Five essential management functions in a software marketing department

Foundational Management Concepts

Introduction
There are a number of critical management functions that are essential to running a business. These include planning, organizing, staffing, leadership and control. Each of these is important in its own way. This paper will take a look at each of them in turn, providing an operational definition. To frame the issue, the example of a marketing department at a software company will be used. This provides an opportunity to use specific examples of each of these aspects of management. The company can be assumed to be a late-stage startup with eight figure sales and a marketing team of 12-15 people.

Planning
Planning is a critical management element. The reason why planning is considered to be the primary role of management is that everything else is about executing on the plans that have been created. In non-management roles, people largely do what they are instructed to do. While is probably oversimplification, the basic breakdown is that management plans and everybody else executes. Goals are set by organizational leadership, and the role of a manager is to make the plans that allow the organization to achieve its goals (Satyendra, 2015).
In our marketing department, the goals will be focused on lead generation. The manager then needs to make particular plans around that. For example, how many events the team attends, what channels it will use for social media, advertising, and other forms of demand generation, are all going to be part of the plans. Then, the manager will need to determine how many people are working on each aspect of those plans. The planning process therefore quickly moves to considering how to allocate the department’s resources in order to achieve the objectives that have been set out by the company’s leadership (Hill, 2019).
Hill (2019) also notes that one of the important parts of planning is the assessment and management of risk. The manager of the marketing department will have estimates for how many leads that each activity will generate. But these are future predictions, so there is a certain amount of uncertainty. The manager therefore must have plans in place to deal with the possibility that some parts of the plan will underperform. There will need to be backup plans that can be put into place, such as adjusting some of the tactics, reallocating resources, and the like. Being able to work under conditions of risk and uncertainty is definitely one of the more important parts of planning – because no plan goes off as expected.
Another important aspect of the planning process is the ability to communicate the plans to other people. Having a plan in your head is not good enough. The marketing manager, for example, has to be able to answer questions from executive leadership about plans, and if necessary to defend decision-making processes. The manager also needs to be able to communicate to the rest of the team, not just about what they are supposed to do in their daily work, but about the plan as a whole. The ability to communicate this effectively is part of the leadership process, because when people understand how they are contributing to a bigger plan, then they are more likely to have a higher level of motivation.

Organizing
The next element of management is organizing. This is the part where the manager starts to analyze what resources are available to execute the plans, and then starts to arrange and deploy those resources in that direction. Organizing starts with budgeting, because all management activities are done within the constraints of a budget. Then, an assessment of where the organization currently stands is a logical next step in organizing. This lets the manager know what changes might need to be made.
The process of organizing starts with organizing people. Usually, this means organizing the different talent within the organization, making sure that the talent available to the organization or team aligns with the activities that need to be undertaken in order to meet the objectives. Getting the right people into the right roles is one of the key jobs of a manager. This might also mean building the right teams that have the optimal mix of talent, leadership and other attributes (Richards, 2019).
Another aspect of organizing is organizing projects (Richards, 2019). In order to meet the objectives, there needs to be the right projects undertaken. Typically, an organization has scarce resources, and this means that the manager must choose which projects to undertake, and which ones to avoid, or postpone. Making sure the right blend of resources is utilized is definitely something that helps a team to perform better.
An aspect of organizing that is often overlooked is the delegation skill. The manager of the organization or team is often not in a position to do it all themselves, and therefore must delegate specific responsibilities, or in some cases delegates team leadership to help ensure that all of the different projects are completed. In a smaller team, like our hypothetical marketing department, there might only be a couple of different teams that the manager delegates to, but ultimately being able to find the right people to whom to hand off responsibility is an important part of being a manager. If you do not hand off this responsibility, it will be much more difficult to manage all of the different outputs and resources effectively.

