One hundred years ago, a Frenchman named Henri Fayol laid the foundation of what has become the international standard and definition of a manager’s five basic responsibilities. The key to his concept was that doing the WORK (building a bridge) was not the same as managing the WORK. Therefore, the standard fit, regardless of the level of responsibility, as long as the title was that of a manager.
Based on this concept, managers’ need not know how to do the work; they just needed to know how to manage the work. Fayol defined five management processes, defined as follows:
1. Planning – do it, build it, make it, on paper first – by creating a body of pre-made decisions regarding the work, resources, schedule, risks and budget (called a plan) the duration of an ad hoc work effort can be cut in half
2. Organizing – assemble, hire, train, prepare to do the work before we need do the work
3. Directing – communicate and focus on the plan “inside” the work group
4. Coordinating – communicate and focus on the plan “outside” the work group
5. Controlling – verify the plan is still valid, control efforts to the plan, (it is less expensive to get back on plan than to stop and create a new one)
For those who have management related certifications, these five processes should look very familiar.
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