How To Create An Effective L&D Plan: A Structured Approach

Questions

I am currently pursuing a bachelor in supply chain management. My dream job role or the ultimate goal is to become a successful ‘Operations Manager’. After completing my bachelor, an associate level membership with APICS can help me to understand the real-world situation. In addition to this, few certification courses from APICS will familiarise me with both the theoretical and the practical level. However, to achieve so, I need to ensure that I must follow a structured and proven path for a career build-up. It means a structured professional development plan is worth a value for such situation (Stewart, 2014). The purpose to have a structural growth towards the career-oriented goal, I need to follow the APIC’s chart of professional competencies.

My personal goals can be divided into three categories such as short-term, middle-term and long-term goals. The short-term goals will comprise of foundational and occupational competencies where I will specifically focus on the basic skills required to be in the retail industry. In the middle-term goals, I will particularly focus on profession-related and foundational competencies. In the long-term goals, priorities will only be the profession-related skills. The following table shows the kind of skills I am interested into for the short, middle and long-term goals:     

Short-term	Interpersonal skills and teamwork
Middle-term Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	Analytical skills and problem solving skills
Long-term	Decision making skills

                                Table 1: List of My Foundation and Professional Skills

The modules being covered during the semester are largely focussed upon the fundamentals of operations management. I get to know the various operations models, theories and frameworks which can be applied in different situations. Moreover, I also had the opportunity to go through a few case studies which provided me the opportunities to apply the theoretical teachings on real-world circumstances. Case-studies, in particular, can be an effective guide to me as these had taught me a variety of ways to deal with different situations. It had everything from leaders facing the challenges and resolving the issues by using the set of creative skills.

Macro-Element	Explanation	Reference
Political	1. Political events such as Brexit and the United States separation from Paris Agreement and Iran Nuclear Deal is an emerging issue now (Zheng, Singh & Mitchell, 2015). 2. Political challenges include, but not limited to, fluctuating foreign currency, changing trade policies, incrementing taxes on imports and the oscillating legal policies (Wang et al., 2016).	1. Zheng, W., Singh, K., & Mitchell, W. (2015). Buffering and enabling: The impact of interlocking political ties on firm survival and sales growth. Strategic Management Journal, 36(11), 1615-1636. 2. Wang, D., Ma, G., Song, X., & Liu, Y. (2016). Political connection and business transformation in family firms: Evidence from China. Journal of Family Business Strategy, 7(2), 117-130.
Economic	1. The latest economic trends are SMEs are going global, freelancing work is booming, business coaches are following the mainstream ideas and employees are being replaced with Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Mensi et al., 2014) 2. Some of the biggest economic challenges include financial management, adherence to compliance policies, technology, customer service, exploring the use of large-scale data and performance monitoring (Sierzchula et al., 2014).	1. Mensi, W., Hammoudeh, S., Reboredo, J. C., & Nguyen, D. K. (2014). Do global factors impact BRICS stock markets? A quantile regression approach. Emerging Markets Review, 19, 1-17. 2. Sierzchula, W., Bakker, S., Maat, K., & Van Wee, B. (2014). The influence of financial incentives and other socio-economic factors on electric vehicle adoption. Energy Policy, 68, 183-194.
Social	1. A few of emerging social trends are unpredicted buying attitudes, enhanced focus on customer service, virtual reality, importance of analytics and customization of service (Godey et al., 2016). 2. Few of the challenges are customer loyalty, increasingly growing numbers of educated customers, getting the skilled staffs and maintaining a pace with the rapidly shifting consumer behavior (Zeugner-Roth,  Å½abkar & Diamantopoulos, 2015).	1. Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., & Singh, R. (2016). Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior. Journal of business research, 69(12), 5833-5841. 2. Zeugner-Roth, K. P., Žabkar, V., & Diamantopoulos, A. (2015). Consumer ethnocentrism, national identity, and consumer cosmopolitanism as drivers of consumer behavior: A social identity theory perspective. Journal of international marketing, 23(2), 25-54.
Technology	1. The Industry 4.0, IoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence (Robotics), 3-D Printing in Manufacturing and others (Lee, Bagheri & Kao, 2015). 2. Identifying the correct managerial skills to support the implementation of different emerging technologies is one of the challenges. Effective coordination and communication between shared partners in an Industry 4.0 business environment (Qin, Liu & Grosvenor, 2016).	1. Lee, J., Bagheri, B., & Kao, H. A. (2015). A cyber-physical systems architecture for industry 4.0-based manufacturing systems. Manufacturing Letters, 3, 18-23. 2. Qin, J., Liu, Y., & Grosvenor, R. (2016). A categorical framework of manufacturing for industry 4.0 and beyond. Procedia Cirp, 52, 173-178.
Demographic	Trends impacting the current business include ethnically diverse customers, Millennials are different from other age-based generations, increased participation of women in the workforce, changing families especially in the Western countries, changing landscape of different religions and the aging world (Pulles et al., 2016).	Pulles, N. J., Schiele, H., Veldman, J., & Hüttinger, L. (2016). The impact of customer attractiveness and supplier satisfaction on becoming a preferred customer. Industrial marketing management, 54, 129-140.
Natural	Few of environmental challenges of concerns are effectively shifting to renewable energy resources such as solar panels, reducing the environmental impacts of products, production of healthy foods, polluting environment, biodiversity, managing the wastes and deforestation (Chen et al., 2014).	Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Nevo, S., Jin, J., Wang, L., & Chow, W. S. (2014). IT capability and organizational performance: the roles of business process agility and environmental factors. European Journal of Information Systems, 23(3), 326-342.

