Prelim- week 1

Lesson 1: Thinking Strategically

Introduction:
Our lives, both personally and professionally, have been disrupted like never before. The COVID-19 pandemic has turned
businesses around the world upside down. We’re all focused on firefighting, on surviving, on managing unforeseen circumstances
that weren’t part of anyone’s strategic plan. At a time like this, why would anyone make time for thinking strategically?

To be blunt: you can’t afford not to. Although COVID-19 has made things even more complex and uncertain than usual,
leaders always need to have one foot in today and another in tomorrow. If you’re focused only on your, or your team’s, work,
you will fail to see the big picture and won’t be able to keep pace with a changing world. The current crisis will eventually end. To
not just survive but also succeed, you and your organization need to understand how your industry will shift in the coming months
and start planning your next steps now. (Kehr, 2020)
Strategic thinking can help you advance your career or improve your business. By thinking strategically, you’ll be able to break
processes down into manageable steps and choose the best resources for helping you achieve your goals. Although you may not be in the habit
of thinking strategically, you can develop this skill with practice.
We all know that developing strategic thinking skills is important, but many don’t realize how critical it is to your career
advancement to show these skills to your boss and other senior leaders. Showing strategic thinking skills tells your bosses that you’re able
to think for yourself and make decisions that position the organization for the future. It assures them that you aren’t making decisions in a
vacuum but are considering how other departments might be affected or how the outside world will respond.
What is Strategic Thinking?
Strategic thinking is simply an intentional and rational thought process that focuses on the analysis of critical factors and
variables that will influence the long-term success of a business, a team, or an individual.
Strategic thinking includes careful and deliberate anticipation of threats and vulnerabilities to guard against and opportunities to
pursue. Ultimately strategic thinking and analysis lead to a clear set of goals, plans, and new ideas required to survive and thrive in a
competitive, changing environment. This sort of thinking must account for economic realities, market forces, and available
resources.
Strategic thinking requires research, analytical thinking, innovation, problem-solving skills, communication and leadership skills, and
decisiveness.
Thinking strategically is a way of assessing and planning when trying to achieve an objective. Strategic thinkers take the time to plan out the best
solution to a problem or the best way to reach a goal. Being able to think strategically allows you to not only help the company you’re working
for, but also advance your career through intentional decisions.
Why is Strategic Thinking Important?
The competitive landscape can change quickly for any organization. New trends may emerge quickly and require you to
take advantage of them or fall behind. By incorporating everyday strategic thinking into your work and life routines, you will become
more skilled at anticipating, forecasting, and capitalizing on opportunities.
On an individual level, thinking strategically allows you to make a greater contribution in your role, become more essential to your
organization, and prove that you’re ready to control greater resources.
What are the Components of Strategic Thinking?
If you’re working on your company’s strategy, you’ll need to engage in analysis, problem-solving, decision making, and
leading through change.
As you create a strategic direction or plan, you’ll analyze:

 Business opportunities and vulnerabilities

 Feasible of each idea or risk
 The costs associated with each move you are considering
 The likelihood that various tactics will be effective
 Methods of aligning objectives with the overall plan
 The effects of competitors, suppliers, customers, and new substitutes might have on your strategic plans
As you discover obstacles during the planning process, you’ll problem-solve by:

 Gathering relevant information about the problem

 Clearly defining the problem from a strategic point of view
 Brainstorming possible solutions
 Imagining further challenges and how to overcome them
 Delegating assignments of various parts of this strategy to key associates.

Strategic thinking requires agility and decisiveness in choosing a plan and sticking with it. However, you have to be aware of
new, more promising opportunities. It is a balancing act between consistency and flexibility. You and your team will:

 Make sure decisions are well-informed by thorough research

 Choose objectives and accompanying metrics
 Prioritize objectives
 Follow a standard decision-making process
 Build consensus, when necessary

During strategic planning, you will need to communicate ideas to your staff and gather feedback from them. You’ll then utilize
effective channels to communicate a compelling vision of the completed plan to all employees and keep them focused on their
contribution to the plan.

Think back to the last time you participated in a strategic planning meeting for your organization. You were likely presented with a
challenge to solve or goal to achieve.
Do you remember your contributions during that meeting? Did you offer compelling ideas and plot a course of action, or find it
difficult to think strategically and develop a solution? Did you have a good idea, but struggle to communicate it in a logical way?
Were you an active participant in the conversation, or did others helm it?
Strategic thinking skills are among the most highly sought-after management competencies. Why? Because employees capable of
thinking critically, logically, and strategically can have a tremendous impact on a business’s trajectory.
If you want to improve your strategic thinking skills, the good news is that, with the right mindset and practice, you can.

