As a procurement manager, merely defining the task that must be undertaken is not sufficient.
The priority given to each task must be appropriate. Prioritization has a number of key functions, including:
- to prevent wastage of resources;
- to maximize net benefits; and
- to ensure all members of the organization give prime attention to the important tasks and policies.
One of the most important responsibilities of a purchasing professional in the management process is to ensure each member of the team gives the correct weighting to the tasks that have been assigned to him or her.
A failure to do so results in a lack of focus and poor timing of effort.
As a general rule, priority must be determined in terms of each task’s importance to the organization, rather than such extrinsic factors at the level of interest that it generates in the individual team member.
The settings of priorities are a critical aspect of strategic planning and ensuring work is carried out in the proper priority is an equally critical aspect of tactical execution.
For instance, setting priorities by making implication necessitates relegating some options to a position so low in the plan of action it is unlikely they will be pursued.
For some of these options, even that lowly position is too high. A key concern in strategic planning is to screen out completely some of the opportunities that the organization may encounter as being too risky, too costly, too far outside of the scope of its mission or its fields of operation, or offering too little in the way of return to justify being taken up.
The plan should provide guidance to the rank and file both as to what to do and also what not to do. There are of course, exceptions to the general rule that work should be carried out in successive order of importance.
The most obvious exception arises where order is dictated by natural sequencing-where X must be completed before Y can be started. Budgetary considerations and other resource limitations may also limit the ability to carry out obviously important work, with the result that priority may be given to those tasks that can be carried out cheaply.
Giving priority to those tasks that are more easily accomplished may make sense, where there is an intent to create quickly some visible progress.
Nevertheless, it is important to understand that these are exceptions to the general rule.
They are limited in scope and they do not negate the general rule that important things should be done first.
Proper prioritization addresses a number of concerns. In particular:
- Prioritization reflects the fact that often there are not enough funds (or other resources) to finance all projects. Prioritization provides a means of determining the more significant projects of the many possible projects competing for the available funds.
- Some work cannot be successfully completed until earlier work has been carried out in full. Other work is wasted if preliminary work is not first completed (the classic example of this problem is where a city repaves a road and then tears it up to install new sewers. The initial work is wasted and the public is inconvenienced unnecessarily).
Prioritization makes sure that work is carried out rationally. It ties the scheduling of work to such considerations as resource conversation, work facilitation and co-ordination effort. It minimizes the risk that the individual members of an organization will work inconsistently or make arbitrary and illogical decisions.
Sometimes distractions from important work are the fault of the organization itself. One of the surest ways to bog things down in any organization is to create a range of middle management posts and then to assign broad administrative responsibilities rather then line responsibilities to the people who are hired to fill those positions.
Stephen Bauld is a government procurement expert and can be reached at swbauld@purchasingci.com. Some of his columns may contain excerpts from The Municipal Procurement Handbook published by Butterworths.
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