ADVANTAGES OF STRATEGY PLANNIG

   Not all managers beleive that strategy planning is useful or even possible.Some suggest that the future is too complex and difficult to anticipate.Of course,perfect accuracy in forecasting is impossible since the future holds many uncertaintes.But,what is likely to happen to an organization that does not try to understand those basic marketplace phenomena that both lead and force change? More than likely it will be blighted with troubles affecting survival and growth.Changes in society,the future impact of corrent decisions,the complexity of govermental regulations,and the increased pressures of competition can hinder survival unless managers make strategic decisions.Surely,strategy planning can assist management in anticipating unfavorable factors and changing enviroments in which organizations must survive and grow. 

In terms of managements decisions,strategy planning asks the questions : Whats is company's business? Is it the right business?Are product lines obsolate and/or markets eroding?If an organization does not know where it is going,it surely cannot get there.By focosing on the future, as well as on presents constraints and polices,managers become better equiped to direct resources toward a succesful achievemental of goals.By anticipating the future there is less temptation to focus on short run results while sacrificing long-run gains,and this is more likely to happen when performance is evaluated on the basic of adherence to to strategy planning involves long-run considerations,managers can uctualy capitalize on anticipated changes for the benift and growth of their organizations.As an example,consider the case of General Electric where "strategic business planning" is used to analyze various product lines systematically in an effort to decide which should be sold.Specifically, the concept involves a continuing in-depth analysis of the market share,growth prospect,profitability,and cash-generating power of each venture.In order to continue on a path of growth,General Electric's strategic planning techniques also put old-line businesses,such as toasters and turbines,under the same analysis as new ventures.In this way,management isolates product lines that are not particularly attractive,either now or in the future.Consequently,strategy planning allows GE to predict the profitability of product lines in as little as one years,as opposed to two or there years as head been normal under its previous planning process.
  While other example could be cited,two major advantages of strategy planning can be seen in the General Electric example.First,more effective plans can be developed,especially those requiring long periods of time to formulate.Managers become involved in shaping the destiny of their organizations and are not content to depend on fortuitous event.To this extent,important contingency plans are taken into account to meet the realities of extreme risks.As a continuous challenge that is never complete.strategy planning requires managers to look at their organizations in a different way from the way they did the previous years.
   Seconds,motivations and cohesiveness are enhanced since all individuals in the organization have an opportunity to know what is going on,where the organization is headed,and what is expected of them in achieving objectives.Of course,if a strategy is to have this value,it must be communicated and understood at all levels within the organizations.Planning of this type also requires exceptional leadership by top level management if given strategies are to be implemented successfully.

THE RISING IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGI PLANNING

  strategic planning has been around for a long time.What is not so obvios is the shifting of managerial attention from the technicalities of the planning process to the subtantive issues affacting long term performance.This a result of rapidly changing economic,social,and political enviroments,all of which affect every organization whether it be a small grocery store,an international conglomerate,or a social welfare agency.

   prior to 1940 most business firms concentrated  on a single product or group of related product and having it available to meet demand profitaby.Thus,Many business managers were preoccupied with day-to-day problems,rather than with appraising current performance and assessing long-term needs and prospect of the business.if any long-range planning was undertaken,it generally deal with expending the product line or the goegrapical sales area.

   With world war II,business firms had to make massive oprational and managerial changes.Since 1950,new markets have appread view invesment in firms with long range profil growth,technology has accelerated at an even greater pace,and social vakues have changes,traditional planning is inadequate.Top level managers must shift their concerns from short term problem to long range oppurtunities by constantly analyzing varios courses of action.This type of anlaysis involves recognition of changing enviroments and strenghts and weaknesses of organizational resouces.

  To illustrate this pont,Eagle Picher Industries was principally a lead and zinc mining and processing company

prior to 1950.In the 1970,the company decided to expand into a balanced diversity of manufacturing operations.This decision requred managers to define the company's business philosopy and overall directional purpose.Social,political,and economic trends affecting the business had to be assesed to determine if each diversification decison was internally consistent with overal goals.Also,the new strategy requred an evaluation of management capabilites and skills so that these resourse could be faused on product and markets with similiar characteristics to those in which the company already exelled.Such a strategic change increased managerial complexity of the organization and forced management to replace spordic diagnoses of cyclical swings in metal prices and the nonferrous metal market with continous market curveillance.

STRATEGI PLANNING AND STRATEGI MANAJEMENT

STRATEGI PLANNING AND STRATEGI MANAJEMENT

From a military standpoint there are wats and battles--wars are wonthrought strategy planning,while battles are guided by tacticalplans.

The battle is a short - term achiement whose secces may results from luck,astute decision making,initiative,leadership,and/or oppotunism.