                                            Table 2: Megatrends and Challenges

Being the operations manager, I will continually expect the different kinds of political challenges such as those mentioned in the table. Operations manager nowadays are not just limited to effectively selecting the suitable business models and the strategies, they are rather needed to think beyond this. The political challenges and the emerging trends are irreversible; however, effective ways can be used to make a difference and thereby attaining the competitive edge (Kernbach, Eppler & Bresciani, 2015). I being the operations manager will follow how successful companies are dealing with the rising political challenges. Moreover, I can also approach the consulting agency to have a better understanding of the situation and get some useful ways out of it. I will also support the brainstorming sessions as this will produce a good amount of different solutions for the identified political challenges.

Assignment Details

The same process goes in terms of economic trends and the challenges. The most ideal way would be to follow the footsteps of successful companies that have already resolved the similar economic challenges. The other way would be to take the help of the consulting firm to get the most valued solution (Slocum, Lei & Buller, 2014). Some of the economic challenges keep on repeating where I can be benefitted from following the mentioned strategies. However, in other situations, I will have to use my own skills to tackle the economic challenges. Notably, I would specifically be responsible for making the plans, communicating the plans with stakeholders, accumulating the required resources, implementing the strategies and finally, monitoring the performance.

The social environment is also not the same now. It is being fuelled with changes due to the emerging trends. There is no better way to deal with this than to follow the successful examples of firms that had already dealt with such challenges and also focussing a lot on data and its analytics (Parés, 2015). Data alone will not be handful; I am also needed to enhance my capability as a data analytic. This will ensure a proper utilization of a large-scale data.

I am well equipped with technologies. This should assist me in making decisions while I will be needed to consider the emerging technologies. Here again, consulting firm can really be handful. In addition to this, I would encourage the brainstorming session. The intention would be to bring out a set of creative ideas and also encourage the workforce to become innovative (Viloria, 2016).

The demographic factors are changing and as such the consumer behavior. The mentioned factors in the table simply mean that I would largely be dealing with a diverse consumer base. It also means different strategies would be needed to attract the participation of diverse customers (Nulkar, 2014). I will be needed to think about the ethnically diverse workforce. I would also be needed to take care of the generation-based gaps.

Environmental challenges will be testing my managerial skills. In context to the environmental challenges, consulting firms can be the handful option. They will suggest on different legislation and policies which are compulsory to follow in order to avoid the negative consequences (Saebi & Foss, 2015). My duty would be to strictly follow the various policies to ensure that the adverse impact of environmental pollution is reduced.

