"The best plans often go wrong." "The problem is with the details." We often hear these expressions. But Oprah's experience in South Africa also shows that you can make great things happen with good insight, the right plans, and proper controls. Even when things don't go as intended, plans and their implementation can often be adjusted to achieve important goals.

One of the best ways to improve time management is to keep a daily time log for a day or two—listing what you do and how long it takes. Make such a log, and then analyze it to determine where you seem to be wasting time and where you are using it well. Also make use of the end-of-chapter Self-Assessment feature to better understand your Time Management Profile and think further about your Time Management Skills.

Visual Chapter Overview

8 Planning Processes and Techniques

Managers need the ability to look ahead, make good plans, and help themselves and others meet the challenges of the future. But it can be easy to get so engrossed in the present that we forget about what lies ahead. Other times a mad rush to the future can go off track due to all sorts of uncertainties and lack of familiar reference points. The trick is to blend the lessons of past experiences with future aspirations, and with a willingness to adapt as new circumstances arise.

As the opening example of Oprah's Leadership Academy shows, no one knows for sure what the future holds. The likelihood is that even the best of plans will have to be adjusted and changed at some point. Thus, we need the insight and courage to be flexible, and the discipline to stay focused on goals even as complications and problems arise.

When planning is done well it creates a solid platform for the other management functions: organizing—allocating and arranging resources to accomplish tasks; leading—guiding the efforts of human resources to ensure high levels of task accomplishment; and controlling—monitoring task accomplishments and taking necessary corrective action. This centrality of planning in management is shown in Figure 8.1. Especially in today's demanding organizational and career environments, good planning helps us become better at what we are doing and to stay action-oriented. An Eaton Corporation annual report, for example, once stated: "Planning at Eaton means making the hard decisions before events force them upon you, and anticipating the future needs of the market before the demand asserts itself."^[456]

Figure 8.1. The roles of planning and controlling in the management process.

Planning should focus attention on objectives and goals that identify the specific results or desired outcomes that one intends to achieve. But objectives and goals have to be good ones; they should push you to achieve substantial, not trivial, things. Jack Welch, former CEO of GE, believed in what he called stretch goals — performance targets that we have to work extra hard and really stretch to reach.^[457] Would you agree that Welch's concept of stretch goals adds real strength to the planning process for both organizations and individuals?

• Objectives and goals are specific results that one wishes to achieve.

• Stretch goals are performance targets that we have to work extra hard and stretch to reach.

It's important not to forget the action side of the planning process. It should always create a real and concrete plan, a statement of action steps to be taken in order to accomplish the objectives. And, planning should result in these plans being well implemented so that desired results are really accomplished.

• A plan is a statement of intended means for accomplishing objectives.

Planning in the full sense of the responsibilities just described is an application of the decision-making process discussed in Chapter 7. The five basic steps in the planning process are:

The planning process probably seems simple and straightforward enough. But remember, planning is not something managers do while working alone in quiet rooms, free from distractions, and at scheduled times. It is an ongoing process, often continuously being done even while dealing with an otherwise busy and demanding work setting. And like other decision making in organizations, the best planning includes the active participation of those people whose work efforts will eventually determine whether or not the plans are well implemented.

The pressures organizations face come from many sources. Externally, these include ethical expectations, government regulations, uncertainties of a global economy, changing technologies, and the sheer cost of investments in labor, capital, and other supporting resources. Internally, they include the quest for operating efficiencies, new structures and technologies, alternative work arrangements, greater workplace diversity, and concerns for work-life balance. As you would expect, planning in such conditions has a number of benefits for both organizations and individuals.

Real People

McDonald's President Sets Goals and Engineers a Winning Role

Some call Don Thompson, president and chief operating officer of McDonald's, the accidental executive. He's not only one of the youngest top managers in the Fortune 500, he also may have followed the most unusual career path.

