Have you ever thought about a private or nonprofit organization, and were curious about their procedures to increase sales year after year? Pacific Sunwear, an Anaheim, California based organization that was established in 1980, applies the four management functions to increase the company's sales each year. Pacific Sunwear, also referred to as PacSun, sells branded clothing for both young men and women and has stores located all over the United Stated and Puerto Rico. Their slogan, "Golden State of Mind," comes from the clothing style that relates to the Californian lifestyle. PacSun can be compared to well-known retailer, Macy's, with PacSun being on a lesser level, with the aspiration to increase sales each year. I am an assistant manager for PacSun, and we put the functions to use every day. These companies utilize the four management functions, planning, organizing, leading, and controlling, to reach for success annually. Each organization uses these functions uniquely, but also use the functions in similar ways.
For any organization, planning, the first step in the four management functions, is very significant to reach success. During the planning process, organizations establish goals for expectations on performance and then decide on how to reach that specific goal. For example, increasing sales each year is Pacsun's year long goal. The stores keep all of their sales reports, return logs, and exchange records for each day, so when that same business day comes around again the following year, each store knows exactly how many sales they need to have to increase sales for the current year. They also keep track of each store's average dollar amount per sale and how many units are being sold through each transact...
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... Lastly, the fourth management function is controlling and it helps observe employee's actions and checking the progress towards achieving the goal. Managers at PacSun have a specific way of controlling, for example: observing, coaching, and following up with each employee on his or her performance. Observing the employee when he or she was assigned a task can reveal if the employee is doing his or her job correctly. Secondly, coaching can be difficult if managers are unsure how to criticize employee's work. "Since you can't always offer better job opportunities, your coaching stance must place the emphasis on where it properly belongs — on continuous learning on the job, and the growing of skills wherever and whenever possible" (Nigro). Because managers control in PacSun, employees can understand how different tasks should be done correctly and effectively.
CP has two concerns, first, establishing a stronger organizational system that will unite both locations, and second, how to effectively manage a growing number of employees. Because of their lack of experience in operating multiple stores, CP has retained Management Improvement Consultants, LLC (MIC), to develop and purpose a new organizational and control system for their newly expanded business.
Levy, he said the most important thing the manager does for him is one-minute praisings. This is where the manager gives the employees clear feedback “in no uncertain terms” about things they have been doing right. Going off what he observed himself, the manager will catch you doing something right and praise you soon after. Then, you will be told exactly what you’ve done correctly so you know to praise yourself when you repeat the action. The key is to help train people to become more independent. It does not take much time to praise someone and let them know that you notice their efforts. By doing this person will feel better about themselves and be more motivated to work to a higher standard. Since they already know what a good performance looks like due to the one-minute goal setting that makes the praisings feel much more personal and
...ouse, 2016). Managers humbling themselves to make their employees comfortable at work by creating a learning environment usually results in a positive work environment. I have supervised employees with negative behaviors who wish to be left along to simply do their work with no desire to promote or be social. These are not necessarily bad employee but are employees who need the additional caution in their team placements. I use servant leadership as much as possible and where appropriate. I also ensure structure and integrity in the subordinate’s line of supervision are followed. Assisting is fine when coaching employees to better performance but as coaching occurs the level of coaching should progressively decrease with employee increased competence. When employee’s needs begin to affecting operations, I believe another style of supervision needs to be deployed.
Controlling in management is a function of management that is concerned with making sure that all other functions of the management are put in place and operated effectively. Controlling ensures that it has taken into consideration the monitoring of the output of the employees as well as the establishing standards of performance that will guarantee that the performance of the will always meets the set standards (Spellman,
Planning aims to reduce uncertainty. It does this by forcing managers to look ahead, anticipate change, consider the impact of change and develop appropriate responses. (Robbins 2012) Through attempted monitoring of conditions in a changing environment, one is able to respond quicker to new information and new circumstances, thereby becoming more flexible. In addition, having the environment under constant observation enables managers to analyse how the organisation will differentiate itself from its competitors, therefore facilitating more chan...
The third function, leading is the function by which managers are able to implement planning and organization to lead and motivate employees to finish tasks and work. It is important that the employees understand their tasks and responsibilities and this requires the managers to move them through these areas (Higgins, 1994). For example, if employees are not comfortable with their responsibilities than the manager must lead the person through the work process to ensure that it is being done
The success of any organization just as the Tesla Motor largely depends on the planning of the activities by the management team in the company. A good performance is always attributed to the planning strategy that a certain company has. The following are therefore four factors that affect the planning and performance of the company.
