Cable Company - Operational Plan

Running head: Operational Plan

Operational Plan

Crystal M Jackson

Ashford University

The Functions of Modern Management (MOB1415B)

Instructor:  Dr. Alan Swank

Week 6

Operational Plan Develop an operational plan for an organization of your choice. Create a fictional organization that includes the name, type of business, size of organization, and the product or service that the organization offers. The paper must be between 10-12 pages in length and include five scholarly sources, in addition to the text. Your paper must:

a. Develop an organizational chart for the proposed organization.

a. Include the title of positions and a brief description of the positions’ duties and responsibilities.

b. Figure 7.7 in Chapter 7 of the text provides an example of how to develop the organizational chart.  

b. Define the organization’s vision, mission, and values.

c. Outline the basic planning process for the organization, and describes how the three levels of management influence this process.

d. Explain why the quality, productivity, and profitability are important elements in the planning process.

e. Evaluate the relationship between the human resource planning activities and the overall organizational strategy.

f. Discuss the philosophy of management that will be applied to the management of the organization and how the structure of the organization will foster a positive work environment where employees will be motivated and productive.

g. Compose the steps of control and types of controls included in the control process for the organization. 

h. David Purdue, Reebox, Dollar General

avid Perdue is a successful business leader with 40 years of real world business experience who helped grow some of America's most recognizable companies including Sara Lee, Haggar, and Reebok. As a Fortune 500 CEO, David led the impressive expansion of Dollar General, creating thousands of quality jobs and adding billions to the value of the company.

While working his way to the top of the business world, he gained a firsthand understanding of the global economy and the impact government policies have on businesses. David has lived and worked in Europe, Asia and throughout the United States, but he always relied on the values he learned from his Middle Georgia upbringing.

Perdue was born in Macon, Georgia and raised in Warner Robins, the son of two educators. His parents were both the first in their families to go to college. From an early age, David was taught the importance of a good education. His father eventually became the well-respected superintendent of Houston County Schools.

David was expected to lead by example, which meant hard work in the classroom during the school year and hard work in the fields of family farms during the summer months. One of his first jobs was in a Head Start program where he saw firsthand how important early learning is to ultimate success in school.

At Georgia Tech, David earned a degree in Industrial Engineering while working warehouse and construction jobs. After graduating, he married Bonnie, whom he had met in the first grade and they have been married for 41 years. Perdue worked fulltime with Kurt Salmon Associates while enrolled in graduate school and Bonnie taught school in Gwinnett County.

David earned his second degree from Tech, a master's in Operations Research. After completing his academic work at Tech, Perdue began a professional career that took him around the globe and to the helm of major corporations.

As a Principal of Kurt Salmon Associates, a management consulting firm, David helped dozens of companies improve their products and expand operations. He quickly learned that his best ideas came from working on the factory floor and talking with employees.

This personal, hands-on approach was more effective than anything Perdue learned from a textbook. He developed a deep understanding of manufacturing, a genuine connection with co-workers, and the ability to utilize those strengths anywhere in the world.

Ultimately, Perdue served as an executive for leading international companies. He accepted tough business challenges from Singapore, Hong Kong, and Paris to Dallas, Boston, and Nashville. As Senior Vice President of Asia Operations for Sara Lee, Perdue established the company's first Asia headquarters.

As President and CEO of the Reebok brand, he was credited with revitalizing the athletic brand. And as Chairman and CEO of Dollar General, he oversaw the company's expansion from 5,900 to 8,500 stores nationwide creating thousands of quality jobs. While at Dollar General, he became heavily involved in literacy and served as Chairman of the National Commission on Literacy and Workforce Development.

David has proven himself in international business and has happily settled back in his home state of Georgia. He currently sits on the Board of Directors of five major corporations and is active in Perdue Partners, a Georgia-based global trading company that he co-founded.

Perdue recently served as an appointee to the Georgia Ports Authority and is a Trustee and Treasurer of the Georgia Tech Foundation. David and Bonnie have two sons and two grandsons. The couple attends Wesley United Methodist Church in St. Simons.

https://perduesenate.com/meet-david.html

Charter, founded in 1993, created a customer service-oriented company that has grown and evolved on many levels over the past two decades. Charter's growth was achieved through acquisitions of cable properties and the subsequent increase of customers in those communities, as well as development and launch of new products and services. Charter became a publicly-traded company on NASDAQ in 1999 and has been a Fortune 500 company since 2001.

A leading broadband communications company and the fourth-largest cable operator in the United States, Charter today employs more than 21,000 and provides services to more than 5.7 million customers in 29 states. Headquartered in Stamford, CT, the company is focused on integrating the highest-quality service with clearly superior entertainment and communications products. Over the years, billions have been invested in the communities Charter serves through infrastructure upgrades to deliver video, high-speed Internet and phone service to homes and businesses.

