Strategic Focus For Performance Exellence

1.A strategy is a pattern or plan that integrates an organization’s major goals, policies, and action sequences into a cohesive whole. Answer: T

2.Mission is the pattern of decisions that determines and reveals an organization’s goals, policies, and plans to meet the needs of its stakeholders. Answer: F

3.Strategic planning is the process of envisioning the organization’s future and developing the necessary goals, objectives, and action plans to achieve that future. Answer: T

4.Strategic objectives are what an organization must change or improve to remain or become competitive. Answer: T

5.A key role of strategic planning is to align work processes and learning initiatives with an organization’s strategic directions. Answer: T

6.The concept of strategic leadership has moved leadership perspectives away from team- and system-based “great group” concept toward the solitary “great leader” paradigm. Answer: F

7.The Organizational Profile provides the “finer picture” of the various organizational parts and thus sets the context for good strategic decisions. Answer: F

8.The second group of questions in the Baldrige Organizational Profile is listed under the heading “Organizational Environment.” Answer:F

9.The term management challenges refers to those pressures that exert a decisive influence on an organization’s likelihood of future success. Answer: F

10.Strategic challenges frequently are driven by an organization’s future competitive position relative to other providers of similar products or services. Answer: T

11.Mission statements typically include details of resource commitments and time horizons for their accomplishment. Answer: F

12.An iterative process in which employees at the lower level in the organization ask what senior management can do, what they need, and what conflicts may arise can avoid many of the implementation problems that managers typically face. Answer: F

13.In the policy deployment process, employees negotiate with the management the performance measures that are used to indicate progress toward accomplishing the objectives. Answer: F

14.Catchball is an up, down, and sideways communication process as opposed to an autocratic, top-down management style. Answer:T

15.Process decision program charts are spreadsheets that graphically display relationships between ideas, activities, or other dimensions in such a way as to provide logical connecting points between each item. Answer:F

16.Traditional organizations tend to develop structures that help them to maintain flexibility. Answer:F

17.In line and staff organizations, staff departments carry out the functions of marketing, finance, and production for the organization. Answer: F

18.In the line and staff form of organization structure, quality managers and inspectors may take on the role of guardians of quality. Answer: T

19.Outsourcing refers to the practice of transferring the operations of a business function to an outside supplier. Answer: T

20.An organization’s main goods and services, how it provides them to customers, and its organizational culture are often reflected in formal mission, vision, and values statements. Answer: T

MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS

1An organization must address certain key practices to achieve a strategic focus on performance excellence. Which of the following is not one of them? a. Gather and analyze relevant data and information pertaining to such factors as the organizations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. b. Develop and refine a systematic approach for conducting strategic planning and setting strategic objectives. c. Understand the competitive environment, the principal factors that determine success, the organization’s core competencies, and strategic challenges. d. Execute mergers and acquisitions, with an aim to expand business globally and to form coalitions and cartels to achieve the same. Answer:D

2.In the study mentioned in the text, the top ones mentioned as key competencies critical for leadership effectiveness were all of the following EXCEPT: a. “articulate a tangible vision, values, and strategy.” b. “be people-friendly—approachable but assertive.”

c. “be a catalyst/manager of strategic change.”
d. “get results— manage strategy to action.”
Answer: B

3.“A person’s ability to anticipate, envision, maintain flexibility, think strategically, and work with others to initiate changes that will create a viable future for the organization, and its competitive advantage to the organization in this way.” This definition applies to: a. Organizational leadership

b. Strategic planning
c. Strategic leadership
d. Long-term planning
Answer: C

4.Effective strategic leaders also have the capability to create and maintain the ability for an organization to learn, which is termed: a. absorptive capacity.
b. adaptive capacity.
c. proactive capacity.
d. strategic learning capacity.
Answer:A

5.The ability of an organization to change in order to deal with increasingly hyper-turbulent environments is referred to as: a. proactive capacity.
b. pliability and malleability.
c. adaptive capacity.
d. absorptive capacity.
Answer: C

6.Strategic leadership can be viewed from three levels. Which of the following is NOT one of them? a. Senior
b. Entry-level
c. Mid-level
d. Supervisory
Answer: B

7.Characteristics of effective strategic leadership include all of the following EXCEPT: a. serving as both leaders and team members.
b. demonstrating the importance of integrity through actions rather than simply articulating it. c. thinking in terms of processes rather than outcomes.
d. viewing employees as resources.
Answer:D

