Fayol's day-to-day management, seeing what worked and what didn't, informed his Principles of Management. By focusing on administrative over technical skills, the Principles are some of the earliest examples of treating management as a profession.
They are:
1. Division of Work: Assign each employee a task that they can become proficient at. Productivity increases as employees become more skilled, assured and efficient. Today, experts still warn against multi-tasking.
2. Authority: Managers must possess the authority to give orders, and recognize that with authority comes responsibility. As well as rank, Fayol argues that a manager's intelligence, experience and values should command respect.
3. Discipline: Everyone should follow the rules. To help, you can make agreements between the organization and employees clear for all to see.
4. Unity of Command: Fayol wrote that "an employee should receive orders from one supervisor only." Otherwise, authority, discipline, order, and stability are threatened.
5. Unity of Direction: Teams with the same objective should be working under the direction of one manager, using one plan. That, Fayol wrote, "is the condition essential to unity of action, coordination of strength and focusing of effort."