Short-term	S	M	A	R	T
Interpersonal skills	Ability to interact with employees and clients	I should be able to progress in terns or making impactful sessions with both employees and the clients	I will be required to seek the assistance on critical situation from my respective managers. I would also follow my managers taking the sessions as this will help me to understand the strategies they use in tricky situations.	A proper interaction with employees and clients is achievable; however, I will be tested for making an impactful interaction. Employees especially have a lot of expectations which when not fulfilled they tend to disobey the management instructions.	3 years from now onwards
Teamwork	To be able to work with employees and clients	A better and progressive trend for collaborate working	Working with employees and clients is difficult in terms of managing conflicting thoughts and harmonising the workforce.	An effectively working with shareholders, suppliers and other stakeholders is challenging for their distinguished demands. The only worth a work would be to keep on working on strategies to make the difference	3 years being into the industry
Middle-term
Analytical skills	Ability to effectively analyze the situation	Number of successful handling of situations is more than the failures.	I would follow my supervisors to understand how they deal with different situations. I would also seek the assistance from few successful case studies to understand the ways being used to analyze the cases.	Few circumstances can really be tricky. I will grow by learning those only. In such cases, I would also seek an assistance of my seniors.	7-8 years being into the industry
Problem solving skills	Conflict management	I will groom myself by handling the different dispute cases. The major area of attention would be the conflicts at the workplace due to the ethnic diverse workforce, age & gender based gaps and others.	This is indeed a long continuing process during which I will get to learn new things with every different case of conflicts.	I will be able to resolve a few of conflicts whereas I can also fail in many. However, at the maturity level that is by my retirement from work, I will develop my personality as the one who has higher success rates in managing the conflicts.	Till the time of retirement
Long-term
Decision making skills	Handling complex cases such as innovating with supply chain operations	The capability to reduce the wastes & the manufacturing costs while maintaining the accepted quality will measure my success in this area.	The ex-supply chain managers and the successful case-studies will be the first point of assistance for me. I would also involve myself into the varied circumstances to get familiar with number of challenges and the relevant solutions as well.	I will definitely be able to make useful decisions and improve the supply chain operations provided that I have the required resources.	Till the end of my career or by my retirement

                                                                         Table 3: SMART Goals

The Table of Contents is below:

Ethics, according to me, are the set of values which I should strive to. My parents were like the first institution to me who taught me to adopt the good things and avoid the bad ones. This is why I have a few qualities in me which perhaps would help me at the organizational level. I am very honest with my work. I do not believe in taking short cuts. Being honest to my work will perhaps assist me to be dedicated with responsibilities I am being assigned to. There are a few skills in me which can help me at the professional level. Few of such skills are ‘being unbiased to situation’ and ‘being supportive to others’. Nevertheless, biasness is a serious issue which managers use as one of their political weapons (Quarshie, Salmi & Leuschner, 2016).

As opined by Boiral & Heras-Saizarbitoria (2017), ethics can be defined as a set of moral principles which guide the business to a number of behaviours. One of such behaviours is differentiating between the right and wrong. It is quite easy to identify that a certain business act is ethical also. It also governs that there should not be any unlawful usage of the copyrighted materials and strategies. However, it is not at all easier to create or set a system of ethical values to do everything in an ethical way.

According to Gonin (2015), business ethics is a set of codes of practice which defines the different organizational activities. It means every single industry is asked to obey the various codes of practice relevant to their operations. These codes of practices when not fully obeyed can also attract a number of potential consequences. Firms can approach to consulting firms seeking the assistance on the codes of practice feasible to their business. Such consultants can also guide to an appropriate implementation of the set of codes.

In the opinion of Schnackenberg & Tomlinson (2016), every single company is in hunt to make the profits and in doing so, they also become ignorant on this part. They intentionally miss on using the relevant codes of practice. Firms are required to produce strong returns to their shareholders. However, it should not come at the expense of violating the social, moral and environmental considerations. Indeed, long-term success can be attained by effectively fulfilling the needs of every single stakeholder such as governments, customers, employees, suppliers and communities.  

1. Self-Introduction: Tell me about yourself — Your goals, your educational background. Where you will be in 5 years and why? What makes you and your personality, capabilities suitable to your desired role? Do you have any experiences in the role?

1. Analytical skills: It means to being equipped with skills which are required to tackle the different situations. Being the operations manager, I am certain to face a number of challenges in different domains such as the supply chain network, marketing & sales, finance, admin and others.

Reference: Akter, S., Wamba, S. F., Gunasekaran, A., Dubey, R., & Childe, S. J. (2016). How to improve firm performance using big data analytics capability and business strategy alignment?. International Journal of Production Economics, 182, 113-131.

