Lecture: Leading the Work: Management & Leadership
Lecture script · about 15–20 minutes spoken · Week 10
Opening
Think about the best shift supervisor, coach, or group-project leader you've ever had. They probably had a plan, made sure everyone knew their part, kept spirits up, and noticed early when something slipped. Now think about the worst one. The gap between them usually isn't effort. It's how they managed and how they led.
Whether you end up running a shift in a hospital emergency room, coordinating volunteers at a community food bank, leading a software team, or growing a coffee cart of your own, you'll do the same four things. You'll plan the work, organize people to do it, lead them through it, and check the results against a standard.
Here's where we are. In Week 8, Midterm Review & the Growth Question, we drew the coffee cart's organization chart at two sizes: 2 people on 2 levels at one cart, and 7 people on 3 levels at two carts. In Week 9, Reaching More Customers: Distribution, Promotion & Digital Commerce, we worked out how the growing cart reaches more buyers. A chart shows who reports to whom. It doesn't say who decides, who keeps the team going, or who notices when things slip. That's management, and that's this lecture.
I'll start with the four functions of management, then the kinds of plans a business makes. Then we'll organize the two carts, meet three leadership styles, pull management and leadership apart, learn how a manager checks results, and finish with the skills a manager needs at each level.
1. Four kinds of work
Picture the cart's owner on the evening the second cart gets the green light. A list starts forming. Where will the new cart park? Who'll run it? How do both carts make the same drink the same way? And how will anyone know if the new cart is doing well?
Every item on that list belongs to one of four kinds of work. Here's the big term first. Management is the work of directing an organization's people, money, and materials toward its goals, conventionally taught as four functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling.
Let's take them one at a time, on the growing cart. Planning is deciding what the business wants to achieve and how it'll get there. For the cart, that's planning the second cart. Organizing is arranging people, positions, and resources so the work in the plan can get done. That's organizing the morning shift across two carts. Leading is guiding and influencing people so they work toward the goals. The owner leads the 2 cart leads. And controlling is setting a standard, measuring results, comparing the two, and correcting course when a result misses its target. Each cart lead keeps a daily count of drinks poured out.
One warning about this model. It's a classroom model for sorting work, not a timetable. You don't plan in the spring and control in the fall. On a single morning, a cart lead might plan the next day's order, organize a break, lead a new barista, and check the waste count.
Pause and try this. The owner decides the second cart will park near the farmers' market on weekends. Which of the four functions is that?
Ask what question the task answers.
Here's the answer. It's planning, because the owner is deciding what the business will do and where.
Plan, organize, lead, control. All four, every day.
2. Plans come in sizes
Here's a plain idea. Some plans you live with for years, and some matter only until tomorrow. Choosing a career path is one kind of plan. Deciding what to pack for tomorrow is another. A business works the same way.
The four types of planning differ by how far ahead they look and how much of the business they cover. Strategic planning is long-range planning, usually one to five years ahead, that sets the direction of the whole organization. For the cart, that's opening a second cart, which costs 20,000 dollars, the same as the first cart and its equipment. How to pay for it waits for Week 14.
Tactical planning is planning for less than a year that turns a strategic plan into specific steps for one part of the organization. That's the second cart's first season of menus and parking spots. Operational planning is day-to-day planning, like the shift schedule for the next morning. And contingency planning is planning for what the organization will do if something goes wrong. Remember the weakness in Week 1's SWOT, the cart's one espresso machine? A contingency plan says what happens when it breaks down mid-rush.
Every plan needs an aim. A mission statement is a short statement of what an organization does, whom it serves, and why. The cart's could be: serve fresh, made-to-order espresso drinks to people where they work and shop. An objective is a specific result the organization means to reach by a set time, written so someone can check it later. Selling at least 12,000 drinks at the first cart this year, its break-even, is an objective. A community food bank works the same way. Its mission might be making sure no family in town goes without groceries, and one objective might be adding a distribution day each week by the end of the year.