After graduating from Purdue with a degree in electrical engineering, Thompson went to work for Northrop Grumman, a leading global security company. He did well, rose into engineering management, and one day received a call from a headhunter. Thompson listened, thinking the job being offered was at McDonnell Douglas (now owned by Boeing)—another engineering-centric firm. Upon finding out it was at McDonald's, he almost turned the opportunity down. But with encouragement, he took the interview and his career hasn't been the same since.

Thompson hit the ground running at McDonald's and did well, but became frustrated eventually when he failed to win the annual McDonald's president's award. He decided it might be time to move on. With the recommendation of the firm's diversity officer he spoke with Raymond Mines, at the time the firm's highest-ranking African American executive. When Thompson confided that he "wanted to have an impact on decisions," Mines told him to move out of engineering and into the operations side of the business. Thompson did and his work not only excelled, it got him the attention he needed to advance to ever-higher responsibilities that spanned restaurant operations, franchisee relations, and strategic management.

From his childhood on Chicago's South Side, Thompson rose to fill the president's chair at McDonald's world headquarters in Oak Brook, Illinois. He has a corner office, but no door; the building is configured with an open floor plan. And that fits well with Thompson's management style and personality. His former mentor Raymond Mines says: "he has the ability to listen, blend in, analyze and communicate. People feel at ease with him. A lot of corporate executives have little time for those below them. Don makes everyone a part of the process." As for Thompson, he says "I want to make sure others achieve their goals, just as I have."

Daniel Vasella is CEO of Novartis AG and responsible for operations spread across 140 countries. He's also calendar-bound. He says: "I'm locked in by meetings, travel and other constraints ... I have to put down in priority things I like to do." Kathleen Murphy is CEO of ING US Wealth Management. She's also calendarbound, with conferences and travel booked a year ahead. She schedules meetings at half-hour intervals, works 12-hour days, and spends 60% of her time traveling. She also makes good use of her time on planes. "No one can reach me by phone and I can get reading and thinking done."^[461]

These are common executive stories—tight schedules, little time alone, lots of meetings and phone calls, and not much room for spontaneity. The keys to success in such classic management scenarios rest, in part at least, with another benefit of good planning— time management.

Management Smarts 8.1 offers useful tips on developing time management skills. And, a lot comes down to discipline and priorities. Lewis Platt, former chairman of Hewlett-Packard, once said: "Basically, the whole day is a series of choices."^[462] These choices have to be made in ways that allocate your time to the most important priorities. Platt says that he was "ruthless about priorities" and that you "have to continually work to optimize your time."

Most of us have experienced the difficulties of balancing available time with our many commitments and opportunities. As suggested in the chapter opener, it is easy to lose track of time and fall prey to what consultants identify as "time wasters." All too often we allow our time to be dominated by other people or to be misspent on nonessential activities.^[463]"To do" lists can help, but they have to contain the right things. In daily living and in management, it is important to distinguish between things that you must do (top priority), should do (high priority), would be nice to do (low priority), and really don't need to do (no priority).

It used to be that long-term plans looked three or more years into the future, while short-term plans covered one year or less. But, the environmental turmoil of the past couple of years has put the concept of "long-term" planning to a stiff test. Would you agree that the complexities and uncertainties of today's environments challenge how we go about planning and how far ahead we can really plan? At the very least we can say that there is a lot less permanency to long-term plans today, and that they are subject to frequent revisions.

• Long-term plans typically look three or more years into the future.

• Short-term plans typically cover one year or less.

Even though the time frames of planning may be shrinking, top management is still responsible for setting longer-term plans and directions for the organization as a whole. They set the context for lower management to work on useful shortterms plans. And unless everyone understands an organization's long-term plans and objectives, there is always risk that the pressures of daily events will divert attention from important tasks. In other words, without a sense of long-term direction, people can end up working hard and still not achieve significant results. Auto industry executives know this only too well. Their firms are operating today in what used to be the far-off "future," and they have arrived here only to be in lots of trouble. Was it the inability to think long term that got them here, or was it an inability to anticipate, recognize, and adjust to changing events that led to their downfalls?

