Management

Cheat Sheet



MANAGING

Topic: P.O.L.C

What do they do/what are they? - General Managerial functions that are interrelated and
interconnected/interdependent. They all influence each other and are influenced by each other

Planning:

Planning is about defining the organisations goals, establishing an overall strategy for achieving
goals, developing plans to integrate and coordinate activities, concerned with both the ends and the
means

Objectives of planning:

Providing direction, reduces uncertainty, minimises waste and redundancy, establishes goals and
standards used for CONTROLLING (evaluation)

Elements of Planning:

Goals are desired outcomes for individuals, groups or entire organisations. Provide direction and
performance evaluation criteria. Stated V Real.

Plans document how goals are to be accomplished and how resources are to be allocation. Provides
a map and process to achieving goals.

Organising:

What is it? – Arranging and structuring work to accomplish the organisations goals. The process of
creating the organisations structure.

Elements of Organising:

Work Specialisation – Dividing work activities into specific job tasks

Departmentalisation – Grouping jobs by function, location, product and process

Chain of command – authority, responsibility (who to report to)

Span of control – Number of subordinates a manager can manage efficiently and effectively

Centralisation/Decentralisation – Degree to which decision making is controlled by few at the higher
levels of the hierarchy, or to the employees at all levels

Formalisation – The degree to which jobs within an organisation are standardised and governed by
rules and procedures


Types of Organisations: Based on the 6 criteria above

Mechanistic – High specialisation, rigid departmentalisation, high chain of command, narrow spans
of control, high formalisation and centralisation

Organic – Cross functional teams, cross hierarchical teams, free flow of information, wide spans of
control, low formalisation, decentralised

Leadership:

A leader is someone who can influence others who may or may not possess managerial authority.
Leadership is the process of influencing a group to achieve goals

Leadership Theories:

Trait Theories – Leaders are born and cannot be trained. Traits differentiate leaders from non-
leaders in terms of drive, desire to lead, honesty and integrity, self-confidence and intelligence.

Behavioural Theories – Leadership is more than possessing a few generic traits. Leaders are not born
but trained.

Contingency Theories – Effective leadership requires more than an understanding of traits and
behaviours. Ability to read and adapt to situational/contextual circumstances is important.

Controlling:

The process of monitoring, comparing and correcting work performance

Why control? – Final link of the four functions of management. Let’s managers assess and evaluate
performance. Encourages managers to delegate. Protects the organisation and its assets. Having
controls and backups to reduce, cope and manage disruptions. Reduces the probability of disasters.
Make provisions and plans in the event of change.

The Control Process:

1. Measuring- How? A combination of approaches (quantitative or qualitative) What? More critical
to the control process than how we measure. Control criteria – employee satisfaction, turnover,
budgets, absenteeism.

2. Comparing – Determined an acceptable range of variation. Deviations that exceed the range need
attention