another building'.

After the goal, you need a strategy. Like any general who is wants to beat the opposition, you need to know what you are up against and have a rough idea of how you are going to reach your goal. You can't just go out there shooting wildly and expect to win. Maybe your opponent saw you coming and has an ambush waiting for you. You need some larger objectives which if achieved will add up to the goal being met. In the print shop example, a few of the strategic steps might be: Survey the area and find out what sort of print jobs are most used. Get a bigger faster printing press. Go to two and then three shifts.

From the strategy, you get down to tactics. Tactical planning is basically what am I going to do next? What do I do right after that? Tactical can get pretty minute. It can go right down to figuring out which jobs to do first, who will be the best man for the next job, etc. In the print shop example, it would include a large portion of the details needed in order to hire, train and put to work your second and third shifts.

Strategy would be working out at which point in time you would need to put in the sales and treasury structure in place to keep those new shifts busy with work and paid accurately. Tactics would be the actual steps of putting an ad in the paper to attract treasurers, interviewing people for jobs, etc.

Organizing is working out who is going to do what and in what sequence. This is where you work out what is going to go where and how the flows of the business are going to run so that they run smoothly. Like working out where the printing presses will need to be in order for the paper to get to them easily and the finished product off them at the end and into trucks or over to the folding machines. Where the folding machines will be placed, how many people will you need to run those folders when the printing press is going full-blast. Whether there will need to be a boss over the folding machines as well as a boss over the printing presses, or just one boss over both, etc.

Organizing is working out the roles and relationships of the people and the equipment so that a product can be produced. If you have your organizing done well, you have a much better chance of getting the product out smoothly and with no drama. If things aren't organized well, there will be a lot of rushing around with people running into each other, both literally and figuratively.

Leading is guiding and motivating your people. It is based largely on the ability to give and enforce orders. Giving orders doesn't mean shouting and enforcement doesn't generally need a club or a whip. A person who can communicate well and let his people know what he wants and when he wants it and who can handle their questions is generally pretty valuable to have as a manager. Of course the manager also has to be able to push his people and make them work. The more understanding the manager uses in getting his orders across, the less force he is likely to need to get the people to work. At the same time if you think that you will be able to run things without getting at least a bit tough from time to time, you will soon find out that there is a genuine need for someone to actually fill the role of boss. Being the boss does include getting rid of those who will not work.

The leader has to be interested in how the overall group is doing and has to put that ahead of how the individuals are doing. There is definitely a degree of judgment needed in leading because a group is made of individuals and if you ruin all the individuals, you don't have a group.

Controlling consists of watching what is going on and then changing what goes wrong to make it go better. In order to be able to effectively do that, you have to know what IS going on. You have to have some idea of what SHOULD be going on. In short, you have to have some standard in mind and then work toward that standard. You also have to be able to know when you have set your standard too high and re-set your standard. Firing the pressman who has been struggling all night long by himself to get a print job finished isn't going to be the right action when the job usually requires three people for two days and a fork lift to move the paper around.

First set some standards, have some idea of what should be happening in your zone of activity, and then measure what they are doing against those standards. If they do measure up, continue or revise your standards higher. If they don't measure up, adjust either the performance or the standards also.

When you do something, you need to look at what you did and assess whether it was correct or not and adjust what you do in the future based on that assessment. If you don't keep any records, it is very difficult to adjust what you will be doing in the future. You could continue to do a set of actions 'because that is the way we do it around here'. The way we do it around here is probably the best way to do things but that doesn't mean that little adjustments can't be made to make things go better.

If you are just starting out and things have been going at least somewhat right with your predecessor, don't go wild and make a lot of huge changes. Learn what is happening in the place first and change what is not going well bit by bit. Sweeping changes are only good when they are desperately needed.

There is a tremendous amount of data available and needed in order to be a successful manager. If you look at the help wanted ads, managers appear to be in huge demand and in short supply even in a down economy. Almost every manager job listing requires some experience. The people who are hiring managers know that a degree helps, but is not necessarily going to weed out the bad managers. The above is a small start if you are interested in running things. This article gives some basic data that can be built on and compared to other data as you go forward.