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The Four Functions of Managers

Management involves far more than just telling others what to do. Before any of you decide that you think you can do your boss's job, let's take a look into more of what a manager does.

The major functions that a manager completes can be categorized into four different functions known as planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. For some of us, we only see the final two - leading and controlling - but you should know that for every managerial behavior you do see, there is an equal amount that you do not. Behind the manager's closed door, he or she spends a good deal of his or her time planning and organizing, so that he or she can effectively carry out the functions of leading and controlling.

Now, before you think your boss is different, you should also know that the four functions of management are standard across industries, whether that be in a manufacturing plant, a home office, a grocery store, a retail store, a restaurant, a hotel, or even an amusement park. Effective managers understand how planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are used to achieve organizational success. Unfortunately, I do not have a rebuttal for those of you who have ineffective managers, but perhaps learning a little more about the four functions of management will help to identify what steps your ineffective manager needs to take to become an effective one.

Try to think about the four functions as a process where each step builds on the others. Managers must first plan, then organize according to that plan, lead others to work towards the plan, and finally evaluate the effectiveness of the plan. These four functions must be performed properly and, when done well, become the reason for organizational success.

Planning

The first of the managerial functions is planning. In this step, the manager will create a detailed action plan aimed at some organizational goal.

For example, let's say Melissa the marketing manager has a goal of increasing sales during the month of February. Melissa needs to first spend time mapping out the necessary steps she and her team of sales representatives must take so that they can increase sales numbers. These steps might include things like increasing advertisements in a particular region, placing some items on sale, increasing the amount of required customer-to-sales rep contact, or contacting prior customers to see if they are interested in purchasing additional products. The steps are then organized into a logical pattern so that Melissa and her team can follow them.

Planning is an ongoing step, and can be highly specialized based on organizational goals, division goals, departmental goals, and team goals. It is up to the manager to recognize which goals need to be planned within his or her individual area.

Organizing

The second of the managerial functions is organizing. This step requires Melissa to determine how she will distribute resources and organize her employees according to the plan. Melissa will need to identify different roles and ensure that she assigns the right amount of employees to carry out her plan. She will also need to delegate authority, assign work, and provide direction so that her team of sales representatives can work towards higher sales numbers without having barriers in their way.

Leading

The third function of management is leading. In this step, Melissa spends time connecting with her employees on an interpersonal level. This goes beyond simply managing tasks; rather, it involves communicating, motivating, inspiring, and encouraging employees towards a higher level of productivity. Not all managers are leaders. An employee will follow the directions of a manager because they have to, but an employee will voluntarily follow the directions of a leader because they believe in who he or she is as a person, what he or she stands for, and for the manner in which they are inspired by the leader.

Controlling

Controlling is the final function of management. Once a plan has been carried out, the manager evaluates the results against the goals. If a goal is not being met, the manager must also take any necessary corrective actions to continue to work towards that goal.

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leading & controlling - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Four Functions of Management: Planning, Organizing, Leading & Controlling - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Management involves far more than just telling others what to do. Before any of you decide that you think you can do your boss's job, let's take a look into more of what a manager does. The major functions that a manager completes can be categorized into four different functions known as planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.

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Strategic planning has always been associated with improved efficiency and sustainable growth. However, the dynamic world and hectic market competition make planning in management essential. Thus, whether you like it or not, the familiar management saying holds true: If you fail to plan, plan to fail.

In this article, you will find:

the definition of planning in management,

10 compelling reasons why planning in management is so important

reasons why some managers fail and others succeed in planning effectively.

By understanding the key benefits of planning in management, you will be more motivated to devote due time and effort to this part of your role. This will make you and your company enjoy the ultimate outcomes of good planning: efficiency and growth.

Planning in Management

To be effective and develop its potential, a company should work towards a desired goal or mission. But how can one know what is relevant to the goal and what's not?

This is what planning is about.

Planning in management is about what steps you need to take to reach the goal, what changes and hurdles to anticipate, and how to utilise human resources and opportunities to reach the expected outcome. The planning process involves a careful analysis of the current resources and market trends and the prediction of emerging markets and future demand.

In simple terms, a goal is where your company wants to be at a certain time and a plan provides directions for how you are going to get there.

Planning is considered a basic function of management. It means that a plan is necessary for any other managerial function, be it organising, directing, staffing, or controlling:

1. Planning dictates how to effectively organise a business. It encompasses determining necessary future activities, assigning them to the right personnel, delegating authority, providing tools and raw material, etc.

2. Having a plan of action facilitates directing as it makes instructions, guidance, and motivation grounded in a brand strategy.