Staffing
Of course, a manager is responsible for the hiring, firing and training of staff. In order to make the best use of organizational resources, which are often scarce, it is important that a manager is able to get the right people on the team. This is not always easy. Theoretically, let’s say that the manager starts with a blank slate. The manager still needs to identify what combination of roles and/or skill sets are going to allow them to execute effectively. Then, they have to work with the human resources department to write job descriptions that attract the best candidates, and then subsequently identify candidates. Some managers do a lot of hiring and get quite good at it, but other managers maybe don’t do as much hiring, and are less good at finding the right people.
Once the right people are hired, they still need to be trained, which is another key element of staffing. Again, if you want people working effectively, they need to have the right skills, and that is not always possible to acquire during the hiring process. So the manager needs to know what skills are musts, and what can then be trained. Then, the training has to actually happen, and that means that the manager needs to have a training plan in place to ensure that the employees who are hired are brought up to speed as quickly as possible.
The third element of staffing is firing. This is an unfortunate reality of staffing, but there are times when you simply cannot continue with someone. Either they are not performing, and the performance management techniques are not working, or they no longer have a skill set that the organization needs. It is actually important to ensure that firing is done without the bounds of the laws, because wrongful termination can be quite expensive. But ultimately, being able to let someone go who no longer is contributing is something that a manager has to be able to do, in order that their organization is operating at its best.
One of the more challenging aspects of staffing, which speaks to other functions like organizing and leading as well, is staffing in times of labor shortages. In some professions and industries, this is fairly common. What do you do when you can’t find enough people, or the people you find simply aren’t good enough to get the job done? Weiner (2016) notes that this is a significant issue that leaders face. They must juggle the work that people do, retrain some employees, re-prioritize items and that sort of thing in order to ensure that the resources that are available are being used to the best possible effect. It is also worth noting that a manager sometimes has to manage expectations upwards – ensuring that if there are critical issues that get in the way of the work being done, such as a staffing shortage, that their superiors are informed of this, and are not expecting the unrealistic. In fact, there are times when the people above the manager can help with an issue. In the situation of a staffing shortage, the person above might have people who are being underutilized elsewhere who can help. Or not, but finding out is definitely one of the roles of the manager.

Leading
There are many aspects to leading, but it is a critical component of being a manager. In fact, much of the literature stresses that leading and managing are two different things, where managing is about resources and leading is about people. Another way of looking at it is that managing is telling people what to do whereas leading is the process of influencing people (Bradt, 2015). Influencing occurs when you allow the employees to make the decisions. You can provide input, and guide them in the decision-making process, but ultimately you are allowing them the freedom to succeed and fail on their own.
Vision is almost always considered a key element in leading (Kerr, 2015). Management is more of handling the day-to-day, the execution part, but vision is forward-looking, and leaders are looking and moving forward, constantly. Leading means not only having a vision, but communicating it effectively to the team, and getting buy-in. A functional department manager might have some vision, but also might be called upon to communicate a vision that has been developed higher up in the organization. Either way, the ability to communicate a vision and to build it into other things like organizing and staffing is a key component of leading that all managers should have. There is something abstract about vision, but the manager who is effective can take the abstract ideas and turn them into concrete reality (Kerr, 2015).
Another aspect of leading is motivation. The two main types of motivation are extrinsic and intrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is actually something a manager can influence, by ensuring that they hire for it. But a manager should also lead by providing extrinsic motivation. This can be mapping out a career path for the employees, or through a more traditional carrot-and-stick sort of approach. But also, a manager can create motivation by removing barriers to progress, putting the employees in a better position to succeed. Loder (2015) notes that providing context - a why behind the actions – can be a highly effective form of motivation. When people understand why they are doing what they are doing, they are more likely to be motivated to succeed at that action. One of the things about being in a position of leadership is that people look to you to provide this – you unlock the power of the entire team by unlocking the power of each person individually when you are able to effectively motivate.

