The most desirable type of control—feedforward control—prevents problems because it takes place before the actual activity.19 For instance, when McDonald’s began doing business in Moscow, it sent company quality control experts to help Russian farmers learn techniques for growing high-quality potatoes and to help bakers learn processes for baking high-quality breads. Why? McDonald’s demands consistent product quality no matter the geographical location. They want french fries in Moscow to taste like those in Omaha. Still another example of feedforward control is the scheduled preventive maintenance programs on aircraft done by the major airlines. These schedules are designed to detect and hopefully to prevent structural damage that might lead to an accident.

The key to feedforward controls is taking managerial action before a problem occurs. That way, problems can be prevented rather than having to correct them after any damage—poor-quality products, lost customers, lost revenue, etc.—has already been done. However, these controls require timely and accurate information that isn’t always easy to get. Thus, managers frequently end up using the other two types of control.

Concurrent control, as its name implies, takes place while a work activity is in progress. For instance, the director of business product management at Google and his team keep a watchful eye on one of Google’s most profitable businesses—online ads. They watch “the number of searches and clicks, the rate at which users click on ads, the revenue this generates—everything is tracked hour by hour, compared with the data from a week earlier and charted.”20 If they see something that’s not working particularly well, they fine-tune it.

Technical equipment (such as computers and computerized machine controls) can be designed to include concurrent controls. For example, you’ve probably experienced this with word-processing software that alerts you to a misspelled word or incorrect grammatical usage. Also, many organizational quality programs rely on concurrent controls to inform workers whether their work output is of sufficient quality to meet standards.

The best-known form of concurrent control, however, is direct supervision. For example, Nvidia’s CEO Jen-Hsun Huang had his office cubicle torn down and replaced with a conference table so he’s now available to employees at all times to discuss what’s going on.22 All managers can benefit from using concurrent control because they can correct problems before they become too costly. MBWA, described earlier in this chapter, is a great way for managers to do this.

The most popular type of control relies on feedback. In feedback control, the control takes place after the activity is done. For instance, remember our earlier Denver Mint example. The flawed Wisconsin quarters were discovered with feedback control. The damage had already occurred even though the organization corrected the problem once it was discovered. And that’s the major problem with this type of control. By the time a manager has the information, the problems have already occurred, leading to waste or damage. However, in many work areas—the financial area being one example—feedback is the only viable type of control.

Feedback controls do have two advantages.23 First, feedback gives managers meaningful information on how effective their planning efforts were. Feedback that shows little variance between standard and actual performance indicates that the planning was generally on target. If the deviation is significant, a manager can use that information to formulate new plans. Second, feedback can enhance motivation. People want to know how well they’re doing, and feedback provides that information.