Rational Manager - Situational Appraisal

Chapter 7 Situational Appraisal - To be effective in the overall job of managing the daily
disorderly flow of information, a manager must also be skilled in the process of situational
apparaisal.
It is an evaluative process that leads to the proper selection and use of the analytical
techniques. Situational appraisal builds the framework for the daily use of rational process
ideas. It shows managers:
- where to begin
- how to recognise situations that require action
- How to break apart issues that are overlapping or confusing
- How to set priorities
- How to manage a number of simultaneous activities efficiently.
Real situations are often confusing, multifaceted, overlapping and fragmentary.
Techniques Loop:
- List Threats and Opportunities (Concerns)
- Separate and clarify concerns
- Consider seriousness, urgency, and growth
- Determine Analysis Needed
- Determine the help needed

List Threats and Opportunities A CONCERN is a situation that causes an individual to feel a need to act.
A perceived THREAT or OPPORTUNITY - tells the individual to do something within his
set of responsibilities or sphere of influence.
The most efficient managers do not just respond to the already known or obvious
threats, they constantly scan for new situations that require action that they can do
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something about.
Scanning the environment for problems:
concerns

1) List current deviations, threats, and opportunities. (ddl?)

2) Review Progress against goals
3) Look ahead for surprises within the organization and in the external
environment
4) Search for improvement

LIST THREATS AND OPPORTUNITIES: Concerns

Where are we NOT meeting standards?
What problems from the last 6 months remain unsolved?
What recommendations are we currently working on or will be
up in the near future?

coming

What decisions need to be made now?

What decisions are being made now and will have to be imlemented
when a choice is made?
What major projects, systems, or plans are about to be implemented?
What changes are anticipated?
What opportunities exist?
What bothers us about X ?
--This will produce a list of problems, decision and concerns that deserve
consideration
--is each concerna a single one or composite one? Break down composite concerns
into their individual concerns. Examine each one on it's own merits.
--Then arrange the list of concerns in a realistic and useful order of priority.
SEPARATE AND CLARIFY CONCERNS: - a combination of concerns presenting themselves as one
situation cannot be dealt with effectively. Most issues and concerns that have earned our
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attention are more complex than they first appear to be.

Now we ask more questions about each item on the list of concerns:
Do we think one action will really resolve this concern?
Are we talking about one thing or several things?
Do we agrea on the reason for our concern?
What evidene do we have that says this is a concern?
What do we mean by X?
What is actually happening with this situation? Anything else?
What do we sense that tells us we must take action?
What actions are suggested by this concern?
What is there about the way we handled this situation that should be improved?
What is really troubling us about this situation?
CONSIDER SERIOUSNESS, URGENCY AND GROWTH - only after we have separated complex
conerns into their components can we set useful, sensible priorities.

Determining Importance or Priority:

We need a systematic way of determining this.

--How SERIOUS is the current impact on identified areas of importance?

-How URGENT is it to keep the concern from becoming difficult, expensive or
impossible to resolve?
-What evidence is there that the seriousness will grow?
You want to identify your CRITICAL concerns first and then maybe If a concern ranks low on all
three of the above you might want to defer it until later.
-Management activities we enjoy most often make stronger bids for our attention than they
may deserve. Or maybe concerns by demanding people.
We need to set priorities based on relative seriousness, urgency and probable future growth.

DETERMINE ANALYSIS NEEDED: How these concerns mya best be resolved, by whom, and the
kinds of answers we need.
1) Does the situation require explanation? Is there a performance deviation between
expected and actual? Is the deviation of unknown cause? Would knowing the true cause help?
If there is a deviation AND it's cause is unkown, AND we need to know the cause THEN
we can use the techniques of PROBLEM ANALYSIS.
2) Does a choice have to be made? Is there a dilemma around the best action to take?
Do objectives need to be set in order to undetake some activity?
If so we can use DECISION ANALYSIS
3) Has a decision been made that has not yet been implemented and it is necessary to
act now in order to avoid possible future trouble? Does a plan need to be made to safeguard
some decision
or future activity? Would we see value if a plan or decision was
implemented better than expected?
If so, we can use POTENTIAL PROBLEM (OPPORTUNITY) ANALYSIS.

The kind of answer we need determines the choice of the RATIONAL PROCESS. HOW
MUCH of an answer we need determines whether we will use all of a process or only part of it.
Time pressure can also cause us to shorted the process. Problems that are urgent are
best handled by quickly comparing a few IS and IS NOT's to search for distinctions. Decisions
that must be made quickly will benefit from identifying a few key objectives and obvious
risks.
What is important that we have initiated specific Rational Process techniques taht are
relevant to resolving concerns. The point is to use those ideas from each technique that are
most suitable and time efficient for resolving concerns.
Once we have identified the techniques we will use to resolve each concern, we may
well have the ultimeate in TO DO lists! We will have idetntified the situations taht require
actions, broken them down into components as necessary, established priorities and identified
the techniques we will use to resolve them.
First - consciously adhere to the disclipline of listing threats and opportunities.
2nd - separate the concerns into manageable components

3rd - set priorities

4th - plan for resolution of concerns that have the highest relative priority.
DETERMINE HELP NEEDED