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Measuring and Evaluating Strategic Performance

Management Skills Application Exercises

  1. (Analytical Skills) You have recently completed a leadership development program, and your company has given you a retail store to manage. The employees at your store are diverse in terms of age, race, gender, and fluency in English. Your company has told you to set individual performance objectives for your employees to increase your store's profitability.

    1. What specific types of actions do you think you should include in a plan to increase profitability in a retail environment?
    2. Would you set the same performance objectives for different store roles, for example sales associates and cashiers?
    3. Should your employees be involved in creating their own performance objectives? Why or why not?
    4. Should your communication of performance goals be adapted for the diversity of the employees you supervise? How and why (or why not)?

  2. (Ethical skills) You have probably experienced a situation in which you were not happy with the service you received as a customer of a business. Put yourself in the shoes of the manager of a business, and think about the following:

    1. How does a company's vision and mission impact your approach to trying to appease an unhappy customer?
    2. Imagine that the company follows a cost-leadership strategy and has a "no cash refunds" policy in order to reduce company costs. What kind of plan or rules would you develop for your employees to follow to deliver consistent customer service if a customer wants a refund?
    3. When might it be ethical to violate the rules you developed in (b) above in order to deliver the right response to a customer service problem?

  3. (Personal skills) Use the strategy cycle to outline a strategy for yourself. What is your personal vision and mission? Analyze your current situation, and develop three personal, professional, or educational goals or objectives that you would like to reach within the next five years. Brainstorm some strategies to achieve those goals. Even though you can't really implement them in the context of this exercise, think about performance measures you might use to track your progress towards your objectives.