The coaching provided by a manager along with goal setting and feedback are an effective means to encourage employee growth and job satisfaction. I appreciated having a manager who believed in performance management. Unfortunately, he was the only manager I ever had who did this. For me this was a great opportunity for development. I was able to gain a deeper understanding of how my job fit into the strategies of the corporation. Even though I stayed in the same job my level of job satisfaction
“Controlling: monitors progress and implements necessary changes where needed. Monitoring is an essential aspect of control” (Bateman & Snell, 2004, p. 18).
The first function of management is planning. Planning is a process that managers use to identify and involve goal setting and decide the best way to achieve the goal.(Bartol 2007) Planning connect the gap between where we do, where we intend to go. It predict the possible things to happen which would not otherwise happen (MSG 2012). There are several steps to the planning process, which are determine the goals of the organisation, evaluate the current position, consider possible future conditions, identify possible alternative actions and choose the best. Planning is the criteria thinking through goals and making decision to achieve the goal of the organisation’s objective, which requires a systematic way. Also objectives focus the managers how to achieve the final result as managers have to predict anything will happen, avoid the problem and fight back to competitors. An example of planning, which is the President Canon Inc Tsuneji Uchida and lead Canon Company become the no.1 in the global business (Canon.Inc 2011). Tsuneji Uchida has to understand what is the company objective and goal. First, make decision to protect the position and the aim of canon, improve the operation more diversity. Second, he creates the new design of camera and new technology, he plan to do these things to maximise profit.
Effective control process in an organization would help in gathering information about the process and the employees, this can further help the management whilst taking important decisions in terms of establishing standards to meet standards, measuring the actual performance, as well as comparing performance with the standards. It can further help the companies in achieving their optimum goals so that they can take corrective actions as and when required. The process controls in place and guide and provide the company with the required regulations of the company’s activities. Which can lead to the performance of the company, hence it will also help the organization in terms of monitoring and responding.
However, some influential management authors believe that the classical management functions need to be update. Williams (2005, p. 7) updated the management functions and came out with four functions: making things happen; meeting the competition; organizing people, projects and process; and leading. To make things happen, it is essential to determine goals, planning ways to attain the goals, gathering and managing needed information to make superior decisions and also controlling performance to enable corrective action to take place if performance worsens. This function actually combined Fayol’s idea of planning and controlling. The thought of determining things to accomplish and developing plans to achieve goals is similar to function of planning suggested by Fayol, which is to define goals, establish strategy and develop plans to implement the strategy in order to reach the goals. Besides, Williams mentioned about controlling performance and corrective action, which is corresponding to Fayol’s classical management functions of controlling. Controlling, according to Fayol, involves observing organization performance and take action if necessary to ensure that goals are to be achieved. Nevertheless, the action of gathering and managing needed information to enable good decisions to be made is not stated in classical management functions. Based on the updated functions, organizing people, projects and processes included consideration of people issues and work processes. At the same time, Fayol mentioned organizing, which is the management process of determining best way to arrange organization’s resources and activities. They actually have the same meaning where both are about locating organization’s resources, which are the employees and also the work processes or activities. The Learning Company, a company that develops and markets games and software, was purchased by toy company Mattel. It was experiencing loss after three years of the purchase because each department in the company works independently and do not share resources.
...ll those helps managers to know if the process control is working or not, while the control process is contributing to successful of the current strategy.
As Schermerhorn states in Management planning, organizing, leading, and controlling are the tools needed by managers to accomplish performance goals. It is crucial that managers be able to recognize and act upon problems or opportunities as they arise. Planning is perhaps the cornerstone of the four processes. All good processes were at some point given great detail so as to anticipate possible problems and solutions to those problems. When the Honda Motor Company decided it needed to refine its inventory they didn't just jump at the first idea that was proposed; they first set their objectives and discussed ways to meet those objectives. After giving careful consideration to processes and the streamlining of those processes human error rose as the top need for change. Sounds simple you might respond; in reality it is much more complicated.
This paper presents a case study regarding Omega Inc., which has a contract sales force for its products. The contractors are employed by independently operated franchised dealers and do not work directly for Omega. Recently, Omega provided a training program for the sales force designed to improve sales performance and the franchisees instituted a performance management system to measure goal accomplishment. There are six primary steps in a performance management system and this paper will review five of the six steps as each relates to the subsequent step.