Victory an war,however,depends an strategy planning.For definitional porposes,strategy planning involves the long-range planning activities of a manajers that considers enviromental factotrs in setting forth organizational characters,purpose,and direction.In abbreviated from,the strategi planning process involves (1) esthabilishingoveral goals, (2) determining long-range actions to be taken by anticipatiing the impcat of future anviromental forces, (3) identifying resouces and the methods used to allocate them in carrying out decisions,and ( 4) evaluating performance in relationship to esthablished goals.

In business organizations,both large and small,strategy planning and technical plans have the same meaning as in military oprations.For example,planning for the week's activities would normaly be regarded as tectical,but when the planning time frame involves three years or longer,it can be considered strategic.Of course,the strategy planning horizon vaeies with diffrent industries. A manufacturing firm,such as scripto,utilizes a 3-years basis.Since strategy planning involves longer planning horizons,it must include all activities that relate to on accomplishment of organizational goals.In this chapter we will look specificaly at the nature and content of strategic planning the forecasting assumptions involved in developing a plan,and an example of how a company changed its strategy to improve its market position.

MANAGEMENT-WINNING AT NEW PRODUCT

Winning at New Product 
Dr Cooper's book is the "Bible" on how to work with the Stage-Gate process in your company.
Third extended and updated edition

Winning at new product,launching high quality new products at market at the right time is among the most critical aspects of succeding as a company.it is also the most difficult to achieve,Winning at new product,writen by Robertcooper,is an in-depth look at creating and implementing a successful new product process. The methodical Stage-Gate process presented leads you step-by-step along the road to success, from generating ideas to launching the finished product at the market.Through analyses of over 2000 of new-product projects,Cooper has determined 15 critical success factors that makes for a winning product.Cooper is known as the father of the Stage-Gate system and has been putting his strategies to use for years. This third edition of Winning at New Products is the definitive interpretation of Cooper's practices. He addresses the practicalities of implementing of implementing a new product process while considering current business conditions which require faster development time and a mutinational perspective.

What's a college degree actually worth?

A recent study linking college majors to lifetime career earnings has rekindled the long-standing debate over the economic value of higher education.

FFORTUNE -- Any student or recent graduate knows the awkward college major conversation all to well :

"What are you studying? Oh, interesting. What are you planning to do with that?" Translation: Will you actually be able to pay your bills with a liberal arts degree?

A recently released study linking college majors to lifetime career earnings has rekindled the long-standing debate over the economic value of higher education.

The roots of this debate run deep. John Adams, the second U.S. president, even offered his view in the late 18th century. His generation and his sons' generation studied practical subjects "in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, musick, architecture, statuary, tapestry and porcelaine," he wrote his wife, Abigail, in a 1780 letter.

College remained, for decades, a privileged aerie, populated largely by scions of wealthy families. Following World War II and the passage of the G.I. bill, a four-year college education became accessible to the middle classes, allowing a more diverse group to follow Adams' vision and study painting, poetry and other areas not offering certain financial futures.

Even so, generations still debate the practical worth of university degrees -- in everything from drama to French -- at many a kitchen table. Rising education costs, weighty student debt, and the paucity of jobs have given the discussion even more urgency.

Some like Apple's (AAPL) Steve Jobs endorse studying humanities -- noting recently that "technology alone is not enough -- it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing."

College dropout Bill Gates has a different perspective. He urges students to pursue a practical education, advising state governors at the National Governors Association's meeting last February to focus on "categories [of courses] that help fill jobs and drive the state economy in the future.

PayPal founder Peter Thiel goes even further. He counsels students to skip college altogether and start a business instead, and he is even putting $2 million behind his idea.

College degrees, say Thiel (who has a bachelor's and a law degree from Stanford), are the wrong indicator of success because smart kids have the drive and ambition to succeed without taking time for college and racking up costly student loans.

Such differing views come down to whether a college degree is seen as a commodity to be purchased or an experience that opens up new possibilities.

"It's both," says Anthony P. Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce, and an author of a new study that examines the linkage between college undergraduate majors and lifetime career earnings.

Yes, it's still worth going

Although the study concludes that there are wide variations in the career payoffs from undergraduate majors, it concludes that a college degree is worth the time and money spent.

"But the days when you could go to college, get a bachelor's degree and have access to a wide variety of jobs, those days are gone because there are more qualifications required to get a job," warns Carnevale. "It takes employers years to train people, but no one wants to commit to a 30-year career any more."

To pinpoint the return on educational dollars spent, the Georgetown study used U.S. Census data gathered in the 2009 American Community Survey to glean information for the lifetime earnings for 171 undergraduate college majors. The study found that the total salary return on some majors is far better than others -- with various engineering degrees, from petroleum to mechanical, delivering earnings as much as 300% more than less technical majors.

