12:00 pm Late Fall Management

Foundations of Planning by Erika Strong

This is Erika Strong from Alicia Revely’s Principles of Management class, there was an assignment to post a blog about your Kiva recipient and how they could use the information in the Chapter that was selected out of the book Management, the ninth edition written by Stephen P. Robbins and Mary Coulter. The group that I was in was Group 6.

We chose Meta Shir Ahammd. She lives in district 4 of Kabul, Afghanistan. She works in the business of Embroidery, which is the art of decorating fabric or other materials with designs stitched in strands of thread or yarn using a needle. Embroidery may also use other materials such as metal strips, pearls, beads, quills, and sequins. Sewing machines can be used to create machine embroidery. Meta Shir Ahammd is applying for a loan on www.Kiva.org to get a new machine such as the one I mentioned. In my group we decided to choose different chapters.

I have chosen to put Chapter 7 towards her, which is entitled Foundations of Planning. The chapter based upon different goals and plans. She should understand that planning provides direction to the managers themselves and the ones they manage over. Even though it may not seem that she is a manager. Everyone is a manager in most cases. As well, planning reduces the uncertainty factor, no one wants to get into a project and not be certain of the outcomes. But most importantly planning establishes goals. These goals are important to figure out in any situation. Everything a person does has goals. That is how you know what is need to be done, it is a desired outcome for an individual or group.

There are many types of goals. Meta should think about having stated goals. These goals are official statements of what an organization says, and what it wants it’s various stakeholders to believe. If she does this, it would make her have a more productive business. There are also real goals. These goals are the ones that an organization actually pursues, as defined as the actions of its members. These allow the business to observe was the organization is actually engages in. With goals comes plans.

There are many types of plans as well and each one is as important as the other, the most important out of strategic and operational to Meta is strategic. This is true because she is running the business so it allows her to apply the plans to the entire organization. I believe if she is planning on having this business for a long time then she has to engage in a long term plan in to how the business is going to be ran and all the details. The plans she should really look into along with the others are specific plans, directional plans don’t go into detail. Specific plans are those that are specifically defined.

Meta Shir Ahammd should look into the process called management by objectives (MBO). MBO is the process of setting mutually agreed-upon goals and using those goals to evaluate employee performance. She can use this to look over what has been done and work on what needs to be done.

Setting goals are pretty easy though, Meta just has to follow five steps:

1. Review the organization’s mission, the purpose of the organization.

2. Evaluate available resources.

3. Determine the goals individually or with help from others.

4. Write down the goals and communicate them to all who need to know.

5. Review results and whether goals are being met.

Meta has to be careful with all the criticisms of planning like:

1. Planning may create rigidity.

2. Plans can’t be developed for a dynamic environment.

3. Formal plans can’t replace intuition and creativity.

4. Planning focuses managers on today’s competition, not on tomorrow’s survival.

In conclusion, planning and goal setting would be an important part of Meta Shir Ahammd’s business. The way the goals are set and plans are made would make her business very successful. Meta Shir Ahammd, if you read this, I wish your business well.