WHAT ARE STRATEGIC THINKING SKILLS?

Strategic thinking skills are any skills that enable you to use critical thinking to solve complex problems and plan for the
future. These skills are essential to accomplish business objectives, overcome obstacles, and address challenges—particularly if
they’re projected to take weeks, months, or even years to achieve.
Strategic thinking skills include:
Analytical Skill, Communication Skill, Problem-solving and Management Skill
How to Improve Strategic Thinking Skills
There are five steps to improving your strategic thinking skills:
How to be more strategic at work

***END of LESSON 1***

Lesson 2: Strategic Analysis 

 
Introduction: Are you confusing strategic analysis with one of these other business functions? If so, you could be focusing on the
wrong priorities Strategic analysis is often confused with other types of data tracking and analysis.
Strategic Analysis is a core step in the Strategic Learning Cycle. Every strategist should have a toolset of analytical models at his or
her disposal. However, there are many techniques and tools available for strategy analysis. If you google around the web, you will
find a long list of options available. The challenge is to acquire the right techniques and tools for a given business problem.  
Unlike strategy planning and execution, strategic analysis can be a fuzzy term. Sometimes it’s confused with the tracking and
analysis of operational data points—an important business activity, but not one that is usually associated with strategy. Strategic
analysis is a crucial part of long-term business planning and the first step in the planning process.
What is strategic analysis?                                           
Strategic analysis (sometimes referred to as a strategic market analysis) is the process of gathering data that helps a company’s
leaders decide on priorities and goals, shaping (or shifting) a long-term strategy for the business.  It gives a company the ability to
understand its environment, and formulate a strategic plan accordingly. It is the process of researching and analyzing the
environment an organization operates in, as well as the organization itself in order to inform the strategy formulation process. The
environment of an organization is comprised of two components - the internal environment and the external environment. Both
internal and external environments should be scrutinized in order to identify factors that influence organizations and aid decision-
making.

Strategic analysis is paramount in any organization because it provides the context and backbone upon which the strategy and
overall position of the business is formulated. Strategic analysis is required to formulate decision making strategic planning and
smooth operation of the organization. With proper strategic planning, the goals or aims of the company can be fulfilled. Due to the
constant endeavor to be successful in this competitive world, business organizations periodically conduct strategic analysis to
determine which segments need improvement and which areas are doing exceptionally well and also try to keep a track of external
factors. For an enterprise to function effectively, it is vital to know the ways through which the positive changes that need to be
implemented, how to better manage the value chain and to identify its strengths and weaknesses.

Why isn’t it enough to simply refer to quantitative data and charts to make a plan for the future? Because it is impossible for an
organization to understand how it will achieve success without first having contextual information—in the form of both
qualitative and quantitative data—regarding its internal resources and external environment. The process of performing a strategic
analysis is what adds context to quantitative data. Spotting trends and patterns in the data and evaluating them will inform your
organization’s long-term plan.

You’ll know you’re performing a strategic analysis if you are:

You don’t do a strategic analysis once and then disregard it when your strategy is developed and implemented. To remain adaptable
in a changing business environment—whether the changes are due to a growing number of employees, new government
regulations, or anything else—it’s advisable to conduct a strategic analysis periodically. Organizations that are part of fast-changing
industries should conduct this exercise (in abbreviated form if need be) more frequently than those that are not. Doing an annual
strategic market analysis refresh will not only help your organization stay on track over the course of a few years, but can also help
inform your annual slate of initiatives.

Applications of Strategic Analysis

 Market sizing analysis

 Product portfolio analysis
 Forecasting analysis
 Brand perception
 Market assessment
 Business partner analysis
 Market player analysis
 Competitive analysis

Strategic Analysis Process

The following infographic demonstrates the strategic analysis process:

Advantages of Strategic Analysis” There are a few of the benefits of strategic advantages which are discussed as follows:
Disadvantages of Strategic Analysis
However, along with numerous benefits, strategic analysis has some weaknesses also. They are as follows.

Types Of Strategic Analysis

There is no standard strategic analysis “format”; rather, there are a number of methodologies available to help guide you through
the process of collecting and analyzing relevant data for strategy planning. Two of the most commonly used methods are SWOT and
PESTLE.

