The Four Functions of Management and How it Relates to My Organization
In today’s corporate world a manager to be affective must be able to incorporate the four functions of management (planning, organizing, leading, and controlling) into his or her management techniques. Managers who fail to implement the four functions have a greater chance of being unsuccessful in accomplishing the primary outcome for the project or task. Thus, generating an inferior product.
DEFINING THE FOUR FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT
“Planning: is specifying the goals to be achieved and deciding in advance the appropriate actions needed to achieve those goals” (Bateman & Snell, 2004, p. 16).
“Organizing: is assembling and coordinating the human, financial, physical, informational, and other resources needed to achieve goals” (Bateman & Snell, 2004, p. 17).
“Leading: is stimulating people to be high performers. It is directing, motivating, and communicating with employees, individually and in groups. Leading involves close day-to-day contact with people, helping to guide and inspire them toward achieving team and organizational goals” (Bateman & Snell, 2004, p. 17).
“Controlling: monitors progress and implements necessary changes where needed. Monitoring is an essential aspect of control” (Bateman & Snell, 2004, p. 18).
As you can see after defining the four functions of management that they prove to be a vital component for a manager and for the success of his or her team or organization in achieving the goals set forth in a particular project. In my company (NUS Consulting Group), I am an Energy Consultant and each function is important for us as well. Each day in my organization, we generate recommendations in the form of a report detailing how our clients can reduce their overall costs in electricity, gas, water, sewer, and any other commodity they wish my company to audit and analyze.
However, in some cases we need to develop strategies for them to improve their efficiency, improve their machinery, install backup generation, etc. In these scenarios, a team is developed with the consultant being the project manager or point man. Therefore, these projects require the four functions to be followed so we can develop the best possible solution. The first function used is “Planning”, which allows us to outline a strategy catering to the specific needs of our client. The “Planning” function also gives us a time table on how long the project will take to complete, who needs to be involved, and how we expect to accomplish each goal.
Encarta Dictionary within Microsoft Word defines leadership as,” the ability to guide, direct, or influence people.” Expanding upon that definition, my personal definition is influencing people to follow to achieve a goal, regardless of how unpleasant. Leadership is not something that happens overnight, it needs to be cultivated over time. During that process, it is necessary to identify delinquencies and make adjustments. Reviewing the feedback provided by my LPI/360 assessment, the three areas identified I need to improve on are, praising people for a job well done, actively listening to diverse points of view, and becoming more visible within the workplace.
The first function of management is planning. "Planning is systematically making decisions about the goals and activities that an individual, a group, a work unit, or overall organization will pursue." (Bateman & Snell) In my organization, planning takes up the most time. Objectives must be laid out, potential products must be examined and the timing and type of marketing must all be planned out before we provide our product to our customers. This function should be first and foremost to all individuals involved in the organization. Poor planning will result in your organizations demise.
Emotions of a leader are so important in this aspect of leadership. It is through emotions that the leader will be categorized as ‘toxic’ or ‘not toxic.’ It is with no doubt that true leaders will appeal to emotions and as the same time know how to cope with their own emotions and how to perceive or control the emotions of a group. The major fundamental task of a leader is to inspire positive feelings in those he leads. In whichever situation followers always turn their attention to leaders, they expect his reaction towards that particular situation which will act as emotional guideline. The way a leader responds to a situation will give the followers a way of interpreting that event which in turn will make them react emotionally. If a leaders panics, gets annoyed or angry, these emotions will spread to the followers. On the contrary if he shows confidence and optimism to the same situation, his emotions will also be “infectious” (Maxwell, 2002).
Planning is an essential but potentially complex managerial function. The main objective of planning is to ensure that the organization is both effective and efficient in its activities and that it achieves its goals.