8. _____ leaders ensure that action plans are deployed throughout the organization so that essential tasks and projects may be accomplished in support of the strategic vision. a. Strategic
b. Senior
c. Mid-level
d. Supervisory
Answer: D

9.The_____, provided in the Baldrige Criteria, addresses the basic characteristics of the organization, organizational relationships, the competitive environment, the advantages an organization has and the challenges that it faces, and its approach to performance improvement. a. Baldrige Profile

b. Organizational Profile
c. Systems Profile
d. Environment Profile
Answer:B

10.The first set of questions in the Organizational Profile helps to provide a clear understanding of the essence of the organization, why it exists, and where senior leaders want to take the organization in the future. This comes under the heading: a. Why-Where Map

b. Leadership Vision
c. Mission and Values
d. Organizational Environment
Answer: D

11.A _____ might include a definition of products and services the organization provides, technologies used to provide these products and services, types of markets, important customer needs, and distinctive competencies or the expertise that sets the firm apart from others. a. mission statement

b. strategy roadmap
c. value statement
d. leadership statement
Answer:A

12.A firm’s _____ guides the development of strategies by different groups within the firm, establishes the context within which daily operating decisions are made, and sets limits on available strategic options. a. values

b. mission
c. vision
d. operating directions
Answer:B

13.The _____ statement articulates the basic characteristics that shape the organization’s view of the future and its strategy. a. value
b. mission
c. vision
d. leadership
Answer: C

14.What is your competitive position? What is your relative size and growth in your industry or markets served? What are the numbers and types of competitors for your organization? Which heading in the Organizational Profile do these questions appear? a. Organizational Description

b. Organizational Situation
c. Organizational Relationships
d. Organizational Environment
Answer:B

15.Which of the following is NOT a question that appears under the heading of Organizational Environment in the Organizational Profile? a. What are your organization’s main product offerings?
b. What are the key characteristics of your organizational culture? c. What is your workforce profile?
d. What are your organizational structure and governance system? Answer: D

16.Strategy development requires an environmental assessment of key factors which typically include all of the following EXCEPT: a. career development paths of maturing workforce.
b. early indications of major shifts in technology, markets, customer preferences. c. competition, or the regulatory environment.
d. long-term organizational sustainability.
Answer: A

17._____ set an organization’s longer-term directions and guide resource allocation decisions. a. Management values
b. Strategic objectives
c. Core competencies
d. Workforce management principles
Answer: B

18.Effective implementation of a strategy is achieved through action plans. This is called: a. proactive implementation.
b. installation.
c. deployment.
d. strategic implementation.
Answer:C

19.Action plans may include all of the following EXCEPT:
a. description of the competitive position of the firm vis-à-vis competitors. b. details of resource commitments and time horizons for accomplishment. c. the design of efficient processes.
d. creation of an accounting system that tracks activity-level costs. Answer: A

20.Essentially, strategy deployment links the _____, who focus on “doing the right thing”, with the _____, whose focus is on “doing things right”. a. management; employees
b. leadership; supervisors
c. thinkers; actors
d. planners; doers
Answer: D

21._____ represents the critical stage in planning when strategic objectives and goals are made specific so that effective, organization-wide understanding and deployment are possible. a. Mission statement development

b. Vision statement development
c. Action plan development
d. Operations planning and scheduling
Answer: C

22.Poor deployment of action plans often results from any of the following reasons EXCEPT: a. improperly defined organizational objectives.
b. lack of alignment across the organization.
c. misallocation of resources.
d. insufficient operational measures.
Answer: A
23.If everyone is able to answer the question, What does strategy mean in terms that I can act on, which aspect of deployment will it address? a. Improperly defined organizational objectives
b. Lack of alignment across the organization
c. Misallocation of resources
d. Insufficient operational measures
Answer: A

24.One of the reasons for poor deployment of action plans is insufficient operational measures. Which of the following does NOT feature under this aspect? a. Projections into the future based on accomplishment of action plans. b. Dedicating resources to make improvements or changes in those areas that are critical. c. Changes resulting from new ventures.

d. Comparisons with competitors, benchmarks, and past performance. Answer:B

25.All of the following refer to the newer deployment process adapted by Japanese and American companies EXCEPT: a. iterative planning.
b. hoshin kanri.
c. management by planning.
d. policy deployment.
Answer: A