In life, whatever you do, four steps are very much essential:
- planning,
- organizing,
- leading,
- controlling.
Planning:
Anything you do, you need to plan prior to action. You can't do things whimsically. When you are going to Tesco or any supermarket for marketing weekly goods, it is always preferred to make a quick list for purchase. Also put tentative cost of each of the thing. It'll help you to have proper marketing, you'll not miss any must needed thing, you'll not end up with buying unnecessary thing, you will understand your budget so that you can save some money.
It is applicable for all the activities you do. Like, if you are a student, make weekly plan. Based on weekly plan, prepare daily To Do List. As such, all of us can always make daily To Do List to smoothen our daily life. Also, for all of us, monthly and yearly financial planning is important, so that we can save reasonable amount for long term. To prepare financial planning, we need to identify monthly income and accordingly we need to plan our expenditure. If our income is not confirmed and not considerable amount, then we need to explore possible income sources and we need to discard any unnecessary expenditure. We have to be strict to ourselves for expenditure point of view.
In professional ambience, where multiple resources are involved to carry out activities, planning is very much essential. It create a proper vision for what to do and how to do. It avoids confusion and conflict as activities for each resource is defined.
Organizing:
After planning, it is essential to organize the things as per plan. Organizing includes identifying and organizing resources to perform the task. For example, while going to supermarket, if you have planned to use cash, instead of using your credit card (as while using card, there is no control over purchase). You have budgeted GBP 60 for the week. So it is essential to organize that amount. For that, before going to supermarket, you need to go to ATM counter to withdraw the amount.
If you are a student of epidemiology and you have planned to work on effect of pollution in a certain area, then it is essential for you to organize relevant data based on which you can pursue your research (example, you have to find extensive data from internet, local hospitals and health centres, etc; you may have to do a sample survey on certain number of people in the locality, etc). In professional ambience, it is essential to organize all resources as per plan. Likewise, it is required to identify suitable manpower, train manpower for suitable skills, organizing money from bank, etc.
Leading:
It is a stage when job is performed at actual. The biggest challenge is to perform the activities as planned. Many uncertain activities and distraction comes during execution which causes hindrances for execution of the job. Here is the role of leading the activities so that desired objective is met effectively and efficiently. For example, after entering the shopping centre, it is essential to buy the products as per list prepared with the cost range as planned. There will be many attractive products on display. Biggest challenge is not to buy them. Also there may be product of different qualities and price tag; challenge is to stick to the plan and buy the product whose price is matching the planned value. So a huge amount of self discipline is required. If you are a student, studying as per plan on each and every day is next to impossible. If you can maintain it daily by reasonably following weekly routine, then it is a true leading the task. If you have planned for group study, then arranging all friends together and conduct study session effectively and efficiently without waste of time is a very tough task. In professional ambience, teamwork is must. Motivating the team members, tracking of progress as per plan with respect to time-money-quality, mitigation of various kind of task to perform activities are few of the role for good leadership.
Controlling:
When we perform any task, invariably there will be some gap between planning and actual execution. The efficiency of a good execution depends on whether we are able to identify and measure the gap reasonably and taking necessary corrective action so that end objective gets fulfilled. While going to supermarket, the target was to buy a list of products within a budget. It may be possible that a couple of things are not available at shop within the targeted price. It is essential to take a quick decision if any alternative product can be procured within budget which can satisfy the purpose of the originally planned product to a reasonable extent. Also there may be need to take a “buy or no buy” decision if the available product's price is much higher than targeted value. There can be other example as well. Likewise, if you are a student, you may have weekly routine where studying ethics is scheduled on Thursday afternoon between 2 pm to 5 pm. It may happen that you fail to study on a particular Thursday due to unscheduled visit of a guest. So you come to know that in that week, you have deficit for three study hours for ethics. Now you have to check suitable time where you can study additional three hours in remaining days of the week. For that you may have to reduce/ sacrifice few other less prioritized routines work (like weekend fun hours, etc). In professional life, controlling has huge importance and a true manager or leader always pays huge attention on controlling activities. Controlling has two aspects. One aspect is to constantly follow up the execution activities with respect to original planning so that the job gets completed as per planning. In case, there is inevitable and unmanageable deviation, then measure the deviation and take corrective action so that the job gets completed either within the planned parameters or with very minimal manageable variance (with respect to cost, time and quality). Also it is required manage risk factors associated with the job.
Planning, organizing, leading and controlling are the skills which we all must try to develop within ourselves. If we apply them then our thought process will also become more logical and analytical. It'll help us to structure our thoughts to identify the wrong and right in true sense. This structured thought not only help us for doing the thing right, but also it helps us do the right thing. It helps us to be much stronger internally to select the right spirit and become less influenced by external wrong ideas. When someone is internally unstructured, then people and ideas with wrong spirits will try to influence them and convert him or her identity to wrong spirits. It'll create a camouflaging atmosphere around him or her which will gradually destroy power to think logically and ethically. So it is very much important to start doing right thing. The best way for doing that is to start following the four steps of life, that is planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Once you will start doing this, you'll automatically become more confident to yourself. Your thought process will be more positive which will inevitably change your life towards positivity. You'll find that you have reasonably good income, you have increasing savings, you have improvement in professional life, you have correct sets of people around you, you have more free time when you can serve humanity in true sense and you have less time to read & follow wrong ideas. It's positivity which will encompass your life.
