Planning, Organising, Leading & Controlling (POLC)

Organising

Planning

Controlling

Leading

Leader

What is Controlling? - The process of monitoring, comparing and correcting work performance


 Why control?
– It is the final link of the four functions of management
 The only way managers know whether organisational goals established through planning, facilitated through organising, and influenced through leading, are being met and, if not, the reasons why
– Employee empowerment
It encourages managers’ to delegate
– Protects the organisation and its assets
 Having controls and backups to reduce, cope and manage disruptions

Defining organisational goals

Establish overall strategy for achieving goals

Plans to integrate /coordinate activities

The control process

Informal Planning

Formal Planning

What is organising?

Why Plan?

Provides direction

Arranging and structuring work to
accomplish the organisation’s goals

Elements of organizing

Reduces uncertainty

Chain of command

Span of control

Departmentalization

Centralisation/de-centralisation

Minimises waste /redundancy

Work specialization

Formalisation

Establishes goals and standards

Leadership Theories

Elements of Planning

Goals

Plans

Types of organisation

Desired outcomes for individuals, groups, or
entire organisations

Mechanistic

Organic

Provide direction and performance evaluation criteria

Trait Theories

Behavioural Theories

Narrow spans of control

High formalisation

High chain of command

Centralised

Rigid departmentalisation

Contingency Theories

Documents how goals are to be accomplished and how resources are to be allocated

High specialisation

Provides a map to arrive at a given destination with provision for detours

Leadership

Someone who may influence others who may or may not possess managerial authority

Free flow of
information

Wide spans of control

Cross hierarchical
teams

Low formalisation

Cross functional teams

Decentralised

The process of influencing a group to achieve goals

Ideally all managers should be leaders

Leaders are born and cannot be trained, traits differentiate leaders from non leaders, drive, desire to lead, honesty and integrity

Step #1 - Measuring -  A combination of approaches (i.e. personal observation, statistical reports, oral reports, and written reports) increases both the number of input sources and the probability of getting reliable information

Step #2 - Comparing

  • Acceptable range of variation
  • Deviations that exceed this range become significant and need the manager's attention

Step #3 Taking managerial action
– Correct actual performance
- Immediate corrective action corrects problems at once to get performance back on track
- Basic corrective action looks at ‘how’ and ‘why’ performance deviated prior to taking corrective action