In this module, we'll be talking about controlling, which is one of the five most essential tasks for all managers and supervisors. Controlling is the process by which supervisors measure results and compare them to standards, analyze deviations from standards, and take action to put results back on track. Control standards, or controls, help guide a supervisor in their department to achieve service or production goals and meet quality standards. Effective control improves communication, increases productivity and efficiency, helps in meeting annual goals, improves morale, promotes financial stability and legal compliance, improves quality, and prevents fraud and errors. Controls safeguard against misuse of resources, and it facilitates corrective measures. All managers are responsible for controlling. Good supervisors practice control on a daily basis by observing and listening to employees and by gathering and interpreting information. Control standards are the central focus of the controlling process. A control standard is a target against which subsequent performance is compared. Standards enabled managers to evaluate future, current, or past actions. They may indicate how well a product is made, how effectively the service is being delivered, or specific activities or behaviors. Standards are usually measured and stated in quantitative terms and expressed in standardized units of one kind or another, like millimeters, euros, dollars, barrels of oil, and so forth. Most standards include a bit of leeway or tolerance to indicate how much variation is acceptable before a problem is considered serious enough to investigate. For example, a store may allow the contents of the cashier's register to vary by 5 dollars in either direction. A deviation of 499 or less would be noted, but not investigated. Managers develop standards in all performance areas that are tied to organizational goals. The form of each standard depends on what is being measured and on the managerial level responsible for taking corrective action. Controlling is impossible without first completing the planning process. The reason is pretty obvious. Control is a little more than specific detailed forms of the goals and objectives set through the planning process. Without goals, controlling is impossible since there are no control standards by which to measure progress, and therefore no way to determine whether anything is going wrong. Supervisors are a crucial part of the control system and play two critical roles, monitor and fixer. As the monitor, supervisors watch to see whether activities, conditions, and results are meeting control standards. As the fixer, they use the problem-solving and decision-making skills and techniques we talked about earlier to recognize whether something has gone wrong or is likely to go wrong, decide how to correct it, and then develop and execute an action plan to fix it. Then they resumed the monitor rule to see if their solutions are affected. These two roles continue as needed, one after the other, until the task is complete. Control standards are typically set on a departmental basis, with each department being responsible for establishing its own controls. Departmental controls must be consistent with and advance the organization's overall goals and objectives. Organization size does matter. Large organizations may have staff members who specialize in establishing controls whereas in smaller organizations, supervisors often set standards themselves. Either way, supervisors always have a huge role to play. It is always there job to cut standards into chunks that are appropriate for each employee and activity. For example, a Sales Department Supervisor, who is charged with increasing sales by 10 percent, may translate that into a number of additional sales calls each employee must make per day to make the standard. Controls are typically based on three different criteria on their own or in any combination, past performance, high hopes, and systematic analysis. Basing control standards on past performance is essentially saying that what your department produced in the past is an appropriate standard. At first, that sounds okay. Certainly, you wouldn't want your department to do worse than before. The problem comes when the department has been underachieving and should have produced more than it actually did. In that case, control standards should be set higher than past performance. For example, consider the manager of a talented soccer team that won just 30 percent of its games last season. Obviously, that's pretty awful. It would be foolish to make winning 30 percent of your games in the next season your standard. Forty percent or more would make a lot more sense. Basing standards on high hopes is generally a poor idea too, since it often leads to unreasonably high unattainable standards. For example, setting a standard of winning a 100 percent of the soccer teams games next season would be unreasonable. Standards should always be both challenging and achievable. Otherwise, they will just annoy and discourage employees. After all, if you can't reach a goal, why try? Standards that are set after a systematic, careful analysis of facts are best. Information about the tasks and jobs involved, equipment, staffing, training, and other aspects can be measured and analyzed. For example, a department with 10 employees and new equipment might have a standard of 50 units per day, whereas an appropriate daily standard for that department with only eight employees might be 45 units.