Management Planning

Management Planning

The various roles of management play important parts of the decision making process. Senior managers set the goals and clarify the mission of the organization. They engage primarily in strategic planning. This means they develop and analyze the company's mission, goals, and allocate their resources. Front-line management implements the goals set by the senior managers.

Senior managers include president or CEO. They focus on emphasizing the control and direction of the work the employees have to do to accomplish the team goals. For example, senior management includes the president of CITIGROUP. The company would not be successful without him. He is the behind the scenes guy. Although he is not seen very often, he makes very important decisions that affect the company and the employees who work there. He is responsible for the growth of the company as a whole.

Middle management use tactical planning. This enables them to interpret goal and provide specific ideas for their department that can be accomplished within a year. For example, the vice president of CITIGROUP focuses on gathering financial and operational reports. Doing this enables him to support the president decision and ideas. At CITIGROUP, the president and the vice president work fairly close together. Although they focus on different parts of the decision making process, they influence each other's decision a great deal.

Front-line management is typically supervisors and group leads. They implement operational plans. Supervisors set standards, create schedules, and report progress. For example, at CITIGROUP have many different levels of supervisors. The production supervisor and the Lean supervisor have very different responsibilities. A production supervisor focuses on C.O.T (Correct and On Time) issues. They also focus on customer demand.

During analytical or general discussions about any given company's drive to success, one constant always remain, it is planning, in the method of strategic, tactical and operational approach. America's second-largest financial institution by market worth, behind Bank of America, said it had written down $24 billion dollars in investments tied to mostly subprime mortgage investments during the fourth quarter. It appears that this particular company did not plan its financial and market future well or has overlooked possible outcomes the planning may result. This company is Citigroup. Of course Citigroup isn't the only financial institution to suffer tremendous losses in 2007-08. Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, MetLife among others had felt market's weak performance. However, to examine and discuss management planning we will look at Citigroup. Inc.

One of the unforeseen problems encountered by Citi in 2007-08 is tied to Subprime home loans. Subprime home loans were granted to Americans with poor credit during a years-long housing boom that ran out of steam almost two years ago. The housing market has been in a downturn since that time and played havoc with Citigroup's finances. Perhaps "unforeseen problems" is an incorrect statement since Citigroup did plan on a great return value and, the planning began with Strategic planning. One of the three levels of planning is Strategic planning. Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organization's long-term goals and strategies. This type of planning is handled by strategic managers--top-level managers--who usually establish goals that reflect both effectiveness and efficiency. Citigroup's subprime loan fiasco demonstrated how insufficient or careless planning may result in company's future business and perhaps even its existence. However, there are always two sides to a story and looking at the situation from a different angle it's clear that a number of high profile individuals made out very well, financially, during the boom. Thus, this could be the case of unethical business behavior after all, when the dust settles and situation is looked at closely.

Strategic plans have a strong external orientation and cover major portions of the organization. Strategic goals are major targets or end results that relate to the long term survival, value, and growth of the organization. In Citigroup's example strategic