Because Charter is part of each community we serve, we have always been dedicated to invest in strengthening our communities with financial and human resources. We have developed programs and initiatives that make a difference. In the coming months, we will begin engaging communities to enable some exciting things happen.

"Our 2013 results show the early success of our strategies to drive accelerated customer growth. We now deliver a competitive, highly valuable suite of products and services to our customers, and we are beginning to execute at a high level, evidenced by improving trends through the year," said Tom Rutledge, President and CEO of Charter Communications. 

https://www.charter.com/browse/content/about-charter

Managerial planning is an important part of being an effective leader. There are three types of mission-based plans: strategic, tactical and operational. The three types of managerial planning as outlined in our text by Plunket, W., Allen, G., & Attner, R., (2013) are strategic, tactical, and operational. Strategic plans establish the steps by which an organization achieves its strategic objectives. They are concerned with the entire organization’s direction and the primary responsibility of top management. Tactical plans focuses on what must be done and are generally short-lived. 

According to Plunkett and Allen (2013) seven steps in the planning process: (1) Setting Objectives, (2) Analyzing and Evaluating the Environments, (3) Identifying the Alternatives, (4) Evaluating the Alternatives, (5) Selecting the Best Solution, (6) Implementing the Plan, and (7) Controlling and Evaluating the Results. The seven steps in the planning process are only the beginning. The personal attributes of the manager also influence decision making.   In 2010, I transferred with my current employer from Texas to Georgia. Sometime in 2009, the organization made a push for technicians to communicate via task messages much like texting the to and from dispatch. The dispatchers immediately started using the software to send and receive messages from technicians. We still received calls in which we helped the technicians but reminded them to text and not call. Within weeks our call volume decrease and there was a noticeable calming on the dispatch floor.

The organizational objective with regard to task messaging had been communicated to managers nationwide. However when I relocated to Georgia almost a year later, I noticed that they were not using the task messaging part of the workforce software. The call volume averaged in the hundreds and technicians were on hold for hours at a time. The Dispatch floor is generally a fast-paced with high turnover but this was outrageous. Sometimes the volume of calls holding would reach over 1000 and management would "dump the que" release all the calls and start over. During my first year a young vibrant dispatch supervisor died a sudden death undoubtedly due to occupational stress. Just the year prior in the organization had filed bankruptcy after losing over a million customers.

Front line managers execute operational planned activities daily, weekly, and monthly (Plunkett, Allen, and Attner, 2013).  These plans should be made by the people who will be implementing them. On several occasions I went to my supervisor, manager and to the dispatch department director stressing the importance of utilizing task messages to reduce call volume. I reported how effective it was to have the technicians send task messages using their PDA. The technology had rolled out to all regions in the nationwide organization however the management in the AL/GA region was so ineffective that no one was listening. The dispatchers complained that they were too busy taking calls to answer the messages. And the technicians refused to send the messages because they were not being answered. Management was at a standstill. Management finally came up with a tactical plans to make task messages the responsibility of one person, not in the dispatch department. The technicians started to get a feel of what it was like to actually get a timely response and began sending more messages. On the weekends, or when the one person was out, management assigned the task to an alternative or back-up in dispatch. As with many tactical plans that focus on what must be done, this plan was short-lived.  Gradually dispatch owned the responsibility of task messages.

In addition to personal attributes, environmental factors also influence decision making in the strategic planning process and impact the quality-productivity-profitability link. I'm originally from New York so I was excited about relocating to Georgia and being back on the East Coast. What I found is that the way of doing business in the two regions were light years away from each other. In Texas, when the Supervisor gave an instruction, it was implemented without question. Employees got along very well and my only problem was that the office was too much of a family environment in that they were workplace relationships and many of the dispatchers were related to the technicians by blood or marriage.

While I was awarded a Charter Achievement Award in 2011 for being instrumental in the implementation of task messaging in Georgia. Organizational plans should be made by the people who will be implementing them. Due to the personal attributes of the manager what took a few days to accomplish in Texas, took years to implement in the AL/GA regions.

References

Dongil (Don) Jung, & Sosik, J. J. (2006). Who are the spellbinders? identifying personal attributes of charismatic leaders. Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 12(4), 12-26. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/203133234?accountid=32521

Plunkett, W. R., Allen, G. S., & Attner, R.F (2013). Management: Meeting and exceeding customer expectations (10th ed.). Mason, OH : South-Western Cengage Learning.

Reilly, Baack and Minnick (2011). The Five Functions Of Effective Management. Bridgepoint Education Incorporated.

Swanson, V., & Power, K. (2001). Employees' perceptions of organizational restructuring: the role of social support. Work & Stress, 15(2), 161-178. doi:10.1080/02678370110066995

Meet David Perdue. (n.d.). David Perdue for U.S. Senate. Retrieved April 28, 2014, from https://perduesenate.com/meet-david.html