Many organizations do both a SWOT and PESTLE analysis to get a complete picture of the business environment. Your entire
leadership team should be heavily involved in these analysis sessions, as should any other personnel who can bring relevant data
points or perspectives to the table. Some team members may be able to speak to strengths and weaknesses through experience;
others may have access to data that supports (and provides context around) those viewpoints. A team that is knowledgeable about
both the company and industry will produce the most effective strategic analysis.

Different Levels of Strategic Analysis

There are three different levels of strategic analysis based on scopes. They are:
10 essential tools for strategy analysis [Updated 2019]

Strategic Analysis is a core step in the Strategic Learning Cycle. Every strategist should have a toolbox of analytical models at his or
her disposal.

Having the right tools won't necessarily make you a good mechanic. Nor will having the right strategy analysis tools make you a good
strategist. But they will help a good strategist get the job done more effectively.

Here is my list of 10 essential tools for strategy analysis:

*** END of LESSON 2***

Lesson 3: Operational Analysis

 

Why measure performance?

Performance Measurement vs Performance Management
 Measurement- knowing what you got, based on facts……”it is what it is”
 Management- acting upon what you got….”should I do anything differently”
What is operational analysis?                                        
Operational analysis is a performance management discipline for measuring, monitoring and responding to the ongoing
performance of an operational asset. The results of an Operational Analysis should trigger considerations of how the objectives
could be better met, what further functionality might be desirable/required, how costs could be saved, and even whether the
organization should be performing a particular function. 

Operational analysis is a method of examining the current performance of an operational (or steady-state) investment and
measuring that performance against an established set of cost, schedule, and performance parameters.  An operational analysis is,
by nature, less structured than performance reporting methods applied to developmental projects (such as Earned Value Analysis).  
It is less structured in nature and should trigger considerations of how the investment’s objectives could be better met, how costs
could be saved, and whether, in fact, the organization should even be performing a particular function.

Beyond the typical developmental performance measures of “Are we on schedule?” and “Are we within budget?”, an
operational analysis should seek to answer more subjective questions in the specific areas of:

 Customer Results,
 Strategic and Business Results,
  Financial Performance, and

Operational analysis is conducted in order to understand and develop operational processes. Using various mathematical
models, statistical analyses, and logical reasoning methods, the operational analysis aims to determine whether each area of the
organization is contributing effectively to overall performance and the furthering of company strategy.
Most notably, operational analysis is a strategy that works to ensure that your operations plan is aligned appropriately with your
strategic planning
Conducting Operational Analysis

Why do Operational Analysis?

The primary objective of performing operational analysis is to determine if an investment is still delivering value and if the
cost to maintain it is appropriate.

 Are we realizing the benefits we expected to achieve?......that is why we funded it!

 Does the investment still meet our needs?.......is it doing what it’s supposed to do?
 Is it performing at required operational performance levels?
 Is risk under control?
 Are we spending more than we should? Is it time to retire and/or replace?
This is achieved through actual, objective performance data to inform both ongoing life cycle investment management and
operations management decisions.

Operational Analysis Goals

 The first key area to be considered is whether financial and resource investment is delivering planned output to the
optimum consumer base.
o Operational analysis can also determine if there is any existing need for additional investment in order to satisfy
customer demands, or if any other adjustments ought to be made, such as lowering prices for the same level of
services.
o The operational analysis will also look closely at whether the current level of financial and resource investment is
sufficient to meet strategic goals.
o An operational analysis will assess if there are better or lower-cost ways of meeting customer needs, aligning with
company strategies, and achieving benefits.
 Lastly, operational analysis investigates the financial performance of the business, determining whether the cost of
production is compatible with the performance numbers and meets strategic goals.
 

