Control is the process of ensuring
that the organisation steadily pursues what it decided it should achieve, and
not anything else. So, to control is to ensure that the performance of the
institution stays within predefined bounds.
Controlling is only possible where
plans prescribing what is to be done exist; and plans may be a waste of
resources without any form of control. That is because the purpose of control is
focusing performance in the direction of the desired outputs, not just any
outcomes.
Control can be applied to all sorts
of plans, and examples are those concerning inventory re-order quantity, revenue,
profitability, quality, productivity and safety.
About five major steps are taken in the
control process.
1.
Determining Standards. Ordinarily, anything to be
regulated requires standards. Standards are performance benchmarks, or grades that
indicate acceptable levels of operation, without which the organisation may not
be able to achieve its objectives.
Standards often make use of comparative representations like sales-to-
quotation ratio and profit margin; rates like units produced a day and breakdowns
per month; and even absolute measures like degrees Celcius or degrees Fahrenheit.
The level of performance picked as standard can depend on many factors.
We use three examples from the sales arena:
i. The amount of experience
possessed by the person carrying out the task. For example, new sales people
fresh from school are not normally expected to sell as much as older, seasoned
ones.
ii. The time of year. Sweaters
and other warm clothes, for instance, do not sell as much in summer as in
winter.
iii. The level of competition,
as in a new, growing market generating a lot more business than a crowded,
mature one.
Other strong elements
affecting the decision to adopt a particular standard are type of industry or product and resources at
the disposal of the institution.
For some variables, say,
friendliness of customer service, establishing standards can be difficult.
2.
Monitoring. Monitoring simply means
keeping an eye on what is happening. Today, it is not always a necessity,
especially because of the emergence of high-intelligence, computer-driven
technologies which can perform the monitoring task and give alarm signals when
something goes wrong. Even then, however, monitoring by humans remains extremely
important in some cases. Besides, machines are not infallible.
Some jobs just may not be
performed as well by the latest technology as by the manager. For example, cutting-edge
technology might be unable to read sadness in a worker. The human supervisor, on the other hand, can
quickly notice and address it before it begins to affect output. Even if no
action is immediately taken, step 4
is likely to be quicker and less time-consuming if the manager has some mental
recollection of how, in this example, an employee had looked.
And there are problems
that have to be spotted and corrected instantaneously, thereby requiring
second-by-second monitoring: like those occurring in a boxing or football contest,
making it necessary for the manager to shout out instructions all the time.
3.
Measuring and comparing. Measuring results and
comparing with set standards is done to find
out if everything is going well. The actual could turn out to be below or above
expectation. There is often an acceptable degree to which actual can exceed
standard or fall below.
Caution: just because the
standard has been outstripped does not mean celebration. Sometimes, higher is
as bad as lower. A business, therefore, cannot produce any more than its storage
facilities can hold or the market can readily buy. That is to say, control is for deficiencies as
well as excesses.
4.
Diagnosing problem. When outputs are in accord with standard, there is normally
no action taken (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, some say), even though some
might recommend measures to further strengthen the chances of attaining the
preferred outcome.
When results are outside
of allowable limits, steps are taken to determine what caused the deviation. The
problem area is expected to be either the standard itself or the way things are
done.
5.
Taking remedial action. Like step 3, this is split into two possibilities. If the problem is
wrong standard, a new standard is worked out. If it is wrong work formula, a new
formula is devised.
More specifically, the answer usually falls in any one, or combination of,
the following categories:
i.
Changing the manner or style in which things are done.
ii.
Changing the conditions under which things are done.
iii.
Changing the inputs or aids.
iv.
Changing the actor (machine or human), or
v.
Changing the standard.
Do note (Figure XY below) that if it
is the standard that has to be reviewed, step 1 serves as step 5 as well. It
also is step 1 in subsequent cycles. Step 5 is phase 1 in circulations
following the first.
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| Figure XY: The five-step control process. |
Rupert Chimfwembe 30
January 2017
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