Management researcher Elliot Jaques suggests that people vary in their capability to think with different time horizons.^[465] In fact, he believes that most people work comfortably with only 3-month time spans; a smaller group works well with a 1-year span; and only the very rare person can handle a 20-year time frame. These are provocative ideas and personally challenging. Although a team leader's planning may fall mainly in the weekly or monthly range, a chief executive is expected to have a vision extending years into the future. Career progress to higher management levels requires the conceptual skills to work well with longer-range time frames.

Plans at the top of the traditional organizational pyramid, the ones senior executives deal mainly with, tend to be more "strategic." By contrast, middle and lower level managers deal with plans that are more "tactical."

Tactical Plans

When a sports team enters a game or contest, it typically does so with a "strategy" in hand. Most often this strategy is set by the head coach in conjunction with assistants. The goal is clear: win the game or contest. As the game unfolds, however, situations arise that require actions to solve problems or exploit opportunities. They call for "tactics" that deal with a current situation in ways that advance the overall strategy for winning.

The same logic holds true for organizations. Tactical plans are developed and used to implement strategic plans. They specify how the organization's resources can be used to put strategies into action. In the sports context you might think of tactical plans as having "special teams" or as "special plays" ready to meet a particular threat or opportunity. In business, tactical plans often take the form of functional plans that indicate how different components of the enterprise will contribute to the overall strategy. Such functional plans might include:

• A tactical plan helps to implement all or parts of a strategic plan.

• Functional plans indicate how different operations within the organization will help advance the overall strategy.

• Production plans —dealing with work methods and technologies.

• Financial plans —dealing with money and capital investments.

• Facilities plans —dealing with facilities and work layouts.

• Logistics plans —dealing with suppliers and acquiring resource inputs.

• Marketing plans —dealing with selling and distributing goods or services.

• Human resource plans —dealing with building a talented workforce.

Research Brief

You've Got to Move Beyond Planning by the Calendar

Organizations today need executives who can make faster and better decisions, and that means strategic planning must be done continuously. Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele, writing in the Harvard Business Review, express their concerns that planning is too often viewed as an annual activity focused more on documenting plans for the record than on action. Little wonder, they suggest, that only 11% of executives in a survey of 156 firms with sales of $1+ billion were highly satisfied that strategic planning is worthwhile.

The research, conducted in collaboration with Marakon Associates and the Economist Intelligence Unit, inquired as to how long-range strategic planning was conducted and how effective these planning activities were. Results showed that executives perceived a substantial disconnect between the way many firms approached strategic planning and the way they approached strategic decisions. Some 66% of the time, executives said that strategic planning at their firms was conducted only at set times, and very often was accomplished by a formal and structured process. Survey respondents also indicated that planning was often considered as only a "periodic event" and not something to be engaged in continuously. Mankins and Steele call such planning "calendar driven," and they question its effectiveness.

In calendar-driven planning, the researchers found that firms averaged only 2.5 major strategic decisions per year, with "major" meaning a decision that could move profits by more than 10%. They also point out that when planning is disconnected from the calendar, companies make higher-quality and more strategic decisions. The researchers call this alternative planning approach "continuous review" and argue it is more consistent with the way executives actually make decisions and business realities.

You Be the Researcher

Why is it that tying the planning process to certain calendar dates may be dysfunctional for a business? On the other hand, how can we plan almost continuously? Choose two or three organizations in your community for some field research. Arrange interviews with a senior executive at each. Find out if they plan on a set schedule and if so, what that schedule might be. Probe further to find out how effective they consider planning in their organization to be.

Reference: Michael C. Mankins and Richard Steele, "Stop Making Plans; Start Making Decisions,"Harvard Business Review (January 2006), reprint R0601F.

