Organising - the second step in POCM
In a series of articles Pat Sheridan talks about the various aspects of the management function under the headings of plan, organise, control and motivate (POCM). If you are responsible for the work of others and for achieving any kind of preordained results then you are, in fact, managing. Whether your title is manager, supervisor, team leader, charge hand or superintendent, you are actually managing and POCM applies to some degree. In this article we look at organising, the second step in POCM.
Review
In the last article we reviewed aspects of planning and the importance of this activity in the formulation of definitions and the achievement of company objectives to ensure its overall success. If you have not already reviewed the last articles in this management series it is important that you do so now as this article must be integrated into the overall management theme to get the full benefit.
Do remember that there are no right or wrong answers to management, as the variables, which we are confronted with as managers, are infinite. The relationship therefore between the quality of information available on any aspect of the business, at several points in time, the interpretation of this information and the decisions we make based on such information may also be effected by our perception. In addition, our attitude and bias can impact on this perception and not always in a positive and effective way. So, my decisions might be different to yours, despite the fact that we may apparently be looking at the same information or issue. Therefore integrating the thinking and analysis of others into your own thinking at every stage of the management process described in these articles is both practical and, in reality, critical. You need to know what the views of colleagues, specialists, suppliers, etc are and on what values they are based, even if you are the one responsible for the final decision-making.
Introduction to Organising
As mentioned in previous articles, when I ask managers or supervisor to describe management for me they invariably begin to explain to me what they actually do, i.e. the physical things. The first sentence always includes the words organise or organising. For example, “I organise the staff to do……” or “I make sure that they…“. Planning does not enter the conversation until I prompt through a series of questions. Neither does control, however motivation does feature. So I guess organising must be perceived as the main element or ingredient of management at least at a subliminal level for many managers and supervisors.
Once we have a detailed plan to follow it is necessary to source and contract for all the required resources which are needed to achieve the objectives outlined in the plan. This might require a massive organisational requirement or very little change from an existing resource base, depending on the specific company circumstances.
Example 1
We will consider first the larger organisational demands. For example let us take a US-based parent company launching a new start-up from a ‘greenfield’ environment. This will require absolutely everything to be put in place. The plan to make a given product in Ireland may have been decided at the parent company headquarters in the US, the timeline and costs have been determined and the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) may be involved in providing assistance to the company by way of grants. In addition a senior US executive may have been charged with the project for a five-year period. There is therefore one person responsible for organising the details set out in the plan.
The planning is completed and now the organising phase begins. The company needs the land, detailed plans of the building for planning permission, a building contract outlining specifications, costs and standards, a reputable contractor, services, manufacturing equipment and staff. All of this and much, much more is scheduled to deliver manufacturing product for delivery in a particular market to particular timescale and cost standards.
Example 2
A company, in business for several years, has only minor requirements for change over the next twelve months and the plan is simple. For example, a 5% increase in throughput with a 10% reduction in overhead costs to be made up by each departmental manager through improved productivity. There is to be no replacement of staff and only one piece of equipment change requiring negligible retraining. As you can see, this is a dramatically different set of circumstance to the last example.
We could obviously go into several pages of such examples and lists in terms of what must be done in each example. I think you should have the basic idea of planning and organising requirements at this stage. However, it is more important for the purpose of this article to reflect on the phase itself. What are we actually doing when we are organising?
There are two aspects to organising - there is the once off set-up organisational activity regarding a resource and there is the regular organising activity required to utilise that resource in response to daily changing circumstances.
Set-up Organisational Activity
Let us say that one aspect of the plan, dealing with staffing, shows a requirement for a mechanical engineer who will be required to assist with the installation of all the new equipment, the commissioning of the equipment and its on-going maintenance. The plan is (we will assume for the moment) sufficiently detailed to determine the date on which such a person will be required. This could be after the building has been handed over and, say, one week before the equipment has arrived. Alternatively the equipment may be very complex and the mechanical engineer is required six months earlier to train with the equipment supplier. Remember the variables are infinite. The plan will also determine how long it might take to find a suitable person. Are we to advertise? Should we use an outside agency to headhunt a suitable person? And so on. It is the manager’s job to determine such detailed criteria within the plan and then to organise to ensure that it happens as required.
Consequently, with this level of detail we will know when we must advertise or otherwise search for a suitable person. Once we know the details of this aspect of the plan we commence the organisation phase of this requirement the moment we begin to actually seek this member of staff. So, there is a distinct shift from the planning phase to the organising phase.
The planning phase is a theoretical expression or map of what you want to do and the organisation phase is the physical act of making this a reality. The plan sets the standards. The organisational phase tries to reflect these standards across a wide range of disciplines to ensure that the skill-sets and allied resources are in place to achieve the key objectives stated in the plan.
Regular Organising Activity
Once the key resources are hired, bought, contracted or otherwise put in place, the managers and supervisors must organise or reorganise on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis as necessary. This is the regular organising activity. From hour to hour and day to day the plan changes in relation to actual real-time occurrences.
The plan was, if you remember, a best estimate of what might happen given a set of criteria and coupled with what we would wish to happen given these criteria. In reality circumstances change. So the plan can’t be entirely rigid. Flexibility is essential both in planning and organising.
Each manager or supervisor must react professionally in both proactive and reactive terms to changing circumstances. Being well prepared for possible eventualities could be termed proactive - for example anticipating what could wrong and being prepared to compensate in some way.
Reacting to unforeseen circumstances and developing a solution which maintains the objectives is an equally important ability. Both fall within the context of the regular organising activity. This could be simply being ready to cater for absenteeism, breakdowns, late deliveries of raw materials, etc. The basic organising principle is to find a way of achieving the required objective despite a multitude of possible fluctuations in the resources.
Generally managers have responsibility and authority to contract for resources with external suppliers or service providers as well as managing internal employees (and other resources) to achieve performance and quality standards. These activities have organisational elements.
Summary
Organising is a management and supervisory responsibility which applies to all departments and management functions and incorporates considerations in terms of legal, financial, human, technical compliance requirements, as well as business needs.
How we manage the organisational phase will vary from company to company depending on the complexity of the work, the value of the process or products and the impact on costs for the business arising from failure to achieve objectives. However the bottom line for managers is to ensure that the resources are in place as stated in the plan and to effectively utilise these resources to achieve the objectives. Of course the manager must be aware of the objectives in terms of profit as well as his or her specific departmental targets. Senior executives are responsible for such communications with managers and supervisors to ensure clarity. (This communications thinking will form a part of a future article in this series on motivation).
The next article in the management series will look at the control phase. The result of control activities generally overlap with the organising activities, as it must by its very nature demand reorganising and flexibility responses.
Using formal monitoring and control systems is a structured way of looking at information to ascertain important reorganising necessities in relation to key objectives in the oscillating business environment. We will elaborate on this facet in the next management article.
