ESD THEORY 2

FOUR FUNCTIONS OF MANAGEMENT THAT AN ENTREPRENEUR CAN MAKE

USE OF

PLANNING LEADING ORGANISING CONTROLLING

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. The four functions of management includes planning, leading, organizing and
controlling.

Definition of key terms

An entrepreneur is someone who develops a business model, acquires the necessary physical and
human capital to start a new venture and operationalizes it for profit and is responsible for its
success or failure. An entrepreneur is someone who identifies a need for a new product, process
or service and builds a business around that need. He or she pursues an opportunity, often
commercially driven, to bring a new product or service to market usually with limited resources
and high risk. An entrepreneur is the originator of an enterprise or business that is set up in order
to satisfy an identified need or want profitably.

Management has been defined in many ways. A simple definition is “the activity of using
resources in an effective and efficient way so that the end product is worth more than the initial
resources.” Management is a distinct process of planning, planning, leading, organizing and
controlling, performed to determine and accomplish stated objectives with the use of human
beings and other resources such as land and capital. It is the process of designing and
maintaining an environment in which individuals, working together in groups, efficiently
accomplish selected aims. Management is defined as the process by which a co-operative group
directs actions towards common goals.
There are four basic functions of management into which nearly every action or process can be
categorized:
1. Planning functions
2. Organizing functions
3. Leading functions
4. Controlling functions
Each of these managerial functions occurs repeatedly throughout business processes, usually in
sequence and almost always overlapping with each other.
Let’s look more closely at each of these functions — and the ways that effective managers
leverage this framework to better meet their organization’s goals.

1) Planning

Managers are responsible for the long-range vision and goals within a company. The planning
function includes this vision and goal-setting along with the work of creating a plan to reach
those goals. They identify business challenges, work on future-facing initiatives (such as growth
plans, company goals, and business forecasting) and make decisions that move the business
toward goals.
Another element of the planning phase of management is resource allocation or workload
management. Typically, the manager decides which employees in the department are assigned to
which projects, seeking to balance workload and maintain efficiency through this work.
Managers often enlist the help of project managers (a vital role for businesses across many
industries) to determine workload and capacity. Or, in some cases where there is no formal
project manager, managers may use project management tools themselves to fill this role.
Planning is essential within any organization, and it’s an important part of the management role
for a few reasons. First, the rank-and-file employees are usually too busy completing tasks to
step back and think strategically about the big picture. Second, people management tend to get
there precisely because they have above-average decision-making, leadership, and planning
skills.
Managers are typically responsible for several types of planning within an organization:

Strategic planning

The highest and most crucial level of planning looks at the long-range, big-picture view of the
company. It identifies future threats and opportunities and sets long-term direction and
organizational goals. Strategic planning isn’t concerned with day-to-day decisions and is looking
instead at three-year plans, five-year plans, market trajectories, and similar big-picture elements.
In most organizations, top management does the bulk of the strategic planning. CEOs and other
top-ranking leaders may rely on input from mid-level managers and will certainly inform them of
the strategic plans, but most decisions here are made by the people in charge.

Tactical planning

Tactical planning looks at how to accomplish more midrange or short-term objectives — usually
those that last a year or less. Tactical planning is more targeted than strategic planning and is
informed by the strategic plan, setting a general course of action that will be fleshed out further
in operational planning.
Middle managers usually complete tactical planning, taking the strategic plan and breaking down
the high-level goals within it into smaller, more measurable and near-term achievable goals.
Tactical planning is more granular than strategic planning, but it still doesn’t delve into the
details of day-to-day operations.

Operational planning

Operational planning, on the other hand, is all about those day-to-day operations — seeking to
use the principles and strategies laid out in tactical plans to accomplish the big-picture goals in
the strategic plan. Department managers, first-level leaders, and project managers often
contribute to operational planning.
Weekly project team meetings are one example of operational planning in action. Project
schedules, timelines, RACI charts, swimlanes, and Gantt charts are all tools used within
operational planning.
2) Organizing

Next up is the organizing function, which refers to the way managers distribute resources,
delegate tasks, structure departments, set staffing levels, etc. This function encompasses
everything from assigning right-fit tasks to the appropriate team members to deciding how those
team members relate to each other in an organizational structure.
If your company is growing rapidly, you’ll need more sales agents next year than you do this
year (and more of just about every other role, too). At some point, even the structures and
departments you have now will no longer make sense: you’ll need more managers to oversee
those new hires, and you might need new divisions that wouldn’t have been feasible when you
were smaller.
All of this takes careful organization from someone in a leadership role — which is why
organizing is the second function of management.