Operational plans guide behavior and describe what needs to be done in the short term to support strategic and tactical plans. They include standing plans like policies and procedures that are used over and over again, and single-use plans like budgets that apply to one specific task or time period.

• An operational plan identifies short-term activities to implement strategic plans.

Policies and Procedures

A policy communicates broad guidelines for making decisions and taking action in specific circumstances. Organizations operate with lots of policies, and they set expectations for many aspects of employee behavior. Typical human resource policies cover things like employee hiring, termination, performance appraisals, pay increases, promotions, and discipline. For example, Judith Nitsch made sexual harassment a top priority when starting her engineering-consulting business.^[467]

• A policy is a standing plan that communicates broad guidelines for decisions and action.

Office Romance Policies Vary

The former CEO of Boeing resigned after his relationship with a female executive became public. Just where do things stand when it comes to office romances? One survey shows employer policies on office relationships vary, with 4% prohibiting any such relationships, 24% prohibiting them among persons in the same department, 13% prohibiting them among persons who have the same supervisor, 80% prohibiting them between supervisors and subordinates, and 5% having no restrictions on office romances.

Nitsch defined a sexual harassment policy, took a hard line on its enforcement, and appointed both a male and a female employee for others to talk with about sexual harassment concerns.

Procedures describe rules for what actions are to be taken in specific situations. They are stated in employee handbooks and often called SOPs— standard operating procedures. Whereas a policy sets a broad guideline, procedures define precise actions to be taken. In the prior example, Judith Nitsch was right to establish a sexual harassment policy for her firm. But, she should also put into place procedures that ensure everyone receives fair, equal, and nondiscriminatory treatment under the policy. Everyone in her firm should know both how to file a sexual harassment complaint and just how that complaint will be handled.

• A procedure is a rule describing actions that are to be taken in specific situations.

Who would have predicted on New Year's Eve 2008 that in 2009 General Motors and Chrysler would declare bankruptcy; that the U.S. government would own large shares of both firms; that GM's Pontiac and Saturn brands would be discontinued; and, that China would become the largest car market in the world?^[468] Who among us was prepared—individually and organizationally—for the recent financial crisis well before it actually hit? GE's CEO Jeffrey Immelt is frank about his failure in this regard. "I should have done more to anticipate the radical changes that occurred," he says.^[469]

Planning in business and our personal lives often involves forecasting, the process of predicting what will happen in the future.^[470] News media regularly report forecasts of economic conditions, interest rates, unemployment, trade deficits, and more. Some are based on qualitative forecasting, which uses expert opinions to predict the future. Others involve quantitative forecasting, which uses mathematical models and statistical analyses of historical data and surveys to predict future events.

• Forecasting attempts to predict the future.

Though useful, all forecasts should be treated cautiously. They are planning aids, not substitutes. It is said that a music agent once told Elvis Presley: "You ought to go back to driving a truck, because you ain't going nowhere." He was obviously mistaken, and that's the problem with forecasts. They rely on human judgment—and they can be wrong.

Picture the scene. A professional golfer is striding down the golf course with an iron in each hand. The one in her right hand is "the plan"; the one in her left is the "backup plan." Which club she uses will depend on how the ball lies on the fairway. One of her greatest strengths is being able to adjust to the situation by putting the right club to work in the circumstances at hand.

Planning is often like that. By definition it involves thinking ahead. But the more uncertain the planning environment, the more likely that one's original forecasts and intentions may prove inadequate or wrong. The golfer deals with this by having backup clubs available. This amounts to contingency planning that identifies alternative courses of action that can be implemented if circumstances change. A really good contingency plan will even contain "trigger points" to indicate when to activate preselected alternatives. Given the uncertainties of our day, this is really an indispensable tool for managerial and personal planning.

• Contingency planning identifies alternative courses of action to take when things go wrong.

