You’ll accomplish this task through management: the process of planning, organizing, directing, and controlling resources to achieve specific goals. A plan enables you to take your business concept beyond the idea stage. It does not, however, get the work done. You have to organize things if you want your plan to become a reality. You have to put people and other resources in place to make things happen. And because your note-taking venture is supposed to be better off with you in charge, you need to be a leader who can motivate your people to do well. Finally, to know whether things are in fact going well, you’ll have to control your operations—that is, measure the results and compare them with the results that you laid out in your plan. Figure 6.3: The Role of Planning gives you a good idea of the interrelationship between planning and the other functions that managers perform.

Functions of Management

If you visit any small or large company, not-for-profit organization, or government agency, you’ll find managers doing the same things you’d be doing to run your note-taking business—planning, organizing, directing, and controlling. In the rest of the chapter, we’ll look at these four interrelated functions in detail.