Customer Reviews

The Executive Guide to Operational Planning (J-B US non-Franchise Leadership)

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This is the one year slice of a strategic plan process that changes the planning process into a true management tool. I have used the system in MacDonald's and other companies and I believe it is the most effective performance management tool I have seen.

Bob Melberth

Having read all about Balanced Scorecard, right through to the latest offering in Strategy Maps. Having looked at the Performance Prism and its implications. And, having looked at many other strategic and operational planning texts, all (still) put into some semblance of context in Mintzberg's The Rise and Fall of STrategic Planning, I can only conclude that many have lost their way in a morass of confusion.

The jump from strategy to implementation remains for most, as always, an unbridgeable chasm.

The incredible hand waving arguments in most "planning guidance" texts when we get to the nitty gritty of deciding major strategic themes and how "normal" core business integrates with those themes - assuming we can abandon everything else, or simply ignoring the relationship ala BSC - never ceases to amuse me. The summary that all this is more art than science is so true!! What an understatement.

The Executive Guide to Operational Planning and the earlier The Executive Guide to STrategic Planning may not be the most sophisticated, most current thinking going around, but, I think they are at the start of a path which points in the right direction as far as useful planning guidance is concerned. Use these and integrate latter efforts into them (BSC, Performance Prism, etc) may actually lead to something better. It is a pity, the authors didn't follow up with their third book in the trilogy - The Executive Guide to Results Management ... or whatever they were going to call it. The three books would have formed a solid foundation for the future on which others could build.

I suspect that the simplicity of the "Executive Guides" put off too many people. I suspect their reaction was: "It can't be this simple." And it's not. What is simple, is marking the start of the journey. Most other books can't even do that!! That, dear reader, is what I believe this book and its Strategic Planning companion does.

The ideas this book covers are still valid in 2001, but it is quite basic compared to today's "state of art" knowledge. Still, most of the idea's of measuring, made "famous" by The Balanced Scorecard, where already present in this book. It includes criteria for writing objectives and detailed action plans and mentions key reult areas and measurement. This probably explains why many other books refer to this work. If the book was repackaged as a "10 minute guide to opearional planning, and was priced accordingly, I'd still recommend it. Today, price/quality are out of balance.