The document defines key terms related to planning including strategic planning, tactical planning, directional plans, specific plans, single-use plans, standing plans, and management by objectives. It also discusses the strategic management process including analyzing the environment through SWOT analysis and identifying grand strategies like growth, stability, and retrenchment. Competitive strategies such as cost leadership, differentiation, and focus are also outlined.
6. Types of Plans Exhibit 3.2 BREADTH TIME SPECIFICITY FREQUENCY OF USE FRAME OF USE Strategic Long term Directional Single use Tactical Short term Specific Standing
18. SWOT: Identifying Organizational Opportunities SWOT analysis Analysis of an organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in order to identify a strategic niche that the organization can exploit Exhibit 3.6
Planning is defining organizational goals, establishing a strategy for reaching those goals, and developing a comprehensive hierarchy of plans to integrate and coordinate activities. It can be either formal or informal, depending on the time frame and amount of documentation
Managers should plan for four reasons: First, planning coordinates effort by giving direction to managers and non-managers. Second, planning reduces uncertainty by forcing managers to look ahead, anticipate change, and develop appropriate responses. Third, planning reduces redundancy. Fourth, planning sets standards or objectives that facilitate control over the process of achieving goals.
Planning may create rigidity. Assuming that conditions will remain relatively stable, formal plans lock organizational units into specific goals and time frames. Plans can’t be developed for a dynamic environment . Managing chaos and turning disasters into opportunities requires flexibility, not rigid, formal plans. Formal plans can’t replace intuition and creativity. Developing strategy depends as much on intuition and creativity as it does on formal analysis. Because most successful strategies are visions, not plans, merely following a systematic framework will not yield incisive thinking. Planning focuses a manager’s attention on today’s competition, not on tomorrow’s survival. Formal planning stresses capitalizing on existing opportunities, not reinventing or creating an industry. Formal planning reinforces success, which may lead to failure. Success can breed failure. Since change is motivated by problems, success may not motivate managers to challenge the status quo. Formal planning has been popular in business since the 1960s, but critics have observed the following:
The most popular ways to describe plans are by their breadth (strategic versus tactical), time frame (long term versus short term), specificity (directional versus specific), and frequency of use (single use versus standing). These classifications are not mutually exclusive. Upper-level managers develop strategic plans that apply to the entire organization, establish overall objectives, and position the organization within its environment. Lower-level managers focus on tactical plans that specify how the overall objectives will be achieved. These plans differ in time frame and scope: operational plans are limited in scope and are measured daily, weekly, or monthly; strategic plans are broader, less specific and encompass five or more years.
The short-term covers less than one year, the intermediate-term covers one to five years, and the long-term is five years or more. The commitment concept is relevant to classifying plans because the more current plans affect future commitments, the longer the time frame for which managers must plan. The length of the planning horizon increases up the management hierarchy and decisions of top management imply greater commitments of resources than decisions of lower managers. With respect to the degree of variability, the greater the uncertainty, the more plans should be of the short-term variety. This is so because shorter-term plans allow for better accommodation of change by providing more flexibility.
It appears intuitively correct that specific plans are always preferable to directional, or loosely guided plans. Specific plans have clearly defined objectives and leave no room for misinterpretation. However, specific plans are not without drawbacks. They require a clarify and predictability that often does not exist. When uncertainty is high and flexibility is needed, directional plans are preferable. Since directional plans identify general guidelines, they provide focus but do not lock managers into specific objectives or courses of action
Some plans are meant to be used only once; others are used repeatedly. A single-use plan is used to meet the needs for a particular or unique situation. A standing plan is ongoing and guides for actions that are performed repeatedly in an organization.
Management by objectives (MBO) emphasizes participation to set goals that are tangible, verifiable, and measurable. MBO’s appeal lies in its emphasis on converting overall organizational objectives into specific objectives for units and members of the organization.
As the figure above shows, the organization’s overall objectives are translated into specific objectives for each succeeding level (divisional, departmental, or individual) in the organization. But because lower-unit managers jointly participate in setting their own goals, MBO works from the “bottom-up” as well as from the “top down.” The result is a hierarchy of objectives that links objectives at one level to those at the next level. And for the individual worker, MBO provides specific personal performance objectives. So each person has an identified specific contribution to make to his or her unit’s performance. If all individuals achieve their goals, then their unit’s goals will be attained and the overall objectives of the organization will become a reality.
There are four ingredients common to MBO programs: participation in decision making, goal specificity, an explicit time period, and performance feedback. MBO objectives should be concise statements of expected accomplishments. It is not enough merely to state the desire to cut costs, improve service, or boost quality. Such desires have to be converted into tangible objectives that can be measured and evaluated: for example, to cut costs by seven percent. The objectives of MBO are not unilaterally set by the boss and then assigned to subordinates. MBO replaces imposed goals with participatively set goals. The superior and subordinate jointly choose the goals and agree on how they will be measured. Each objective has a specific time period in which it is to be completed. So managers have not only specific objectives but also stipulated time periods in which to accomplish them. The final ingredient in an MBO program is feedback on performance. MBO seeks to give continuous feedback on progress toward goals so that individuals can monitor and correct their own actions. Continuous feedback, supplemented by more formal periodic management evaluations, takes place at all levels of the organization.
