Management is essential for an organized life and necessary to run all types of management. Good management is the backbone of successful organizations. Managing life means getting things done to achieve life’s objectives and managing an organization means getting things done with and through other people to achieve its objectives.






Management is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively. Since organizations can be viewed as systems, management can also be defined as human action, including design, to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system. This view opens the opportunity to manage oneself, a pre-requisite to attempting to manage others.

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Definition of Management: The Management Process

Management functions include: Planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal.

There are several different resource types within management. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of:

  • Human resources
  • Financial resources
  • Technological resources
  • Natural resources                                     
                                                                          

The Purpose of Management

The purpose of management is to serve customers. Yet, if one looks through most management books for a definition of management, 99.9 percent of the time the word customer will not be mentioned. This is astonishing because serving customers in order to obtain a profit is the crux of every business organization. Equally remiss is the fact that most definitions of management neatly filter out service in their descriptions of management.

Good managers constantly streamline their organizations toward making a sale. In other words, good managers are needed to keep their organizations on track by ensuring that everything that’s being done is ethically geared toward providing what customers want. In this regard, a good manager is responsible for reducing waste and ambiguity, keeping costs down, and motivating others to do the same. In the same vein, good managers regularly take educated risks and exercise good judgement (the basis of entrepreneurship). These risks include:

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The Need for Management: Management is needed in order to coordinate the activities of a business and make sure all employees are working together toward the accomplishment of the organization’s goals.

  • Trying new things;
  • Successfully adjusting to constant change;
  • Developing subordinates (good managers aren’t afraid of letting other people shine and, in fact, they encourage it);
  • Improving their own skill.                         
                                                                   

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Key Points

  • Management in all business and organizational activities is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.
  • Good managers are needed to keep their organizations on track by ensuring that everything that’s being done is ethically geared toward providing what customers want.
  • Good management is needed to inject motivation, creativity, discipline, and enthusiasm into areas in which they either don’t exist or they’re not necessarily wanted.
  • People who work for managers must realize that it is their job to make their managers value them.