Control
Of course, a manager is also going to have constraints, such as budget. They need to make sure that their plans are being executed properly, and that means control. There are a few important aspects to the control function. One is that the manager needs to have data. This means having visibility. It is impossible to control without knowing how the organization is performing. The manager therefore needs to have specific systems in place to measure outputs, and to measure inputs. THe control function, naturally, means adjusting some of the inputs in order to improve the outputs, so both of those things have to be measured. Sometimes this means setting up software or otherwise tools that can measure outputs. Sometimes it just means watching what’s going on and being able to identify inputs and outputs qualitatively. But however it is done, a manager has to know what’s going on in order to properly evaluate whether the plans that were put in place are being followed, and whether the objectives that the organization are being met. Both of those, tools and supervision are an important part of the control function (Spacey, 2018).
Management control can also be task-based. This is particularly important when employees have not yet demonstrated total competency at something. This is the basic quality control function. Checking outputs to ensure that they are as expected, or up to standard, is an important part of control. Making adjustments when need be, in order to bring things up to standard, is the other part of the management function where supervision and task-based quality control are concerned.
There are more aspects to control as well that are worth discussing. Some control systems have to be put in place before action is taken. Budgeting is a good example of a common control system that is put in place in advance. For example, a marketing department might receive a certain budget for its activities, and have to meet its goals with that budget. The budget then needs to be allocated by the manager to the different activities that are going to be undertaken. The way the budget is allocated is a form of control, because it sets some constraints on activities, and determines what the organizational capabilities are going to be. What typically would happen is that a budget is then checked, say after every quarter, to determine whether or not it was met. Budget variances are investigated, for example, to determine why too much money was spent, or why the cost per lead maybe was too high, or whichever. Identifying sources of deviation can be an important means of control. Even though it is after the fact, it is a way to identify when things are being done wrong, so that corrective action can be taken.

Conclusions
There are a number of different critical functions for managers, and in order for the manager to be effective, they have to be able to perform each of those functions well. Planning is a critical aspect of management that involves looking to the future, to try to analyze past performance and then predict future performance. But a manager has to be more than plans and data, the manager also has to lead people. That means taking the vision for the organization and finding ways to communicate that vision to people in order to create motivation, but then also to find ways to translate that vision into specific tasks, and then assign those specific tasks to the different people.
A manager also needs to have the control function in place. This is what allows the manager to make adjustments, because control requires an analysis of what has happened (or is happening) and then evaluate that against the plans and goals, and make adjustments from there. Organizing is another key function, and that means organizing teams, as well as other resources. Then, on top of all this, a manager needs to be good with the people side of things. Not just motivating, but being able to hire people, fire people when need be, to discipline, to train, to motivate and to inspire. All of these functions are elements of the management role, and an effective manager ultimately has to be good at them all.





References

Bradt, G. (2015) The fundamental difference between leading and managing: influence versus direction. Forbes. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgebradt/2015/11/24/the-fundamental-difference-between-leading-and-managing-influence-versus-direction/#1b8cb1033c73

Hill, B. (2019) The importance of planning in an organization. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/importance-planning-organization-1137.html

Kerr, J. (2015) Leader or manager? These 10 important distinctions can help you out. Inc Magazine. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from https://www.inc.com/james-kerr/leading-v-managing-ten-important-distinctions-that-can-help-you-to-become-better.html

Loder, V. (2015) How great leaders motivate their teams. Forbes. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from https://www.forbes.com/sites/vanessaloder/2015/02/25/how-great-leaders-motivate/#1ed220a82a55

Richards, L. (2019) Management and organizing techniques. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from https://smallbusiness.chron.com/management-organization-techniques-2890.html

Satyendra (2015) Planning – a management function. ISPAT Guru. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from http://ispatguru.com/planning-a-management-function/

Spacey, J. (2018) 20 types of management controls. Simplicable. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from https://simplicable.com/new/management-controls

Weiner, L. (2016) 3 strategies for managing staffing shortages. Health Leaders. Retrieved March 2, 2019 from https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/strategy/3-strategies-managing-staffing-shortages