Case Study No

Chan 1

Mgmt 5 Prof. McLaughlin Joseph Chan Student ID# 13486917 Case Analysis 8: Planning

Chan 2 1) What adjustment would you make at this point? Would you cancel the program or run it at a loss? The adjustment that I believe I would make is that in a basic level, I would sent out the brochures and contacting the company that will be interest in the program again. As the chapter analysis that, no matter how good the product is, marketing is extremely important for sales. If there is no room for sales, it is difficult for the product to be success in the market. Secondly, I would revisit the program content designed by the faculty director, in that case, I would be willing to adjust the content that aim on what students really want to learn from the class with the fundamental objective that the original plan is. The idea is to be flexible in this dynamic environment that provide room for improvement and will fit to some more people as to attract them to join the program. Although there is only one week for registration, there are four more weeks for the program to start, at this point, I wouldn’t cancel the program. I would rather run it at a loss cost. First of all, it’s the first time the LDC run this program, second, running it at a loss financially doesn’t reflect on the quality that the program brought in a long run as an establish to its reputation and experience for next years program. 2) Draw out a Gantt Chart of the sequence and timing of key activities. What insights does this give you regarding the plan and its implementation? The plan turns out to be as smooth as they have planned. The idea of developing an action plan creates a time table for the plan to run under certain guideline. The implementation of the plan was closely matched with the original plan; it in fact goes at a faster pace than the original. However, in the chapter, the author also discussed the monitor of the implementation, and one key point that I believe reflect in this case is to

Chan 3 monitor the level of resistance. The idea of implementation involves changes which need extra encouragement and special consultant to help on the connection and the plan. 3) What do you think went wrong? What do you see as the strengths and weakness of the planning process? I believe the part that went wrong is the very first process of analyzing the environment and setting objectives and strategies. I don’t really see Pam spending any time doing those processes before his plan. The actual running process of setting up a time schedule and implementing the schedule seems to be working. But the objectives and the strategies from what I read in the case is very unclear. The only paragraph that states the objective is to provide a sufficient quality program that gives participants a favorable impression of LDC. I don’t see any concrete idea as to for example improve efficiency in the office or business decision. If the main objective is unclear, potential participate definitely lose their interest due to the content of the program. The strength of the planning process is to establish a concrete time table and follow the plan step by step which give room and time for the program planner to handle uncertainties. The weakness however, is that by establishing a list of things to do, often, it limits the program to a specific type of people to join. However, I believe that planning process definitely benefit the plan itself and the organizer of the plan. 4) LDC seemed to follow a planning process that had worked well for its mid-level managerial programs. Are there differences between senior executives and mid-level managers that might explain why the plan did not work out as anticipated? Could these differences have been anticipated? Should they have been? There is certainly a different between senior executives and mid-level managers. In

Chan 4 previous chapter, the book talks about the different level of managers have different responsibility and task to do. Each level of management requires different type of skills. In a mid-level management it might require more operational plans that are usually small and narrower to smaller departments or unit. Not only that, the type of training in a midlevel manager is also different. They require more tactical and relational skills. On the other hand, a senior executive should be more focus training on strategic plans or tactical plans that is more conceptual, complex and general. It is more of a benefit to the whole company instead of a particular department. The differences between senior executives and mid-level managers should definitely be anticipated. In fact, the differences are huge that it is actually two totally different courses. Therefore I believe using either one of them for both level of managers is not going to work.