2. Creative thinking skills: It speaks about the skills which encourage making the creative decisions. Creativity is required to understand the importance of emerging technologies and the ways to tackle these.

Reference: Munro, E. (2017). Building soft skills in the creative economy: Creative intermediaries, business support and the ‘soft skills gap”. Poetics, 64, 14-25.

3. Decision making skills: Leaders are tested for their decision-making capabilities. It is very important that leaders are able to make effective decisions in diverse situation. A good decision can bring the benefits whereas any bad decision can eventually cause a lot.

Reference: Janssen, M., van der Voort, H., & Wahyudi, A. (2017). Factors influencing big data decision-making quality. Journal of Business Research, 70, 338-345.

4. Problem solving skills:This is required in situations such as conflict management, operational issues like ineffective supply chain operations, unskilled workforce and a lot more.

Reference: Helfat, C. E., & Peteraf, M. A. (2015). Managerial cognitive capabilities and the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities. Strategic Management Journal, 36(6), 831-850.

5. Teamwork: It is needed to work in collaboration with employees and the clients. Moreover, managers are also needed to promote teamwork at the organisational level to flourish the sharing of diverse skills and reducing the rate of conflicts.

Reference: Erhardt, N., Martin-Rios, C., & Harkins, J. (2014). Knowledge flow from the top: the importance of teamwork structure in team sports. European Sport Management Quarterly, 14(4), 375-396.

Creative thinking skills:A creative thinking skill can be defined as a capability which helps to deal with the tricky situations. Examples include, but not limited to, dealing with emerging technologies. If managers are not good at being creative to emerging trends, they will not be able to its consequences (Berg, 2016).

Solution: Considering examples of successful entrepreneurs as their stories are full of creative strategies.

Problem-solving skills:Managers who cannot handle the situations capably, they will not be able to survive in long-term. For example, reputed firms keep on changing their CEOs and top-managers in times when they strategically feel to do so (Ahern, Leavy & Byrne, 2014).

2. Mega Trends and Challenges What is happening in your industry or position? What are the drivers of these positions, what are the challenges for the industries you would like to enter? You will need to do some research here. In order to complete this, you will need to consider the Macro-elements. I would put these in a table as shown below

Solution: Taking parts in number of projects as this will give me opportunities to work with senior managers and observing them solving the diverse problems.

Analytical Skills:Without being able to effectively analyze the situations, managers will lack an effective handling of projects and will also struggle to produce the results (Brunton, Eweje & Taskin, 2017).

Solution: Closely following the world great leaders and their experiences

Strengths	· Equipped with technological skills · Self-confidence · Organizing capabilities
Weaknesses	· Effective communication · Creative thinking skills · Problem solving skills

                                               Table 4: Strength and Weakness Analysis 

My technological skills would motivate me for emerging technologies. The self-confidence in me will encourage me to approach the senior managers to learn new things. The organizing capabilities make me feasible for work-based projects.

Effective communication is one of my weak zones; however, the organizing capabilities will help me collect a number of things from my senior managers and work upon the weakness. A creative thinking skill is another issue; however, the eagerness in me to learn new things will help me to overcome it. ‘Problem solving skills’ will eventually grow in me with continuous exposure to diverse projects.

References 

Ahern, T., Leavy, B., & Byrne, P. J. (2014). Complex project management as complex problem solving: A distributed knowledge management perspective. International Journal of Project Management, 32(8), 1371-1381.

Akter, S., Wamba, S. F., Gunasekaran, A., Dubey, R., & Childe, S. J. (2016). How to improve firm performance using big data analytics capability and business strategy alignment?. International Journal of Production Economics, 182, 113-131.

Berg, J. M. (2016). Balancing on the creative highwire: Forecasting the success of novel ideas in organizations. Administrative Science Quarterly, 61(3), 433-468.

Boiral, O., & Heras-Saizarbitoria, I. (2017). Managing biodiversity through stakeholder involvement: why, who, and for what initiatives?. Journal of business ethics, 140(3), 403-421.

Brunton, M., Eweje, G., & Taskin, N. (2017). Communicating corporate social responsibility to internal stakeholders: walking the walk or just talking the talk?. Business Strategy and the Environment, 26(1), 31-48.

Chen, Y., Wang, Y., Nevo, S., Jin, J., Wang, L., & Chow, W. S. (2014). IT capability and organizational performance: the roles of business process agility and environmental factors. European Journal of Information Systems, 23(3), 326-342.

