B. Planning

You are discussing planning with middle management. First, you explain that all good strategic or operational plans answer the six ED SODA questions:

- Experience?

- Direction?

- Situation now?

- Outcome desired?

- Deadline?

- Action steps?

– Mr Frost speaks about experience and direction. Experience includes traditions, culture and management style, resistance to change. It is the question "Where are we coming from?". Direction means answering the question "Where are we heading (if we keep going)?"

– Mr Nelson speaks about situation now and outcome desired;

– Mr Backer speaks about deadline and action steps (strategy, sub-objectives, resources needed).

You are discussing the planning cascade, including organizational mission, strategy, unit objectives and individual objectives:

– Mr Welsch understands mission as voluntary imprecise statement of purpose, overall task, ethic, policy of the organization.

e.g. "To provide excellent service to our customers".

– Mr Burton speaks about strategies as conscious choices as to how the mission is to be fulfilled (e.g. operating options; areas of emphases, decisions on methods, resources and direction).

e.g. "To improve customer service by computerizing, order handling and stock control".

– Mr Frost speaks about objectives. He considers them to be the critical few measurable differences between performance now and performance expected at the end of a given period.

e.g. "To have reduced the number of customer complaints on delivery from the present 10 per month to max. 2 per month by July 31^st without extra headcount.

– You agree and say that a good objective must meet 3 criteria (necessary, realistic and agreed) and must have 3 components (result, deadline, limits). – you say that action steps mean sub-objectives.

Date: 2015-01-02; view: 755