What Management Is and Who Is a Manager

Management gets used as a loose word. People call themselves managers, talk about managing teams, and complain about being managed. Behind the looseness is a precise definition that helps when the everyday word stops being useful. Once a school head knows what management is, she can tell whether what she is doing in a given moment is management or something else, and adjust.

A working definition

The definition that travels through most management literature is short:

Management is the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.

Four words in that sentence are worth pulling out.

1. Function. Management is something one does, not a status. A teacher can do management without being called a manager.
2. Coordinates. Management is about putting effort together. Two teachers each doing their own lesson plan is not yet coordinated; a syllabus that aligns their lessons is.
3. Goals. Management is purposeful. Movement without a goal is busyness, not management.
4. Efficiently and effectively. Two different tests, both required. Efficiency is using few resources. Effectiveness is meeting the goal. A school that uses few resources but does not teach the children well is efficient and ineffective; a school that teaches well at impossible cost is effective and inefficient.

A useful test of any management activity is to ask: which resources did this coordinate, towards which goal, with what efficiency, and what effect? An activity that fails any one of those questions is something other than management. It might be communication, supervision, or maintenance, but it is not management.

What a manager is

If management is the function, a manager is the person who carries it out:

The person responsible for supervising the use of an organisation’s resources in fulfilment of the organisation’s goals and objectives.

Three points sit inside that definition.

1. Responsibility. A manager is accountable. If the goal is not met, the manager is the person who has to answer.
2. Supervision of resources. Not direct delivery. The manager does not teach the lesson herself; she ensures that the conditions for the lesson to be taught are in place.
3. Tied to the organisation’s goals. A manager’s job is defined by what the organisation is trying to do. A grade-3 reading coordinator’s responsibility is to deliver grade-3 reading mastery. A finance manager’s is to keep the books and pay the bills.

A common confusion: a senior teacher with a title is sometimes called a manager but has no responsibility for resources or for goal delivery. She is doing more teaching, not management. Whether someone is “really” a manager is settled by what she is accountable for, not what her business card says.

The resources a manager has to work with

The same handout lists what counts as a resource. Worth reading carefully, because a manager who does not see something as a resource cannot manage it.

Two items deserve attention.

1. Parents as a resource. In school management, parents are often treated as people to inform, not as resources to mobilise. A grade-3 reading drive that does not enrol parents in nightly reading at home is missing a major resource.
2. Loyalty as a resource. Long-serving teachers, parents who trust the school, and students who keep returning year on year are an asset that is hard to rebuild once lost. A management decision that damages trust is destroying a resource even if no money is spent.

A manager who counts only money and equipment as resources will under-perform a manager who sees all seven categories.

Management as a skill

Naming management as a function rather than a title has one more implication: it is a learnable skill. A teacher who has never been called a manager can manage well. A formally titled manager can do the job poorly.

Three early indicators that someone is doing management well, regardless of title:

1. She can name what she is coordinating. Not “the team” or “things” but “the work of three grade-3 teachers towards the reading mastery target”.
2. She can tell efficient from effective. If asked which she sacrificed in this week’s decisions, she can answer.
3. She tracks resources, not just activities. She knows what was used, by whom, and whether the use was justified by the result.

A school where the deputy head can answer all three is in good management hands. A school where the deputy can only describe activities is being supervised, not managed.

Flashcard

What four words define management, and why is each important?

Tap to reveal

Answer

Coordinates, people, resources, efficiently and effectively.

Management is the function that coordinates the efforts of people to accomplish goals using available resources, efficiently and effectively.

1. Function, not title.
2. Coordinates: puts effort together.
3. Resources include people, parents, money, equipment, and loyalty.
4. Efficient (uses few resources) and effective (meets the goal) are different tests; both required.

Management is everywhere in a school

A school does management even when it does not name it as such. A grade-level coordinator who decides which teacher takes which section is managing. A clerk who decides how to sequence paperwork to keep the office moving is managing. A teacher who plans her lessons around six finite class periods is managing.

Management happens inside an organisation: a structured unit of people that a manager coordinates. The shape and performance of that organisation define what counts as good management.