The link between project management and operational analysis

Key Roles and Responsibilities

Project Manager:
 Coordinate resources needed to collect performance data and report performance results
 Provide information that business owners and other investment management bodies need to make informed investment
management decisions
 Provide information that operations managers need to maintain ongoing performance at required performance levels

Business Owners
 Review, feedback to, and approve metrics and performance targets
 Review operational analysis results and determine if any changes to the investment are needed
 Refine information requirements on an ongoing basis
*** END of LESSON 3***
Financial analysis (also referred to as financial statement analysis or accounting analysis or Analysis of finance) refers to
an assessment of the viability, stability, and profitability of a business, sub-business, or project. It is performed by professionals who
prepare reports using ratios and other techniques, that make use of information taken from financial statements and other reports

Financial analysis is the process of evaluating businesses, projects, budgets, and other finance-related transactions to determine
their performance and suitability. Typically, financial analysis is used to analyze whether an entity is stable,  solvent, liquid, or
profitable enough to warrant a monetary investment.
Financial analysis refers to an analysis of finance-related projects/activities or a company’s financial statements which includes a
balance sheet, income statement, and notes to accounts or financial ratios to evaluate the company’s results, performance, and its
trend which will be useful for taking significant decisions like investment and planning projects and financing activities. A person after
assessing the company’s performance by using financial data presents findings to the top management of a company with
recommendations about how it can improve in the future.
Steps in Financial Analysis
Types/ Techniques in Financial Analysis
There are many ways one can perform financial analysis; the most popular types and tools are listed below:

Vertical Analysis
This type of financial analysis involves looking at various components of the income statement and dividing them by
revenue to express them as a percentage. For this exercise to be most effective, the results should be benchmarked against other
companies in the same industry to see how well the company is performing.
This process is also sometimes called a common-sized income statement, as it allows an analyst to compare companies of different
sizes by evaluating their margins instead of their dollars.
Horizontal Analysis
In Horizontal Analysis, financial statements of the company are made to review for several years, and it is also called a long-
term analysis. It is useful for long-term planning, and it compares figures of two or more years. Here we find out the growth rate of
the current year as compared to the previous year to identify opportunities and problems.
Trend Analysis
Trend analysis involves collecting the information from multiple time periods and plotting the collected information on the
horizontal line to find actionable patterns from the given information.
Liquidity Analysis
Liquidity Analysis determines the company’s ability to meet its short-term financial obligations and how it plans to maintain
its short-term debt repayment ability. Ratios used for Liquidity Financial analysis are current ratio, quick ratio, and cash ratio.

Turnover Ratio Analysis

The turnover Ratio primarily identifies how efficiently the company’s resources are utilized. The following ratios are used to
do turnover analysis: 
Accounts receivable turnover                        inventory turnover ratio
Working capital turnover ratio                         asset turnover ratio
Equity turnover ratio                                       days payable outstanding
Profitability Analysis
Profitability financial analysis helps us understand how the company generates its profit from its business activities.
Common examples of profitability measures are:
            Gross margin                                                  EBITDA margin
            EBIT margin                                                    net profit margin

Business Risk Analysis

Business Risk Analysis measures how investment in fixed assets affects the sensitivity of the company’s earnings and the
debt on the balance sheet.  The top ways to analyze Business Risk are:
          Operating leverage                                         degree of operating leverage
            Financial leverage                                           degree of financial leverage

Financial Risk Analysis

Here we measure how leveraged the company is and how it is placed with respect to its debt repayment capacity. Tools
used to do leverage financial analysis debt to equity ratio and debt service coverage ratio.

Stability Ratios 
The stability ratio is used with a vision of the long-term. It uses to check whether the company is stable in the long run or
not.

Coverage Analysis
This type of coverage financial analysis is used to calculate dividend, which needs to be paid to investors or interest to be
paid to the lender.
Control Analysis
Control ratio from the name itself, it is clear that its use to control things by management. This type of ratio analysis helps
management to check favorable or unfavorable performance.
There are mainly three types of ratios used here – Capacity Ratio, Activity Ratio, and Efficiency Ratio

Valuation Analysis
Valuation Analysis helps us identify the fair value of the business, investment, or company. While valuing a business,
choosing the correct valuation methodology is very important. You may use one of the following valuation financial analysis tools –

            Dividend discount model                                discounted cash flow formula

            Trading multiples                                             transaction multiples valuation

Variance Analysis
Variance analysis in budgeting is the study of the deviation of the actual outcome against the forecasted behavior in
finance. It is essentially concerned with how the difference between actual and planned behavior indicates and how business
performance is being impacted.
Scenario and sensitivity Analysis
Scenario analysis takes account of all the scenarios and then analyzes them to find out the best scenario and the worst
scenario. 
Rate of return Analysis
The internal rate of return is a metric employed in capital budgeting, which is used to measure the extent of profitability of
potential investments. It is also known as ERR or economic rate of return. IRR is defined as the discount rate that sets the NPV of a
project to zero is the project’s IRR. 
*** END of LESSON 4***

5 Key Elements of Financial Analysis 

Financial health is one of the best indicators of your business's potential for long-term growth. The first step toward
improving financial literacy is to conduct a financial analysis of your business. A proper analysis consists of five key areas, each
containing its own set of data points and ratios.

