Recommendation for public and nonprofit organizations in general.

Your recommendations should be targeted toward the leadership and management of any public sector or nonprofit organization. Recommendations are an essential part of the strategic planning process, because they function as a communication tool, as a proposal for the utilization of scarce resources, and certainly as an action plan to accomplish the mission/vision of the organization.

The following elements MUST complete this:

Determines appropriate best practices decision makers could implement to enhance likelihood of program success, based on measures used to evaluate program outcomes and best practices identification

• Program Success: Identify program outcomes and best practices, and, based on the measures used to evaluate them, explain which best practices decision makers could implement to enhance the likelihood of program success.
• Participation: Recommend a participation best practice.
• Program Reengineering: Recommend a best practice model for program reengineering based on your cost-benefit analysis.
• Overcoming Constraints: How effective were the strategic management processes used to overcome the constraints they faced?
• Organizational Success: Explain how governmental and nonprofit agencies can improve organizational success by best utilizing the principles of benchmarking, best practices, and comparative governmental performance.
• Customer Service: Recommend a strategy to mitigate the impact of the challenge of providing effective and efficient customer service. Justify your recommendation.
• Boundary Limitations: Recommend a strategy or tactic that an organization (PUBLIC OR NON PROFITS ORG) can implement to mitigate the impact of the challenge of territorial boundary limitations. Justify your recommendation.

 

Google Corporation, City of Grand Rapids, Michigan United Way Organization.

Organizations in the non-profit and public sectors have been under increasing pressure to demonstrate their effective methods of practice. One of the most important organizational practices to achieve program success is transparency, Transparency within an organization “implies visibility into the functions of the organization for its stakeholders” (Importance of Transparency – The Nonprofit Times). The way an organization conducts its activities is important to building and retaining the brands image. In order to better understand transparency, leaders of an organization must be able to encourage and manifest their desired behaviors with the rest of the organization.

An organization that is looking to improve must delve into their past, present and what the future would be like. Establishing some kind of reporting system where organizations are examined on their planned targets, financial development and responsibility, and present and future accessibility (Liket & Maas, 2015, p. 272). In order to improve a strategy, it is critical to determine whether it is achieving its goals or failing and whether or not the organization should update their approach. External consultation defines the problems and builds for a consensus for corrective action, and helps in improving organizational effectiveness (Bryson, 2011). External consultation helps in the design and management of the strategic plan but also with technical support to measure the success of tactics. These best practices help undertake the essentials in the implementation of strategic planning. An organization must have the drive and vision to achieve their overall purpose for their stakeholders and constituents.

Participation

            A recommended best practice participation based on the reengineering processes used across the three organizations is adaptability. Adaptation can lead to a number of tactics based on changing conditions or competitive trends that lead an organization to be closer to their members or customers. Adaptation may not achieve the optimal form of a strategic plan but it will provide guidance to performance and ultimately help the organization re-structure their organization in the direction of their mission. This form of adaptation should not be limited to certain sectors; it is recommended that adaptation begins with the leadership of an organization.

In order for an organization to adapt, “a company must have its antennae tuned to signals of change from the external environment, decode them, and quickly act to refine or reinvent its business model and even reshape the information landscape of its industry” (Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage, 2011). Organizations therefore need to create environments that encourage the knowledge flow, diversity, autonomy, risk tasking, sharing, and flexibility on which adaption thrives (Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage, 2011).

Program Reengineering

            Process improvement is “directed at streamlining a business process for greater efficiency and effectiveness” (Curtice, R.). Reengineering efforts have enabled many organizations to eliminate non-value-added work, to speed up processes, and to reduce the labor content needed to carry out processes (Curtice, R.). To be effective, “reengineering projects must involve personnel who represent the various functions that the process crosses, and perhaps representatives from various business units, geographic regions, and plants where the process is executed” (Curtice, R.). Reengineering requires “an organization to look closely at its strengths and weaknesses, ask difficult questions where necessary and make changes for the better of the organization” (What Does Reengineering an Organization Mean?, 2010).