. The energy crisis, deregulation in the marketplace, rapidly changing technology, and increasing global competition have changed the nature of planning forever. Managers now must analyze the environment, assess organizational strengths and weaknesses, and identify opportunities for gaining competitive advantage. Then, they must develop strategic plans based on their findings. Senior management uses the nine-step strategic management process to develop organizational strategy.
First, management must identify the mission, objectives, and strategies of the organization. A mission statement defines an organization’s purpose and provides guidance to managers and employees. A clear mission statement forces management to identify the scope of its products or services carefully It answers questions such as the following: What business are we in? What are we trying to accomplish? All organizations have strengths and weaknesses.
In step two, managers analyze the environment in which the organization operates: actions of competitors, pending government legislation, preferences of customers, and supply of labor. Managers use environmental scanning to anticipate and interpret environmental changes. The term refers to screening information to detect trends, monitor the actions of others, and create scenarios. This slide and the next one review four environmental-scanning techniques: competitive intelligence, scenario development, forecasting, and benchmarking. The seeking of basic information about competitors, competitive intelligence can allow managers to anticipate rather than react to the actions of competitors. Advertisements, promotional materials, press releases, governmental reports, annual reports, want-ads, newspaper articles, databases, trade shows, industry studies, and competitor’s products supply 95% of the data required for this technique to work.
To plan strategy, managers must complete steps three, four, and five by assessing the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats within its operating environment. To do so, they conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) which compares the organization’s resources against opportunities in the environment. Environmental scanning reveals opportunities (positive external factors) for the organization to exploit and threats (negative external factors) that the organization must face. How an organization defines opportunities or threats depends on its resources. The figure above illustrates the objective of SWOT analysis. A successful analysis identifies a niche in which the organization’s products or services can have some competitive advantage. The area in which the opportunities in the environment overlap with the organization’s resources represents the niche wherein the organization’s opportunities lie.
Management analyzes the internal resources of the organization, such as capital, skills of workers, or patents. These resources are the strengths of the organization. The strengths that represent unique skills or resources are called the organization’s distinctive competence . In contrast, weaknesses are resources that are lacking in the organization. Based on the results of the SWOT analysis, management must complete step six by assessing the opportunities that are available, reevaluating its missions and objectives, and making necessary changes.
In the seventh step, management must set strategies for all organizational levels. Four grand strategies are available: growth, stability, retrenchment, and combination. The Growth Strategy: organizations can grow through direct expansion, merger, and acquisition. The Stability Strategy . characterized by an absence of change, this strategy is appropriate if several conditions exist: a stable and unchanging environment, satisfactory organizational performance, absence of valuable strengths and critical weaknesses, and nonsignificant opportunities and threats. The Retrenchment Strategy : c haracteristic of an organization that is downsizing, this strategy is used in an environment of decline.. The Combination Strategy . This strategy is the simultaneous pursuit of two or more strategies.
A direct expansion strategy involves increasing a company’s size, revenues, operation, or workforce. A merger occurs when two companies (of similar size) combine resources to form a new company. An acquisition occurs when a larger company “buys” a smaller one and absorbs its operations.
An organizational unit must translate the grand strategy into a set of strategies that gives it a competitive advantage. Using Michael Porter’s framework, management can select a strategy that gives its organization a competitive advantage . Porter named three strategies from which management may choose: cost-leadership, differentiation, and focus. When an organization aims to be the low-cost producer, it is following a cost-leadership strategy . The firm that seeks to be unique in ways that are widely valued by buyers is following a differentiation strategy . The focus strategy aims at a cost advantage or differentiation advantage in a narrow segment. If an organization cannot use any one of these three strategies to develop a competitive advantage, then it is stuck in the middle unless it is competing in a highly favorable market or all of its competitors are also stuck in the middle.
Step eight requires leadership from top management and commitment from middle or lower-level managers. In step nine, management must evaluate the results obtained from the strategic management process.
TQM focuses on quality and continuous improvement. If integrated into ongoing operations, incremental improvement can accumulate into a competitive advantage that others cannot steal. Benchmarking is the practice of using a measurable scale to compare key business operations with those of successful organizations. It involves four steps. (1) Form a team to identify the following: benchmarking targets, “best practices” of other organizations, and data collection methods. (2) Collect data from internal operations and external organizations. (3) Analyze data to identify performance gaps and determine their causes. (4) Prepare and implement an action plan to meet or exceed performance standards. To show that its products meet world standards for quality management, a company must gain ISO 9000 certification. The certificate attests that the company has met rigorous standards for quality and consistency as defined by the International Organization for Standardization in Geneva.
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