What you’ll learn to do: explain why control is an essential part of being a manager and how this function contributes to effective management

Consider the two images below . . . one with control and one without:

Consider the two parking lots as two different organizations. What you can see is that one has management controls in place, and the other . . . well, you can tell how that’s working out.  In the second photo no one is in charge of controlling the actions and activities of the employees within the company—it’s a free-for-all.

It might seem attractive, at first, to work for a company where people aren’t telling you what to do, how to do it, or when things are due. But it wouldn’t take too long, probably, for all that freedom to feel like chaos. In this next section we’ll focus on the control function of management to better understand how it helps people and organizations achieve goals and objectives.

LEARNING ACTIVITIES

The learning activities for this section include:

• Reading: Controlling: A Five-Step Process
• Self Check: Control

Take time to review and reflect on this activity in order to improve your performance on the assessment for this section.