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A Successful Travel Means a Successful Management

By: Marjorie A. Vega, MBA Student, Camarines Norte State College - Philippines

What is your travel goal? What encourages you to plan a travel vacation? How do you plan it? What are the things that you need to bring before you go and who are the persons responsible for it? Who do you join on such travel and how do you choose them? How would you determine if your travel is successful? The answers are to know if having an enjoyable travel vacation will be a success or not. These questions are also being asked inside an organization. You must need to identify the different factors that will affect your goals and ensure that your objectives are measurable, attainable and can be reinforce. In an organization, before a top management can start doing something he needs to create first the vision of the organization. In order for them to be successful of that vision, managers perform the five management functions: planning, organizing, staffing, motivating and controlling.

A narrow and long-term goals must need to be set for them to know what they really want to happen in the company and that where a planning takes place. Planning is developing a decision on how you will start to attain your pre-determined goals. However, planning is a continuing process. It can be a short term or a long term of planning. Plans change as companies continually reinvent themselves. To be successful, a joint effort from the members of the organizational must be developed. The statement, “No man is an island”, which express that any objectives will not be met if the manager exerts the effort alone. Rather, he needs to include and work hand-in-hand with co-employees to determine what needs to be accomplished.

According to Urwick, “Planning is a mental predisposition to do things in orderly way, to think before acting and to act in the light of facts rather than guesses”. To put in other words, this means before deciding to book a travel, one should think first what to do, how to do and who does checking. What to do means checking the date of availability of each member who will join, checking the weather on the prefer date, securing money to spend and deciding what to bring. How are you going to do them? Most of us prepare to do travel at least 2 months ahead of time or one year if it’s out of the country. Each member of the group sets meetings and timelines to finish all the things they need to do. Then they create itinerary of travel to maximize the time and place of the tour.

The same is true in organization, proper planning helps to utilize the company’s resources. Repeated errors which cause delays on the production of the company will be avoided. It also directs the company in realizing its future. An objective serve as a guide to measure the improvement of the company’s performance by asking what do we do, for whom do we do it and how do we excel? Developing the mission states what business the company is in now and will be in the future. Managers reexamine the mission to see if it needs to be changed. For whom do we do it? Most of the companies exist because of the increasing customer demands inside and outside the country that spend their resources in acquiring the products and services they produce. How will the company improve its performance? By creating effective strategies, company will determine what the customer wants, or how to add customer value and define the target market. Employees also develop growth strategies by means of mergers, acquisitions, take overs, joint ventures, and strategic alliances.

Another part of pursuing your travel goals is organizing. Organizing means, the process of delegating and coordinating tasks and resources to achieve objectives. There are lot of things that need to be work out and bring before the date of travel. But who will be responsible for these? Each member of the travel team must need to divide and delegate tasks. One of the members maybe assign to do their itinerary of travels. The other one maybe assign to buy foods and drinks, and the other one may serve as their driver if it is by land.

Moreover, organizing involves grouping activities and resources. With division of labor, employees have specialized jobs in a functional area such as accounting, production and sales. Coordination from each member of the team must ensure to all departments and individuals to work together to accomplish the company’s objectives. The process of delegating task to each member of an organization follows a different level of management hierarchy from the top executive managers down to their rank and file employees. An organizational chart depends on the arrangement of positions and interrelationship among departments.

“As with any journey, who you travel with can be more important than your destination”. It only says that no matter how beautiful the places are but you do not enjoy the company of the people they are with, it would not be a satisfying vacation. It is not just where you travel, it is who you experience your travel with. So choosing a right people to join will make all of you enjoy the rest of your vacation. The success of the company is not on how large the capital or how beautiful their building is, but the people who compose the organization that help together to attain the vision of the company. Before an employee get the desired position in the company, he/she must undergo the staffing process.

Staffing means, a process by which a firm ensures that it has the right number of people and the right kind of people at the right places at the right time, doing work for which they are economically most useful. Human Resource Department is responsible in doing recruitment for the company. They identify prospective candidates for a specific position. It can be an inside and outside sourcing as long as they can perform the job description that they will assign to them. Nowadays, companies look for applicants by means of using different websites such as jobstreets, jobsdb, LinkedIn and other social media pages such as Facebook. This will make the HR easily reaches out for aspiring applicants anywhere they are located.

Once an employee got the position, the process will not stop there. His performance will be measured to ensure that his work is being done according to its functions and that he is doing an improvement with their jobs. Large or small companies also provide benefits and appraisal with his employees. These depends primarily on the resources that the company has. It can be through a promotion, same position but with increase of salary or it can be through bonuses and gift checks.

But in an organization, it is not enough that you only hire and ask employee to do their jobs. They need lots of motivation to perform their job well and satisfy on what they get from the company, just like what motivates you to plan a travel. Some of the big companies provide a vacation leave. This is one of their ways in motivating their employees by giving an opportunity for them to relax and get away from a stressful works in the office. Some companies identify the needs of their employees like need physical, psychological and social aspects. It will motivate them to work hard and stay long for the company.

How would you determine if your travel is successful? The answer for this is what we called controlling. It is the process of checking whether or not proper progress is being made towards the objectives and goals. During the preparation of the things need to be done before the travel, unexpected problems can’t be avoided. Like some of the joiners back out because of sudden important matters need to attend to or not enough money to produce. By identifying those factors, you must prepare an alternative plans to solve the problems. To measure the completeness of company’s goals, each members of the organization needs to establish a standard performance. And from that standard, the actual performance of the company that they have set is compared. The variances between the two will be the basis of top management to create strategies on how to correct it.

Management functions are essential not only inside the company but also in our everyday living. We cannot achieve what we want in our life if we do not have a clear direction to be set that will guide as on achieving it. The success of any organization, company, business, family and the like are composed of different factors and full of responsibilities to build their trust in continuing what they have started.

It says, “Live with No excuses and Travel with No regrets”. Once you start doing something, own it. Do everything to make your goals achievable, not just for yourself but also for other people who depend on you. Fill your life with travel and adventures and let your members join in your road to success.

References:

1.) Robert N. Lussier, Ph.D. “Management Fundamentals,Concepts,Applications, Skill Development” Third Edition,pp.15-493.

2.) International Institute of Management & Technology Studies, “Principles of Management:m, pp. 49-1-06, pp. 195-219.