Philip Walcoff - "The Fast Forward MBA in Business Planning for ...

Philip Walcoff - "The Fast Forward MBA in Business Planning for Growth"completion dates. In addition, the necessary resources to achieve the objective are presented.The champions of each annual objective should complete these mini-implementation plans and, ifapplicable, present them to the management team for review and comment within several weeks of theplan's finalization.Page 146Referring to Figure 10.1, the combination of the seven tasks leads up to achievement of the statedobjective. Mini-implementation plans set the stage for moving forward to address each annual objectivein your business plan.Managing by ObjectivesFor companies large enough to have a management team, a major advantage of getting your senior staffinvolved in the business-planning activity is that it enables them to become champions of andaccountable for achieving specific objectives. Because these objectives are measurable, you have anexcellent basis for effectively evaluating your management team's performance at year-end. Thisapproach is becoming more and more popular in a large number of companies and is calledmanagement by objectives. In fact, establishing year-end objectives, managing progress, and coachingchampions throughout the year is taking place at all levels of these forward-thinking companies, fromsenior managers to front-line workers. The days of giving all employees a fixed percentage raise at yearendare gone. In today's business environment, you need to create incentives for your employees andpay only for performance.Consider offering your senior management team a management-by-objectives incentive compensationprogram this year and moving it down your organization in following years. This approach can go along way toward addressing the management and personnel issues discussed in Chapter 4 whilecreating a more effective management organization.Holding Regularly Scheduled Staff MeetingsHolding weekly staff meetings is a major step toward creating enhanced communications (andoperational effectiveness) within your management team. A sample agenda for a weekly onehour staffmeeting, including a segment for the action plan review, is presented in Figure 10.2.file:///C|/Documents and Settings/gasanova/Local Setti...orward_MBA_in_Business_Planning_for_Growth/e-book.html (160 of 219)16.02.2005 13:54:23