A plans-driven organization is based on compliance of its membership. It believes in using a disciplined approach to moving forward. This organization requires rigid adherence to the plan. Rewards are based on absolute compliance with the pre-agreed plan. Such rigor requires an equally rigorous management system to sustain itself. Authoritarian management is the common approach. With a fixed structure there is little latitude for individual decision making or unilateral actions. In a plans-driven organization the name of the game is to accomplish the goals. Employees are rewarded for high compliance. Sticking to the plan is important. Because of this fixation with goal achievement, the customer tends to be placed in the back row of priorities.
A utilities company is probably a good example of a plans-driven organization. An electrical company must operate from a tightly managed plan to generate and deliver a certain level of power to its users. It must do usage calculations to determine the flow of its outputs and plan accordingly. To adequately serve the public, it must be thinking far ahead in terms of population growth, support requirements, and total management of the consumption requirements.
Plans are central to any organization that by necessity has a high compliance component. For example, a rigid plan would be followed by a team during an annual outage changeover procedure. Servicing nuclear rods is not the time to be creative. They would not be rewarded for skipping standard operating procedures, taking shortcuts, or making it up as they go along. A corporation with diverse business units must have a plan focus. It is the only combination that allows diversity. The only thing that matters in this case is whether the business unit met its plan requirements. That’s the bottom line.