Planning is involved in defining an organization’s goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving these goals, and developing plans for organizational work activities. Planning can establishes goals and objectives to provide direction to all levels of managers in the organization. Planning also reduces uncertainty and reduces overlapping and wasteful work activities. Planning helping establish standards that are using in control. Planning has two components: goals and plans. The goals can define the targets that the organization wants to achieve. Timeframes are usually included to specify when the targets are to be achieved. The goals is include ‘What is it to be done?’ and ‘When is it to be done?’. Action Plans are another component of planning details steps and actions, there are required to achieve goals. The
Controlling in management is a function of management that is concerned with making sure that all other functions of the management are put in place and operated effectively. Controlling ensures that it has taken into consideration the monitoring of the output of the employees as well as the establishing standards of performance that will guarantee that the performance of the will always meets the set standards (Spellman,
Functional managers need to have good decision making skills in order to weight the positives and negatives of each choice. According
As managers coordinate the work of his/her subordinates to achieve better efficiency and effectiveness, they perform certain functions in the corporation. Although they differ in a way in every corporation, the four functions of a manager are as follow; planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (Huszczo, 2004, p. 26). Managers that are performing the planning function set goals, they also identify the procedures in accomplishing the goal or the strategy to achieve the goals, and determine the timeframe in which those procedures have to be finished by (Huszczo, 2004, p. 26). After the planning function, a manager then will organize his/her subordinates. A manager that are performing the organizing function will then expand on the procedures that the team have to take in order to complete the goal. He/she will also assign who, when, what, and how the task will be done (Robbins et al. 2006, p. 11).
Nowadays, management has become an important part of the society. The role of management is to assist the organisation to make the best use of its resource to achieve its goal. Base on the aim of management, one of the theorists Henri Fayol proposed the four necessary management functions: planning, organisation, leading, controlling are the tools managers use to achieve these goals. (Jones 2006) This essay is going to describe and discuss these functions.
"In everyday language usage, management refers to the people in organizations who manage, and to the activities they perform." (Fulop, Frith, Hayward 1992 p. 187) To be more specific, management is the process of organizing work activities with and through people to ensure the activities are completed efficiently and effectively (Robbins, Bergman, Stagg, Coulter 2006, p. 9). Through management, the goals of the organization or business are to be achieved. Henri Fayol, one of the most influential contributors to modern concepts of management, proposed that there are five primary functions for management, which consist of planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating and controlling. Nonetheless, the functions of commanding and coordinating have metamorphosed into leading (Crainer 2003).
Organizing involves determining the tasks to be done, which will do them, and how those tasks will be managed and coordinated. Managers of an organization have to put a work team together so that proper information, resources, and tasks can flow properly and efficiently in an organization.
C-Control: Controlling all possible aspects of the business to ensure everything is running according to the plan.
Leading is mobilizing or stimulating people to achieve their best. Managers need to be able to motivate their employees to achieve the business group and overall organizational goals. One way for a manager to do this is through close contact and communication on a daily basis. Workers that get positive feedback and motivation from their managers are going to be more willing to help the team achieve the goal at hand. Through leading their employees the manager can ensure that the team is working well together and is efficiently reaching their goals. If the manager is working closely with the team they will know when something is not working and can take immediate action to correct it.
Over recent years companies have become less dependent on paper and more dependent on technology. Take American Honda Motors for example; the Davenport Parts facility recently converted computer systems to more efficiently manage its inventory. Prior to its new system months of preparation was needed in order to ensure a smooth change over. Without the four basic functions of management all working together success would not have been possible.
According to Fayol, H. (1930) thought, he mentioned that control consists of verifying whether everything occurs in conformity with the plan adopted, the instructions issued, and the principles issued. Besides, Breech, E.F.L (1963) defined control as the process of checking actual performance against the agreed standards or plans, with a view to ensuring adequate progress or satisfactory performance and also recording such experience gained as a contribution to future needs. Controlling process enable an organization to adapt to changes in the environment, limit the accumulation error, to cope with organizational complexity and to reduce costs. The controlling process is implemented to take care of the plans. With the help of controlling, deviations are immediately detected and corrective action is taken. Therefore, the difference between the expected results and the actual results is reduced to the minimum. In this way, controlling is helpful in achieving the goals of the organisation. In addition, controlling is the process of measurement current performance level. It helps to indicate how well an organization can function so managers can compare and make sure the actual work performance follow with the standards. Controlling makes it possible to make efficient use of resources. Under controlling, it is ensured that no employee deliberately delays