What is management and why is it needed?

Management is needed in every company to coordinate the work of employees. It improves the organization of activities and production, increases internal indicators, and maintains the pace of the work process. Enterprises strive to increase income and increase economic competitiveness, and the achievement of these goals directly depends on managers who set tasks and help employees fulfill them. What is the essence of management, what relates to management, its functions, types and levels - we will tell you in the article.

What is management

Management is a management activity. It is a combination of the following factors:

• Planning;
• Setting goals;
• Organization of business processes;
• Coordination;
• Motivation;
• Control.

Subjects and objects of management

In management there are always subjects and objects.

• Subjects are individuals or groups performing management functions.
• Objects can be considered people, systems and processes to which the actions of subjects are directed. For example, employees, competitors, partners, suppliers, information, resources.

Management models and principles

There are many different management models in the world. There are three currently dominant approaches:

• American;
• Western European;
• Japanese.

The American model is very formalized, and relationships within a team are similar to relationships within a sports team. Planning is long-term. The speed of career growth depends on personal results; the hiring period is often short-term. The priority is maximum profit with minimal expenditure of resources.

The Japanese model is characterized by an ideology based on the company's values, the relationships within which are similar to family ones. The system of decision-making and responsibility is most often collective. The focus is on quality at any cost. Virtually complete absence of staff turnover due to the focus on maximizing productivity. In the Japanese model, “lifetime hiring” is common, in which the company grows employees, focusing not on existing experience, but on a person’s potential.

The Western European model is a cross between American and Japanese. Formalities are diluted with informal relationships, the ability to establish connections is valued.

When choosing a management model, ready-made solutions are often taken as a basis, but they may not take root without serious adaptation taking into account territorial or national characteristics and mentality.

Due to the ever-increasing speed of change, classical management models are being replaced by flexible paradigms and concepts: agile, “turquoise” organizations, holacracy, although they do not always stand the test of practice.

Management tasks

Management is needed to define and set goals, achieve them with the help of people and resources, coordination and control.

Without a competent management system or self-organization, effective economic activity in any field is impossible: business, public administration, non-profit projects.

Management functions

This concept refers to the types of interaction between subjects and objects of management.

Setting goals

Conventionally, two basic types of goals can be distinguished:

• Strategic - long-term;
• Tactical - short-term.

There is also a category of medium-term goals, which makes sense to consider in special cases.

Strategic goals depend on the mission, values ​​and ideology of the company. They set the vectors for the development of the organization and the benchmarks to be achieved.

Tactical goals are more aimed at operational management.

To correctly set any type of goals, it is recommended to use the SMART methodology.

Planning

Planning can determine both the organization’s goal-setting system and influence the setting of goals, and vice versa - plans can be built on the basis of already defined and formulated goals.

Depending on the management model used, planning can also differ radically in approaches:

• From a strict production plan for several years;
• Before flexible planning systems based on iterations under conditions of uncertainty: Scrum, Kanban.

The scenario approach to planning, when multivariate schemes are developed, deserves special attention.

Depending on various factors that were previously foreseen by analysts:

• Market conditions;
• Dynamics of development of the organization;

Various versions of the developed plans are used.

Organization of activities

Formally, two stages of organizing activities can be distinguished:

• Formation of organizational structure;
• Organization of work processes.

Depending on the management model, the organizational structure can vary greatly. As mentioned earlier, the range of varieties can vary:

• From a rigid tree structure with a vertical control system;
• Up to a group of independent self-organizing teams, each of which independently determines the format of work and internal regulations.

Organization of work processes includes:

• Combining the competencies of relevant employees and departments;
• Effective allocation of resources and tasks to achieve both strategic and tactical goals of the company.

An advertising campaign is one of the important management objects in business. For it to work effectively, you need to properly allocate resources.

Control

There is external and internal control.

External control is carried out by various inspection bodies: tax, fire, technical inspections, sanitary and epidemiological service, banks.

Despite all the seemingly negative component of external control, it has a positive impact on the work of the organization. Employee motivation automatically increases when they understand that their activities can be audited by external bodies with all the ensuing consequences for the company and for them personally. Management, based on the results of external audits, receives an assessment of employee performance from a third party.

Internal control is carried out by the resources of the organization itself. It can be carried out both through audit and audit, and by performers or management.

Control functions are required for:

• Obtaining information on the basis of which management decisions are made.
• Tracking the company's progress towards its goals.
• Safety of material assets, important and confidential information.
• Rational and more efficient allocation of resources.

It is extremely important to understand how the implemented internal control system affects employees. It can motivate them and influence the achievement of organizational goals, or it can demotivate and limit them.

