"The MGMT Solution," Vocabulary from Chapter 5

Planning offers several important benefits: intensified effort, persistence, direction, and creation of task strategies.

Plans encourage managers and employees to direct their persistent efforts toward activities that help accomplish their goals and away from activities that don’t.

The fourth benefit of planning is that it encourages the development of task strategies. In other words, planning not only encourages people to work hard for extended periods and to engage in behaviors directly related to goal accomplishment, it also encourages them to think of better ways to do their jobs.

Finally, perhaps the most compelling benefit of planning is that it has been proved to work for both companies and individuals.

The first pitfall of planning is that it can impede change and prevent or slow needed adaptation.

Speaking of the detachment of planners, Cosslett says, “The biggest thing I remember from those days . . . was how much of what comes out of corporate offices is of absolutely no purpose, and how far removed some people are from the front line.

S.M.A.R.T. goals are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Timely.

Another technique for gaining commitment to a goal is to make the goal public.

The third step in planning is to develop effective action plans. An action plan lists the specific steps (how), people (who), resources (what), and time period (when) for accomplishing a goal.

The second method of tracking progress is to gather and provide performance feedback. Regular, frequent performance feedback allows workers and managers to track their progress toward goal achievement and make adjustments in effort, direction, and strategies.

Because action plans are sometimes poorly conceived and goals sometimes turn out not to be achievable, the last step in developing an effective plan is to maintain flexibility. One method of maintaining flexibility while planning is to adopt an options-based approach.

The goal of options-based planning is to keep options open by making small, simultaneous investments in many alternative plans. Then, when one or a few of these plans emerge as likely winners, you invest even more in these plans while discontinuing or reducing investment in the others.

Whereas the purpose of an action plan is to commit people and resources to a particular course of action, the purpose of options-based planning is to leave those commitments open by maintaining slack resources—that is, 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, or opportunities.

Management by objectives (MBO) is a four-step process in which managers and their employees (1) discuss possible goals; (2) collectively select goals that are challenging, attainable, and consistent with the company’s overall goals; (3) jointly develop tactical plans that lead to the accomplishment of tactical goals and objectives; and (4) meet regularly to review progress toward accomplishment of those goals.

Operational plans direct the behavior, efforts, and priorities of operative employees for periods ranging from thirty days to six months.

Unlike single-use plans that are created, carried out once, and then never used again, standing plans save managers time because once the plans are created, they can be used repeatedly to handle frequently recurring events.

Policies indicate the general course of action that company managers should take in response to a particular event or situation. A well-written policy will also specify why the policy exists and what outcome the policy is intended to produce.

Procedures are more specific than policies because they indicate the series of steps that should be taken in response to a particular event.

Rules and regulations are even more specific than procedures because they specify what must happen or not happen. They describe precisely how a particular action should be performed.

After single-use plans and standing plans, budgets are the third kind of operational plan.

Rational decision making is a systematic process in which managers define problems, evaluate alternatives, and choose optimal solutions that provide maximum benefits to their organizations.

The first step in decision making is identifying and defining the problem. A problem exists when there is a gap between a desired state (what is wanted) and an existing state (the situation you are actually facing).

Decision criteria are the standards used to guide judgments and decisions. Typically, the more criteria a potential solution meets, the better that solution will be.

Although there are numerous mathematical models for weighing decision criteria, all require the decision maker to provide an initial ranking of the criteria. Some use absolute comparisons, in which each criterion is compared with a standard or ranked on its own merits.

Another method uses relative comparisons, in which each criterion is compared directly with every other criterion.

The next step is to systematically evaluate each alternative against each criterion.

The final step in the decision-making process is to compute the optimal decision by determining the optimal value of each alternative.

In reality, however, the manager’s limited time, money, and expertise mean that only a few alternatives will be assessed against a few decision criteria.

Groups can do a much better job than individuals in two important steps of the decision-making process: defining the problem and generating alternative solutions.

Groupthink occurs in highly cohesive groups when group members feel intense pressure to agree with each other so that the group can approve a proposed solution.

Because groupthink leads to consideration of a limited number of solutions and restricts discussion of any considered solutions, it usually results in poor decisions.

A third possible pitfall to group decision making is that sometimes one or two people, perhaps the boss or a strong-willed, vocal group member, can dominate group discussions and limit the group’s consideration of different problem definitions and alternative solutions.

And, unlike individual decisions where people feel personally responsible for making a good choice, another potential problem is that group members may not feel accountable for the decisions made and actions taken by the group.

Most people view conflict negatively. Yet the right kind of conflict can lead to much better group decision making. C-type conflict, or “cognitive conflict,” focuses on problem-and issue-related differences of opinion.

A-type conflict often results in hostility, anger, resentment, distrust, cynicism, and apathy. Unlike c-type conflict, a-type conflict undermines team effectiveness by preventing teams from engaging in the activities characteristic of c-type conflict that are critical to team effectiveness.

The following five steps establish a devil’s advocacy program:
1. Generate a potential solution.
2. Assign a devil’s advocate to criticize and question the solution.
3. Present the critique of the potential solution to key decision makers.
4. Gather additional relevant information.
5. Decide whether to use, change, or not use the originally proposed solution.

The following are the five steps of the dialectical inquiry process:
1. Generate a potential solution.
2. Identify the assumptions underlying the potential solution.
3. Generate a conflicting counterproposal based on the opposite assumptions.
4. Have advocates of each position present their arguments and engage in a debate in front of key decision makers.
5. Decide whether to use, change, or not use the originally proposed solution.

Nominal means “in name only.” Accordingly, the nominal group technique received its name because it begins with a quiet time in which group members independently write down as many problem definitions and alternative solutions as possible. In other words, the nominal group technique begins by having group members act as individuals.

In the Delphi technique, the members of a panel of experts respond to questions and to each other until reaching agreement on an issue.

Brainstorming has four rules:
1. The more ideas, the better.
2. All ideas are acceptable, no matter how wild or crazy they might seem.
3. Other group members’ ideas should be used to come up with even more ideas.
4. Criticism or evaluation of ideas is not allowed.