StrategyDriven

Organizations are complex creatures comprised of personnel with varying personalities, talents, needs, and aspirations. Increasing this complexity is the wide array of organizational possessions: tools and materials, physical and intellectual properties, and financial instruments. Ordering this complex collection of resources to ensure the efficient, highly engaged use of all of the organization’s assets is the function of the resource management program.

Processes associated with an organization’s resource management program vary between the strategic and the tactical. Within the realm of strategic planning, resource management encompasses the processes and activities of performing annualized projections and monthly/weekly capacity planning. Extended into the tactical arena of business execution, resource management involves scheduling; acquisition; retention; maintenance and development; and termination, retirement, and release/disposal of assets.

Resource management, whether strategic or tactical, focuses on personnel, material, land, intellectual property and financial instruments. In strategic planning, resource management processes group assets into large categories based on common characteristics. As processes narrow their focus from long-range to tactical resource planning, asset focus becomes more specific; even to the point of uniquely identifying the asset to be involved in an activity.

Posts in this category are dedicated to discussing the leading practices of companies successfully executing a resource management program in support of strategic planning and tactical business execution.

Popularity: 17% [?]

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No longer can personnel resources be underutilized in either skill or capacity. Today’s dynamic business environment demands a degree of responsiveness and cost competitiveness that can only be achieved through heightened personnel flexibility and interchangeability. To achieve this requires the building of a foundation of standardized policies and procedures that align personnel resource management practices across the organization.

Personnel resource sharing requires individual availability and skill matching. Optimally, an individual possessing the needed, not excessive, skill in one workgroup is available to augment the receiving workgroup for the exact period of time necessary to complete the work assignment. This situation is difficult to achieve not only because of the idealistic pairing of skills and availability but because of the challenges associated with identifying well suited, available resources across the organization. While difficult, the optimal pairing of the organization’s personnel resources with its work is enhanced through effective execution of the following programs:

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Popularity: 92% [?]

“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”

Parkinson’s Law
Wikipedia

There exists a tendency among workers to use all of the time allotted to perform a task even if the work can be done in a shorter period of time. Some organizations, through high accountability and managerial engagement, minimize the amount of lost time caused by unnecessary work expansion. In other organizations, however, a lack of managerial oversight and reinforcement of high performance standards allows the Thieves of Time to rob the organization of precious productivity.

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Popularity: 46% [?]

All organizations face the dilemma of limited resources.  Some organizations, through the use of deliberate work prioritization and sound resource needs estimation, ensure their resources are appropriately allocated to maximize the organization’s overall value.  In other organizations, however, there exists an adversarial relationship between seniors and subordinates that results in inaccurate resource estimation and subsequently diminishes the overall value the organization is capable of producing.

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Popularity: 32% [?]

An organization’s mission defines its purpose for being.  Making the mission measurable and then prioritizing those measures helps create a sense of where the organization should focus its efforts.  However, prioritization at this level does not create the clarity needed for individuals making resource allocation choices between their day-to-day activities, especially if the activities all serve the same mission measure.

Categorically prioritizing the organization’s major ongoing activities helps focus efforts on the twenty percent of activities that tend to offer eighty percent of the organization’s value.  Activity categorization starts by identifying the value adding products and services the organization provides.  All activities uniquely related to the creation of an item are placed in an activity category together.  Excluded from these activity categories are the common, supporting processes such as human resources and finance which are grouped together and labeled as supporting processes.  Next, a simple, relative prioritization scheme is created, often having three to five priority levels.  Each activity category, except that of the supporting processes, is placed within the relative priority scale in order of the value provided by the product or service represented.  The most value adding item is assigned to the highest priority and so on; with the least value adding item assigned the last position in the lowest priority level.  The resulting prioritization list is then broadly communicated and reinforced; shaping resource allocation decisions at all levels of the organization.

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Popularity: 20% [?]