Cola Wars Go Cross Cultural

Some American multinationals experienced backlash against their brands and products as a result of the Iraq War. Could Coca-Cola and Pepsi executives have anticipated the advent of new competitors like Mecca Cola and Qibla Cola that offered customers an alternative to the big U.S. brands? Qibla Cola was created by UK housewife Zahida Parveen to be "Muslim-friendly" and for customers wanting to "reject injustice and exploitation." The firm's CEO, Zafer Iqbal, once said: "The Qibla Cola Company is here to provide consumers from within the Muslim community and all people of conscience with a real alternative."

The lack of adequate contingency planning was very much in the news when debates raged over the massive oil spill from a BP offshore well in the Gulf of Mexico. Everyone from the public at large to U.S. lawmakers to oil industry experts criticized BP not only for failing to contain the spill quickly, but also for failing to anticipate and have contingency plans in place to handle such a disaster. For its part, a BP spokesperson initially said: "You have here an unprecedented event ... the unthinkable has become thinkable and the whole industry will be asking questions of itself." On the other hand, an industry expert responded: "There should be a technology that is pre-existing and ready to deploy at the drop of a hat ... it shouldn't have to be designed and fabricated now, from scratch."

After experiencing the full brunt of the crisis, BP CEO Tony Hayward finally admitted: "There are some capabilities that we could have available to deploy instantly, rather than creating as we go."^[471] The lesson here is hard-earned but very clear. Contingency planning can't prevent crises like this from occurring. But whenever acting in an environment of risk and uncertainty, it's essential to have good contingency plans available to help deal with crises if and when they do happen.

A long-term version of contingency planning, called scenario planning, involves identifying several alternative future scenarios or states of affairs that may occur. Plans are then made to deal with each scenario should it actually happen.^[472]

• Scenario planning identifies alternative future scenarios and makes plans to deal with each.

Scenario planning typically involves discussions of both "worst case" and "best case" scenarios. A worst case scenario in respect to global resource planning, for example, is outright conflict where nations fight one another to secure increasingly scarce supplies of oil. A best case is where nations work together to find ways to meet current resource needs while supporting the sustainability of global resources. At Royal Dutch/Shell, scenario planning began years ago when top managers asked themselves: "What will Shell do after its oil supplies run out?" Although such planning can never be inclusive of all future possibilities, it can help executives to really think ahead and better prepare for "future shocks."^[473]

Real Ethics

What Really Works When Fighting World Poverty?

Developing countries send $100+ billion in aid to poor countries; private foundations and charities spend $70+billion more fighting poverty and its effects around the world. But, are these monies being well spent? Not all of them, that's for sure. And that's a problem being tackled by the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The director, Abhijit Banerjee, a development economist, says: "We aren't really interested in the more-aid-lessaid debate. We're interested in seeing what works and what doesn't." The lab criticizes "feel good" evaluations and pushes for rigorous evaluations of poverty-fighting programs using scientific methods. Here's an example.

The Indian antipoverty group Seva Mandir was concerned about teacher absenteeism and low performance by rural school children. Its original plan was to pay extra tutors to assist teachers in 120 rural schools. The Poverty Lab Plan suggested paying extra tutors in 60 schools, making no changes in the other 60, and then comparing outcomes to see if the plan worked. An evaluation of results showed no difference in children's performance, even with the higher costs of extra tutors.

A new plan was made to buy cameras for 60 teachers, have them take time/date-stamped photos with children at the start and end of each school day, and have the photos analyzed each month. Teachers would receive bonuses or fines based on their absenteeism and student performance. Again, no changes were made in the other 60 schools. Evaluation revealed that teacher absenteeism was 20% lower and student performance was significantly higher in the camera schools. With the Poverty Lab's help, Seva Mandir concluded that investing in closely monitored pay incentives could improve teacher attendance in rural schools.

You Decide

Look around your organization and at cases reported in the news. How often do we draw conclusions that "plans are working" based on feel-good evaluations or anecdotal reports rather than solid scientific evaluations? What are the consequences at work and in society when plans are implemented at great cost, but without defensible systems of evaluation? Even if the objectives of a project are honorable, what ethical issues arise in situations where it isn't clear that the project is having the intended benefit?

