Planning Flashcards
What is planning?
Choosing a goal and developing a method or strategy to achieve that goal
What are the benefits of planning?
- Intensified effort
- Persistence
- Direction
- Creation of task strategies
What are the pitfalls of planning?
- Can impede change and prevent or slow need adaptation
- Commitment can make companies see their plans aren’t working
- False sense of certainty
- Detachment can lead planners to plan for things they don’t understand
What are smart goals?
Specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely
What are the steps to making plans that work?
- Setting SMART goals
- Developing commitment to goals
- Developing affective action plans
- Tracking progress towards goal achievement
- Maintaining flexibility in planning
How can goals direct behaviour and increase effort?
Goals need to be specific and challenging
How can goal commitment be attained?
- Set goals participatively
- Make goals public
- Obtain top management’s support
What are action plans?
Action plans lists the specific steps, people, resources and time period for accomplishing a goal
What are the methods of tracking progress towards goal achievement?
- Set proximal goals and distal goals
- Gather and provide performance feedback
What are proximal goals?
Short term goals or subgoals
What are distal goals?
Long term or primary goals
Why set proximal goals?
Achieving proximal goals may be more motivating and rewarding than waiting to reach far off distal goals
How can flexibility be maintained in planning?
Options based approach
Learning based approach
What is the options based approach?
Maintaining planning flexibility by making small, simultaneous investments in many alternative plans.
Leave commitments open by maintaining slack resources, so when a plan reveals itself to be the best course of action it can be pursued
What are slack resources?
A cushion of resources, such as extra time, people, money or production capacity, that can be used to address and adapt to unanticipated changes, problems and opportunities
What are top level plans called?
Strategic plans
What are strategic plans?
- Overall company plans that clarify how the company will serve customers and position itself against competitors
- Concern the next 2 to 5 years
- Set by top management
What is a mission?
A statement of a companies overall goal that unifies company-wide efforts toward it’s vision, stretches and challenges the organisation, and possess a finish line and a time frame
What are two strategic plans?
Company’s vision & mission
What are middle level plans called?
Tactical plans
What are tactical plans?
- Specify how a company will use resources, budgets and people to accomplish specific goals within its mission
- Concern the next 6 months to 2 years
- Set by middle managers
What is management by objectives?
A four step process in which managers and employees discuss and select goals, develop tactical plans and meet regularly to review progress toward goal accomplishment
What are bottom level plans called?
Operational Plans
What are operational plans?
- Day to day plans for producing or delivering the organisation’s products or services
- Concern a 30 day to 6 month period
- Set by lower-level managers
What are the three types of operational plans?
- Single Use plans
- Standing Plans
- Budgets
What are single use plans?
- Operational plans that cover unique, one time-only events
- Tsunami response etc
What are standing plans?
Operational plans used repeatedly to handle frequently recurring events
What are the three types of standing plans?
- Policies
- Procedures
- Rules & Regulations
What are policies?
- Standing plans which indicate the general course of action that should be taken in response to a particular event
- A well written policy will also specify why the policy exists and what outcomes the policy is intended to produce
- Facebook use etc.
What are procedures?
- A standing plan which indicates the specific steps that should be taken in response to a particular event
- Handling defective products etc.
What are rules & regulations?
- Standing plans which describe how a particular action should be performed, or what must or must not happen or in response to a particular event
- Forbidding managers writing job references etc.
What are budgets?
Operational plans of quantitate planning through which managers decide how to allocate available money to best accomplish company goals
What is rational decision making?
A systematic process of defining problems, evaluating alternatives and choosing optimal solutions
What are the steps to make rational decisions?
- Define the problem
- Identify decision criteria
- Weight the criteria
- Generate alternative courses of action
- Evaluate each alternative
- Compute the optimal decision
What are decision criteria?
The standards used to guide judgements and decisions
What factors are important in choosing a computer etc.
How can criteria be rated?
Absolute or relative comparisons
What is using absolute comparisons to rate criteria?
