YANGON UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS
DEPARTMENT OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES
MBA PROGRAMME
MBA 111 GENERAL MANAGEMENT
ASSISNMENT - 2
Nay De De Zune
MBA 23rd Batch
1. Managing Stretch Goals
Organizations usually set stretch goals which are ambitious and challenging for
employees to drive the employees’ enthusiasm, engagement, and motivation. Managers
should consider to be realistic in setting the stretch goals. Mostly stretch goals are more
challenging than normal goals. But they should be practicable and attainable for employees.
When a company create a stretch goal, the management must know team’s capacity to
implement these goals. If the team is skillful and capable to implement the goals,
management should set the stretch goals aligned with the visions, missions of the company.
The realistic stretch goals may encourage employees to motivate and increase commitment in
their works. Moreover, the employees who working with the ambitious goals can create
innovative ideas and strategies for attaining such goals.
If the stretch goals are too far from practical and unrealistic, there will be many
drawbacks. Unrealistic challenging goals are very risky and may result failure. Failure can
discourage and decrease the enthusiasm of employees. Moreover, they may be lower
confidence in implementing such goals and lower engagement in future activities. Therefore,
employees may feel stressful and burnout because of these unreasonable stretch goals.
Not only unrealistic stretch goals but also the team with poor capacity may ruin the
ethical standard of a company. Everyone wants to prove their good performance when
achieving challenging goals. To reach the stated goals, employees might do push selling,
mismarketing, cheating on attained goals and such kinds of misbehaviors may occur.
Therefore, manager of an organization should monitor, and do surprise check the team’s
performance while implementing goals.
Additionally, managers should study the performance level of team before setting
stretch goals. And the goals should be realistic and balanced with organization’s current
visions. Moreover, management should support required mental and physical support when
attaining stretch goals.
2. Planning in Today’s Organizations Compares to Planning 25 Years Ago
There might be few differences among planning today’s organizations and planning
last 25 years organizations. One of the obvious differences between now and the past is
technology changes. Last 25 years ago, almost all process of business functions were manual
such as computing big data, keeping customer big profiles, tracking competitors, keeping
employee records, making orders from global suppliers, etc. Nowadays, business can take
advantages from the growth of technology. The uncertainties of business environment in the
pest and today are not a big difference. In the pest, businesses suffered from the butterfly
effect of 9/11, 2008 financial crisis and the America and China trade war. Todays’ businesses
are facing world pandemic, and conflicts in some countries. But the planning process of the
organizations remains the same as former.
All organizations require to set the operational plan, strategic plan, tactical plan and
contingency plan for their success. No plan means no success in the future. Therefore,
organizations should have operation plans for business functions to run the operation
smoothly. And they must plan for long-term for organization growth to survive in the
competitive world. The strategic should break down into tactical plan to see the work scopes
clearly. Furthermore, they should consider setting contingency plans for encountering the
crisis occurred in turbulent environment. Consequently, today’s managers must be able to see
insight and must have both proactive and reactive nature. Forecasting potential changes and
crisis that may occur in the organization is a new required skills for managers. And they must
have the abilities to adopt with those changes. Additionally, organizations should face the
threats arising in the organization, then try to solve the problem, and take opportunities on
these experiences to tackle the future crisis.
3. Dominant Decision Style
Most managers usually make decisions depend on the problems or opportunities
occurred in the organization. I am a General Manager of a company. Therefore, I use
directive decision style for financial decision and operation decision. For example, when we
have to buy required inventories for operation team to finish the confirmed project in time, I
must clearly review and make quick decision for the inventory lists and the amount we spend
for those inventories. If my team report me about client extra request on completed service, I
must also analyze the operation budget and make quick response to my team.
