“Coordination joins the efforts of people and the elements of activities”
Coordination is one of the important functions of management. An NGO can not imagine achieving its objectives without effective and smooth coordination. Managers and other staff members should have regular coordination internally and externally for better performance in the organization. Board members are equally responsible to coordinate with other concerned organizations like with related government line agencies, donors, and other NGOs.
Despite such importance of coordination, it is a major problem in most NGOs. There are several reasons for this such as feeling of competition with others, lack of transparency, poor coordination skills or mechanisms, or even coordination not receiving importance. Most NGOs in Nepal start working in a small scale and hence do not often realize importance of coordination. They continue with the working style even though they expand the volume of work and increase number of employees. It gives rise to coordination problem. Coordination is usually done on personal basis rather than on the basis of a professional approach.
Concept of Coordination
“Coordination is bringing activities of different persons or units or departments into proper relation to each other to make certain that everything that needs to be done is performed and there is no duplication or gap in performing the required actions”. When people’s performance and the elements of their activities are coordinated, everything goes smoothly towards achieving the objectives. For example, for the successful implementation of primary education program it is necessary to bring all relevant people or agencies (e.g. children, parents, community people, school teachers, head masters, education supervisors, School Management Committees, Village Development Committees, District Education Offices, Education Department, private sectors and other social organizations) and their resources and activities together in a proper relationship.
For the purpose of program management, coordination can be defined as the planned collaboration of two or more persons, departments, programs or organizations who are concerned with achieving a common goal. Such collaboration is important to achieve the goal most adequately, effectively and efficiently. For example, in order to reduce poverty of poor women through micro finance program the Microfinance Manager needs to coordinate and work in collaboration with the external sectors like banks, community people, local employers, local training institutes who provide skill trainings, other social organizations, women’s group, landlords, shop keepers and market sectors, farming and non farming sectors, insurance company, local industries and government organizations. The manager has to ensure the functional
coordination within and among the sections and departments. When an activity is not coordinated it is liable to fail in its objective. It is proven that an uncoordinated activity is ineffective, inefficient and unsuccessful. For example, if the Finance Manager fails to coordinate with above mentioned groups and people then there is a very minimum chance of achieving the objective of poverty reduction.
So the coordination is the means of:
a. Dividing responsibilities: In a smoothly coordinated work the responsibilities are distributed among the individuals or units or sections. For example, in the micro finance program bank is responsible to deposit and provide loan to the poor women, social workers are responsible to raise awareness of the poor women and convince them to be the group member, training institution is responsible to give quality skill training to the group members and their family members, and microfinance supervisor is responsible to organize regular meeting, make sure everyone has paid loan in time and account is maintained properly. b. Providing channels of communication: Once the tasks are distributed then there should be a regular interaction to ensure that the information is shared among the persons in the right time, tasks of each group are in right track and the issues raised are resolved. This is done through sharing information and resources, reporting back the progress, and raising issues and resolving together. The coordinated work itself creates the channel of communication between the persons, sections and organizations. For example, in the microfinance program each concerned bank manager, microfinance supervisor, women group need to have communication regularly.
c. Distributing authority: In a coordinated work it ensures that enough authority is provided to perform the assigned tasks or responsibility. The coordinator should inform to other concerned group or individual what authority is being given to a particular person or section. The coordinator needs to monitor and ensure that the authorities are not misused. For example, a microfinance supervisor should have authority to explore every possibility and implement the action if a woman can not pay the loan in time.
d. Encouraging team work: The coordinated function creates forum for working together and encourage for team work. It helps to bring the people’s expertise and competencies together and give space for having regular communication. The coordination is the arrangement of work so that the rights things are done in the right place at the right time in the right way by the right people.
Importance of Coordination
Coordination is for better performance in the organization. A manger can not fulfill its objectives without having proper coordination internally and externally.
collaborating with all interested parties, the Microfinance Managers can provide different service required to the poor women and family in reducing poverty. This is equally applied to all managers of any organizations. It is difficult to establish effective coordination mechanisms but once it is done and regularized then it gives following benefits:
• Coordination makes the most efficient and effective use of staff; equipment, supplies, physical facilities; funding; services provided; knowledge, experience and skills; evaluation results; educational activities and materials; and access to client groups.
• Coordination improves services by having more effective programs which reach a greater number of people, reaching new and different client groups, discovering any gaps in services, and creating a larger service program with greater impact.
• Coordination builds trust and decreases competition and conflict among the service providers. By identifying and discussing their common problems and concerns, individuals and organizations will realize that they are not fighting all the battle alone, and that it is to their advantage to work together.
• Coordination makes it possible to share information and the lessons learned from the experience of others, thereby helping to overcome program planning and implementation difficulties and avoid wasteful and unnecessary programs and efforts.
• Coordination reduces or eliminates duplication of or gaps in services. This happens because the concerned individuals and organizations will know what others are doing and hence they can use their resources and efforts in such a way that they do not duplicate the programs and activities but rather meet the gaps that exist.
• Coordination enlarges the scope of activities by assigning activities to those individuals and organizations which are best suited to carry those activities out, thus putting an end to duplication of services. This should free up both funds and personnel to take on new activities, and thus broaden the scope of the services provided.
• Coordination standardizes policies. This makes the implementation of the programs easier as all individuals and organizations are guided by and comply with the same set of rules, norms and procedures.
• Coordination brings greater influence by bringing all the concerned individuals and organizations together and presenting a common stance on issues strongly and advocating resolving the issues even in policy and strategic level.
Principles of Coordination
It has been quite often heard that the tasks are not performed or the goal is not achieved because of proper and smooth coordination. To make the coordination smooth and effective, there are some principles to be followed.
Objective Definition Command Responsibility Authority Span of control Balance Constraints in Coordination
Despite many obvious benefits of coordination, it is often difficult to achieve it in practice. Most of the social organizations, government organizations, NGOs and business organizations are also facing similar type of difficulties in coordinating with others and getting the results as expected. Many times the delivery of different Each group of tasks must have an objective that contributes to the objectives of the organization as a whole.
Each group of tasks must be clearly defined so that every one knows exactly what the tasks are.
Each group of task must have one person in charge, and all concerned must know who this person is. In each group there should be one in charge and s/he should be responsible for the performance of the people in his group.
Each and every in charge of a group of task must have authority equal to his responsibilities.
Each in charge of the groups of task should only be managing only six to ten people. It will be difficult to manage more than that.
There should be some balance of work (responsibilities and authorities) in each group person in charge.