Options and Priorities - the Wood or the Tree Dilemma!

I have, applied the system with spectacular results in many situations and departments. In the Commercial Tax Department a large number of petty cases, accounting for a majority of the number but making only an insignificant contribution to the revenue, were placed in category C.

Similarly a very small number of cases involving huge amounts of revenue went into category A. Going after A and C improved, at once, the revenue collection as well as the overall disposal of cases, while the department attended to the remaining cases in category B. Likewise we analyzed the Urban Land Ceiling surplus area declarations in Hyderabad city in 1976.

The ABC approach threw up more than 70% of trivial cases of excess land – small holders more or less accidentally crossing the bench- mark prescribed by the law – accounting as a group for a small extent of excess land (less than 5%) and going into category C. On the other hand less than 10% of the declarants together owned more than 50% of the total excess land and went into category A.

The approach proved to be invaluable in providing immediate relief to a huge number of small holders sparing them from needless harassment and, simultaneously, allowed us to concentrate on the handful of worthwhile cases requiring careful and close scrutiny. Once again the remaining work (category B) was left to the system.

While all this analysis is essential there can, like all good things, be too much of it. Start with a tentative agenda on these lines and push ahead. Revisit this exercise once in a way and tweak it with benefit of knowledge gained as you go along.

There is, otherwise, the danger of Xeno’s paradox which deals with the following conundurum that half the distance between any two points has to be traversed in any journey, half of that distance again before proceeding further and so on until you conclude that no movement is possible! Similarly in administration, continuous or endless refinement of objectives could well end up preventing the exercise from beginning. Unless one begins to churn the milk the cream will not surface.

It is, in other words, necessary to eliminate noise from what is entering into the zone for consideration from the ambient environment, and capture "information" there from. In my own way I sometimes refer to this approach as "management by elimination" (MBE).

The trick, therefore, lies in deciding what not to do!People incorporate circles one familiar with the phenomena called the "glass ceiling" referring to an invisible barrier. Persons occupying senior management posts sometimes find that top positions appear seemingly accessible to them, while it is actually not so. Though such goals seem within reach, it is only an illusion and you really have to stretch your hand to feel the partition that prevents you from reaching them.

There is a similar feeling one gets while dealing with some people. They look friendly at first sight, and it looks almost possible to shake hands with them. It is only when you actually try to do it that you find that there is a barrier in between. I refer to this in a light-hearted manner as the "glass partition".

A management information system (MIS) focuses on the employment of the tools and techniques of information technology to provide efficiency efficacy in strategic decision making. It includes transaction – processing systems, decision – support systems and such like.

The term is often used in the academic study of businesses and has connections with other areas, such as Informatics, e-commerce and computer science; as a result, the term is used interchangeably with some of these areas.

An MIS as an academic discipline which studies people, technology, organisations and their relationships among them and is commonly also offered as a course of study in business schools. Such schools (or colleges of business administration within universities) have an MIS department, as also departments of accounting, finance, management and marketing. They may award degrees (at undergraduate, masters and doctoral levels) in MIS.

MIS professionals help organisations to maximise the benefit from investments in personal, equipment and business processes.

A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organisation or a particular activity in which it engages. Often, sexes are simply the repeated, periodic achievement of some levels of an operational goal (for example 0 defects, 10/10 customer satisfaction et cetera) and success is usually defined in terms of making progress to words strategic goals.

Accordingly, the ability to make the right choice of KPIs call is for a good understanding of what is important to the organisation." What is important" often depends on the department measuring the performance – for examples the KPIs useful in finance will differ from the KPIs assigned to sales. Since there is a need to understand well what is important, various techniques to assist the present state of the business, and its key activities, associated with the selection of performance indicators.

These assessments often lead to the identification of potential improvements, so performance indicators are routinely associated with "performance improvement" initiatives. A very common way to choose KPIs to apply a management framework such as the balanced scorecard.

Transparency, continuity, efficiency, balance, equity, selflessness, planning, organising, directing, controlling and coordinating are generally recognised as fundamental principles of sound management.