Sometimes, I use analytical style for product/ service development and marketing
decisions, and conceptual style for business development, and some strategic decisions. For
the decisions regarding product/ service development and marketing, I used to collecting
ideas and plans from respective team members. Then, I review and modify on the reports and
choose the most suitable one from the alternatives. We did a lot of brainstorming works
together for business development decisions like where should we invest or not for business
growth. Last year, our company opened a new branch in Mandalay to extend new market. My
team and I implemented the whole plan and did the whole process starting from searching for
the rent house to setting required resources including human resources. We invested a lot of
time and make various decisions for that branch to be able to open flawlessly. All of us are
tired but the result was excellent.
For human resource issues, behavioral decision style is work for me. When
conducting performance appraisal for employees, HR team has to collect the performance
appraisal forms where the employee rate themselves and others’ performance and give
suggestions to others. After analyzing the data, HR team reports the result file to me. After
that I have to interview either the sorted candidates who are the best performers or the
candidates who are unqualify. I always listen to the interviewees and make unbiased
decisions for promotion, increasement, providing training program and demotion.
In my opinion, all managers will practice all decision styles as per the conditions of
the problem or opportunity. Therefore, managers should be good listeners, open-minded, and
must have rational thinking for all situations.
4. Effects of Decentralization Trend
Todays’ businesses want to give quick response to customers because they are
operating in competitive environment. If they cannot respond speedily what customer
request, customer will tend to find other similar business who can give prompt response for
their needs. Decentralize authority is very helpful for customer centric business. Customers
want to get real time information and prompt response for their special request related to
products and services. For example, imagine that in a restaurant, a customer wants extra
cheese for the meal he/she ordered, and he/ she request a waiter to add some cheese. Does the
waiter really need to report to manager for giving extra cheese? I think, the waiter does not
have to report to manager to request extra cheese. He should add some extra cheese by his
own decision to keep customer happy.
Therefore, businesses should decentralize authority for some decisions that could not
harm the entire business. Operation and customer service-related decisions should empower
to employees as per their level of responsibility and accountability. But top management must
handle corporate level decisions. For example, manager of a construction materials company
sets the ceiling price and floor price of products for sales team. Sales reps have the authority
to sell the products in amount between ceiling price and floor price. But pricing the products
is a responsibility for the manager, the sales reps do not have the authority to set price for
products. In conclusions, decentralization will continuously happen in most businesses in the
future. It is important for almost all businesses especially for service businesses to serve the
customers and solve the problems.
5. The operation system of online based companies like Facebook and the operation
system of brick and motor companies like Telenor are slightly different. Facebook runs social
media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and WhatApps and earns revenues from digital
advertisement. It is selling everything on digital platform and most of the operations run via
online. Facebook replaces almost all operations with chatbot service and automated replies. It
creates FAQ section for frequently asked questions by users. For advertisers, it develops
automated response for FAQ, chatbot services and appoints customer service representative
for severe ads issues. Although Facebook runs almost entire operation from online, it may
need many IT technicians and other employees to maintain huge data center in US. Moreover,
Facebook has future plan to develop AR & VR products to expand new market to survive in
next digital era. The organization structure of Facebook may be decentralized because
business nature of Facebook is professional based.
Telenor operates its operation by opening headquarters and branches in respective
cities. It provides telephone operator service and fiber Wifi service. It has to use manpower
for delivering SIM cards and installing Wifi service. It also has digital platforms such as
website and social media accounts to present its product and service information to
customers. The organization structure of Telenor seems to be matrix because it has many
product lines and branches. And the authority may be both centralized and decentralized since
the product/ service nature. For the regular problems, the company sets automated reply and
gives standard scripts to customer service. For unique issues, the company’s management
handle itself.
In conclusions, operating online business and operating brick and mortar business
depend on product and service nature of a company. In todays’ business world, small
businesses are started with online business. After that they may need to open physical store as
per business growth and market requirement. Conversely, the physical stores cannot run by
themselves. They also require to use digital platforms likes websites and social media
accounts to advertise their brand, products and services to all potential customers.