Last week we saw how collaboration means inclusion. Today we’ll see how coordination is part of collaboration and what are its benefits.
Coordination affects all the functions of leaders. Coordination encourages team spirit, gives right direction, motivates employees, and makes proper utilization of resources.
Definition
Coordination is defined as balanced and effective interaction of movement and actions. The word originated in the 1640s; and originally meant the action of setting in order, harmonious adjustment or action.
Thus, Coordination is the process in which different people or things work together to attain specific goals or aims.
For example, today here on the east coast we are experiencing the monster storm “Sandy.” I have been following the news and admiring how different entities, both governmental and private, are coordinating efforts to keep people safe, and to respond to emergencies.
Benefits of coordination
Coordination within an organization is critical to that organization's success and provides the following benefits:
- Higher Efficiency, effectiveness, and Economy
- Good Human Relations
- Clear unified direction
- Key to all leadership and managerial functions
By avoiding overlapping efforts and duplication of work, coordination provides integration and balancing of individual efforts, contributing to harmonious team work. It makes possible a total result which is greater than the sum of individual achievements. It creates synergy, enabling optimum use of resources.
Coordination fosters loyalty and commitment among employees. This enhances the effectiveness and stability of the organization.
Coordination improves human relations by reconciling individual and organizational objectives. It reduces conflicts among people because it promotes understanding.
Coordination helps to ensure unity of action by bringing different departments and sections together. It enables the executives to see the business as a whole instead of narrow sectional silos. Individual interests are subordinated to the common interest.
Leadership is mostly coordination of all activities, efforts and forces that affect the organization from within and without. According to Mary Parker Follett, a brilliant 19th century pioneer in organizational concepts, called by some “prophet of management,”
"the first test of a business administration should be whether you have a business with all its parts so coordinated, so moving together in their closely knit and adjusting activities, so linking, inter-locking, inter-relating, that they make a working unit that is not a congenis of separate pieces, but a functional whole or integrated unit".
Four principles of coordination
Mary Parker Follett gave four main Principles of Coordination. If you follow these four principles you will make co-ordination effective.
- Principle of direct contact of the responsible people concerned
- Principle of early stages coordination
- Principle of reciprocal relations of all factors
- Principle of Continuity
All managers must have direct contact with their subordinates. Direct contact helps to avoid misunderstandings, misinterpretations and disputes between managers and subordinates. It enables the managers to coordinate all the different activities of their subordinates effectively and efficiently. This first degree of coordination may be achieved through direct communication conferences, committees and other such face-to-face operations. I’m if she had lived today, she would have added other electronic and social ways available to us now.
Coordination must start during the planning stage. This will result in making the best plans and implementation. If coordination is started early, all the functions will be performed successfully. For example, if the head of the production department, while forming his policy, meets and discusses with the other heads the questions involved, it is far more likely that successful coordination will happen. Here is where long range vision is attained.
The decisions and actions of all the people (i.e of all managers and employees) and departments of the organization are inter-related. This is systems thinking in action. The decisions and actions of one person or department will affect all other persons and departments. Therefore, before taking any decision or action all managers must first find out the effect of that decision or action on other persons and departments in the organization. For Coordination to succeed, thinking on the inter-relationship of all parts is imperative.
Coordination must be a continuous process, not a one-time activity. It should be able to perpetuate itself. It must begin when the organization starts, and continue throughout its existence. Then the circle or spiral, is not broken in the transition from planning to activity and from activity to further planning. You must keep up with the facts, keeping up with the facts changes the facts. In other words, the process of adjustment, change and transformation, changes the things to be adjusted to and coordinated. This is progressive growth.
These principles represent the growth of coordination in an organization.
Remember. . .
Collaboration requires good coordination. Taking the time to develop good coordination techniques within your organization can make projects run smoother, improve productivity and therefore will help add more profit to the company's bottom line.
I can help you plan and achieve the growth your deserve. Working with me you will find your best path for development and change. To find out more, simply click here.