Clustered at the other end for overall earnings were majors like social work, drama, and early childhood education. But, in an encouraging sign for the less technical-minded, liberal arts and humanities majors were in the middle of the pack in terms of earnings and employment, with median incomes of $47,000.

The study did not factor in health, retirement and other benefits but based its conclusions on data from some three million Americans responding to the federal survey.

Humanities majors: There's hope

A separate study, from compensation data provider PayScale, suggests that all is not grim for humanities majors when it comes to earnings potential. Its latest "college salary" report found that scientists and engineers fare best, but noted that "there is still plenty of money to be made with a liberal arts degree."

PayScale used nationwide salary survey data of people with undergraduate degrees and calculated starting salaries and median salaries for mid-career workers, defined as people who had 15 years experience in a field. Engineering -- aerospace, chemical computer, electrical -- took the top mid-career salary slots, with earnings between $109,000 and $102,000. Majors like elementary education ($42,400) and social work ($41,600) yielded the lowest median salaries, but other majors like philosophy had a median salary of $76,700 and art history delivered a median salary of $62,400.

To be sure, many liberal arts and humanities majors are not relying solely on their four-year degrees for their career earnings, the Georgetown study noted. Some 41% of liberal arts and humanities majors go on to earn graduate degrees, which provides graduates with an 50% return on their investment, on average, according to the study.

These majors "generally fare well in the workforce, ending up in professional, white-collar and education occupations," Carnevale concludes. He says that job opportunities began to shift significantly in favor of degreed-workers after the economy restructured in the wake of the recession in the early 1980s.

While graduate degrees deliver higher earnings, the increase also depends heavily on the subject area a student pursues, according to the report. Health-care and biology-related areas deliver the highest earnings bump. But advanced degrees in studio arts or petroleum engineering yielded among the lowest earnings increases. Georgetown plans to release another study detailing graduate degree earnings.

Carnevale warns that students should examine options closely before deciding their choice of major. For example, he said an undergraduate business major with a concentration in hospitality would yield a far lower salary than other types of business majors. Even so, an undergraduate business degree in finance, accounting or economics would out-earn an economics degree earned in a university's social sciences department, he says.

Georgetown's findings are underscored by data for starting salaries for this year's college graduates. The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) recently reported that seven out of the 10 top-paying majors are in engineering, which includes chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering. Computer science was the only non-engineering major in the top five.

Graduates with these majors were offered an average starting salary of $60,000, according to the 2011 Spring Salary Survey, a study of 70 different majors at colleges and universities across the country that NACE conducts every three months.

Gaps that go beyond college majors

In at least one respect, little has changed for the high-paying technical college majors -- white men predominate. The Georgetown study found that even though there are significant numbers of women in such technical majors as mathematics -- where 44% of undergrads are female -- this did not mean a higher-paying career.

"Women earn, on average, $20,000 less than their equally educated male counterparts," Carnevale says.

African-Americans are in a similar situation, earning an average of $22,000 less than their white counterparts who majored in the same subject, and $12,000 less than Asian counterparts in a well-paid major like electrical engineering.

"We never expected to find this," he says. "These differences came as a real surprise. We thought it had changed.

Definition of Performance Management

You must have a clear and practical definition of performance management if you want to purposefully manage the performance of your direct reports in order to lead them to peak performance.We do not define anything here in terms of theory – we define everything here according to the practical needs of the manager who must deliver results through her direct reports.Before we ask ourselves what is performance management, let’s define the meaningof“performance.”

Performance is the sum of behavior plus results:Performance = Behavior + Results

When you are looking at performance, it is necessary to focus on both, on behavior and on results:

. If you only focus on behaviors, you won’t notice if you don’t get desired results.And if you only focus on results, you won’t notice if your employees don’t behave ethically.Remember this simple formula – it’s very easy to recall it and it is extremely useful.The definition of performance management then, is the systematic and periodic assessment of your direct report’s behaviors and results.Now, despite the fact that this definition of performance management is accurate and objective, it is useless.This definition by itself won’t help you get very far in managing the performance of your employees.Together with this definition of performance management, you also need to know what performance management is for.Performance Management GoalsWhat is performance management for? In other words, what are the goals of performance management?Performance management has two goals:The first goal is to create competency in your people – competency refers to the adequate skills your direct reports need in order to achieve desired performance.The second goal is to create growth in your employees – growth refers to the development of skills of your direct reports in order to exceed desired performance and be able to move to increasingly difficult assignments.Translation number one: Performance management means that your job as the boss is two-fold:First, it is to help your direct reports be able to do current tasks; and second, it is to help them grow professionally.The more you do this well, your team will become gradually stronger, and your team will deliver better resultsTranslation number two: As the manager that you are, doing performance management well will help you grow as a leader tremendously (to lead – among other tasks – is to grow people).Since you get paid to deliver results, from your own perspective and from the organization you work for perspective, performance management is not an option.Translation number three: Performance management is an ongoing process.Performance management is not a once in a while one-time event – like performance appraisal for example – if it were, it would be impossible to achieve your two performance management goals.By keeping these two elements (definition of performance and the two performance management goals) in your definition of performance management, you will maintain objectivity and effectiveness in your performance management endeavors, and consequently, you will be able to boost the performance of your direct reports.