Planners sometimes become too comfortable with the ways things are going and overconfident that the past is a good indicator of the future. It is often better to keep challenging the status quo and not simply accept things as they are. One way to do this is through benchmarking, or the use of external and internal comparisons to better evaluate one's current performance and identify possible ways to improve for the future.^[474]

• Benchmarking uses external and internal comparisons to plan for future improvements.

The purpose of benchmarking is to find out what other people and organizations are doing very well, and then plan how to incorporate these ideas into one's own operations. It is basically a way of learning from the successes of others. One benchmarking technique is to search for best practices —things people and organizations do that help them achieve superior performance.

• Best practices are things people and organizations do that lead to superior performance.

Well-run organizations emphasize internal benchmarking that encourages members and work units to learn and improve by sharing one another's best practices. They also use external benchmarking to learn from competitors and non-competitors alike. Xerox, for example, has benchmarked L.L. Bean's warehousing and distribution methods, Ford's plant layouts, and American Express's billing and collections. Ford benchmarked BMW's 3 series because, says James D. Farley, Ford's global marketing head, "The ubiquity of the 3 series engenders trust in every part of the world, and its design always has a strong point of view."^[475] And in the apparel industry, the Spanish retailer Zara has become a benchmark for excellence in "fast-fashion."^[476] The firm's design and manufacturing systems allow it to get new fashions from design to stores in two weeks. Zara produces only in small batches that sell out and create impressions of scarcity. Shoppers know they have to buy now because an item will not be replaced. And if something doesn't sell at Zara, it's not a big problem; there wasn't a large stock of the item to begin with.

Plans Help Coach Adapt to Changing Times

The financial crisis and declining sales of Coach's high-end purses caused CEO Lew Frankfort to push top management to make better plans for how to adapt to changing times. "I've never worked harder," he says about the process of developing a new line that would maintain the firm's image while still being priced more affordably. The result was the more affordable Poppy collection and an increase of the number of bags that sell for under $300. Frankfort said that getting to the decision required a "mind shift" but that everyone also recognized that "the world will forever be different, and we need to acclimate ourselves."

As organizations grow, so do the planning challenges. Cisco Systems, for example, has been planning for quite some time that a lot of its growth will come from investments overseas. And it wasn't too long ago that China was the big target in Asia. It still is a big one, but when Cisco's planners analyzed their planning premises and projected future scenarios, India emerged as a strong competitor. It turns out that they found a lot to like about India: excellence in software design, need for Cisco's products, and weak local competition. They also found some major things to worry about in China, including a government favoring local companies and poor intellectual property protection.^[477]

In many organizations, as with Cisco, staff planners are employed to help coordinate and energize planning. These specialists are experts in all steps of the planning process, as well as in the use of planning tools and techniques. They can help bring focus and expertise to a wide variety of planning tasks. But one risk is a tendency for a communication gap to develop between the staff planners and line managers. Unless everyone works closely together, the resulting plans may be based on poor information. Also, people may lack commitment to implement the plans, no matter how good they are.

In the dynamic and highly competitive technology industry, CEO T. J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. values both performance goals and accountability. He supports a planning system where employees work with clear and quantified work goals that they help set. He believes this helps people find problems before they can interfere with performance. Says Rodgers: "Managers monitor the goals, look for problems, and expect people who fall behind to ask for help before they lose control of or damage a major project."^[479]

Commitment to goals isn't unique among successful managers; in fact, it's standard practice. When Jim Kilts took over as CEO of Gillette he realized that the firm needed work.^[480] In analyzing the situation, however, he was very disciplined in setting planning goals to deal with high priority problems. In respect to sales, Gillette's big brands were losing sales to competitors. Kilts made plans to increase market shares for these brands. In respect to earnings, the company had missed its estimates for 15 quarters in a row. Kilts made plans to meet earnings estimates and raise the company's stock price.