3. Planning informs staffing, as it shows what work-force a company will need.

4. Establishment of standards and measurement of actual performance - controlling - is done against the expectations that planning sets

Informal planning gives a short term focus, which might be necessary for the business to operate. In an organisation, various units can have their own informal plans. However, if the company wants to grow and reach ambitious goals, the process of planning should be formal, written, specific, and involve common organisational goals.
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10 Reasons that Make Planning in Management so Important

Planning is important both for small and medium-sized businesses and large enterprises with complex structures. Here are 10 compelling reasons that prove this:

1. It Helps to Set the Right Goals

2. It Sets Objectives and Standards for Controlling

A primary function of strategic formal planning is providing direction to lower-level managers, allowing the development of tactical goals. Planning shows objectives for each organisational department and helps managers to prioritise activities depending on their relevance to the goal.

Planning also sets the standards for assessing performance. Without such standards, managers wouldn't be able to intervene and take corrective actions to stay on track, which would also threaten the goal.

3. It Reduces Uncertainty

The uncertainty of the future puts the great risk on business sustainability, for it is always difficult to manage through change. No organisation can control the economic and competitive environment; thus, the ability to anticipate challenges and have contingency plans in place is the best alternative.

Planning involves an intentional critical evaluation of the available data and experts' predictions. This makes planning in management very helpful in terms of reducing the uncertainty of the future and avoiding the risks.

4. It Eliminates Overlapping of Wasteful Activities

Effective planning gives clarity about the responsibilities and expectations of each department, team, and even team member. This helps to make sure that the activities don't overlap and improves co-ordination.

5. It Ensures Efficient use of Resources

Planning makes the use of human and material resources as efficient as possible. By starting the management process with a good plan that focuses on the ultimate goal and considers available capabilities, you can see many opportunities to cut expenses.

Without such a plan, it is easy to fall for appealing B2B offers. This can waste organisational resources on the raw materials that the employees cannot process in a due time, expensive robotics, or online software that speeds up only one aspect of the process not affecting the overall result.

6. It Promotes Innovation

If the organisation has a challenging goal on the one hand, and the possibility of hurdles and market change on the other hand, it starts brainstorming creative ideas and solutions. Determining a future course of action is an important function of management. Keeping a focus on the need to reach the goal, employees or management can spot new opportunities for business development, suggest new products or services, or discover new target markets. This way, planning becomes a continuous process that encourages creative strategic thinking and innovation.

7. It Improves Decision Making

Planning improves decision-making processes and time management in two ways. First, it helps managers to keep the focus on a goal and thus ask themselves how alternative courses of action might facilitate or delay reach it. Second, the plan allows managers to be more farsighted: having a clear road map, they can think what effect an adopted decision will have on some long-term tasks and activities.

Without such a plan, managers' decisions may not be strategic but based only on the available data and current situation.

8. It Boosts Motivation and Team Spirit

It also shows that each person in the business environment is indispensable to reaching the common goal. This helps to reduce internal competition and nurture community and team spirit. You can use motivational quotes in your pep talks to help enthuse your team.

9. It Helps to Earn Credibility and Trust of Stakeholders

All managers understand that a solid plan is needed to persuade creditors and investors to help. However, sometimes they forget that the turbulent market environment can drive the need to engage them without planning to do so. Having a formal business plan readily available will have a great impact if you need to find and engage new investors in a short period of time.

The availability of clear goals and a formal plan also shows your social responsibility and increases the trust of employees and clients.

10. It Gives a Competitive Edge and Allows Strategic Positioning

Planning involves getting a realistic view of organisational strengths and weaknesses, as well as revealing the gaps and vulnerabilities of the competitors. Acting upon this data rather than inertly performing the same actions gives a great competitive edge.

Why Some Managers Fail to Plan

Although planning is a basic function of management, in practice, many managers neglect it. You may think that they don't need formal types of planning, as they can use their strategic vision and gut instinct to keep the organisation on track even without it. However, this is not true. Here are the key reasons why managers fail to create a strategic plan:

Many managers hold a get-things-done attitude, failing to stop and analyse the things they need to do. They don't understand how planning can affect performance and are not willing to change anything.

There are many tools used in planning such as SWOT analysis, PESTLE Analysis, VRIO Framework, environmental scanning, resource analysis, etc. If a manager didn't get good training in management, he/she may fail to plan effectively and thus see no sense in it. It may also be that they lack experience in certain areas - creating a marketing plan is very different from operational planning.

Some managers might have succeeded with an absence of planning, leading them to think that planning is just a waste of time. They attribute success to their own abilities rather than favourable conditions.

Setting and pursuing goals, either personal or organisational requires dedication and discipline. Often, managers need to develop their personal strengths and skills for effective planning in management.

Sometimes, managers avoid planning because there is no goal that will engage or motivate them to do so. This often happens with companies that operate without any mission statement.

