Four Functions of Management
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.
4 Functions of Management Process: Planning, Organizing, Leading, Controlling
Functions of management are a systematic way of doing things. Management is a process to emphasize that all managers, irrespective of their aptitude or skill, engage in some inter-related functions to achieve their desired goals.
4 Functions of management are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling that managers perform to accomplish business goals efficiently.
First, managers must set a plan, organize resources according to the plan, lead employees to work towards the plan, and control everything by monitoring and measuring the plan’s effectiveness.
Management process/functions involve 4 basic activities;
Planning and Decision Making: Determining Courses of Action, Organizing: Coordinating Activities and Resources, Leading: Managing, Motivating and Directing People, Controlling: Monitoring and Evaluating activities.
1. Planning and Decision Making – Determining Courses of Action
Looking ahead into the future and predicting possible trends or occurrences that are likely to influence the working situation is the most vital quality and manager’s job. Planning means setting an organization’s goals and deciding how best to achieve them.
Planning is decision-making regarding the goals and setting the future course of action from a set of alternatives to reach them.
The plan helps maintain managerial effectiveness as it works as a guide for future activities. Selecting goals as well as the paths to achieve them is what planning involves.
Planning involves selecting missions and objectives and the actions to achieve them. It requires decision-making or choosing future courses of action from among alternatives.
In short, planning means determining what the organization’s position and the situation should be in the future and decide how best to bring about that situation.
Planning helps maintain managerial effectiveness by guiding future activities.
For a manager, planning and decision-making require an ability to foresee, visualize, and look ahead purposefully.
2. Organizing – Coordinating Activities and Resources
Organizing can be defined as the process by which the established plans are moved closer to realization.
Once a manager sets goals and develops plans, his next managerial function is organizing human resources and other resources identified as necessary by the plan to reach the goal.
Organizing involves determining how activities and resources are to be assembled and coordinated.
The organization can also be defined as an intentionally formalized structure of positions or roles for people to fill in an organization.
Organizing produces a structure of relationships in an organization, and it is through these structured relationships, plans are pursued.
Organizing is part of managing, which involves establishing an intentional structure of roles for people to fill in the organization.
It is intentional in the sense of making sure that all the tasks necessary to accomplish goals are assigned to people who can do the best.
The purpose of an organizational structure is to create an environment for the best human performance.
The structure must define the task to be done. The rules so established must also be designed in light of the abilities and motivations of the people available.
Staffing is related to organizing, and it involves filling and keeping filled the positions in the organization structure.
This can be done by determining the positions to be filled, identifying the requirement of the workforce, filling the vacancies, and training employees so that the assigned tasks are accomplished effectively and efficiently.
The managerial functions of promotion, demotion, discharge, dismissal, transfer, etc. They have also included the broad task “staffing.” staffing ensures the placement of the right person in the right position.
Organizing decides where decisions will be made, who will do what jobs and tasks, who will work for whom, and how resources will assemble.
3. Leading – Managing, Motivating, and Directing People
The third basic managerial function is leading. It is the skills of influencing people for a particular purpose or reason. Leading is considered to be the most important and challenging of all managerial activities.
Leading is influencing or prompting the organization member to work together with the interest of the organization.
Creating a positive attitude towards the work and goals among the members of the organization is called leading. It is required as it helps to serve the objective of effectiveness and efficiency by changing the behavior of the employees.
Leading involves several deferment processes and activates.
The functions of direction, motivation, communication, and coordination are considered a part of the leading processor system.
Coordinating is also essential in leading.
Most authors do not consider it a separate function of management.
Rather they regard coordinating as the essence of managership for achieving harmony among individual efforts towards accomplishing group targets.
Motivating is an essential quality for leading. Motivating is the management process of influencing people’s behavior based on knowing what cause and channel sustain human behavior in a particular committed direction.
Efficient managers need to be effective leaders.
Since leadership implies fellowship and people tend to follow those who offer a means of satisfying their own needs, hopes, and aspirations, understandably, leading involves motivation leadership styles and approaches, and communication.
4. Controlling – Monitoring and Evaluating Activities
Monitoring the organizational progress toward goal fulfillment is called controlling. Thus, monitoring progress is essential to ensure the achievement of organizational goals.
Controlling is measuring, comparing, finding deviation, and correcting the organizational activities performed to achieve the goals or objectives. Thus, controlling consists of activities like; measuring the performance, comparing with the existing standard and finding the deviations, and correcting the deviations.
Control activities generally relate to the measurement of achievement or results of actions taken to attain the goal.
Some means of controlling, like the budget for expenses, inspection records, and the record of labor hours lost, are generally familiar. Each measure also shows whether plans are working out.
If deviations persist, correction is indicated. Whenever results differ from the planned action, persons responsible are to be identified, and necessary actions must be taken to improve performance.
Thus outcomes are controlled by controlling what people do. Controlling is the last but not the least important management function process.
It is rightly said, “planning without controlling is useless.” In short, we can say the controlling enables the accomplishment of the plan.
Conclusion: Management is a process of interrelated functions.
All the management functions of its process are interrelated and cannot be skipped.
