Understanding the Four Functions of Management

management- "the act of getting things done through people". This is what immediately comes to mind when the term management pops up. This popular definition was put forward by Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) in the early twentieth century.

Over the years, management (in academics and practice) has gone through various refinements and modifications, yet its major functions have remained almost constant in meaning and nomenclature. According to Henry Fayol, management to consist of seven functions:

1. Planning

2. Organizing

3. Leading

4. Coordinating

5. Controlling

6. Staffing

7. Motivating

Modern theorists have regrouped these seven functions into four major ones:

1. Planning,

2. Organizing; has been reviewed to include staffing and coordinating functions,

3. Leading; now include motivating, and

4. Controlling.

planning

Planning is a process for accomplishing purpose. It is the blue print of business growth and a road map of development. It helps in deciding objectives both in quantitative and qualitative terms. It is setting of goals on the basis of objectives and keeping in view the resources.

Depending on the type of activities concerned, planning can be short term (0-2 years), intermediate i.e. medium term (2-5years) or long term (above 5years).

As a manager you must determine what the organization's goals are and how to achieve those goals. Much of this information will come directly from the vision and mission statements of the company. Setting objectives for the goal and following up on the execution of the plan are two critical components of the planning function.

organizing

In any business organization, one of the most important aspects is the organizing function of management. In fact, properly implementing the organizing function of management can make or break a business enterprise.

Organizing is establishing the internal organizational structure of the business. The focus is on division of jobs and duties, coordination of various job activities, control of tasks, the flow of information within the organization, and ultimately staffing. Managers distribute responsibility and authority to job holders in this function of management.

The organizing function addresses the following

1. How people within the organization will interact.

2. Who reports to who?

3. The organizational chart.

4. The lines of authority.

All four above are aspects of personnel management and organization that falls within the purview of the organizing function of management.

According toBernard L. Erven; Department of Agricultural Economics, Ohio State University, every organization has an organizational structure. By action and/or inaction, managers structure businesses. Ideally, in developing an organizational structure and distributing authority, managers' decisions reflect the mission, objectives, goals and tactics that grew out of the planning function. Specifically, they decide:

1. Division of labor: - This is concerned with relationships among tasks and the authority to do the tasks.

2. Delegation of authority: - Authority is legitimized power. Power is the ability to influence others. Delegation is distribution of authority. Delegation frees the manager from the tyranny of urgency. Delegation frees the manager to use his or her time on high priority activities. Note that delegation of authority does not free the manager from accountability for the actions and decisions of subordinates.

3. Departmentalization: - Departmentalization is the grouping of jobs under the authority of a single manager, according to some rational basis, for the purposes of planning, coordination and control. The number of departments in an organization depends on the number of different jobs, i.e., the size and complexity of the business.

4. Span of control: - The span of control is the number of people a manager supervises. The organizational structure decision to be made is the number of subordinates a manager can effectively lead. The typical guideline is a span of control of no more than 5-6 people. However, a larger span of control is possible depending on the complexity, variety and proximity of jobs.

5. Coordination: -process that involves a decision by management as to how best to put together the resources of the firm in order to carry out set goals and objectives. Coordinating also requires directing. In directing, managers oversee day-to-day activities and keep the organization functioning smoothly

leading/leadership

The words leading and leadership are often used interchangeably. Of course both connotes capacity: - the capacity of leaders to listen and observe, to use their expertise to initiate and encourage dialogue between all levels of decision-making, to establish processes and transparency in decision-making, to articulate their own values and visions clearly but not impose them. Leadership is about setting objectives and attaining them, identifying problems, and initiating change that makes for substantial improvement rather than managing change."

Leading focuses on people management. The people here refer to the subordinate of the leader. Hence the job of the leader is to get the organization's objectives accomplished through his subordinates.

According to Jack Welch; in his book Winning 2008 - leading requires distinct behaviours and attitudes. Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself, and when you become a leader success becomes all about growing others. Jack Welch also postulated some rules of leadership which is summarized below:

leadership rules

Rule 1: Leaders relentlessly upgrade their team using every encounter as an opportunity to evaluate, coach and build self confidence. You need to invest the vast majority of your time and energy as a leader in these three activities mentioned:

Evaluation - making sure the right people are in the right jobs, supporting and advancing those who are, and moving out those who are not.

Coaching - guiding, critiquing, and helping people to improve their performances in every way.