1. Revenues
Accounted as the core origin of cash, Revenues is crucial for long-term achievement;
 Revenue growth: No former revenue can be added while calculating revenue growth as it leads to distorting the
analysis.
 Revenue concentration: It is assured that no single client can make more than 10% of total revenue, as a customer is
generating high revenues now, but what if he stops purchasing, one can encounter financial difficulty.
 Revenue per employee: It calculates the productivity of the business, the higher the value, the better it is. 
2. Profits
Profit is the return investment that a business derives from the invested amount on the business. Multiple factors such as
price, market trends, assets, obligations, costs, etc, can affect the profit of the business. It can be measured on the basis of;
 Gross profit margin: It enables us to handle revenues or the cost of goods that are sold out without suffering the capability
to pay off for continuous expenses.
 Operating profit margin: It incorporates no interest or taxes, although it measures the strength of generating profits for a
company despite how an individual manages finance services.
 Net profit margin: Pure value that is left for reinvestment into the business, also the redistributed amount to be divided
amid owners.
3. Operational Efficiency 
In order to determine how adequately the company’s resources are utilized, operational efficiency is implemented and its
scarcity leads to shorter profits and more delicate growth.
 Accounts receivables turnover: It computes how perfectly the credit is managed, spread to customers. A bit of a higher
number implies the well-managing of credit whereas a lower number gives a warning sign to improve credit collected from
customers.
 Inventory turnover: It estimates the well-management of inventory. Again, a bit of higher number delivers a good sign and
a lower number implies either goods aren't sold out efficiently or the goods are produced on a large scale in comparison
current level of sales.

4. Capital Efficiency and Solvency

The core aspect of interest of capitalists and bestowers, basically;
 Return on equity: It is used to depicts the return that is generated by lenders, coming out from the business.
 Debt to equity: In generalized terms, it symbolizes how much leverage is practiced to work that can’t be more than what is
justifiable to business.

5. Liquidity 
The term Liquidity signifies the availability of a sufficient amount of cash and other assets to satisfy cash expenses like
debts, bills. 

Every business demands for a sufficient amount of liquidity to meet its expenses. Therefore, a low level of Liquidity implies
the company needs extra capital and its performance is underprivileged. Liquidity can be measured by;
 Current ratio: It calculates the worth amount to be paid for short-term debts from the available cash. If the value of the
current ratio is less than the one, then the company needs extra amount due to inadequate liquidity, however, the current
ratio’s value above two is considered as beneficial.
 Interest covered: The measurement to pay interest expenditure from the available cash, and the value of 1.5 leads to meet
bestowers.

Advantages
 With the help of financial analysis, method management can examine the company’s health and stability.
 It provides investors an idea about deciding whether to invest a fund or not in a particular company, and it answers a
question such as whether to invest? How much to invest? And what time to invest
 It simplifies the financial statements, which help in comparing companies of different sizes with one another.
 With the help of financial analysis, the company can predict the future of the company and can forecast future market
trends and able to do future planning.

Disadvantages
 One of the disadvantages of financial analysis is that it uses facts and figures that are as per current market conditions, which
may fluctuate.
 False data in the statement will give you false analysis, and data may be manipulated companies, and it may not be accurate.
 A comparison between different companies is not possible if they adopt other accounting policies.
 If any company is working in a rapidly changing and highly competitive environment, its past results shown in the financial
statement may or may not be indicators of future results.

Limitations of Financial Analysis

 When companies do financial analysis, most of the time, they fail to consider the price changes, and due to this, they unable to
show inflation impact.
 It only considers the monetary aspects of companies’ financial statements and does not take into consideration the non-
monetary aspects of financial statements.
 It is based on past data in financial statements, and future results can’t be like a past.
 Many Intangible assets are not recorded in the statement, due to Intangible assets don’t consider while doing financial analysis.
 It is limited to a specific time period and not always comparable with different company’s statement due to different accounting
policies.
 Sometimes financial analysis is the influence of personal judgment, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that strong  financial
statements analysis of companies have a strong financial future.

