Key element of a successful strategic plan is its ability to prepare the organization
business
Description
Unit 1 and Unit 2 Individual
Assignment
One key element of a successful strategic plan is its ability to prepare the organization
to weather and, indeed, to capitalize on the changes in the external environment in
which the organization exists.
Individuals face an equally challenging and rapidly changing environment that they must
plan for. The following excerpt from Friedman and Mandelbaum (2011) expresses these
new challenges.
Broadly speaking, today’s job market can be divided into three segments,
which are steadily collapsing into two. The first includes what are known as
nonroutine high-skilled jobs...
In the second category are routine middle-skilled jobs, involving a lot of
standardized repetitive tasks, of either the white-collar or blue-collar variety...
The third segment of the job market involves workers doing nonroutine low-
skilled jobs that have to be done in person or manually—in an office, a hospital, a
shopping center or restaurant, or at a specific construction site, factory, or
locale....
Putting all three categories together makes clear why the experts speak of job
market “polarization.” Nonroutine high-skilled work becomes, if anything, more
lucrative, depending on the overall economy. Nonroutine low-skilled work can
pay decently, depending on the local economy and how well that worker
performs. But white- and blue-collar routine work shrinks, gets squeezed on pay,
or just vanishes. The net result of the “rising demand for highly educated workers
performing abstract tasks and for less-educated workers performing ‘manual’ or
service tasks is the partial hollowing out or polarization of employment
opportunities,” conclude Katz and Autor. (pp. 75-78)
For the complete text, see: Friedman, T. L., & Mandelbaum, M. (2011). That used to be
us: How America fell behind in the world it invented and how we can come back. New
York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Given this challenging outlook, we need to think of ourselves as our own company, as
You Inc., and we all need to plan a strategy to succeed in this changing and challenging
environment. Individuals need a strategic plan just as organizations do. To that end, we
are going to develop individual strategic plans during the next two units, using the tools
that are introduced here and in your readings.