That ties back to Week 3. The business plan's sections, from the executive summary to the financial projections, should all serve the same mission.
Pause and try this. "What we'll do if the espresso machine breaks during the morning rush." Which type of plan is that?
Notice the words "what if."
Here's the answer. It's a contingency plan, because it prepares for something going wrong.
Years, months, tomorrow, what if. Not one plan, but four.
3. Organizing two carts
Picture early morning at two carts in two different places. Each cart needs someone in charge, someone at the counter, and someone at the espresso machine. Organizing is matching those people to that work.
Let's count, using the chart from Week 8. There's 1 owner, plus 2 cart leads, plus 2 baristas under each lead. That's 1 plus 2 plus 4, or 7 people. That count of people is the business's headcount. Each cart's team is 1 lead and 2 baristas, so 3 people. Two teams of 3 make 6, and the owner makes 7.
The chart has 3 levels. The owner's span of control is 2, the two cart leads. Each lead's span of control is also 2, the two baristas. Here's the trap I want you to see coming. The owner is in charge of everyone, so it's tempting to say the owner's span is 7, or 6. But span of control counts only the people who report directly. The baristas report to their leads.
Organizing also has to fit the work to the equipment. If each cart runs one espresso machine, as the first one does, each cart can make 30 drinks an hour. Over a four-hour morning rush, that's 120 drinks at one cart, and 240 across the two.
Pause and try this. How many people report directly to the owner at two carts?
Count only one line down the chart.
Here's the answer. Two, the two cart leads, because the baristas report to their leads, not to the owner.
Count the boxes for headcount, and count one line down for span.
4. Three ways to lead
Let me tell you about three leaders on the same afternoon. In a hospital emergency room, a charge nurse gives short, fast orders as an ambulance pulls in. At a community food bank, a volunteer coordinator asks the volunteers to help plan the next food drive. On a software team, a team lead tells experienced developers what a new feature has to do, then lets them decide how to build it. All three are leading well. They're leading differently.
Leadership is influencing people to work toward a goal, whether or not the person doing the influencing holds a management title. A leadership style is the usual way a leader makes decisions and involves the group. The classic three-way split traces to Lewin, Lippitt, and White's 1939 study of group climates.
Autocratic leadership is a style in which the leader makes the decision alone and tells the group what to do. That's the charge nurse, because seconds matter. Participative leadership, also called democratic, is a style in which the leader involves the group in a decision before it's made. That's the volunteer coordinator, because volunteers give their time freely and know their neighborhood. Free-rein leadership, also called laissez-faire, is a style in which the leader sets broad limits and the group makes its own decisions within them. That's the software lead, because the developers know the code best.
Courses use different labels for these, so hold on to the ideas: I decide, we decide, you decide. And no one style is right everywhere. A charge nurse who stops for a vote during a crisis puts patients at risk.
The cart's owner uses all three. The owner sets the 5-dollar price alone, because the break-even rests on it. The owner asks the two cart leads before choosing the weekly special. And the owner lets each lead arrange the morning shift within the plan.
Pause and try this. The owner asks both cart leads for ideas before picking the weekly special. Which style is that?
Ask who takes part in the decision.
Here's the answer. It's participative leadership, because the owner involves the group before deciding.
Match the style to the moment: the time pressure, the group's experience, and the stakes.
5. Managing isn't leading
Picture two cart leads. The first writes a perfect schedule, orders cups on time, and tracks every count. But the baristas do the bare minimum, and two of them want to quit. The second lead is warm and inspiring, and the baristas love their shifts. But that cart runs out of milk twice a week. Neither lead is doing the whole job.
Here's the distinction. Managing is planning, organizing, and controlling the work: the schedule, the supplies, the counts. Leading is influencing people toward that work: earning their effort and their trust. The first lead manages well and leads poorly. The second does the reverse.
One person usually does both, and the cart leads do both every morning. Checking that the milk order arrived is managing. Thanking a barista by name for handling a long line calmly is leading. Moving a barista to the counter when the line grows is managing again.
