Dr. Tom D.
McFarland, Management Consultant
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Dr. Tom D.
McFarland, Management Consultant |
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| Services Offered: Planning Details Today’s companies are complex, goal-directed, social systems functioning in a dynamic business environment. Managers must assess the external business environment, diagnose conditions inside the firm, and understand differences among individuals who work together to achieve goals. Leaders must take correct decisions, initiate proper actions, and prepare for change using those assessments. Planning meets the need to assess business conditions, review organizational capabilities, evaluate financial and resource productiveness, and determine the contributions required from members. It is a dynamic and ongoing activity that creates a shared vision of the firm through the collaboration of key leaders in the process. Strategic plans establish the fundamental purposes and values of the business as a whole. The company is viewed as an entity in the broad context of international, national, state and industry conditions. Planning provide a business environmental analysis that identifies opportunities, threats, strengths, weaknesses of the business and then formulates a long term strategy and the policies needed for implementation. Business plans provide a tactical view of the company and its important functions. They are guides summarizing where you are now, where you want to go in the next year, and how you expect to get there. We provide a framework to conduct a thorough analysis of the multi-levels of an open systems organization. We identify and assess critical success factors in the economic and technological sectors, socio-cultural and political arenas, industry and market conditions, and organizational, team, and individual characteristics and link these factors to the various functions of the firm (finance and accounting, general management, marketing, operations, personnel, research and development). The soundness of a plan depends on the accurate determination of the interactions among organizational processes, systems, and behaviors. Organizational processes include change, communication, conflict management, control, culture, decision-making, goal setting, group dynamics, innovation, information flows, intergroup dynamics, leadership, management, motivation, organization development, power, politics, socialization, technology, and work. Systems include direction (mission and goals), environmental interaction, social-cultural, structure, tasks, and technology. Behaviors of organizational members are characterized as performance-oriented, membership, and/or adaptive. Because of the complexity of internal and external business environments it is impossible to ever assess all of these factors. In today’s world of rapid technological, political, and economic change with intense industry competition, most professionals are challenged to remain at the top of their field. The effectiveness of their firms, although vitally important, may not be their top priority. These conditions make it absolutely critical that the time and effort spent planning strategy, managing operations and developing the firm’s capabilities be especially efficient and definitely effective. |
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