Communication Assessment: Promising Practice For Meeting Management

by John Helie
We may never attain a participatory democracy and it may not be desirable to eliminate our system of representative governance, but we are moving toward engaging many more people on important issues. Town hall meetings are increasing, expanding and addressing more issues. (See "Listening to the City" below.)

Operations Management

Assembled by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD
Operations management focuses on carefully managing the processes to produce and distribute products and services. Usually, small businesses don't talk about "operations management", but they carry out the activities that management schools typically associate with the phrase "operations management." Major, overall activities often include product creation, development, production and distribution. (These activities are also associated with Product and Service Management. However product management is usually in regard to one or more closely related product -- that is, a product line.

Operations management is in regard to all operations within the organization.) Related activities include managing purchases, inventory control, quality control, storage, logistics and evaluations. A great deal of focus is on efficiency and effectiveness of processes. Therefore, operations management often includes substantial measurement and analysis of internal processes. Ultimately, the nature of how operations management is carried out in an organization depends very much on the nature of products or services in the organization, for example, retail, manufacturing, wholesale, etc. (http://managementhelp.org)


Management
Project Management Software
Business process management
Contract Management
Financial Management

Vision, Strategy, and Tactics

    * Vision: What you want the organization to be; your dream.
    * Strategy: What you are going to do to achieve your vision.
    * Tactics: How you will achieve your strategy and when.

Your vision is your dream of what you want the organization to be. Your strategy is the large-scale plan you will follow to make the dream happen. Your tactics are the specific actions you will take to follow the plan. Start with the vision and work down to the tactics as you plan for your organization.