Operations

Comfort zone:

Operational jobs involve:

• Completing tasks
• Meeting clear short-term goals
• Meeting performance and efficiency targets
• Prioritising and scheduling tasks
• Technical know-how

Expansion:

Operational jobs involve some or all of the following:

• Utilising tools and processes
• Delivering product, service
• Controlling and/or meeting quality standards
• Selecting most suitable equipment and choosing best-buy options
• Minimising costs and waste
• Maximising asset/resource utilisation
• Measuring and/or managing customer satisfaction

Strategic

Comfort zone:

Strategic jobs involve:

• Shaping the future
• Setting longer-term goals
• Creating breakthrough developments
• Transforming businesses and capabilities
• Making a global impact

Expansion:

Strategic jobs involve some or all of the following:

• Building competitive advantage
• Deciding on expansion, diversification, consolidation and innovation
• Building value-chains at an industry level
• Setting the overall agenda
• Developing the right culture
• Clarifying and setting the risk appetite and vision

In-between

Comfort zone:

These jobs involve:

• Introducing innovative approaches
• Inputting to strategy
• Formulating strategic options

Expansion:

Jobs that link operations and strategy involve some or all of the following:

• Making recommendation on significant new investments and associated cost/ benefits
• Contributing to the strategic business planning process
• Building clear business plans ensuring that the business processes, capabilities and resources are in place
• Making authorative recommendations on initiatives that require major shifts of resource or impacts the core mission

Expansion on the Type of Work Undertaken

Task Level

This involves delivering routine and repeatable products or service within clear guidelines and established practices.

Decisions

The decisions that I make relate to specific tasks where there are many ‘automatic’ responses to situations. I work within established rules, instructions, custom and practice. Immediate obstacles are overcome as they are encountered by using tried and tested methods.

Problems encountered

The problems that I am faced with are likely to be of the type that:

• Occur regularly,
• Are ‘concrete’ in nature,
• Have obvious cause and effect relationships,
• Involve selecting options from a prescribed list.

Typical Impact of Decisions Over-Time

• The full impact of decisions taken on outputs are likely to become clear within minutes, hours or weeks,
• Certain changes may take up to 3 months for the end-results to be obvious.

Expansion on the Type of Work Undertaken

Process Level

Work at this Level involves some or all of the following:

• Solving non-routine problems and issues on a case by case/project basis,
• Providing support and service often to the people undertaking the fundamental work of the organisation,
• Generating different options for known-problems with clear recommendations and outcomes,
• Creating opportunities and minimising costs,
• Designing/building important components.

Decisions

The decisions that I make relate to established processes, policy and professional practice. The exact output (or the means of achieving this) cannot be fully prescribed at the outset. However, most decisions, which are based on professional know-how and principles, have clear and predictable outcomes that can be assessed by putting in place feedback mechanisms.

Problems encountered

The problems that I am faced with are likely to be of the type that:

• Are presented as a series of symptoms that provide the basis for a diagnosis,
• Need to be analysed, classified and categorised,
• Have arisen before albeit infrequently,
• Do have predetermined guidelines which involve interpretation and professional know-how,
• Have underlying causes that are not immediately obvious.

Typical Impact of Decisions Over-Time

• The full impact of decisions taken on such aspects as resource allocation and operating costs are likely to become clear within a range of three months to one year
• Certain changes may take up to 12 months for the end-results to be obvious.

Expansion on the Type of Work Undertaken

System Level

Work at this Level involves some or all of the following:

• Maximising existing resources,
• Making contingency plans based on risk/benefit assessments especially for all possible major failures of operational systems and processes,
• Managing the resources of people, materials, money and data to achieve a balanced set of results,
• Inputting to strategy,
• Creating ‘improved-recipes’ with known ingredients.

Decisions

The decisions that I make relate to flows of work and set goals. Variables and dependencies have to be established and a plan put in place. Outcomes of all actions are not known precisely in advance and contingency plans have to be created. A set of resources has to be managed and balanced.

Problems encountered

The problems that I am faced with are likely to be of the type that:

• Involve identifying patterns in actual performance across a number of dimensions,
• Involve in-depth detail some of which is distracting and irrelevant,
• Have unit-wide and systems implications,
• Are presented as dilemmas such as the apparent contradiction of demand for quality and short delivery time frames.

Typical Impact of Decisions Over-Time

• The full impact of decisions taken on such aspects as unit costs, revenue, budgets (or gross margin) and customer trends are likely to become clear in a time range from one to two years
• Certain changes may take up to 3 years for the end-results to be obvious.

Expansion on the Type of Work Undertaken

Breakthrough Level

Work at this Level involves some or all of the following:

• Focusing on the resources that are not there –but should be there,
• Taking accountability for developing strategic options,
• Building/shaping the organisation and/or capabilities required to meet longer-term challenges,
• Creating a strategic shift in thinking resulting in new perspectives,
• Integrating systems.

Decisions

The decisions that I make have to take into account the past, current capability and long-term future opportunities. Uncertainty and inter-dependency are very much part of the territory. Options are modelled and the 2nd and 3rd order consequences of achieving the goal have to be thought through.

Problems encountered

The problems that I am faced with are likely to be of the type that:

• Involve considerable ambiguity and uncertainty as to their probable causes,
• Cannot be solved by extrapolating from past trends,
• Be presented as dilemmas such as the apparent contradiction, between honouring what is present with shifting to a new position,
• Are presented as separate streams of problems but often have inter-dependencies between them.

Typical Impact of Decisions Over-Time

• The full impact of decisions taken on such aspects as market trends, return on investment and underlying profit of the business are likely to become clear over two to three years,
• Certain changes may take up to 5 years for the end-results to be obvious.

Expansion on the Type of Work Undertaken

Vision and Mission Level

Work at this Level involves some or all of the following:

• Clarifying the capabilities required to meet future demands,
• Defining intent, direction, culture and long-term performance targets,
• Managing external relationships at the highest level,
• Bringing about completely new possibilities.

Decisions

The decisions that I make have business wide impact and are based on a combination of concrete facts, highly abstract data, principles and values.

Problems encountered

The problems that I am faced with are likely to be of the type that:

• Involve a network of interconnected units with frequent and multiple linkages,
• Have arisen in the external environment of the unit,
• Are concerned with the long-term direction,
• Appear to have no clear boundaries or established context,
• Are presented as dilemmas between abstract ideas such as wealth creation and corporate social responsibility.

Typical Impact of Decisions Over-Time

• The full impact of decisions taken on such aspects as brand-values and relative share-price are likely to become clear over a five year time-range,
• Certain changes may take ten years for the end-results to be obvious and even longer in many cases.

Expansion on the Type of Work Undertaken

Global Transformation Level

This involves leading one of the major sources of world influence (or the potential to be so).

Decisions

The decisions that I make shape the context, agenda and value system in operation.

Problems encountered

The problems that I am faced with are likely to be of the type that:

• Have never been encountered before,
• Have global implications.

Typical Impact of Decisions Over-Time

• The full impact of decisions taken on such aspects as consumer behaviour are likely to become clear over a ten year time-range,
• Certain changes may take fifteen years for the end-results to be obvious and even longer in many cases.