Last year, I joined Sun Yat-Sen university MBA interview. The most impressive question from interviewers is "What is the essence of administration". My answer is "administration is to building a cluture to make every people work for the organizaion, like cluture".
After interview, I told to Arvin. He told me "Planning, Executing, Monitoring", which just like the thought of project managerment. I recall this since I am reading the <PMBOK guide> for preparaing PMP certificate examination.
First of all Planning is dependence on target, a project have a target, an organization need. No target, no one know how is the improvement. Someboby(like me) always, seems I did nothing in last year. This is is becuase everyone, no matter a human or a team or a company. With target, people(Manangement team) could design the action plan like Strategy, method, progress plan, and work breakdown structure which is base on decomposed target.
With this clear target, people could review whether the target is meeted. No matter yes or now, we can know why and work for improvement to meet the target next time.
The executing, is to perform action which base on the work breakdown structure. Someone do something at a time. Execution is to make some changes. Otherwise, no need to execute.
Monitoring is to review whether actions are executed base on defined plan. The plan is baseline for execution. If no monitoring found some problem, maybe the execution is not align to the plan, like some actions are deplyed? Management team need make change, like provide more resource to improve? Or change the plan?