Pause and try this. A lead explains to the baristas why the cart counts waste, so they see why it matters. Is that managing or leading?
Ask whether it's about the work or the people.
Here's the answer. It's leading, because it influences how the baristas feel about the work.
Run the schedule, and win the effort. Two jobs, one person.
6. Checking the results
Picture the first cart's lead at closing time with a notebook. Two numbers go in: drinks sold and drinks poured out. On their own, those numbers don't tell you much. You need something to compare them with.
That something is a standard, the target a result is measured against when a manager controls the work. Controlling runs in four steps. Set a standard. Measure the result. Compare the two. And correct course if the result misses.
For the first cart, a natural standard comes from Week 7. The break-even was 12,000 drinks a year, over 250 operating days. Divide one by the other and you get 48 drinks a day. That's the first cart's break-even pace, the number of units it has to sell each operating day to reach its break-even over the year. So each day's count of drinks sold is compared with 48.
The waste count works the same way. Each poured-out drink still uses its 2-dollar variable cost, and it brings in none of the 5-dollar price. So a rising waste count is a cost growing with no sale behind it.
Here's the trap. "Control" sounds like a tight grip, so people hear micromanaging: hovering over every barista. But controlling looks at the count, not over anyone's shoulder. And one rainy morning below 48 isn't a crisis. A good manager looks for the cause, and for a pattern across several days, before changing anything.
Pause and try this. At the first cart, what standard is the daily count of drinks sold compared with?
Think back to the break-even in Week 7.
Here's the answer. It's compared with 48 drinks a day, because 12,000 drinks over 250 operating days is 48 a day.
Standard, measure, compare, correct. Never micromanage.
7. Skills by level
Picture the first cart's lead on a busy morning. The grinder jams, and the lead clears it in a minute. A new barista gets flustered, and the lead calms them down and shows them the next step. Now picture the owner that evening, weighing whether a second cart fits the plan at all. Both of them manage. They lean on different skills.
Managerial skills are the abilities a manager uses to do the job, commonly sorted as technical, human, and conceptual skills, with the mix shifting by the manager's level. The sort follows Katz (1955), "Skills of an Effective Administrator."
Technical skills are the ability to do the specific work of a job, like pulling an espresso shot or clearing a jammed grinder. Human skills are the ability to work with and through people, like coaching a new barista or settling a scheduling clash. And conceptual skills are the ability to see the whole organization, how its parts fit, and how a decision in one part affects the others.
The cart lead is a first-line manager: a manager who directly supervises the people doing the core work and manages no other managers. The owner is the top manager, responsible for the business's overall direction. Every manager uses all three skills, but the mix shifts. Technical skills matter most for a first-line manager. Conceptual skills matter most for a top manager.
You can see the same shift at a city transit agency. A shift supervisor at the bus yard needs to know the buses and routes inside out. The general manager needs to see the whole network, and how changing one route ripples into the others.
Pause and try this. Deciding whether a second cart fits the business plan leans on which skill?
Ask how much of the business the decision touches.
Here's the answer. It leans on conceptual skill, because it means seeing the whole business and how its parts fit.
That's why the best barista isn't automatically ready to run the business. Near the work, know the work. Near the top, see the whole.
Closing
Let me pull it together in the order we built it. Management directs people, money, and materials toward goals through four functions: planning, organizing, leading, and controlling. Plans come in four types: strategic for the whole business over years, tactical for one part over months, operational for tomorrow, and contingency for what if, all serving a mission and checkable objectives. Organizing the two carts puts 7 people on 3 levels, with a span of control of 2 at each level. Leaders can decide alone, decide with the group, or let the group decide, and no style fits everywhere. Managing runs the work, and leading moves the people. Controlling compares results with a standard, like the first cart's 48 drinks a day. And technical skills matter most near the work, while conceptual skills matter most at the top.
Next in this module come the slide deck, the Readings and Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Then, in Week 11, Hiring and the Law: Human Resources & Labor Relations, we'll see how a business fills those boxes on the chart, within the law.
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