8316-607 Developing Excellence in Operations

Unit Overview

8316-607 Developing excellence in operations is a unit in the ILM Level 6 module that improves the ability of the leaders to facilitate excellence in handling different tasks and expectations. Organisations are guided by principles that focus on maximising and optimising performance in different areas of practice and operation. It is important to understand the standard that the practices established within the organisational setting must achieve.

Leaders must ensure that they push their organisations to exceed the set standards and expectations and ensure that performance standards are maintained. It is critical to ensure that productivity and quality are optimised, but it is also significant to ensure that the standards are retained. This ensures that the organisation is able to achieve its set goals and objectives in line with productivity, financial performance or accomplishing stakeholder obligations and responsibilities. Leaders must therefore understand the theoretical and practical principles that are required to achieve these goals and objectives within their areas of responsibility.

8316-607 Developing excellence in operations is a unit that focuses on improving the ability of the leaders to create and manage quality and excellence in operations within the workplace. The unit provides the learners with training on the approaches that they can use in their areas of responsibility to drive performance and quality of outcome from their activities. The unit aims at building an understanding of the approaches to improve excellence in operations as well as maintain the standards that are set by the operations. The unit is taught in 11 hours of guided learning and contributes 6 credit values towards the completion of ILM Level 6 module.

Suitability of the Unit

Leaders have responsibilities in different areas of operation within the organisation. Each leader must develop the ability to effectively influence their areas of operation and ensure that they achieve the set standards. This process should be managed based on effective models and principles that facilitate excellence both in the efficiency of the operations and the quality of the outcome that is derived from the process.

Leaders must be well trained, therefore, to effectively handle the operations in their areas of responsibility to ensure they achieve these set standards of excellence. This makes 8316-607 Developing excellence in operations8316-607 Developing excellence in operations a highly suitable unit for different leaders within the workplace. This unit provides them with the guidelines and training on different approaches to optimise the performance in their specific areas.

The unit is designed to effectively address the shortcomings in the ability and skills of middle managers within the organisations. Middle managers are responsible for individuals within a large span of control within the organisation. The unit helps them to manage the operations in their departments optimally hence contributing to the overall performance of the organisation. However, the unit is also effective for other stakeholders. The team leaders, junior leaders and employees looking forward to leadership roles in senior and executive positions can be benefited from the unit as it helps them to understand the roles and responsibilities that they should play. It also helps them to understand the skills that are required for facilitating excellence in operations at this level of leadership.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the unit, the learners should be able to:

• Understand the role of data collection and performance management in facilitating excellence in operations with the workplace

• Collect and analyse feedback in in the form of performance appraisal and management systems about personal management practice

• Evaluate the effectiveness of personal management practice using operational data collected from colleagues and the other appraisal system

• Evaluate personal performance based on performance information

• Implement different management theories, models and trends of management thinking in identifying the impact of personal management practice on operations

• Identify the strengths of weaknesses in personal management practice from the performance appraisal processes

• Create an effective action plan that is designed to improve performance in different areas of weaknesses identified from the evaluation

Key Learning Areas

8316-607 Developing excellence in operations focuses on improving the management practice of the leaders, especially in line with the contribution towards facilitating excellence in practices. The unit covers critical areas that include:

Data Collection and Analysis

Learners are guided to understand the significance of collecting relevant feedback on improving their managerial performance to ensure they lead excellent performances in operations. In achieving these goals, the learner is introduced to different forms of data that can be used for self-assessment as well as information that involves performance appraisal. The learners are also guided to effectively collect, analyse and use feedback from colleagues and critical stakeholders within the workplace to make effective managerial practice improvements. They are taught the different types of data that can be used for developing excellence in operations as a leader and manager. The learner is also guided to understand the critical roles that they must play in managing excellence in operation as well as the skill that they need to develop to ensure they are able to achieve the desired levels of excellence.

Improvement of Management Practice

This area of learning focuses on ensuring that the learners understand different management theories and schools of thought. They are also guided to develop an understanding of the areas of weaknesses that they need to improve based on the data collected and analysed especially involving personal management practice.

With this information, learners are guided on effective improvement approaches that can be used to align their management practice and methods using different theories to the roles and responsibilities that they play within their areas of responsibility. This area of learning also helps them to evaluate the effectiveness of the development approaches that they have implemented in their specific areas of responsibility.

Evaluation

On completing the unit, the learner is required to complete an evaluation/ this evaluation includes a written assessment that tests the mastery of both the theoretical information as well as the ability to use the information learned in practical settings. Approaches such as supervised practice, simulated exercises and case studies are applied to ensure the learner has mastered critical principles and information.