5 Factors to Successful Strategic Planning

If you understand the importance of planning in management and want to grasp all the benefits of this function, consider the following 5 factors that determine the effectiveness of planning.

1. Engagement

Although planning is a managerial function, it should not be done by one person behind a closed door. On the contrary, it is the task of a manager to make planning a collaborative and inclusive process. Make your employees feel engaged in the process of planning, and they will be eager to commit to the plan and take on shared responsibility for its realisation. They might even have innovative ideas you would otherwise have missed.

2. Data, not assumptions

We all hold assumptions about businesses and markets, but they are not necessarily true. Basing your plan on assumptions is a grave mistake that overrides all the advantages of proper planning. It is important to do market research, host focus groups, talk to one's own employees, consult market experts - gain any information that will help to base decisions on data rather than assumptions.

3. Communication

It is important to clearly communicate the desired results and the strategic plan to the employees. Nurture open communication encouraging everyone to give feedback and suggest improvements to the plan. Note that some benefits of planning, such as innovation in particular, depend on how eager employees are to voice their ideas and whether they feel heard and appreciated for giving them.

4. Culture of growth

A true focus on improving efficiency and growth can be maintained only in a culture that values efficiency and growth. Work to create such a culture in your organisation. If you help your employees to learn and develop their skills, appreciate and reward personal achievements, employees will be more willing to commit to ambitious goals and demanding plans.

5. Commitment to change

Effective planning requires letting go of outdated processes, revision of strategies, innovation, hiring and firing. All this means change, which is difficult to manage. Still, to truly benefit from the advantages of planning, a manager should be ready to go beyond the cosmetic changes and face the possible resentment of the team. In this respect, planning in management is a function that requires much courage and commitment.

Concluding Thoughts

If you understand the importance of planning, you should be ready to work on your personal qualities, professional skills, and organisational culture to succeed with effective planning. Last but not least, you should be ready to change: you cannot get different results unless you try different approaches.
: Nataly Havrysh is a marketing manager at . Nataly is an editor and content writer thrilled about researching topics in sociology, psychology, personal growth, modern IT trends, management, and internet marketing. An active mom passionate about her work, Nataly is a pro in personal time management.

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How to Succeed with Planning in Management and Why it is Important | RingCentral UK Blog

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Strategic planning has always been associated with improved efficiency and sustainable growth. However, the dynamic world and hectic market competition make planning in management essential. Thus, whether you like it or not, the familiar management saying holds true: If you fail to plan, plan to fail.

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ProjectManager.com

Your business operations are only as good as your ability to monitor and control them. For example, manufacturing teams would be lost without a controlling process that lets them measure and improve on their management function.

The process of controlling in management is essential for any business to remain viable. When you monitor with software and control the process of your manufacturing, you're able to see what works and what isn't working.

What Is Controlling Process in Business Management?

The controlling process in business management is when managers set, measure and refine their business operations and manage cost control.

By using a controlling process, a company can navigate changes to the supply chain, customer demand and other variables that impact a company's livelihood. It's a critical task in keeping any business solvent.

Through the process of controlling in management, a company can accurately tell if plans are moving in the right direction and are fully implemented. If those plans aren't working and take the company off-track, they can right the ship and stay on course.

Project management software helps you measure performance. ProjectManager is a cloud-based tool that does this in real time. You can see the difference between your planned and actual effort with ProjectManager's live dashboard. The dashboard collects production data, automatically crunches the numbers and then displays the result in easy-to-read graphs and charts. Try ProjectManager today for free!

Controlling Process Steps in Business Management

There is a five-step procedure to controlling process that will help you set, measure and tweak your business activities-whether that's production, packaging, delivery or another business process.

If you're not applying a controlling process, then your not really managing your business processes. You can't lead your workforce without controlling process.

For organizational control that leads to fulfilling your company's goals and strategic plans, follow these five steps:

1. Set Performance Standards

You need a goal for your business, but you also need guidance for your team to keep them working towards that goal. Without such standards, it's possible that they'll move away from the plan, whether intentionally or not.

Standards are like goals that are tasked to a specific department or team member. They must achieve these standards through cooperation, teamwork and a collaborative effort. To ensure these standards are being met, though, you must have criteria to measure them by.

By setting up rules you can measure with, you can judge or rate performance to keep the results standard. This helps management understand how production is progressing, and whether it's on track or needs adjustment. Having standards to base performance on means that work doesn't have to stop to get a picture of how it's progressing.

There are two groups of standards: tangible (or specific) and intangible (or abstract). The former is measurable; you can see it and count it. The latter cannot be seen nor counted. A tangible standard would be time, cost, profit, expenditure, output, etc. Intangible standards are a manager's performance, worker's attitude and so forth.

