Controlling, The Basic Control Process

● Controlling: The measurement and correction of performance in order to make sure that enterprise objectives and the plans devised to attain them are being accomplished is called as controlling.
● The Basic Control Process: Control techniques and systems are essentially the same for controlling cash, office procedures, morale, product quality, and anything else. The basic control process, wherever it is found and whatever is being controlled, involves three steps:
• Establishing standards
• Measuring performance against these standards, and
• Correcting variations from standards and plans.
• Establishment of Standards: Because plans are the yardsticks against which managers devise controls, the first step in the control process logically would be to establish plans. However, since plans vary in detail and complexity, and since managers cannot usually watch everything, special standards are established. Standards are simply criteria of performance. They are the selected points in an entire planning program at which measures of performance are made so that managers can receive signals about how things are going and thus do not have to watch every step in the execution of plans.
There are many kinds of standards. Among the best are verifiable goals or objectives, as suggested in the discussion of managing by objectives. You will learn more about standards later, especially those that point out deviations at critical points.
• Measurement of Performance: Although such measurement is not always practicable, the measurement of performance against standards should ideally be done on a forward-looking basis so that deviations may be detected in advance of their occurrence and avoided by appropriate actions. The alert, forward-looking manager can sometimes predict departures from standards. In the absence of such ability, however, deviations should be disclosed as early as possible.
• Correction of Deviations: Standards should reflect the various positions in an organization structure. If performance is measured accordingly, it is easier to correct deviations. Managers know exactly where, in the assignment of individual or groups duties, the corrective measures must be applied.
Correction of deviations is the point at which control can be seen as a part of whole system of management and can be related to the other managerial functions. Managers may correct deviations by redrawing their plans or by modifying their goals. (This is an exercise of the principle of navigational change.) Or they may correct deviations by exercising their organzing function through reassignment or clarification of duties. They may correct, also, by additional staffing, by better selection and training of subordinates, or by that ultimate restaffing measure-firing. Another way is to correct through better leading-fuller explanation of the job or more effective leadership.
___________________________________
Fundamentals of Management : Controlling