Although both Rodgers and Kilts make us aware of the importance of goal setting in management, they may make it look a bit too easy. The way goals are set can make a big difference in how well they do in pointing people in the right directions and inspiring them to work hard. One thing to remember is the importance of moving from having "no goals" or even just everyday run-of-the-mill "average goals" to having really "great goals"—goals that result in plans being successfully implemented. Great goals tend to have these characteristics.

It is one thing to set great goals and make them part of a plan. It is quite another to make sure that goals and plans are well integrated across the many people, work units, and levels of an organization as a whole. Goals set everywhere in the organization should ideally help advance its overall mission or purpose. Yet, we sometimes work very hard to accomplish things that simply don't make much of a difference in organizational performance. This is why goal alignment is an important part of managerial planning.

• In a hierarchy of goals or hierarchy of objectives, lowerlevel goals and objectives are means to accomplishing higherlevel ones.

Figure 8.2 shows how a hierarchy of goals or hierarchy of objectives helps with goal alignment. When such a hierarchy is well defined, the accomplishment of lower-level goals and objectives is the means to the accomplishment of higher-level ones. The example in the figure is built around quality goals in a manufacturing setting. Strategic goals set by top management cascade down the organization step by step to become quality management objectives for lower levels. Ideally, everything works together in a consistent "means-end" fashion so that the organization, as stated in the figure, consistently performs as "the world's number one supplier of recyclable food containers."

Figure 8.2. A sample hierarchy of objectives for quality management.

Conversations between team leaders and team members or between supervisors and subordinates at each step in the hierarchy are essential to achieving the integration just described. Ideally, the conversations result in agreements on (1) performance objectives for a given time period, (2) plans through which they will be accomplished, (3) standards for measuring whether they have been accomplished, and (4) pro-cedures for reviewing performance results. Some-times this process is called management by objectives (MBO), but it is really just old-fashioned good management.^[481]

As pointed out earlier, goal alignment conver-sations should focus on objectives that are specific, timely, measurable, challenging, and attainable. An example is the improvement objective for a team member "to reduce quality rejects by 10% within three months." Another is the personal development objective "to learn by April 15 the latest version of our supply chain management software package."

One of the more difficult aspects of stating performance objectives is the need to make them as measurable as possible. Ideally, there is agreement on a measurable end product, for example, "to reduce travel expenses by 5% by the end of the fiscal year." But performance in some jobs, particularly managerial ones, can be hard to quantify. Rather than abandon the quest for a good objective in such cases, it is often possible to agree on verifiable work activities. Their accomplishment serves as an indicator of performance progress. An example is "to improve communications with my team in the next three months by holding weekly team meetings." Whereas it can be difficult to measure "improved communications," it is easy to document whether the "weekly team meetings" have been held.

Figure 8.3. How participation and involvement help build commitment to plans.

When 7-Eleven executives decided to offer new upscale products and services, such as selling fancy meals-to-go, they learned a planning lesson the hard way. Although their ideas sounded good at the top, franchise owners balked at the store level. The executives belatedly realized the value of taking time to involve the owners when making new plans for the stores.^[482]

Planning is a process and not an event. And "participation" and "involvement" are two of its core components. Participatory planning includes in all planning steps the people who will be affected by the plans and asked to help implement them. One of the things that research is most clear about is that when people participate in setting goals they gain motivation to work hard to accomplish them.^[483] Whether the planning is for a team, a large division, or the entire organization, involving people goes a long way toward gaining their commitments to work hard and support the implementation of plans.

• Participatory planning includes the persons who will be affected by plans and/or those who will implement them.

This role of participation and involvement in the planning process is shown in Figure 8.3, and there are many benefits when and if it can be followed in practice. Participation can increase the creativity and information available for planning. It can also increase the understanding and acceptance of plans, as well as commitment to their success. And even though participatory planning takes more time, it can improve results by improving implementation.