The management process designs and maintains an environment in which personnel’s, working together in groups accomplish efficiently selected aims.
All managers carry out management’s main functions: planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. But depending on the skills and position on an organizational level, the time and labor spent in each function will differ.
Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are the 4 functions, which work as a continuous process.
What Are the 4 Functions of Management?
How does an organization move the needle toward achieving its goals? Who’s in charge of steering employees in the right direction as they pursue those objectives?
Here’s the answer: management.
Yes, leaders and supervisors are the ones who not only set the finish line but also support their teams in crossing it. To do so, managers need to fulfill core responsibilities known as the four functions of management.
Introducing the four functions of management
Think of the four basic functions of management as the four core responsibilities every leader needs to fulfill.
They were initially identified as five functions by Henri Fayol in the early 1900s. Over the years, Fayol’s functions were combined and reduced to the following four main functions of management: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
No matter which industry you work in, the functions of management are consistent and applicable across all sectors.
Below, we’ll give some clarity and define four functions of management. But first, it’s important to understand that each function isn’t exclusive. Instead, each one builds upon the function before it — when they’re all in place, the most effective management happens.
Planning
Managers first need to develop a detailed action plan. In the planning phase, management should identify the goals and create a reasonable course of action to attain them. There may be multiple ways to achieve the goal, but it’s management’s responsibility to determine the best course of action.
Drafting a successful plan includes aligning the goal with the organizational vision, considering factors that may impact the project internally and externally, and establishing a realistic timeline while being mindful of resource and budgetary constraints.
Three different types of planning in management include:
Strategic : A long-term, high-level type of foundational planning that emphasizes the mission, values, and vision of the organization. Upper management drafts its strategic plans, and all managers should refer back to the strategic plans to guide their decisions.
: A long-term, high-level type of foundational planning that emphasizes the mission, values, and vision of the organization. Upper management drafts its strategic plans, and all managers should refer back to the strategic plans to guide their decisions. Tactical : A short-term (one year or less), objective-focused type of planning, often carried out by middle management.
: A short-term (one year or less), objective-focused type of planning, often carried out by middle management. Operational: A plan that describes the daily roadmap of the activities within the company. Low-level managers and supervisors devise operational strategies in most cases.
Organizing
The organizing function consists of taking the previously created plan and putting it into action. Key activities in this function include:
Identifying all of the necessary steps of the project
Determining who will complete the actions and deploying those resources to work
Establishing levels of authority and responsibility for every individual involved
Organizing facilitates a clear development of the organizational structure for executing the plan, but it also encourages collaboration among team members spread amongst various teams and departments. When the Project Management Institute (PMI) cites poor communication as one of the leading causes of project failure, it’s evident that ensuring effective collaboration amongst team members plays an influential role in driving a project’s success.
Leading
With the first two functions of management underway, managers should then shift their attention to the people.
The leading stage consists of motivating and influencing employees to do the work and meet performance standards. Keep in mind that effective leadership extends beyond delegating and directing employees what to do.
Examples of effective leadership skills that managers can focus on include frequent and clear communication, expressing empathy, being an active listener, maintaining transparency, and empowering the team to perform to the best of their ability. Utilizing interpersonal skills and different leadership styles for different situations is crucial for managers to tap into while leading their employees.
Controlling
The controlling function consists of monitoring performance and progress through project execution and making adjustments as needed. Managers should ensure that employees meet deadlines while simultaneously balancing synchronicity amongst the project’s resources and the overall budget. Managers may need to take corrective actions and be proactive in their approach to ensure that team members meet their assigned deadlines.
Two key areas where managers may need to make adjustments include staffing and budget. For example, let’s say an assigned leader working on a project leaves the company. The manager will need to identify a replacement as soon as possible, train them efficiently, and, hopefully, keep the project running smoothly.
From a budget perspective, managers should monitor spend closely. Suppose a project starts to run over budget — in that case, the manager should identify what’s causing the overspend. If that expense is justified, they should proactively ask for additional funding or curb spending to be more mindful of the budget in other areas.
Tips for applying the four functions of management
Applying the four functions of management may seem challenging at first, but with the right resources and knowledge, managers can carry out all duties successfully.
Feeling intimidated? Don’t be. Here are a few quick tips for getting started:
Set yourself up for success at the start and document your plan using a project management platform like Wrike.
Identify how your team may work best together during the organizing stage, such as through an Agile work environment.
Implement processes for recognizing employees for a job well done at the start of the project, and ensure you acknowledge and celebrate them accordingly.
Keep in mind that leadership is a learning process — whether you’re brand new or well-established. As you manage a team or project, you’ll uncover different areas where you can improve and grow.
Become a successful manager using the four functions of management
Management isn’t an easy gig, and there isn’t a tried-and-true approach that works for everybody. However, every manager fulfills the same core responsibilities, known as the four functions of management.
When a manager checks the box of each of those major functions, they’re well-equipped to lead projects, teams, departments, or even entire companies to their objectives.
Want to boost your management abilities and keep your team and project on track? Sign up for a free trial of Wrike and start planning today.
More resources for managers and team leaders