A process in which each decision criteria is compared to a standard or ranked on its own merits
What is using relative comparisons to rate criteria?
A process in which each decision criterion is compared directly to every other criterion
What is true about alternative courses of action in rational decision making?
The more the better
What stage of rational decision making can take the longest and be the most expensive?
evaluating each alternative
How is the optimal decision computed via rational decision making?
Multiplying the rating for each criterion by the weight for that criterion and then adding up those scores for each alternative course of action
What are the limits to rational decision making?
Limited resources, attention, memory and expertise, make it nearly impossible for managers to maximise decisions.
Consequently, more managers don’t maximise, they satisfice
What is Satisficing?
Choosing a “good enough” alternative
What stages of rational decision making can groups do better than individuals?
Groups can do much better than individuals in defining the problem and generating alternative solutions
Why use groups in planning?
- Multiple perspectives
- Find and access more information than individuals can
- When members are involved in decision making, they will be more committed to making chosen solutions work
What are the pitfalls to using groups in planning?
- Groupthink
- Takes considerable time
- Group members may not feel accountable for the decisions made and actions taken by the group
- Individuals can dominate and restrict consideration of different solutions
What is groupthink?
A barrier to good decision making caused by pressure within the group for members to agree with each other
Why does groupthink occur?
- The group is insulated from others with different perspectives
- The group leader begins by expressing a strong preference for a particular decision
- The group has no established procedure for systematically defining problems and exploring alternative
- Group members have similar backgrounds and experiences
What are the two types of structured conflicts?
- Cognitive Conflict
* Affective Conflict
What is cognitive conflict?
- Disagreement that focuses on problem and issue related difference of opinion
- Group members disagree because their different experiences and expertise lead them to view the problem and its potential solutions differently
- Characterised by a willingness to examine, compare and reconciles those differences to produce the best possible solution
What is affective conflict?
- Disagreement that focuses on individuals or personal issues
- Often results in hostility, anger, resentment, distrust, cynicism and apathy
- Undermines team effectiveness by preventing teams from engaging in the activities characteristic of C-type conflict that are critical to team effectiveness
What are the benefits of devils advocacy and how is it used?
- Assigns an individual or subgroup the role of critic
- When properly used, introduces cognitive conflict into the decision making process
What is the nominal group technique and what are its pros/cons?
- A decision making method that begins and ends by having group member quietly (independently) write down and evaluate ideas to be shared by the group
- Ideas are shared after independent thought, and then ranked independently
- Decreases A-type conflict but also restricts C-type conflict
- Typically produces poorer decisions that does the devils advocacy approach
What is the delphi technique and what are its pros/cons?
- A decision making method in which members of a panel of experts respond to questions and to each other until reaching an agreement on an issue
- Experts don’t have to disrupt their schedules, and so are more likely to participate
What is production blocking?
A disadvantage of face-to-face brainstorming in which a group member must wait to share an idea because another member is presenting an idea
When is evaluation apprehension most poignant?
During (e) brainstorming
What is brainstorming?
- A decision making method in which group member build on each others ideas to generate an many alternative solutions as possible
- The more ideas the better
- All ideas are acceptable
- Other group members’ ideas should be used to come up with even more ideas
- Criticism or evaluation of ideas is not allowed
What is the pros/cons of electronic brainstorming over normal brainstorming?
- Overcomes the disadvantages associated with face-to-face brainstorming i.e production blocking & evaluation apprehension
- Studies show it’s much more productive than face-to-face
- Expense of computers and equipment
- Anonymity of ideas may bother people who are used to having their ideas accepted by virtue of their position
- Outgoing individuals who are more comfortable expressing themselves verbally may find it difficult to express themselves in writing
What is the learning based approach?
A method of maintaining flexibility in planning where plans are continuously adjusted
Why is career management important?
- Organisational cost cutting and the loss of job security.
- The changing nature of work (ex. Team based and flater structures).
- Changes in workforce diversity and demographics.
- Work-family life relationship.