First of all, all employees must clearly understand the goals of the organization and the tasks assigned to them personally. It is also important to establish effective internal communications and feedback mechanisms.

Three stages of control can be distinguished:

• Preliminary - at the planning stage, rules and regulations are formed.
• Current - carried out directly during processes.
• Final – summing up, analysis and conclusions.

When creating and changing a control system, it is necessary to compare the economic effect. If the costs of control exceed the profits or savings from its implementation, then the feasibility of such implementation should be carefully weighed.

During control, it is important to predict and identify at the earliest stage deviations from the path or inconsistencies with the intended dynamics of achieving goals. Moreover, not only for recording deviations, but also for analyzing the reasons for their occurrence, identifying trends and logical patterns. This helps make corrective decisions.

Coordination

Coordination is responsible for the coordinated actions of employees and departments of the company, maintains and improves the relationships established between them, and ensures smooth and continuous work. In management, coordination streamlines the efforts of personnel, creates common goals and organizes joint activities.

This function ensures the interaction of different parts of the enterprise, taking into account the characteristics of their activities. Coordination determines which employees perform tasks, when they do them, and in what order.

Motivation

Motive is of great importance - the internal reason that motivates a person to work. After all, motivated employees achieve their goals faster. Motivation is formed according to the following scheme:

• employees are aware of the assigned tasks;
• become familiar with potential rewards;
• correlate the information received with opportunities and needs;
• start to take action.

Types of management

Management levels

Illustrative examples of management can be seen in the system hierarchy. There are several levels of managers, each of which controls the previous one, but does not directly relate to the lower one.

Lowest level or line level

These are employees who control the solution of the company’s basic tasks: the correct use of resources and the progress of the work of their department. In production, such work is carried out by laboratory managers, shop managers, senior nurses and other lower-level managers.

Middle management

Mid-level specialists - heads of departments. They monitor many processes: the work done, its quality and deadlines. The data is passed on to senior managers for performance analysis.

Senior management - top managers

The smallest group with more responsible and extensive tasks, including the development and implementation of development strategies in the short and long term. To do this, directors make a series of decisions, guide the entire organization, and the rest of the management teams support the chosen course.

Mistakes by senior-level employees result in the largest financial losses, so before making decisions, they collect all the information about the company's work and scrupulously analyze its functioning as a whole and in specific departments.

Small Business Management

Small business refers to various forms of organizing commercial activities. This could be a single business owner or a small staff of a dozen employees. The work of a manager in a small business has its own characteristics:

• communication with staff is built directly, without transferring instructions to lower-level managers;
• show flexibility and multitasking in organizing the work process;
• Work with employees is carried out individually;
• the vector of training and professional development of subordinates is determined by the manager himself.

Enterprise management

The work of managers comes down to solving both daily tasks and longer-term ones:

• maintaining the company's competitiveness;
• formation of the company’s business reputation;
• searching for new ways to organize the work process;
• working with staff to increase motivation;
• analysis of the company's needs;
• maintaining financial positions.

Managers at an enterprise, as universal specialists, solve many problems in their department. The consistency and organization of the enterprise depends on their work.

Problems of management at the enterprise

Managers face problems at different levels of the enterprise organization:

• unstable demand in the market;
• aggressive competition;
• outdated workflow management tools;
• risky activity during production;
• team disunity;
• insufficient motivation of employees.

   

Profession manager

Managers oversee specific departments. They assign tasks to subordinates and monitor their progress, solving problems, mentoring and motivating employees to solve production problems.

What a good manager should know 

A good manager has a fundamental theoretical base and developed communication skills. The head of the department must be attentive, reliable, open to dialogue, erudite and fair. To properly organize the process of interaction with subordinates, you need to:

• establish interpersonal contact;
• seek an individual approach to employees to increase their motivation;
• receive feedback;
• work on communication and public speaking skills.

Management for a marketer

Yes, yes, you heard right. The fact is that a marketer, regardless of whether he works for himself or leads a company project, must be able to manage tasks. His responsibilities directly depend on the results he strives for. As a rule, they include monitoring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns, planned indicators, listening to calls and tracking the work of the call center, as well as the effectiveness of other managers.

Tracking the effectiveness of advertising campaigns

Usually Google Ads is quite enough for this. The main problem is that if a marketer has many projects and they are all carried out on different systems, it will not be possible to generate correct statistics. What can we say about a snapshot, when you need to understand the situation on the project “right now”. In this case, it’s logical to break it down not by systems, but by projects, isn’t it?

Conclusion

Management is a popular tool for organizing work and industrial relations. It allows the enterprise to solve a number of internal and external problems, provides information, analytical, motivational support and gives both a short-term effect from use and a long-term one, building a development strategy for years to come.