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT CYCLE

PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT
CYCLE
----------------------------------------------------

The performance management cycle I use is rather easy to learn and to implement – its power resides in its accurate application. This is not rocket science – in fact it is a very simple model.

The difficulty of this model is in the unlearning of your old ineffective behaviors, and the learning of- and daily application of this cycle.

This model consist of three elements:
. Goal setting
. Evaluate performance
. Feedback

These three elements are in a closed loop, and you must always execute them within your organization’s Mission, Values, and Strategy.



To make this model work flawlessly, you need the rest of the tools on this website – just go back to the previous page (Basic manajement skills ), and continue reading in a sequential order

Basic Management Skills

Basic management skills to help you manage the performance of your direct reports.

But don’t be fooled by the word “basic” – whether you are an entry-level supervisor, a seasoned executive, or the CEO, these skills will help you lead your employees to peak performance.

In my experience working with hundreds of managers, the great majority of them didn’t know about most of these so-called basic skills.

I grouped these skills into four sections:

# First Section: Building Blocks

# Second Section: General Skills

# Third Section: Communication Skills

# Fourth Section: Specific Skills
Because each skill is a stand-alone technique or tool, you may look at each section, and decide which skill you want to learn about.
However, in order to maximize the effectiveness of this performance management model, I suggest you go through the first three sections in a sequential order.

Time Management Skills

This section discusses personal time management skills. These are essential skills for effective people.

People who use these techniques routinely are the highest achievers in all walks of life, from business to sport to public service. If you use these skills well, then you will be able to function effectively, even under intense pressure.

At the heart of time management is an important shift in focus:

Concentrate on results, not on being busy

Many people spend their days in a frenzy of activity, but achieve very little because they are not concentrating on the right things.

THE 80:20 RULE

This is neatly summed up in the Pareto Principle, or the '80:20 Rule'. This argues that typically 80% of unfocussed effort generates only 20% of results. The remaining 80% of results are achieved with only 20% of the effort. While the ratio is not always 80:20, this broad pattern of a small proportion of activity generating non-scalar returns recurs so frequently as to be the norm in many areas.

By applying the time management tips and skills in this section you can optimize your effort to ensure that you concentrate as much of your time and energy as possible on the high payoff tasks. This ensures that you achieve the greatest benefit possible with the limited amount of time available to you.

Time Management Tools

By the end of this section, you should have a much clearer understanding of how to use time to its greatest effect.

These tools and many, many more are explained in Mind Tools' Make Time For Success! This contains more than 100 pages of time tested tips, techniques and secrets to improve your time management skills and get the most that life has to offer. You will learn how to set realistic goals, generate a life plan and leverage all of the opportunities that life has to offer. Many of the lessons include workbook exercises so that you really understand how to put these invaluable skills to work in your life.

Why Needs management

MANAGEMENT : WHY NEEDS ARE FOR GOOD BUSINESS...

When the news broke earlier this month that Tesco had poached Barclays' deputy chairman Sir Richard Broadbent, outgoing Tesco chairman David Reid said Sir Richard’s 'wide expertise, board experience and personal qualities' were the key things he would bring to the table.

That 'broad experience' includes a spell at the helm of Schroders' European corporate finance business, as well as a stint as executive chairman of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise. But if you’re not the world’s third largest retailer, how do you go about finding a non-executive director (NED) who will help you grow your business?

A good NED should 'fill in the gaps', so the recruitment process starts with identifying any potential weaknesses in the skillsets on the board. Any SME, especially a fast-growing one, will need different things as it grows, but won’t be able to afford them all at the same time. Having carefully-picked NEDs on the board is a way of staffing-up without stretching resources too far. Many NEDs will work for share options (some might even pay you by putting in equity), and restricting their workload to a couple of days a month will mean you get a high-level team member at great value for money.

While an SME may only need its NEDs for one or two days a month, this may need to be increased if the company is going through a process such as an acquisition where the experience and support of the NED can be very important .

The number of NEDS will depend on the size of the company and its needs, but it’s usually advisable to have more than one. A "'one voice' will need to make a lot of noise to avoid getting drowned out, but if it’s too loud, it may ostracise the rest of the board.

In fact, getting the chemistry right is one of the most important stages in the NED recruitment process. NEDs are a company's 'critical friends'. They have to be allowed to challenge the board, but the board has to trust them to do so in a constructive way.