• A press operator at the Denver Mint noticed a flaw—an extra up leaf or an extra down leaf—on Wisconsin state quarters being pressed at one of his five press machines. He stopped the machine and left for a meal break. When he returned, he saw the machine running and assumed that someone had changed the die in the machine. However, after a routine inspection, the machine operator realized the die had not been changed. The faulty press had likely been running for over an hour and thousands of the flawed coins were now commingled with unblemished quarters. As many as 50,000 of the faulty coins entered circulation, setting off a coin collector buying frenzy.3

• Northrop Grumman has implemented several major changes in its satellite production unit after serious slipups were discovered in the building of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.4

• H&M, the Swedish fashion retailer has a problem: $4.3 billion of unsold inventory. For a competitor in fast fashion retailing, that’s a pretty serious problem.5

• McDonald’s Japan has apologized to customers and vowed to better control product safety after foreign objects—including a tooth and plastic—were found in food.6

• Hundreds of KFC stores in the United Kingdom had to close after a logistics error meant no chickens were on hand to cook and sell.7

• Hackers attacked a Saudi Arabian petrochemical plant and gained control over a safety shut-off system critical to defending against catastrophic events. The hackers would have had the ability to control what that safety system would do in the event of an emergency.8

• The 2017 Academy Awards were quite memorable...not for the emcee’s lines or the clothing choices of the nominees, but for the Best Picture Award when the wrong envelope was handed to the presenters and the wrong picture announced as the winner, a mistake that had to be quickly corrected. A thorough review afterward by PricewaterhouseCoopers, the accounting firm in charge of the awards, of what went wrong led to revised protocols and “ambitious controls” to ensure it would not happen again.9

• No fast-food chain wants its employees doing gross stuff behind the scenes, but social media photos and videos of a Taco Bell employee licking a stack of taco shells, a Wendy’s employee bending down under a Frosty machine with mouth wide open gobbling the treat, or a Domino’s Pizza employee performing vulgar and unsanitary actions while preparing food have all shown up online.10

Can you see now why controlling is such an important managerial function? Planning can be done, an organizational structure created to facilitate efficient achievement of goals, and employees motivated through effective leadership. But there’s no assurance that activities are going as planned and that the goals employees and managers are working toward are, in fact, being attained. Control is important, therefore, because it’s the only way that managers know whether organizational goals are being met and, if not, the reasons why. The value of the control function can be seen in three specific areas:

1. Planning. In Chapter 5, we described goals, which provide specific direction to employees and managers, as the foundation of planning. However, just stating goals or having employees accept goals doesn’t guarantee that the necessary actions to accomplish those goals have been taken. As the old saying goes, “The best-laid plans often go awry.” The effective manager follows up to ensure that what employees are supposed to do is, in fact, being done and goals are being achieved. As the final step in the management process, controlling provides the critical link back to planning. (See Exhibit 15–1.) If managers didn’t control, they’d have no way of knowing whether goals and plans were being achieved and what future actions to take.

   Exhibit 15–1

   Planning–Controlling Link

   

   Figure 15–1 Full Alternative Text

2. Empowering employees. The second reason controlling is important is because of employee empowerment. Many managers are reluctant to empower their employees because they fear something will go wrong for which they would be held responsible. But an effective control system can provide information and feedback on employee performance and minimize the chance of potential problems.

3. Protecting the workplace. The final reason that managers control is to protect the organization and its assets.12 Organizations face threats from natural disasters, financial pressures and scandals, workplace violence, supply chain disruptions, security breaches, and even possible terrorist attacks. Managers must protect organizational assets in the event that any of these should happen. Comprehensive controls and backup plans will help minimize work disruptions.