MGT 566 Week 6 Executing and Measuring the Plan Example

Turning the Plan Into Monthly Results: Execution, Measurement and Review at North Star Home Services

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MGT/566: Planning and Organizing for Success

Week 6 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

North Star Home Services and all results are composites written for a model paper.

Six months have passed since the composite company North Star, formed from four acquired contractors, launched its three-year plan. Over the previous weeks, leaders set strategy, analyzed the organization, chose a hybrid structure, aligned goals and incentives and prepared contingency plans. Most strategies fail not in the boardroom but in the months afterward, when daily pressures crowd out the plan and no one checks whether it is working. This paper explains how North Star executes and measures its plan.

An Execution System

Kaplan and Norton (2008) described execution as a loop rather than a line. Leaders first form the strategy and turn it into objectives, then bring units and people into line and plan day-to-day work, and finally watch results, learn from them and revise the strategy itself before the loop starts again. North Star's earlier work covered the first four; this paper covers monitoring, learning and adapting.

The Management Practices Behind Execution

Firms that routinely track performance, set clear targets and tie rewards to outcomes tend to show higher productivity and profitability (Bloom & Van Reenen, 2007). Execution depends on these routine practices more than on the plan document.

The Company Scorecard

The scorecard has twelve measures across four perspectives. Financial: revenue, operating margin and cash flow. Customer: service agreement members, renewal rate and review scores. Internal process: first-visit repair rate, call answer time and integration milestones. Learning and growth: technician retention, certifications earned and apprentices enrolled. Each has a quarterly target, an owner and a written definition, so that every team calculates it the same way.

Early Results: Ahead of Plan

Service agreement members grew from 14,000 to 17,800, ahead of the 17,000 target, helped by technicians offering agreements on every visit. Heat pump installations reached 410, above the 360 target, despite the end of a federal tax credit. Technician retention improved to an annualized 81 percent from 74 percent.

Early Results: Behind Plan

Call center answer times average 74 seconds against a 30-second target since the four call centers were consolidated. Operating margin is 9.8 percent against a 10.5 percent target. Back-office integration is on schedule, but dispatch consolidation is a month late.

The Monthly Operations Review

Each month, the chief executive and leadership team spend two hours reviewing the scorecard, with field operations managers presenting their teams' results. Measures off target by more than 10 percent require a cause and an action plan. The meeting focuses on operations, not strategy.

The Quarterly Strategy Review

Each quarter, leaders spend half a day on strategy: whether assumptions still hold, how the scenarios from Week 5 are unfolding, whether initiatives are delivering and whether resources should shift. This separation keeps urgent operational issues from crowding out strategic thinking.

Managing Strategic Initiatives

Strategic initiatives, such as the call center consolidation, pay harmonization, the apprenticeship program and the brand change, are tracked in a portfolio with owners, budgets, milestones and expected results. Initiatives that fall behind are reviewed at the quarterly meeting, and those that no longer serve the strategy can be stopped.

Diagnosing the Call Center Shortfall

Investigation found that consolidating four call centers reduced staff overlap but also put agents in front of unfamiliar service areas and trades, lengthening calls. Peak winter volume began before agents were fully trained. Corrective actions include adding six temporary agents through winter, completing trade training within six weeks and routing calls by trade during peak periods. Owner: call center director; target: 40 seconds within two months, 30 by spring.

Diagnosing the Margin Shortfall

Margin fell short partly because pay harmonization raised labor costs faster than revenue gains from cross-selling, which take longer to build. This is a timing issue rather than a strategic failure. Leaders decided to keep pay harmonization on schedule, protect retention gains and expect margin to reach target by the end of year two, while deferring two noncritical capital projects.

Leading and Lagging Indicators

Some measures report the past and others predict the future. Revenue and margin are lagging indicators; by the time they move, the causes are months old. Agreement sign-ups per visit, first-visit repair rates, technician certifications and apprentice enrollment are leading indicators that predict next year's revenue, renewals and capacity. The monthly review gives leading indicators equal time, so leaders can act before lagging results disappoint. At six months, leading indicators are mostly positive, which suggests margin will recover as cross-selling and retention gains accumulate.

Checking the Contingency Triggers

The quarterly review also checks the triggers from Week 5. Heat pump quote conversion has held above the 30 percent trigger despite the end of the federal credit, so that plan has not activated. Technician turnover is below its trigger. The cold surge plan was activated once in January, and the after-action review found that parts shortages, not staffing, limited response, leading to larger winter parts stocks on trucks.

Data Quality

Measures are only useful if trusted. Early in the plan, two legacy companies counted callbacks differently, making one look better than it was. A single definition for every scorecard measure, documented and owned by finance, now ensures comparisons are fair. Managers can challenge numbers in reviews, but changes go through the definition owner.

Accountability

Each measure and initiative has a named owner. Field managers' and directors' bonuses depend on their scorecard results. Owners report progress in reviews, and missed commitments lead to support or reassignment rather than blame.

What the Board Sees

The private equity owner's board receives a quarterly version of the scorecard with the same measures, a short narrative on each shortfall and the status of major initiatives. Board members asked at the last meeting whether the call center problem threatened the integration timeline; the data allowed leaders to show that it did not, because back-office integration remained on schedule. Consistent reporting to the board and to employees prevents two versions of the truth from developing.

Communication

Results are shared monthly with all employees through team huddles, a one-page summary and the technicians' tablet app. Celebrating gains, such as agreement growth, and explaining shortfalls build trust in the plan.

Revising the Plan

At the end of each year, leaders will update the three-year plan with actual results and new assumptions. Miller and Cardinal (1994) found that planning's benefits depend on how it is carried out, and continuous revision keeps the plan relevant rather than ceremonial.

How the Six Weeks Fit Together

Planning set direction; organizational analysis found best practices and gaps; structure created the hybrid design; alignment connected goals and incentives; contingency planning prepared for shocks; and execution turns all of it into monthly practice. Each step depended on the one before.

Conclusion

Six months in, North Star's plan is producing gains in service agreements, heat pumps and retention, with shortfalls in call center performance and margin that measurement has made visible and diagnosable. A scorecard, separate operational and strategic reviews, initiative tracking, accountability and regular revision form an execution system that keeps the plan alive.

References

Bloom, N., & Van Reenen, J. (2007). Measuring and explaining management practices across firms and countries. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 122(4), 1351-1408. https://doi.org/10.1162/qjec.2007.122.4.1351

Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (2008). The execution premium: Linking strategy to operations for competitive advantage. Harvard Business Press.

Miller, C. C., & Cardinal, L. B. (1994). Strategic planning and firm performance: A synthesis of more than two decades of research. Academy of Management Journal, 37(6), 1649-1665. https://doi.org/10.2307/256804