Four Functions of Management Essay
University of Phoenix
10/18/08
The question that many businesses might ask is how management can be successful. There are four simple steps that one must follow in order to see good results. Management must know about these four functions in order to reach company’s goals. The four functions are planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
Planning is the first step we take in my organization. Bateman Snell, stated that planning is the logical thinking through goals and making the decision as to what needs to be accomplished in order to reach the organizations’ objectives. Managers use this process to plan for the future, like a blueprint to foresee problems, decide on the actions to evade difficult issues and to beat the competition. I can relate to that. The company I work for is an inbound call center. Our top priority is to provide world class customer service to Reliant (electric company) customers. During these meetings, we discuss new problems or new objectives. Just the other day, we were discussing ways to improve performance and quality. We need to make sure that the customer service representatives are providing accurate information and most important providing excellent customer service. We need to have both the customer and the client satisfied to continue with the contract. At the end of the meeting management came up with a few ideas such as, extending the training longer from 4 weeks to 6 weeks to get a better understanding about the product. Management also gave tips to the trainers, to use role play with different scenarios that they will face once they hit the production floor. Planning allows management to look at where the business is currently at and where they want to be in the future.
Once accomplishing planning the next step is organizing. The manager must then go over the plans with the team, break the assignments into units that one person can complete, link...