4 • Planning and Goal Setting
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Better Techniques of Control
Controlling involves holding people accountable for their results and measuring whether or not these results have been achieved. If you want to practice supervision, you have to control. In order to control you have to explain to people what it is they are expected to achieve and what steps are necessary for the achievement to take place. Sometimes employees help set their own goals and methods. In either case, specifying goals and how to attain them means that planning has taken place. Control is thus only possible as a follow-up to planning. No planning, no control.
One employee cogently illustrated the relationship between planning and control. She noted during a job attitude interview: "My boss com¬plains that I'm not doing my job. But so far he hasn’t told me what my job is supposed to be.”
HOW PLANNING GUIDES ACTIVITY
If an organization followed planning to the ultimate degree, every action taken by every worker would be designed to achieve an important goal or objective. Everybody from the proverbial floor sweeper to the chief ex¬ecutive officer would perform every work activity with an organizational goal clearly in mind.
David Hampton refers to this phenomenon as the network of objec¬tives.6 A goal is set at the top of the organization, and everybody else in the organization establishes a set of objectives to help reach the goal. The best way to reach an objective is for every action to contribute toward that objective (or goal). Figure 4-1 illustrates both the network of objec¬tives and how small, specific actions are carried out with the objective in mind.
A plan-conscious supervisor examines all actions performed and asks, “How does what I am doing right now contribute to a goal I am trying to reach?” One particular activity may contribute to reaching an important objective at one time. At another time the same activity may be a waste of time. One day office supervisor Janet spends five minutes chatting with another supervisor in the parking lot. Janet is basically enjoying the sun¬shine and passing the time of day. The next day Janet spends five minutes chatting with another supervisor in the parking lot. However, this time she is performing an important work function. She is trying to build a good relationship with a supervisor from another department. In order to
6David R. Hampton, Contemporary Management (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1977), p. 130.