Financial Analysis Best Practices

All of the above methods are commonly performed in Excel using a wide range of formulas, functions, and  keyboard
shortcuts. Analysts need to be sure they are using best practices when performing their work, given the enormous value that’s at
stake and the propensity of large data sets to have errors.
Best practices include:
 Being extremely organized with data
 Keeping all formulas and calculations as simple as possible
 Making notes and comments in cells
 Auditing and stress testing spreadsheets
 Having several individuals review the work
 Building in redundancy checks
 Using data tables and charts/graphs to present data
 Making sound, data-based assumptions
 Extreme attention to detail, while keeping the big picture in mind
***END of LESSON 5***
Lesson 6: Performance Improvement 
Work performance is never a stable thing. Sometimes you can show outstanding results but other days you lose in the productivity
stakes. And the same applies to your employees----we are all human after all. But, if poor performance becomes a regular
occurrence for your employees, you might consider a performance improvement plan.
What is performance improvement?                                
Performance improvement is a form of organizational development focused on increasing outputs and improving efficiency
for a particular process or procedure. Performance improvement can occur at different levels including the employee level, team
level, the division or unit level and the organization as a whole.
Quality control is a common form of performance improvement as a means to ensure consistency of output and consistency of
performance analysis. The Seven Basic Tools of Quality are used to measure quality and make improvements.
Performance improvement can range from a formal, rigid process conducted at timely intervals to a continuous, software-driven,
real-time system that continuously looks at ways efficiency and output can be increased.
Performance improvement can be seen as a subset of performance management.
Performance is a measure of the results achieved. Performance efficiency is the ratio between
effort expended and results achieved. The difference between current performance and the
theoretical performance limit is the performance improvement zone.
Another way to think of performance improvement is to see it as improvement in four
potential areas.

Steps in Performance Improvement

Common types of Performance improvement
            Performance improvement is the evaluation of performance followed by efforts to improve that performance. It is a repeated
process that can be applied to organizations, teams and individuals. The following are common types:
Common types description
revenue Directly achieving more revenue
throughput Doing more work
efficiency Doing more with less
productivity Doing more in an hour of work
quality Improving the value of your output
Customer experience Improving things for the customer
knowledge Acquiring and refining valuable knowledge
processes Valuable change to process
controls Introducing or improving internal controls
Risk management  
communication  
leadership  
culture  
resilience Increasing resilience to stress

Performance improvement Plan (PIP)

A performance improvement plan (PIP) is an official document for an employee who is struggling to succeed in their work.
It aims at helping an employee overcome performance pitfalls at work and pave the way out of a challenging situation step by step. 

A performance improvement plan:

 is developed and approved by the employee’s manager and HR 
 clearly states the steps an employee should take to improve their performance
 has definite goals and a deadline (30, 60, or 90 days)
 explains the implications (demotion, dismissal, or transfer to another department) should the employee fail to meet the
requirements listed in PIP
 can be used for legal scrutiny in case a company and an employee don’t find common ground on work-related issues

When to Apply a Performance Improvement Plan

Employees tend to treat performance improvement plans rather negatively and often consider them as an informal invitation
for termination or demotion. When implementing a PIP, use caution. This decision needs to be well-thought-out. For this, HR needs
to:

 determine if a PIP is really required in this case

 avoid any bias implication that may occur during employee’s performance monitoring 
 provide support to the employee and their manager alongside the plan implementation
 state clear goals, performance assessment criteria, and deadlines in the PIP

Creating a Performance Improvement Plan

Stage 1: Define the problem
At this stage, you need to understand precisely what an employee is doing wrong that adversely affects their
performance. These negative points should be well defined and include the examples of poor work or behavior. Not just feelings or
thoughts.
Stage 2: Determine the objectives
If you’ve defined the performance problems but a chat about improvement had no impact, then it’s time to set the
objectives for your PIP. The easiest and most effective way to create workable objectives is to use the SMART framework.
Stage 3: Provide support
At this stage, you need to define the possible steps that the employee should take to achieve their objectives.  Consider
what kind of support you could provide to the employee. For example, a list of available resources they can use, such as a manager’s
assistance, training, and sources of additional information. 
Stage 4: Set up a schedule and interim check-ins
When all the performance improvement plan objectives and steps are specified, it’s time to determine the key dates to
monitor the outcomes.
Stage 5: Point out the consequences
Elaborate on the consequences the employee will meet if there is a failure to fulfill the performance improvement plan
objectives. This stage is rather touchy, as you state the negative after-effects that follow PIP’s failure.