Clarifying and Implementing Organizational Mandates

John Aderibigbe

Vision

• Vision "clarifies what the organization should look like and how it should behave as it fulfills its mission.“ Vision is "an ideal and unique image of the future."

Mission:

• Strategic Planning for Organizations, mission "clarifies an organization's purpose, or why it should be doing what it does."

Organizational Mandate

• Mandates define what an organization is formally and informally required to do or not do by external authorities. Formal requirements are likely to be codified in laws, ordinances, articles of incorporation, other legal documents, and the policies and procedures of organizations. Informal mandates may be embodied in the cultural norms or expectations of key stakeholders. (Bryson, 1995)

Core Organizational Values:

• Core organizational values are those values that refer to here-and-now beliefs about how things should be accomplished. Values help us determine what to do and what not to do. Members of an organization should be able to enumerate the organizational values and have a common interpretation of how the values will be put into practice. For people to understand the values and come to agree with them, they must participate in the process.

Mission & Mandate Considerations• Below are the top five considerations when developing a mission & mandate for

your security program:1. Ensure it Incorporates Your corporate Strategy: Build your organizational

strategy, and then reflect it within your mission & mandate statements.2. Document your Mission & Mandate: Bottom-line, if you cannot document what it

is you are doing, then you do not know what you are doing.3. Be Specific: A flowery Dilbert-inspired Mission & Mandate Statement may seem

tricky, but will lead to a vague understanding by the rest of the organization of what your program is doing. This lack of understanding is more dangerous than the protection you may think you are getting by not effectively defining what you are doing.

4. Be in Balance: Do not try and take on a mission of the whole organization if you do not have a mandate to accomplish this goal. Ensure that your mission is balanced with the level of power you have been afforded to accomplish it.

5. Be Realistic: It is tempting to want to try and take on the world with your mission, but this can be very dangerous to a successful effort. Take a look at what is practical within your environment, and then set your bar a little above that.

CLARIFY organizational mandates• The next step is to clarify the nature and meaning of necessary

organizational mandates, which can be either formal or informal. Formal mandates are required and include policies; federal, state and local laws; administrative codes and regulations. Election results and key stakeholders’ expectations are examples of informal mandates.

• Planners need to consider that formal and informal mandates not only constrain their efforts to realize their organization’s strategic goals, but also provide the means to achieve those goals. It is important that an organization have a clear understanding of its current mandates, as well as their implications for future actions. Many organizations assume that they are more constrained by mandates than they actually are. Some mandates may provide a wider range of options than organizational members assume because they have always narrowly interpreted the mandates. While that interpretation of the mandates may have served their organization well at one time, new challenges and opportunities may require another interpretation or a change in the mandates.

CLARIFY organizational mandates• In other instances, organizations may be operating under outdated

mandates that no longer serve a purpose to the public. Organizations must take the time to distinguish which mandates are appropriate and which are out-of-date. Another error that organizations make is to emphasize one aspect of a mandate over another. For example, an organization may have both a regulatory and service delivery role. If the administration has viewed the organization as regulatory, most of its funding and resources have gone towards performing that role. A review of the mandate may reveal that it was not necessary that the regulatory role dominates its service delivery role and that each creates equal value to the organization and its clients.

• DESIRED outcomes– List of an organization’s formal and informal mandates– Clarification of what is required by the mandates and what is not– Identification of mandates that have outlived their time and usefulness

Formal Vs Informal Mandates

• List your organisational mandates• Separate them into formal and informal

mandates

Possible Scenario • Typically, few members of any organization have ever read,

for example, the relevant legislation, ordinances, charters, articles, and contracts that outline the organization’s formal mandates. Many organizational members also do not clearly understand what informal mandates—typically political in the broadest sense—their organization faces. It may not be surprising, then, that most organizations make one or all of the following three fundamental mistakes. – First, not knowing what they must do, they are unlikely to do it. – Second, they may believe they are more tightly constrained in

their actions than they actually are. – Third, they may assume that if they are not explicitly told to do

something, they are not allowed to do it

Organizational Mandates

• Formal mandates are those required by a funding or authorizing group. If these mandates are not met, the organization may face serious sanctions including (possibly) the inability to operate.

• Informal mandates are those expectations that may remain unspoken. Often the expectations of clients or staff are informal in nature. A simple way to state this is to ask the question-what are we supposed to do, and who requires it of us? A similar question could be asked about informal mandates-how can we find out what stakeholders expect of us?

Group Exercise• Suggested Method. Post a large sheet of easel pad paper on the

wall. Have the group leader ask the question "What are we supposed to do?" and explain the concept of mandates briefly. For a few minutes, have the members brainstorm some of the key mandates. After brainstorming, the group should review the initial list and mark the ones that are formal mandates with an "F" and the informal mandates with an "I.“ The group then review the list one more time to identify who or what group mandates each item.

• Following this, briefly review the mission statement to determine if the list of mandates suggests any gaps in the mission statement. Are there expectations that are not fairly represented in the mission statement? Do not take time now to rewrite the mission, but have someone make notes of any potential gaps.

Instances Burdensome reporting requirements• The single greatest symptom of the lack of a coherent system for

evaluating mandates and their effectiveness is the uncoordinated and burdensome mass of reports . Because information is not often provided on the overall picture of the Organization’s work in an area, it is difficult through those reports to judge the effectiveness of mandates in meeting the Organization’s objectives.

