"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right thing.”
-Peter Drucker
Business experts like Peter Drucker, Stephen Covey and Tom Peters have discussed and written about the differences between management and leadership for decades. These quips are then repeated and often used to pit leaders and managers against one another with leadership always winning this imaginary competition.
I find it odd that we look at management as being at odds with or second best to leadership. We don't do this with other professions.
Imagine theorists and practical experts commenting on nursing versus physical therapy in the same way. If someone has been in a car accident, had a stroke or experienced a workplace injury, both a nurse and a physical therapist could help with healing and recovery—in different ways.
Management and leadership are important in business, and each has a vital role to play in achieving strategic, tactical and operational goals. It is more helpful and accurate to examine management in terms of its purpose and core organizational responsibilities rather than compare it to leadership.
6 Main functions of management
Management exists to support individual contributors, teams, and the organization as a whole through setting strategic goals, allocating and optimizing resources, coordinating and collaborating, solving organizational problems, monitoring performance and developing and training employees.
In other words, managers wear as many hats as a person can within an organization, and their impact touches every functional area of the business.
Here's a breakdown of the primary functions of management and examples of what each one can look like within an organization.
1. To set strategic goals
Many people relegate this function to leadership, but strategic planning is a critical management task.
For example, Kyra, a manager at a clean energy company, gathers her team of solar power experts at the start of each quarter to review the organization’s objectives for the year and smaller goals to achieve during the current quarter.
In the meeting, she outlines four key objectives that she helped develop as a member of a planning phase team of managers, assistant directors and directors. During the meeting, Kyra’s direct reports are encouraged to ask questions about the goals and Kyra responds positively, confidently and with a focus on a clear direction for the team.
A successful manager makes a strategic plan to accomplish each goal the organization hands down. Kyra’s employees leave the meeting ready to contribute to the company's growth.
2. To allocate resources
Many management functions center around making the best use of any resources you and your team have. This could include everything from efficient use of the quarterly budget to researching the most effective project management tools.
For example, let's say Stephan is a manager in manufacturing. He spent several days at the end of Q2 reviewing the budget for Q3. After identifying possible areas where spending could be reduced, he called in team leads to confirm the plan to reduce resources in these areas and reallocate those funds to meet the department’s staffing needs. He also wants to upgrade an existing technology that has been the cause of slowdowns in production.
This example of allocating resources to areas where they will do the most good is only the first step of effective management. When he calls in his team, direct reports and colleagues, he also builds relationships and improves morale.
3. To coordinate collaboration
Businesses are more efficient and more innovated when individual contributors and teams coordinate efforts.
When employees and departments share resources and collaborate to solve problems, the whole organizational structure benefits. But these collaborative efforts take intentional planning. Successful managers take on this organizing function of management when it will be most beneficial, while also keeping employees focused on their own work.
Managers act as bridge between departments or liaison between leadership and workers. Their efforts result in reduced redundancy and increased productivity which moves the entire organization closer to the organization’s larger goals.
Imagine a team of marketers managed by Jeff.
Jeff’s team of marketers work in isolation to develop a new campaign that will appeal to loyal customers and grab the attention of potential customers. The same marketers handle each campaign, each new launch and wind up having repeat conversations. This is not the way to make progress.
If Jeff’s marketing professionals instead collaborate with Magda’s customer service reps and Lin's sales team, then the marketers can see the product, the people and the pricing through very different eyes.
Brainstorming with people who aren’t already loyal to an old idea can change the team’s perspective and the direction of the marketing campaign. Businesses need managers who see the benefits of collaborating across functional areas to break out of doing business the same way we’ve always done it.
As side benefits, the customer service reps are educated on the messaging that the marketing team creates and the research that informs those messages. The sales professionals also get a look at how the CSRs support the business by speaking with customers who have small and large problems with the product or who need to be educated on product features after the sale is complete. Managers exist to create these connections.
4. To educate leadership
To move from the current state to the desired state of any company, decision-makers need accurate and complete information.
This is one of the reasons middle management exists. These managers take large and often messy data, and analyze it so that others in the business can use it to save time, reduce costs or increase sales. Without managers, leaders or upper management would often make decisions based on their individual opinions or with incomplete or biased data. Solving problems or making decisions with only some pieces of the puzzle on the table puts organizations at unnecessary risk.
Managers ensure that all the pieces are on the table so that risks, which cannot be eliminated, can be managed and minimized.
5. To monitor performance
It is easy to argue that people are the biggest asset an organization has. Making sure that people are working to their potential is one of the operative functions of management.
Attracting and hiring the best people for each role in an organization is crucial to the business’s success, but this won’t matter if those talented people aren’t given clear performance metrics, aren’t supported in meeting those metrics, and don’t receive feedback on their successes and areas for improvement.
Managers often use tools such as dashboards to monitor performance in real time or at least at regular intervals. They use the performance data to reward achievements and to support those not meeting expectations with developmental feedback.
A manager who stays current on performance across a team or department will notice trends or long-term patterns that require one-on-one coaching, additional team coaching or third-party training.
Consistent performance monitoring can help managers be proactive, preventing drops in productivity, quality or efficiency before they happen.
6. To train employees
Training and development has obvious benefits (like producing a more skilled and knowledgeable workforce). Providing training and development also results in higher morale and higher retention.
Employees stay when they are earning and learning because beyond earning a paycheck, people want to grow professionally. Most people embrace opportunities to feel more confident and competent doing higher level or more difficult work.
Training and development programs are complicated, time-consuming, and expensive to build and implement. When department managers or human resources professionals work to create training and development programs that speak to real gaps in the workforce, the programs are seen as a benefit of employment, and they provide an attractive ROI rather than being another cost to the business.
Good employee training should meet specific gaps. Project managers and middle managers have the best knowledge of employees and their roles in selecting the appropriate participants for learning opportunities. This operational planning is also another example of resource allocation.
Managers in human resources or corporate labor and development understand the connection between development and employee retention. They also understand the impact that training and development has on aligning employee goals and organizational goals, on meeting legal compliance, and on reducing errors, injuries, and disengagement.
For more on this, check out Why Is Everyone Talking About Upskilling and Reskilling?
Can you think of other functions of management?
Think of any work environment you've been in before. Whether you had good experiences with management or negative ones, what would you add to these primary functions of management? One of the most critical management skills you can have is the ability to adapt and adjust to each situation that arises in your workplace.
Management is essential to a successful business as managers provide direction and practical hands-on work across departments and levels. Far from being second to or less than leadership, management drives organizational growth by empowering individuals, supporting leaders and establishing processes.
Plus, managers have the greatest sway in how their teams perform. To make the biggest impact on their company, Empowering Teams Should Be a Manager's Top Priority: Here's How to Do It
