Four Principles of Management

Four Principles of Management

Jacqueline Garcia

University of Phoenix

November 10, 2007

Many Fortune 500 companies have management training programs. A company must always have the competitive edge over its competitors. These companies must invest in creating curriculums to help the mangers create motivation in the employees as well as attain the goals set forth by the corporation. According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, management is “the act or manner of managing: handling, direction, or control; skill in managing, the person or persons controlling and directing the affairs of a business institution, etc.”

A great manager must know and implicate the four major principles of management. The principles of management are planning, organizing, leading and controlling. A manager must be able to make people work more effective than they would with out

Good management starts with good planning. Planning is setting the specific goals to be achieved and creating the needed steps to attain the goals. Operational planning is how a manger decides “implement the organization’s strategic planning by establishing objectives, devising a course of action to accomplish the plan, determining appropriate measurements that will reflect the progress, and setting a schedule for accomplishing the plan (Battles, 2005).” Proper planning prevents mishaps.

Bank of America is a large organization. We deal with the regular checking and savings accounts and a wide range of financial services. My objective is to meet the goals in the credit card division. Customer satisfaction is one of our biggest departments. We have over one hundred thousand employees working 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week all year round. The credit card division is by far the second larges to the retail banking. Each department has different goals and each department has different types of managers.

At the beginning of every month, our manager sets up the monthly plan. It includes adhering to the company policies, the goals for the floor, the goals for the team, and the goals for each individual. She plans how each person, depending on the skills, will contribute to the final goal. The credit card division rarely has problems hitting goal but the reason behind is the plan each team has taken to surpass the goals on a monthly basis. This step is crucial for all the team players but especially the new comers who need help adjusting to a plan and weekly deadlines. This helps lead to the second principle of management, organizing.

Organizing is the function of synchronizing people, finances, physical work, and other resources needed to achieve the goal (Bateman, 2007). This may include attracting and retaining good employees, giving specifics on job responsibilities, giving resources and grouping teams so that the cogs mesh together to form achieve success. The work, the people, and the workplace are the key elements the manager must work with.

We, as a team, are taught by our manager the newest procedures to do our work more efficiently. We must have the appropriate schedule so that there is always someone to help out the customer. We set the schedule for daily updates. One person under the manager is delegated the maintenance of the daily reports and at the end of the week, the person must present them to the manager. The manager sees how we are progressing and if a meeting is needed to ask about certain trends that may be happening which is impeding attaining goals to talk about them and come up with a solution.

Leading is perhaps one of the most important parts of being a excellent manager. The manager is the leader of the pack. The leader must know where they want to go, establish the standards, communicate effectively, listen, be neutral, and criticizing constructively (Battles, 2005). Leading is stimulating people to be top performers.