Management as the art of *getting things done by others*: a critical analysis

What the statement says

The statement presents management as a skill of working through people: the manager does not personally carry out every task but arranges for others to carry it out. The study text records a closely related view from Harold Koontz, who saw management as the art of getting work done through and with people in formally organised groups, and of creating conditions in which they can perform and cooperate. A critical analysis asks two things: what this view gets right, and what it leaves out.

Where the statement holds

1. Managers answer for other people's work. A manager is someone responsible for the work of others, and in every kind of organisation the basic aim is the same: to build an environment in which goals are reached with the least resources, through the people who work there. The branch head of a bank in Lucknow is judged by what her tellers and loan officers achieve, not by the few transactions she handles herself.
2. It puts the human side first. By placing people at the centre, a definition of this kind captures the personnel or human-relations side of managerial behaviour.
3. Management does call for art. A manager has to rely on experience, intuition and judgement when deciding and acting, and shaping how people at work think and behave, in a changing setting, is described as an art of a very high order.

Where the statement falls short

1. It says nothing about the process. The statement names no function through which work is got done. The study text makes the same criticism of the Koontz view: it stresses people but makes no specific mention of the processes of management, which it treats as the most important element in any group activity. Those functions are planning, organising, staffing, directing and controlling.
2. By others, or with others? The words by others suggest a manager who stands apart and only gives orders. Management is better described as working with and through others to reach organisational objectives; the manager is a member of the team, not an outsider to it.
3. It ignores goals, effectiveness and efficiency. Getting things done is not enough. The right task has to be completed so that the goal is reached, which is effectiveness, and it has to be done correctly at minimum cost, with fewer resources for the same output, which is efficiency. A contractor in Indore who gets a road laid through his workers, but at twice the budget, has got things done and still managed badly.
4. It forgets resources other than people. The process definition of George R. Terry, which the study text prefers, has management using human beings and other resources to reach set objectives. Money, machines and materials have to be managed as well as people.
5. Art is only half of it. Management is also a developing science with principles of wide application, and its science and its art work together, each completing the other.

A fuller view of management

Put together, management is a distinct and continuous process. It studies the internal and external environment, organises material and human inputs, and then plans, organises, staffs, directs and controls so that set objectives are achieved effectively and efficiently. People remain central to it, but as partners in a process, not merely as the hands through which the manager acts.

Conclusion

The statement captures a true and important side of management: results come through people, and handling people well is a skill. As a full definition, however, it is too narrow. It leaves out the managerial process, the goals that give the work its direction, the other resources a manager must use, and the body of principles on which managerial art rests.