Reengineering concepts have readily proliferated across steadily growing and attentive audience in both the public and private sectors (Reyes, D., p. 43). Reengineering tools and practice have now been either considered or adopted in the agenda of renewal of public sector organizations among developed and developing countries, both at the local and national level (Reyes, D., p. 42). The reengineering of programs by organizations must take into account that their stakeholders are an essential part of their overall success and obtaining external help that the government can provide to establish structure to fulfill organizational goals and stakeholder requirements.

Overcoming Constraints

            The effectiveness of strategic management process by each of the organizations analyzed to overcome constraints they faced were based on various determining factors. In the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan, they used the approach of “reviews that are conducted to show the development impact of fees on a regular basis. The City will also recalculate the full costs of activities supported by user fees to identify the impact of inflation and other attendant costs and recommend adjustments where necessary” ( city of grand rapid – Annual Program Budget FY 2018, p. 34). The city focuses on vision and values, establishing a collaborative with assessments, identifying strategic issues, formulates goals and strategies, and strategy implementation. The GOOGLE utilizes acquisition of other companies in order expand and gather new ideas as well as more income. Also, with the number of employees within GOOGLE , it is important for the organization to “upgrade products and services, the threat alone of new entrants into the market requires the Company to hedge against such risk by simultaneously” (Case Study: ).

The UNITED  WAY  has a Board of Directors where the members complete self-assessments as well as peer evaluation to measure the effectiveness of the board. The united WAY uses “outreach ensuring accessibility and awareness of the resources available to all constituents and enhanced collaboration with the formal parts of the organization regarding conflict resolution programs” (Office of the Corporate Ombudsman 2017 Annual Report, p. 1). The three organizations have different constraints to overcome due to the difference in their organizational structure. But the important take away is that all of the organizations overall objective is to remain operational in the best interest of the organization itself and in turn the constituents they benefit from.

Organizational Success

            Organizational success can be achieved through the utilization of benchmarking. Benchmarking is the process “through which a company measures its products, services, and practices against its toughest competitors, or those companies recognized as leaders in its industry (Benchmarking – strategy, organization, system, manager, type, company, business).

Competitiveness, system). It is leaderships best tool for determining “whether the company is performing particular functions and activities efficiently, whether its costs are in line with those of competitors, and whether its internal activities and business processes need improvement (Benchmarking – strategy, organization, system, manager, type, company, business).

Utilizing benchmarking enables managers to “determine what the best practice is, to prioritize opportunities for improvement, to enhance performance relative to customer expectations, and to leapfrog the traditional cycle of change” (Benchmarking – strategy, organization, system, manager, type, company, business). Another benefit of benchmarking for managers/leaders are an organization is that it helps them to learn how to lower costs and take action to improve cost competitiveness.

Customer Service

            Implementing and improving the customer service standards are a vital component for any organization at any level. Customer service is an essential component within any organization and setting a customer service standard should be a major priority. A strategy to mitigate the impact of the challenges of providing effective and efficient customer service is to recruit and train the right people, recognize the importance of customer loyalty, look at the process from a customer and a staff point of view as well as measure the performance. The “full involvement and commitment of both staff and customers in a customer service excellence program greatly depends on the skills of communicating with them” (The Top 10 Customer Service Strategies, 2017).

Therefore, having both staff and customer input in developing a successful customer service strategy is beneficial to any organization. All organizations depend on their customers and staff for profit and getting work done, so it is imperative that their thoughts and recommendations are heard by the decision-makers within the organizations.

Boundary Limitations

The coordinated efforts among organizations that want to change the way their boundaries are organized are willing to merge expertise and resources. In order to mitigate the impact of the challenge of boundaries, setting up networks to broaden relationships is key to establishing mutual trust and lead to boundary spanning opportunities.

Strategic planning can shed light on an organization’s unique strengths and relevant weaknesses, enabling it to pinpoint new opportunities or the causes of current or projected problems (Mittenthal, R, 2002, p. 9). If board and staff are committed to its implementation, a strategic plan can provide an invaluable blueprint for growth and revitalization, enabling an organization to take stock of where it is, determine where it wants to go and chart a course to get there (Mittenthal, R, 2002, p. 9).