Overlap between and within organs• Year after year, the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council

and the Security Council continue to adopt new mandates on the same issues, sometimes even under more than one agenda item in the same organ, usually without introducing new ideas or approaches. While some overlap of mandates from different organs is inevitable and different perspectives desirable, the existence of many interrelated mandates is generally confusing, redundant and wasteful.

An unwieldy and duplicative architecture for implementation• The proliferation of mandates has in some

cases led to overlapping, uncoordinated and inconsistent architecture for implementing mandates, in which the whole may be less than the sum of the parts. Little guidance is provided on what to do with older mandates that address the same issues, which therefore linger on over the years.

Gap between Mandates and Resources

• A fundamental and recurring challenge has been the adoption, year after year, of hundreds of mandates which must be implemented within resource constraints that do not keep pace. Member States confer additional responsibilities with neither corresponding funds nor guidance on how resources should be reallocated. This gap leads to real costs for the Organization and the people it serves.

KPIs/ CSFs

• Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are significant predefined measures that provide individuals with the information they need to assess previous actions. KPIs define target performance and provide individuals with the ability to assess past performance. For example, if the goal is to improve customer satisfaction, then several KPIs can help to monitor that goal.

Example of KPIs• Customer satisfaction KPIs could include order

cancelation, late shipment, incomplete order shipment, returns and customer attrition. Looking at the order cancelations KPI in greater detail, the purpose of this KPI is to monitor the number and value of items that have been canceled during the sales process. This KPI should address several questions such as when do most cancelations occur during the sales process? What is the lost revenue due to cancelations? Why are these transactions being canceled? How do the current cancellations compare to target performance and to historical trend?

Example of KPIs• In this example, there are four stages to the sales process. The

process begins by a sales representative issuing a quote to a potential customer. If the customer approves the quote, the sales transaction moves to the order approval stage for consideration of extension of credit to the customer and then to the shipment stage where the product is sent to the customer. Once the product has been shipped, an invoice is created and sent to the customer for payment. Order cancelations are monitored to assess performance at each stage of the sales process.

For the current full month, order cancellations were: • 626 orders valued at $5,173,434 at the quote stage, • 17 orders valued at $109,869 at the order approval stage, • 16 orders valued at $139,417 at the shipment stage, and • 31 orders valued at $212,075 at the invoice stage.

The strategic objectives of Farm Fresh are to:

• Gain market share locally of 25%.• Achieve fresh supplies of "farm to customer" in 24

hours for 75% of products.• Sustain a customer satisfaction rate of 98%.• Expand product range to attract more customers.• Have sufficient store space to accommodate the range

of products that customers want. • In order to identify possible CSFs, we must examine

the mission and objectives and see which areas of the business need attention so that they can be achieved.

Objective Candidate Critical Success Factors

Gain market share locally of 25%

Increase competitiveness versus other local storesAttract new customers

Achieve fresh supplies from "farm to customer" in 24 hours for 75% of products

Sustain successful relationships with local suppliers

Sustain a customer satisfaction rate of 98%

Retain staff and keep up customer-focused training

Expand product range to attract more customers

Source new products locally

Extend store space to accommodate new products and customers

Secure financing for expansionManage building work and any disruption to the business

Creating Key Performance Indicators

To define meaningful KPI measures that align with the goals of the organization, the following questions need to be asked:

• What are the business / organization measures?

• How do these translate into IT service measures?

• How will I collect and analyze the measure?

Process Goal (KPI) Measure Definition Measurement architecture

Service level management

Improve ability to track and meet service levels agreed to with clients

% increase or decrease in meeting service level

Tracked through incident management and monitoring

Change management

Reduce incidence caused by unauthorized change

% reduction in the number of incidents resulting from unauthorized changes

Tracked through incident management and change management and monitoring

Sales Increase Customer satisfaction

% reduction in order cancelation, late shipment, incomplete order shipment, returns and customer attrition.

Tracked through incident and process management and monitoring

Group Exercise

• Considering your corporate goal vis-à-vis the HR processes, identify KPIs using the table above as an example?

Effectively Using Key Performance Indicators

Once the measures are defined and linked to the various business goals the focus of the measurement activity is on the measurement process itself. How the data is going to be collected, analyzed and reported needs to defined. The measurement program will identify the sources of data and who is responsible for the measurement activity. The overall intent is to use the measures to evaluate and improve the processes.

The KPIs should provide insight into:1. Quality – How well is the process working? Are we improving

toward goals that were established for this process?2. Efficiency – Is the throughput of the process sufficient?3. Compliance – Is the process being followed?4. Value – Are we doing what we are supposed to be doing?

• Step One: Establish your business's or project's mission and strategic goals

• Step Two: For each strategic goal, ask yourself "what area of business or project activity is essential to achieve this goal?" The answers to the question are your candidate CSFs.

• Step Three: Evaluate the list of candidate CSFs to find the absolute essential elements for achieving success - these are your Criticial Success Factors.

• Step Four: Identify how you will monitor and measure each of the CSFs.

• Step Five: Communicate your CSFs along with the other important elements of your business or project's strategy.

• Step Six: Keep monitoring and reevaluating your CSFs to ensure you keep moving towards your aims.