Erhardt, N., Martin-Rios, C., & Harkins, J. (2014). Knowledge flow from the top: the importance of teamwork structure in team sports. European Sport Management Quarterly, 14(4), 375-396.

Godey, B., Manthiou, A., Pederzoli, D., Rokka, J., Aiello, G., Donvito, R., & Singh, R. (2016). Social media marketing efforts of luxury brands: Influence on brand equity and consumer behavior. Journal of business research, 69(12), 5833-5841.

3. Goals

Gonin, M. (2015). Adam Smith’s contribution to business ethics, then and now. Journal of Business Ethics, 129(1), 221-236.

Helfat, C. E., & Peteraf, M. A. (2015). Managerial cognitive capabilities and the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities. Strategic Management Journal, 36(6), 831-850.

Janssen, M., van der Voort, H., & Wahyudi, A. (2017). Factors influencing big data decision-making quality. Journal of Business Research, 70, 338-345.

Kernbach, S., Eppler, M. J., & Bresciani, S. (2015). The use of visualization in the communication of business strategies: An experimental evaluation. International Journal of Business Communication, 52(2), 164-187.

Lee, J., Bagheri, B., & Kao, H. A. (2015). A cyber-physical systems architecture for industry 4.0-based manufacturing systems. Manufacturing Letters, 3, 18-23.

Mensi, W., Hammoudeh, S., Reboredo, J. C., & Nguyen, D. K. (2014). Do global factors impact BRICS stock markets? A quantile regression approach. Emerging Markets Review, 19, 1-17.

Munro, E. (2017). Building soft skills in the creative economy: Creative intermediaries, business support and the ‘soft skills gap”. Poetics, 64, 14-25.

Nulkar, G. (2014). SMEs and environmental performance–A framework for green business strategies. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 133, 130-140.

Parés, M. (2015). Market?Based Social Innovation: Are Business Strategies and Social Change Compatible?. Public Administration Review, 75(4), 628-631.

Pulles, N. J., Schiele, H., Veldman, J., & Hüttinger, L. (2016). The impact of customer attractiveness and supplier satisfaction on becoming a preferred customer. Industrial marketing management, 54, 129-140.

Qin, J., Liu, Y., & Grosvenor, R. (2016). A categorical framework of manufacturing for industry 4.0 and beyond. Procedia Cirp, 52, 173-178.

Quarshie, A. M., Salmi, A., & Leuschner, R. (2016). Sustainability and corporate social responsibility in supply chains: The state of research in supply chain management and business ethics journals. Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, 22(2), 82-97.

Saebi, T., & Foss, N. J. (2015). Business models for open innovation: Matching heterogeneous open innovation strategies with business model dimensions. European Management Journal, 33(3), 201-213.

Schnackenberg, A. K., & Tomlinson, E. C. (2016). Organizational transparency: A new perspective on managing trust in organization-stakeholder relationships. Journal of Management, 42(7), 1784-1810.

Sierzchula, W., Bakker, S., Maat, K., & Van Wee, B. (2014). The influence of financial incentives and other socio-economic factors on electric vehicle adoption. Energy Policy, 68, 183-194.

Slocum, J., Lei, D., & Buller, P. (2014). Executing business strategies through human resource management practices. Organizational Dynamics, 43(2), 73-87.

Stewart, C. (2014). Transforming professional development to professional learning. Journal of Adult Education, 43(1), 28-33.

Viloria, A. (2016). Commercial strategies providers pharmaceutical chains for logistics cost reduction. Indian Journal of Science and Technology, 9(47).

Wang, D., Ma, G., Song, X., & Liu, Y. (2016). Political connection and business transformation in family firms: Evidence from China. Journal of Family Business Strategy, 7(2), 117-130.

Zeugner-Roth, K. P., Žabkar, V., & Diamantopoulos, A. (2015). Consumer ethnocentrism, national identity, and consumer cosmopolitanism as drivers of consumer behavior: A social identity theory perspective. Journal of international marketing, 23(2), 25-54.

Zheng, W., Singh, K., & Mitchell, W. (2015). Buffering and enabling: The impact of interlocking political ties on firm survival and sales growth. Strategic Management Journal, 36(11), 1615-1636.