Example of organizing functions

Managers have ongoing responsibilities to rebalance workload and even headcount as they
respond to changes in the business landscape. Just 20 years ago, most marketing departments
were doing little (if any) digital marketing, let alone content marketing or SEO. Today those
areas comprise the majority of business for many marketing departments and agencies. And that
same story plays out across numerous departments, roles, and business units.
Managers must keep jobs, job hierarchies, and resource allocation organized and appropriate for
the business landscape of today — with an eye toward future needs and further changes.

3) Leading

Every organization, from creative agencies to enterprise operations, needs a force to drive it
forward: rallying the troops and pushing them toward a common goal. Move down through the
layers of a business and you’ll find a similar need for teams, projects, departments, and any other
organizational or work structure that’s in place.
 This is the leading or leadership function of management — a crucial part of every manager’s
job.
The leading function of management focuses on people (whether individual, teams, or groups)
more than work tasks. That’s not to say that tasks don’t matter, but rather, how those people are
or aren’t handling their tasks and responsibilities will influence the type of leadership response
that managers ought to give.
Managers and business leaders provide both direction and inspiration to those who follow them.
This can take all sorts of forms:
 Rallying
 Motivating
 Inspiring
 Instructing
 Encouraging or praising
 Redirecting
 Pushing
 Demanding or commanding
Additionally, leadership includes both people management and making the tough right calls that
others might miss.
There are many approaches to leadership in management, each with its own pros and cons. And
it’s important to understand that there is no one right style — successful managers skillfully
move between approaches, as each has its uses.
We’ll use the situational leadership model popularized by author and business coach Marshall
Goldsmith, which highlights four other leadership styles: directing, coaching, supporting, and
delegating.

Directing

A top-down, more authority-driven style of leadership, the director makes decisions and provides
strong leadership without much, if any, input from the person or team being led. This style is
useful when leading new or inexperienced teams, training new employees without a background
in your industry, and potentially when forging ahead into a new market or technology (but only
when the leader has experience worth trusting).
This method doesn’t work as well when the manager isn’t a powerful, experienced figure or
when the people being managed have valuable input to offer.

Coaching

A coach comes alongside skilled contributors, guiding them as they use their skills. The coaching
style of leadership is much the same, working alongside team members yet retaining authority to
make the final call. Coaches also develop potential or raw talent into something better and more
useful, and it works exactly the same way in business.
Coaching is highly effective for employees who have input to give or raw talent that needs
refining. It’s also effective with skilled employees who need help staying on target. Just like in
sports, a coach can’t be better than the sum of the players on the team. So coaching may not be
the best approach for inexperienced employees or those with significant performance issues.

Supporting

Supporting steps back even further than coaching. This method assumes team members know
what to do and how to do it, so the manager takes a more hands-off approach. Supportive
managers often step into the relational aspects of a team, helping team members work better
together.
This style of leadership also comes into play when individuals grow unsteady in terms of output
or performance, offering support to a person who may need a hand getting through a rough
patch.
Supportive management works best with highly skilled teams that still have some issues with
interpersonal relationships, consistent performance, or other metrics.

Delegating

The delegating style of leadership assigns tasks to employees (delegation) and provides little
more than basic oversight once assigned, freeing the leader to spend more time on high-level
work — like long-term vision and goal-setting for the project.
This method is very attractive to managers because in some ways it’s the easiest and least time-
consuming. However, it only works consistently well with high-performing teams and team
members who don’t need directing, coaching, or support.

4) Controlling

Controlling includes all of management’s efforts to make sure the goal (established way back in
the planning phase) is accomplished. It includes ongoing analysis of the plan and iterative
updates to that plan as needed.
The manager’s project monitoring component (the analysis of how well the project team is
adhering to the plan) may overlap slightly with project management. Not every business or
project gets a dedicated project manager, either. If you’re a manager and find yourself doing
more project management than you’d like, a good project management software tool can help.
Teamwork is a robust project management suite that managers and project leads alike can use to
improve their project workflows. Take a look at Teamwork’s powerful Resource Management
capabilities.

Examples of controlling functions

Schedule and deadline management, employee training, performance evaluations, adjustments to

budgets or staffing assignments, and resource allocation are all included within the controlling
function.

Conclusion
The four functions of management are all inter-related. An entrepreneur has to have the ability
and knowledge on how to appropriately implement each and every one of these functions in
order to reach success and obtain business growth.
References
www.teamwork.com

www.wrike.com

Managing Business Ethics: Straight Talk About How to Do It Right, 2nd ed. by Linda K Trevino
and Katherine A. Nelson (Wiley, 1999)..