I currently hear a couple of subsidiary subjects for my Computer Science study.
One of the lectures deals about management. There is strategic and operational management. Simplified strategic management deals about long term goals and market decision, like e.g. how should we represent ourself as a company and on which direction we want to develop our products.
On the other hand operational management is all about dealing with short term events and decision on the day to day basis.
So while strategic management acts on a more higher level of abstraction and long term, operational management acts on a more lower level and short term.
This kind of split up in the management process is quite interesting because it represents the planning process of individual people, too. We are planning strategic by thinking about long term goals we want to reach, like e.g. getting a degree, going into a specific career path, family planning, fitness goals etc…
To realize this kind of goals we can not just only write down our goals and say: “I want to reach this now”. We have to plan precisely and adjust our operational planning every week to improve our acting.
It’s quite interesting that there are parallels between company management and personal management. The planning process is just one example. It’s shows that we have to adjust and replan regularly to reach our long term plans. Nobody can plan a one year project from start to finish. If so, there would not be project managers which have to act on an operational level most of their time. It is similar to our personal goals. Without the use of operational planning we limit our daily decisions and discard chances.
Written on January 29th, 2018 by Lasse Schultebraucks