Management ensures that an organization achieves set goals and objectives efficiently and competently.
It’s a dynamic process that generally involves planning, organizing, leading, motivating, and monitoring human resources, financial assets, physical infrastructure, and the flow of information.
Broadly, the functions of management are planning, organizing, staffing, directing, and controlling.
Let us take a brief look at each function and how they seamlessly dovetail into each other.
- Planning
The most basic function of management, planning, is fundamental to an organization’s success.
It involves charting a course of action, a road map, of the most efficient ways to achieve predetermined goals.
It’s a process of deciding how to reach where we want to be and usually involves exercises in problem-solving and decision-making.
It’s also a systematic way to ensure the proper utilization of all resources- workforce, capital, and physical infrastructure.
Good planning calls for intelligence and a highly analytical approach to minimize confusion, uncertainties, risks, and resource wastage.
- Organizing
It is the process of aligning together the physical infrastructure, available financial capital, and human resources to establish a productive relationship and achieve organizational goals.
Organizing involves identifying and classifying activities, assigning authority and responsibilities, and providing the resources necessary for the smooth flow of work.
In simple words, organizing creates the platform required to reach a company’s objectives and goals.
Organizing is exceptionally critical because it helps define the roles of every person, develops a systematic structure, and leads to better coordination among the teams and departments of an organization.
- Staffing
This is the function of management that deals with providing the organization structure with qualified and appropriate human resources.
With technological advancements and the increase in complexity of running a business, staffing has assumed critical importance in recent years.
The primary objective of suitable staffing is to put the right resources for the right job. It’s crucial to have adequate processes to ensure excellent standards of selection, appraisal, training, placement, and development of personnel.
Aspects such as providing clear paths for individual growth, best-in-class facilities, and gaining a reputation as a great place to work have all become critical to the function of staffing.
- Directing
This is the part among managerial functions that deals with securing the overall efficiency of an organization.
Directing is pretty much the fuel of an enterprise that keeps it constantly moving, firmly on the growth curve.
While good planning and great staffing can set the stage for excellence, an organization still needs to direct its resources properly.
Therefore, directing deals with influencing group dynamics, guiding individuals, supervising and motivating teams to achieve organizational goals.
Encouraging employees to stay committed to organizational goals and ensuring they remain highly motivated are two critical roles of sound direction.
It involves able leadership at every level, a smooth and transparent flow of communication, inspiring and incentivizing good work, and dynamic processes to monitor and supervise performance.
As the word implies, controlling deals with the metrics and procedures that measure individual, team, and organizational accomplishments against performance standards.
It also deals with the steps taken to correct deviations or shortfalls in performance. The essential purpose of controlling is to ensure that all aspects within an organization confirm to set targets and objectives.
Efficient controlling measures must be able to pinpoint deviations before they occur. Therefore, controlling deals with establishing standard performance protocols, uncomplicated and transparent measurement methods, and practical tools for corrective action.
In conclusion
Management is an essential feature of organized life and integral to the success of any organization.
Just as we each manage ourselves to get things done and achieve our objectives, in an organizational context, it is about how we get things done with and through collective action by adhering to a set of professional ethics.