MANAGEMENT FUNCTIONS

MANAGEMENT AND ITS CHALLENGE

Prepared by P. A. Mhache
Community Economic Development Student (2008/09)

Yesterday I promised to talk about what is management and key function of management, what do managers have in common in short “They get things done through their organizations”

Managers create the conditions and environment that enable organizations to survive and thrive beyond the tenure of any specific supervisor. A key aspect of managing is recognizing the role and importance of others.

Good managers know that the only way they can accomplish anything at all is through the people of the organization.

Management scholar Mary Parker Follet defined management as “the art of getting things done through people” Peter Drucker recently management theorist stated that the job of managers is to give direction to their organizations, provide leadership and decide how to use organizational resources to accomplish goals.

Getting things done through people and other resources and providing leadership and direction are what managers do. By saying so the following is the definition of Management.

Management is the attainment of organizational goals in and effective and efficient manner through planning, organizing, leading and controlling organizational resources.

There are two important ideas in this definition: one the four functions- planning, organizing, leading and controlling and second is the attainment of organizational goals in an effective and efficient manner.

Let me ask one question, you can answer it through your comment on this article or by any means. Kinondoni Municipal does it have a goal “Organizational goals” does it have resources? For those with answer of “YES” they’ll agree with me that the above definition is within our organization.

Kinondoni Municipality has its vision and mission statement. Let me remind you about this, I don’t mean that you are not aware of that but I think you can forget about it or we can give a minimal weight on it.

OUR VISION:
‘A community, which is motivated, dynamic, with socio economic development’

OUR MISSION:
‘Provision of quality services to the community through effective and efficient use of resources, capacity building, good governance and rule of
law hence improve the living standard of people’

To attain our vision and mission we need resources but always resources are scarce whether in term of human resources as well as material resources. To survive we are required to choose through scale of preferences. The whole activities must be done through Management.

By saying so, what is planning by the way, planning defines where the organization wants to be in the future and how to get there.

Planning means defining goals for future organizational performance and deciding on the tasks and use of resources needed to attain them.

Lack of planning or poor planning can hurt an organization’s performance. And we can end – up being busy but busy for nothing. No one will recognize our efforts. Our DC complained that we are good on papers “ECXELLENT” but nothing moving ON, is it true?

Another function of Management is Organizing, it involves the assignment of tasks, the grouping of tasks into departments, and the assignment of authority and allocation of resources across the organization.

Leadership is becoming an increasingly important management function. Leading is the use of influence to motivate employees to achieve organizational goals. Leading means crating a shared culture and values, communicating goals to employees throughout the organization, and infusing employees with the desire to perform at a high level.

Leading involves motivating entire departments and divisions as well as those individuals working immediately with the manager.

Controlling is the fourth function in the management process. It means monitoring employees’ activities, determining whether the organization is on target toward its goals and making corrections as necessary. Managers must ensure that the organization is moving toward its goals.

By doing self assessment, are we doing the four function of management? If Yes are we on tract to achieve our goals and if Not what is wrong with us, are we COLD to be WARMED, I don’t know.

Next time before X-mass I would like to share with you about Management skills which includes Conceptual Skills, Human Skills and Technical Skills. I would also share with you about management type including Top Managers, Middle Managers and First Line Manager.





Please you can make your comment on my web www.ngorora.blogspot.com



19/12/2008

Thank you.