Once, in a different economic era, The Boss went into his/her office, closed the door, and wrote the company or departmental operational plan (or “business plan” as it was often called).
Today, international studies of managers who develop and implement operational plans show that the following key competencies are required for this process:
Planning Risk management
Delegating Networking
Involving others Innovating
Consulting Communicating
Influencing and persuading Monitoring
Evaluating Setting objectives
Building consensus
These reflect the entwined issues of complexity and collaboration.
When seeking a competitive advantage, many opportunities for improvements exist in pieces, with different people, in different parts of a business. These may be the pieces of better customer satisfaction, higher quality, cross-functional process tightening, problem solving, innovation and internal entrepreneurship.
One piece of the puzzle presents itself to one person or team. Another piece of information or insight can only be seen at another level of the organization (perhaps where a specific job is being done).
Management may be distanced (by time, place or communication) from other managers or employees who hold key pieces of information or insights. All the pieces, together, can make significant differences to the business process.
The organization that finds many of the pieces does better than its competitors. It finds the productivity, effectiveness, creativity, and employee engagement that are the leading edge of profitability, often by using collaborative processes during operational planning.**
**CPS offers custom programs in both operational planning and internal entrepreneurship. All programs are eligible for state funding.
