Planning, Organizing, Directing, Controlling in Office

1. Introduction

Management in the office is very essential for an organized life and necessary to run all types of organizations. Managing an organization is very important and means getting things done with and through other people to achieve its objectives. Management is the art and science of managing people. Knowledge of management is very important as it will help you identify and develop the skills to better manage your career, relationships, and the behavior of others in organizations.

It may be convenient to separate the function of management but practically these functions are overlapping in nature i.e. they are highly inseparable. Each function is connected with each other and any one of them affects the whole chain is affected.

The challenge of a manager is to solve problems creatively. Managing a workplace solving issues and making sure that the work is going on smoothly is very important. So to manage all these activities there are 4 principles of Management.

There are basically 4 primary functions of management.

    1. Planning
    2. Organizing
    3. Directing
    4. Controlling

Planning

Planning is the first and most important function of management, planning is future-oriented. It is a systematic way of making decisions today that will affect the future of the company. Planning bridges the gap between where we are and where we want to go.

Planning is deciding in advance – what to do when to do & how to do it. It is the determination of courses of action to achieve desired goals. Thus, planning is systematic thinking about ways & means for the accomplishment of pre-determined goals. It is all-pervasive, it is an intellectual activity and it also helps in reducing confusion, uncertainties, risks, wastages, etc. Planning is necessary to ensure the proper utilization of  Resources both human & non-human resources.

Organizing

It is the process of bringing together physical, financial, and human resources and developing productive relationships among the employees so that they can work effectively and efficiently.

To organize a business and to make it work one has to provide it with everything useful for its functioning i.e. raw material, tools, capital, and personnel. Organizing a business involves determining & providing all the resources that are required, to work smoothly.

Organizing as a process involves

  • Identification of activities.
  • Classification of a grouping of activities.
  • Assignment of duties.
  • Delegation of authority and creation of responsibility.
  • Coordinating authority and responsibility relationships.

Directing

Directing is the third important function of management. Directing main focus is on instructing, guiding, inspiring, counseling, and leading people toward the accomplishment of the desired goal.  It is a continuous process that goes on, throughout the life of the organization.

Directing is the heart of the management process. As we can say if a supervisor guides his subordinates and tries to clarify his doubts about a task, it will help the employee to achieve work targets given to him as the right direction has been given.

Directing has the following elements:

3.1 Supervision– Supervision means overseeing the work of the employees by their superiors. The act of watching and directing them in case of any difficulty.

3.2 Motivation– This means motivating and encouraging employees to work accordingly. Motivation is important in any workplace as sometimes due to unhealthy work culture.

3.3 Leadership– Leadership may be defined as a process by which a leader guides and influences the work of subordinates in the desired direction. And solve their problems.

3.4 Communication– –  Communication is the process of connecting with someone and passing information, experience, opinion, etc. from one person to another. Communication is a bridge of understanding.

 Controlling

 This is the last important function of management controlling means checking whether proper progress is made toward the objective or goal. Controlling is done to ensure that everything occurs in accordance with the standards. A good controlling system can detect the problems that are going to occur before they actually occur.

It includes monitoring the plan that is implemented and correcting the deviation from that plan.      The main function of controlling is to check errors in order to take corrective actions. Therefore controlling has the following steps:

  1. Establishment of standard performance.
  2. Measurement of actual performance.
  3. Comparison of actual performance with the standards and finding out deviation if any.
  4. Corrective action.

 

Reference

 

 

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