Henri fayols

14 Principles of
Management
Henri Fayol’s 14 principles of
management are remembered even
today for their simplicity and genius. The
thing is, whenever you are managing
something or running a business, you
cannot pinpoint what is going wrong.
The principles of management suggested 14 such steps
which you can compare to your business, and find out
where you are missing out in proper implementation of
the principles. This was especially useful in the times
when computers and modern software were not
available. Today, there are so many time tracking
devices as well as management techniques available,
that you might think you don’t need the 14 principles of
management.. But these principles are applicable in
today’s work environment as well.
Here are the 14 principles of
management by Henri fayol and
how you can implement these 14
principles of management in your
organization.
1) Division of work
Applicable for firms which have many employees
as well as few employees, the principle of division
of work says, that the work should be divided
between all people who are capable of doing it
and should not be overloaded to
a concentrated few. It should not be diluted by
giving the same work to many people. This
ensures proper utilization of labour and keeps
them focused and productive.
Here is how you can apply this
principle of management in your
case
•Are you dividing the work equally between
employees of your organization?
•Are people specializing in the work they are
doing?
•Do you need to restructure the division of
labour in your organization?
2) Authority
The power and responsibility to give orders should
reside with only a few people and should not be
diluted. One of the common errors of large
companies is that the management comprises of
too many people, thereby creating conflicts. When
a few hand selected people have the power to
vote, then this authority is carried down the chain
and the process gets implemented.
•Are you giving the authority
of decision making to too
many people?
•Are the people in authority
not ready to take
responsibility?
3) Discipline
It goes without saying, that
management is responsible for the
way discipline is maintained in an
organization. And this discipline
percolates down the line, to the end
of the employee chain as well
•Are your employees disciplined?
If not, what can you do to bring
discipline in them?
•Are you and your managers
disciplined with regards to usage
of time and space?
4) Unity of command
When we discussed authority in the above point,
we said that authority should lie with only certain
people. Similarly, the authority flows down the
chain only when there are a limited number of
people associated with the authoritative person. If
all the people in a political party were directly
reporting to the prime minister, he will soon be
admitted in the hospital due to stress.
•Is there unity of command in
your company?
•Are there too much conflicts at
the managerial level with
regards to who is reporting to
whom?
5) Unity of direction
Once unity of command is achieved
and you have a complete hierarchy,
where everyone knows who they are
reporting to, and they are ready to do
the leaders bidding, then it is time to
implement unity of direction.
It is like the famous
saying “United we
stand, divided we
fall”.
•Unity of direction is important
to give one vision to all the
employees of your company
•United we stand, divided we
fall
6) Subordinate interests
To control people, you have to understand their
interests first. And in the end, you have to ensure
that the interest of the company lies above the
interest of the individual. Many a time, a person is
removed from the company when he is moon
lighting or doing his own sideline jobs. This is
because the company wants to ensure, that the
person who is working in the company is giving his
100% to the company.
•Do you have employees or
managers who are placing
personal interest above
company’s interests?
•How would you change or tackle
these sub ordinate interests?
7) Remuneration
Now, naturally when you are expecting
your employees to be disciplined, you
want unity of direction and command, then
you have to remunerate the employees so
that they are less likely to shift to the
competition and more likely to concentrate
on the jobs they have in hand.
•Are your employees happy with
the monetary remuneration and
is it as per industry standards?
•Are offering non monetary
remuneration from time to time
to keep employees motivated?
8) Centralization
Centralization is the amount of control that is
lying with people in an organization. If there
are select group of people who have control
(for example – in large corporates), then this
is known as centralization. On the other hand,
if there are a higher percentage of people in
the organization having control (for example –
in small businesses), then this is known as
decentralization.
•Is your organization
centralized or decentralized?
•Which of the centralization
tactics will help you?
9) Scalar chain
Scalar chain is confusing for many people,
but let me break it down simply for you.
When mentioning the unity of command, i
said that one person should report to a
single manager higher up the chain only. So
an executive should report to a team
manager, who should report to the regional
manager who will report to the national
manager, so on and so forth.
Popular companies like Samsung and others have
the scalar chain set to a dot. In such companies, for
customer service, if your complaint is not resolved
in 3 days, it goes to the local manager, if not resolve
in 5 days, it goes to regional head, and if not
resolved in 7 days it goes to national heads. So this
is how a scalar chain looks like. It looks like the
wireframe of a company, with complete
architecture and hierarchy of the company shown
in the wireframe.
Does your company
implement Scalar chain
and does each employee
know the chain of
command?
10) Order
This order does not mean that someone sitting
on top is ordering the people. It is the order of
“Order vs chaos”. Simply said, if an
organization does not work in an orderly
manner, there will be chaos. So to work in an
orderly manner, employees need the right
equipment and the right procedure to ensure
order is maintained at all times.
•What measures have you taken
to ensure that your employees
are working in an orderly
manner?
•Bringing order to chaos ensures
clear thinking of mind and more
productivity.
11) Equity
Everyone should be treated equally and
no preference should be given in an
organization. Many a times, the most
common complaint of employees is that
a different employee was preferred over
them for promotion or better
remuneration.
12) Stability of tenure
One of the critical things in Henri fayol’s 14
principles of management was stability of tenure,
or attrition of employees. In essence, Henri fayol
said that an organization has a better chance to
grow faster if its employees are stable. Naturally, if
there is high attrition in the organization, then
there will be a lot of time wasted in training
and development, costs will go up and stability of
tenure will not be observed.
•Simply said, the more the stability of
tenure, the more the profit
•High attrition means a lot of cost towards
training and development
•If tenure is stable, means your
employees are happy and the company
will develop faster as you have trained
employees handling the work.
13) Initiative
It sounds too good when we think that a company
has innovated and brought a new product to the
market. But many a times, we question, why
companies are not regularly innovating. If you look
at it, the most innovative companies are the ones
which encourage young and old talent to bring out
their own ideas. They also show interest and
involvement to encourage such professionals.
•Are you listening to feedback
from your employees with
regards to product / company’s
improvement?
•Are you taking initiative to
change things as they are and
to make them even better?
14) Esprit de corps
Esprit de corp is defined as a feeling
of pride and mutual loyalty shared by
the members of a group. And that’s
exactly what you have to target for if
you want to achieve success while
applying the 14 principles of
management.
Overall, these 14 principles of
management are evergreen in nature, and
no matter the way technology is catching
up with us, these 14 principles of
management will matter to even the
smallest of organizations and will help
them when they are growing large.
There are even simpler ways to
track several of the things written
in 14 principles of management. But
the ultimate goal is to have an
organization which is efficiently
managed, productive, and gives
optimum results as per the goals of
the organization.
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fayols-14-principles-management/