2. Measure Performance

Setting a standard makes it possible to measure performance using a control function. Through this measurement of performance, you can quickly catch and correct any deviation from the plan before it goes off-track and runs production into the ground.

Measurements are easier when dealing with tangible standards that can be seen and counted. This is naturally more difficult with intangible standards. By definition, intangible performance is difficult to measure in an information system, as you cannot quantify it.

One way to make up for this shortcoming is by looking at a manager's performance through the eyes of their team. What is the team attitude like towards their work? Is morale high? How are communications between the team and the manager? Is the team loyal to each other, their manager and the company?

Although these are intangible standards, together they paint a picture of the manager's performance. All of those questions speak to the ability of the manager to successfully manage their team. Draft the standard for measuring what teams do, what is their expected performance, etc. You can collect this data regularly by reports, whether weekly, monthly, quarterly or yearly.

Related: Free Progress Report Template

3. Compare Actual Performance Against Performance Standards

Once you have a baseline for how your teams are performing when manufacturing, packaging, delivering, etc., you can compare the actual to the planned performance and determine the extent of the deviation. This is called variance, or the difference between actual performance and goals. Schedules can be immensely helpful when it comes to analyzing variance.

ProjectManager has online Gantt charts that allow you to set concrete milestones and project phases, so you can see at a glance if you are ahead or behind schedule. Plus, the Gantt updates in real time as your team completes their work. Take a free trial and build a schedule in minutes.

The manager must look at this data and accept or reject the outcome. This depends on the deviation and the impact on the business. If everything is going as expected, that's great, but it's more likely that there will be deviation of some sort. It's up to the manager to determine if that gap is one that can be ignored or acted on.

4. Analyze Deviations

This brings us to the next step: where you analyze data using the acceptable limits. If standards weren't met, the manager must then figure out whether more control is required-or if maybe, the standard itself should be changed.

If there is a gap between planned and actual performance, the next step is figuring out what is causing it and what the extent of it is. Then, you have to determine how this deviation is impacting the business. If the difference is only a small one, then it's probably okay to ignore it. But if the gap reflects gains, appointing workers, changing or repairing equipment and other critical issues, it must be addressed. A gap analysis template can help in that decision-making process.

5. Take Corrective Actions

Once you have analyzed the deviation and determined its cause, the manager will have to set up a plan in which corrective measures, critical point control and other means are used to resolve the issue. This is to reduce the deviation and ensure the standard is met. This might involve changes to processes and/or behaviors.

Some of the situations discovered in a controlling process might require corrective action to save the business, while others might just be a below-standard performance that needs correcting to improve processes and bring production back on schedule. Therefore, actions might be needed immediately because of the urgency.

Corrective actions include a variety of activities. For example, you might change how certain business operations are carried out. However, some operations and performances might not be able to change, and may require more resources. For example, hiring more team members might be the solution to correct the deviation you've discovered.

It's important that managers monitor and control the process from start to finish. That includes not only the controlling process, but any actions planned to resolve the deviation or reset the standards. An understanding of the controlling process shows if plans are being met and, if not, what actions need to take place in order for them to be met.

How ProjectManager helps With the Control Process Steps

ProjectManager is cloud-based work management software that manages plans and monitors performance in real time to help managers make more insightful decisions. Multiple project views make it easy for hybrid teams to use the tool how they want, no matter where they are, what they do or their level of expertise.

Track Progress on Gantt Charts

Setting performance standards can be done on ProjectManager's interactive Gantt charts. Milestones can be set, tasks assigned and priority and other tags added to better organize the standards. A baseline is set to capture the plan, which can then be used later to compare the actual performance with the standards and goals set. Then, the manager can share the Gantt with the team and stakeholders.

Measure Performance on Dashboards

Measuring actual performance is more accurate with ProjectManager's cloud-based reporting software. It collects data in real time and displays them on the live dashboard, which also can be shared with stakeholders. Reports are a way to dig deeper into the data. Teams can deliver status reports to update their performance as they execute their tasks, and managers can generate reports on variance, workload, timesheets and more.

Manage Workload and Reallocate Resources

Resource management tools help you analyze and take corrective action. Workload is one of the standards that can slow down production if too few team members are tasked with too many tasks. ProjectManager's color-coded chart shows you who is overallocated, and then you can reallocate resources right from the workload chart. Once the workload is balanced, production will increase as will team morale.
ProjectManager is award-winning software that helps with controlling process. It has features to help you plan, monitor and report on performance. Multiple project views make it accessible to anyone from management to team members. It's perfect for hybrid teams looking to improve their work management. Try ProjectManager today!

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Controlling Process Steps in Business Management

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ProjectManager.com Your business operations are only as good as your ability to monitor and control them. For example, manufacturing teams would be lost without a controlling process that lets them measure and improve on their management function. The process of controlling in management is essential for any business to remain viable.