Festival Saturday: Next Saturday the town's summer festival fills Market Square, right outside Kofi's shop. On a normal Saturday the shop sells about 300 loaves. This Saturday Kofi expects twice that.
The bread will be the same bread. What changes is everything around it: how much to order, who works, when the vans come, and what to do if the day goes better or worse than expected.
None of that is baking or serving. It is Kofi's job as the manager.
Earlier in this topic you saw the difference between managing and leading. This micro looks at the managing side up close: what a manager actually does all week.
Management is getting work done through other people, using the money, time and materials the business has, to reach its objectives. In 1916 Henri Fayol, a French engineer who ran a large mining company, sorted that work into five tasks (the functions of management). They are still the usual way to describe what managers do.
Planning
decide what should happen
- Order 600 loaves, not 300
- Aim to have fewer than 30 left at closing
Organizing
get people and things in place
- Borrow a counter assistant from Jonas
- A second card reader from Marco
Directing
tell people what to do
- A 7 a.m. briefing: who serves, who restocks
Coordinating
make the parts fit
- The bakers, the van and the shop work to one timetable
Controlling
check and correct
- At 10 a.m., compare sales with the plan
- Act on the gap
Planning means looking ahead: deciding what the business should achieve and how. Kofi's plan for the festival has a target and a route to it. He will order 600 loaves from the Mill Lane bakehouse, and he wants fewer than 30 left at closing, because unsold bread is thrown away.
Organizing means getting the people, equipment and materials in place so the plan can happen. Kofi puts all three of his counter staff on for the whole day. Jonas lends him a fourth, because the Park Road shop is quiet when the town is at the festival. Marco, who buys the equipment for all three shops, finds a second card reader for a table outside.
Planning or organizing?: Planning decides what and how much: 600 loaves, fewer than 30 left over.
Organizing decides who and with what: four counter staff, a table outside, a second card reader. If the answer is a number or a target, it is usually planning. If it is a person, a shift or a piece of equipment, it is usually organizing.
Do not confuse these with the business functions from Unit 1: marketing, finance, operations and human resources. Those are areas of a business. The functions of management are the tasks every manager does, in whichever area they work.
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Saturday, 7 a.m. Four counter staff are in the shop and the square is already filling up. Kofi gathers them for five minutes: one on each till, one restocking the shelves from the back, one on the table outside. The sample tray goes out at eleven.
This is directing (Fayol called it commanding): telling people what to do, making sure they know how, and keeping an eye on the work as it happens. Priti does the same at Mill Lane at 2 a.m., when she tells her six bakers which loaves go into which oven, and in what order.
One timetable for the festival
Thursday: the flour
Valley Grain brings the extra flour a day early, so the bakehouse has it before the night shift starts on Friday.
Friday, 4 p.m.: the order
Kofi's order for 600 loaves reaches Priti with the other two shops' orders, so she can plan one night's baking for all three.
Saturday, 2 a.m.: the baking
Priti bakes Kofi's extra 300 loaves last, so they are still warm when the van comes back for them.
5 a.m. and 8 a.m.: the van
600 loaves do not fit in one van load. The Market Square van takes 400 at five and comes back for 200 at eight.
Why fitting things together is a job of its own: Each person can do their part well and the day still fail. Priti bakes 600 perfect loaves, but the van leaves at five with room for 400. Jonas lends his assistant, on the one Saturday his own shop is busy.
Making sure the separate parts of the work happen at the right time, in the right amounts, and do not get in each other's way is coordinating. It is the task that joins the bakehouse, the vans, the supplier and the shop into one plan.
| Directing | Coordinating | |
|---|---|---|
| Whose work | The manager's own team | Several teams, and people outside the business |
| The question it answers | Does each person know what to do today? | Does everyone's work fit together? |
| At the festival | Kofi's 7 a.m. briefing; Priti's oven order | Flour on Thursday, the order at 4 p.m., the van's second trip at 8 |
Four or five?: Many books merge coordinating into the other tasks and call directing 'leading'. That gives four functions: plan, organize, lead, control. It is the same work, counted differently.
Directing this Saturday's shift is management. Setting where the bakery should be in five years, and getting people to want to go there, is the leadership side from earlier in this topic.
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A plan only helps if someone checks whether it is working. Comparing what is happening with what was planned, and putting right the difference, is controlling. Kofi does it in three steps.
Controlling, in three steps
Set the standard
Take it from the plan. Kofi expected to sell about 200 loaves by 10 a.m. and to have fewer than 30 left at closing.
Measure what happened
At 10 a.m. the till shows 280 loaves sold, 80 more than planned. At that pace the shelves are empty by 2 p.m., and the festival runs until six.
Correct the gap
Kofi phones Priti before the night shift goes home. Maya and Ade stay an extra hour and bake 80 more loaves for a van at noon.
| Festival Saturday | Planned | Actual | What Kofi learns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Loaves delivered | 600 | 680 | The noon van was needed |
| Loaves sold | about 570 | 668 | Demand was higher than he guessed |
| Left at closing | fewer than 30 | 12 | Target met, even with the extra 80 |
| Takings at $3 a loaf | about $1,710 | $2,004 | 668 × $3 = $2,004 |
Controlling feeds the next plan: On Monday Kofi writes down what he learnt: order 680 next year, keep the second van trip, and ask for the extra bakers from the start.
That is the loop. Controlling shows where the plan was wrong, and the next plan starts from those figures. Management is not a list of five jobs done once; it goes round every week.
Lena and Marco, directors
- Plan the year: which shop to open next, the yearly budget
- Organize the money and the managers
- Control the monthly accounts against the budget
Aisha, Kofi and Jonas, shop managers
- Plan the week: the bread order and the staff rota
- Direct the counter staff on each shift
- Control each day's sales and what is left over
Priti, head baker
- Plan the night: which loaves, in which order
- Direct six bakers at the ovens
- Control each batch: its weight, its crust, its timing
Finding the management side in a case: The five tasks are done at every level. What changes is how far ahead each manager looks: a year for the directors, a week for a shop manager, one night for the head baker.
In a case study, look for targets, budgets, rotas, orders, timetables and checks. Each one is a manager planning, organizing, directing, coordinating or controlling. Name the task, then show it with a name or a number from the case.
How this comes up: The management side of a case is asked as a short explain question about a named manager: explain two things the manager must do to prepare for an event or a change, for four marks, or explain one way she could check that a plan is working, for two.
In a longer answer on the case, the same five tasks help you say what the managers must plan, organize and check before a decision can work.
The four-mark pattern
- Name the first task and what it means. Planning: deciding in advance what the shop should achieve and how.
- Show it in the case. Kofi sets a target of 600 loaves, twice a normal Saturday, and fewer than 30 left at closing.
- Name the second task and what it means. Organizing: getting the people and equipment in place.
- Show it in the case. A fourth counter assistant borrowed from Jonas and a second card reader from Marco for a table outside.
Three traps: A list is not an explanation. 'Planning, organizing, directing, coordinating and controlling' names five tasks and explains none of them.
Planning and organizing swapped. A target or a number of loaves is planning; a person, a shift or a piece of equipment is organizing.
Leading instead of managing. 'Kofi must inspire his staff' is the leadership side. The question asks what he must do to get the work done.
Explain two functions of management that Kofi needs to carry out before the festival.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.