Building self confidence - pouring out encouragement, caring and recognition. Self confidence is the fuel of winning teams. It energizes and it gives people the courage to stretch, take risks and achieve beyond their dreams.

People development should be a daily event integrated into every aspect of your regular going-on. There is no event in your day that cannot be used for people development - a customer visit is a chance to evaluate your sales force, plant tours are an opportunity to meet promising new line managers and see if they have the ability to run something bigger. In all encounters, take every opportunity to inject self-confidence into those who have earned it. Use ample praise; the more specific the better.

Rule 2: Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it. You have to communicate your vision to everyone with amazing clarity and consistency. You have to talk about the vision constantly. The message is always new to someone, so keep repeating it and keep talking to everyone about it.

If you want people to live and breathe the vision "show them the money". When you do, it should be with salary bonus, or significant recognition of some sort.

No vision is worth the paper it's printed on unless it is communicated constantly and reinforced with rewards; only then will it leap off the pages - and come to life.

Rule 3: Leaders get into everyone's skin, exuding positive energy and optimism. The leader's mood is catching and infectious. An upbeat leader who goes about with positive outlook and attitude ends up building a team with such characteristics and vice versa.

Your unique job as a leader is to fight the gravitational pull of negativism. This means you display an energizing, can-do attitude about overcoming the challenges faced by your team NOT sugarcoating them.

Rule 4: Leaders establish trust with candor, transparency and credit. You have to build trust by being transparent, candid, and keeping your word.

Leaders also establish trust by giving credit where it is due. They never score off their own people by stealing an idea and claiming it as their own.

In bad times, leaders take responsibility for what has gone wrong. In good times they generously pass the praise around.

When you become a leader you're given additional responsibility to bring out the best in others.

Rule 5: leaders have the courage make unpopular decisions and gut calls. As a leader you are not to win popularity contests - you are to lead.

At times making decisions is hard because it comes from your gut and defies a "technical" rationale. Leaders are faced with gut calls all the time, so as a leader always listen to your guts - it's always telling you something.

Rule 6: Leaders probe and push with a curiosity that borders on skepticism, making sure that questions are answered with actions.

You as a leader, your job is to have all the questions. Every conversation you have about a decision, proposal, or a piece of market information has to be filled with you asking "what if"? "why not"? and "how come"?

Questioning however is never enough, you have to make sure your questions unleash debate and raise issues that get action.

Rule 7: Leaders inspire risk taking and learning by setting the example. If you want people to experiment and expand their minds, set the example yourself. You can create a culture that welcome risk taking by freely admitting your mistakes and talking about what you have learned from them.- it is always ok to make a swing and miss as long as you learn from them.

As for learning - again live it yourself. Because you are the boss or leader doesn't mean you know it all. Learn from your subordinates who are smarter than you. The fact that they are smarter doesn't mean you can't lead them. In fact in the best case scenario, all your people will be smarter than you are. Of course as a leader you should focus on employing people who are smarter than yourself.

Rule 8: Leaders celebrate!!!

Recognize moments of achievements and celebrate them. Send a team of achievers to the Disney world with their families; hand out new Ipods to achievers; throw parties on big achievements.

controlling

Controlling in management means setting standards, measuring actual performance against set goals and objectives and taking corrective action where deviations occur.

Controlling is an important function because it helps to check the errors and to take the corrective action so that deviation from standards are minimized and stated goals of the organization are achieved in desired manner.

In 1916, Henry Fayol formulated one of the first definitions of control as it pertains to management:

Controlling consists of verifying whether everything occurs in conformity with the plan adopted, the instructions issued, and principles established. Its object is to point out weaknesses and errors in order to rectify them and prevent recurrence.

Robert J. Mockler presented a more comprehensive definition of control from a manager's point of view:

Management control can be defined as a systematic effort by business management to compare performance to predetermined standards, plans, or objectives in order to determine whether performance is in line with these standards and presumably in order to take any remedial action required to see that human and other corporate resources are being used in the most effective and efficient way possible in achieving corporate objectives.

From all definitions stated above, controlling as a function of management can be concluded to be a process which involves five stages:

Process of Controlling

1. Setting performance standards.

2. Measurement of actual performance.

3. Comparing actual performance with standards.

4. Analyzing deviations.

5. Correcting deviations.

I n conclusion any manager, business organization - (whether profit making or non-profit making), or management team that is to succeed in its line of endeavour, must be fully armed with both practical and theoretical knowledge of these four management functions of planning, organizing, leading, and controlling... because without them all that will be left is chaos and crisis.