2.2 Management Functions

So, with these success skills, the manager has different functions that need to be performed. In fact, the entire body of knowledge, management, is really divided into five functional areas, planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. Now, these are in the proper sequence. These are aligned, one, two, three. You have to have a plan before you need to do any of the following. Once you have a plan, you’ve gotta organize it, then you have to have people, then you have to have, figure out how to lead those people and control those those, that plan, okay? So, let’s look at an overview. Now, I’d like for you to think in terms of, you want to be an entrepreneur. You want to open a restaurant, whatever kind of restaurant, an Italian restaurant, a French restaurant, or maybe even a bakery. So, first thing that we need to do as a manager, is we need to plan. We need to develop a plan. So, what is our mission? What do we, what kind of restaurant do we want to be? What, how prestigious? Is a price based on price, is it based on prestige, is it based on location? Do we want to have a five-star chef, a master chef? So, we need to set up our priorities, our objectives. We need to understand what are the what, how do these things link together? We need to map out an action plan. We need to determine buy-in. How do we get buy-in from our investors, from our partners? Now how do we identify, what are the resources that we are going to be needing? So once we have a plan, now we have to organize that plan. So we have our, we have a plan, we know we need money. So we gotta go find out, how do we get money? So, we have to determine, you know, we have to determine what’s the hierarchy going to be like? Who’s in charge? Who’s the boss? Who are supervisors? What kinds of roles and responsibilities do we need? We have to create a specific project plan in order to accomplish and get to the fact that we want to open a restaurant. We have to identify, what are the different actions that have to be taken? We have to let, we have to figure out, how do we align these different relationships? What are the interactions between the various parts of the organization? And we have to allocate, you know, the, the activities to the appropriate people, at the appropriate time. And we have to set processes in place or processes in place. So, we have a plan, we all want to open Italian restaurant. We have, you know, we’ve done some or, we’ve organized that plan. We’ve determined, you know, the numbers and accounts and budgets and finance and laws. And we’ve got all that in place. Now we need people. What kind of people do we want? What kind of people do we need? What kind of levels of people do we need? Do you want somebody that’s famous that has their own television show to be your master chef in, in our, in our restaurant? Do you want to use that as part of you, part of your marketing, your claim to fame? What kind of job descriptions and skill sets do we need? You know, how are we going to hire the right people? We don’t want to hire a lot of different people and have a lot of different turnover. That turns customers off. So, how do we hire tough in order to get the right people? We need to train those people. You know, what do you know, what do they need to know? We probably want them to know the menu. We probably want them to know a little bit about the food. So, how do we incorporate and train them so that they are going to be able to interact when we open the store? Now, how do we develop people for the future? Maybe our goal is to have more than one restaurant. So, we’ve planned, we’ve organized, we’ve staffed. Now, who’s going to lead this group? So, we have to determine, how are we going to communicate the goals and how are we going to share the, our vision with these people, okay, that we have hired? How are we going to, you know, get this group of people to want to follow us, in order to achieve the goals? How are we going to motivate them? How are we going to inspire them? How are, are we going to have integrity and honesty to, you know, to be someone who people want to follow? We’re going to listen. Are we going to celebrate accomplishments? That’s all part of this, you know, of this aspect of leading. Finally, the fifth function of management is to control. All kinds of controls. We need to make sure that our restaurant gets opened. We don’t waste a lot of money. We don’t do things intentionally that we could have prevented in, you know, in order to cause us harm. So, we have to figure out, how do we minimize risk? How do we monitor and make sure our plan stays on track? How do we, what measures do we need? How do we collect, you know, the, the results in order to evaluate, you know, and, and determine our metrics, okay? What if our plan gets off track? How do we make adjustments to our plan in order to accomplish the goals of our plan? And evaluation. Did we achieve our goals? Did we have satisfied customers? We may, if we achieve our goal and have no satisfied customers, that’s not good for business. So, we have to mutually achieve our goal, the type of restaurant that we envisioned in our plan, and have customer satisfaction. So, this is an overview of the five functional areas of this body of knowledge called management. Many organizations, larger organizations for sure, really have these functions divided into departments, into functional areas where there are different people doing these. In a smaller organization, your restaurant, you may have to do all of these yourself. But these five functional areas are still the, the road map to get you to an open business. Of course, there is no guarantee for success, but here is part of the road map.