WorksheetsLeadership and Strategy
Total questions: 79
Worksheet time: 40mins
Which of the following is true of the change process for a strategic facility plan?
The change process records problematic areas but not areas of particular success.
Significant changes may require a detailed business case to propose the change.
Interim changes require executive or board approval, even when minor.
Strategic facility plans should be updated only as they expire, every 3 to 5 years.
Which of the following indicates where an organization is versus where it wants to be?
Strategic creative analysis (SCAN)
Statement of requirements
Gap analysis
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis
Facility master plans (real estate master plans) fall within which of the following layers of strategic planning?
An element of the facility management organization’s strategic plans
An element of performance measurement
An element of tactical plans
An element of the organization’s strategic plans (corporate strategy)
Which of the following could be used to answer both of the following questions: "What is the likely impact if the maintenance backlog is not eliminated?" and "Should the organization divest or reinvest in a site that requires substantial incremental investment?"
Facilities audits
Work coordination technology
Scenario alternatives
Statement of requirements
Which of the following would be likely used as an outcome measure rather than a performance driver?
Emergency response times (work order generation time and time to site [or repair])
Number of CFM certifications (number of new approved certifications)
Staff turnover (number of employees out of division/total employees)
Labor costs charged to work orders (time charges and employee labor rates)
Which of the following is true of gaining executive or board buy-in and approval for facility management organization strategic plans?
If facility managers are presenting several scenarios, they are careful not to show bias toward any scenario.
In this phase, approval is on the strategic direction; approval of the financial impact is deferred until the next phase.
Approval of a strategic facility plan includes release of all funds.
Approval often relies primarily on the executive summary and not on the body of the proposal
Which of the following is true of facility management organization approval of strategic objectives for a tactical plan?
Strategic objective approval is at the sole discretion of executives/clients, never the facility manager.
Strategic objectives above a certain value or planning complexity may require executive/client approval.
Strategic objective approval is always at the discretion of the facility manager regardless of cost or planning complexity.
Strategic objectives and tactical plans never need approval.
Which of the following could show simultaneously that a proposed facility management strategy provides the highest return at the lowest risk and that the plans are aligned to the organization’s strategy?
Financial data benchmarking
Economic feasibility studies
Strategic creative analysis (SCAN)
Scenario planning
Which of the following ensures that an organization’s new balanced scorecard system is being used and reflects current strategy?
Use leadership to inspire staff to develop their own balanced scorecard measures
Change employee review and reward systems to reflect balanced scorecard measures.
Change mission and vision statements to reflect the four perspectives of the balanced scorecard system.
Use balanced scorecard success criteria to enforce existing service level agreements and avoid renegotiating the agreements.
Which of the following is true of a facility master plan (real estate master plan)?
Once tactical plans are created, they replace facility master plans as the primary strategy documents.
Once facility master plans are approved, implementation is straightforward and low risk.
Facility master plan scenarios may anticipate changes so additional planning may not be necessary.
The facility master plan is a higher level plan than the strategic facility plan.
Which of the following is true of programming tasks in a strategic analysis?
Needs assessments for a facility master plan may entail full-scale programming and scheduling.
Asset life-cycle models account for the quality of the asset but not for maintenance person competencies.
Needs assessments involve analysis of trends and making projections over the strategic planning horizon.
Microlevel space forecasts are contained in an organization’s strategic plan.
Which of the following is the best example of how facility managers can apply leadership skills to facility management (FM) strategy development?
Market the value of strategic activities such as facility planning to FM stakeholders.
Get buy-in and funding from FM stakeholders for strategic activities such as programming.
Communicate the FM organization’s mission, vision, and strategic plan to FM stakeholders.
Implement strategy by conducting scheduling and resource allocation.
Which of the following is true of a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis?
Opportunities can become threats if poorly managed.
Strengths and weaknesses are derived from environmental scanning.
Strengths and weaknesses refer to external advantages and disadvantages.
Opportunities and threats are derived from strategic or macro programming.
In which of the following balanced scorecard categories would performance drivers be located if they are used to minimize equipment down time?
Customer perspective
Financial perspective
Process perspective
Innovation and learning perspective
The strategic purpose of an organization is to serve the needs of its
customers.
employees.
executives.
shareholders.
When getting final input on a strategic statement of requirements, which of the following could a facility manager provide to department heads to show them the primary and secondary adjacencies between their departments?
Workflow diagram
Strategic creative analysis (SCAN)
Bubble diagram
Asset life-cycle model
Which of the following is true of the performance drivers and outcome measures in a balanced scorecard system?
Performance drivers and outcome measures are determined and target values are undefined.
FM leaders ask subordinates to review and sign off on measurements they provide to ensure accountability.
Facility staff are empowered to determine what data to collect for each measurement.
Performance drivers are linked to specific job roles and individuals.
Which of the following programming tasks most directly helps facility managers factor in budget and human resource constraints?
Modeling requirements
Prioritizing or ranking requirements
Active and passive needs assessment tools
Generating derived requirements
Which of the following helps make the link between the strategic facility plan and the organization’s requirements transparent because it indicates actual customer/internal stakeholder needs?
Programming
Benchmarking
Strategic creative analysis (SCAN)
Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats (SWOT) analysis
Which of the following is true of an organization’s mission, vision, values, or culture?
Facility managers work within organizational culture because they cannot influence it.
Organizational culture changes whenever group membership changes.
Organizational values and culture have minimal influence on organizational success.
A strong mission provides underlying principles that guide individual behavior.
Which of the following situations may trigger a change to facility management strategy between major updates?
The organization receives a national quality award
Analysis reveals previously unknown options that prove superior.
A change is proposed that would fit the budget but disrupt core work unnecessarily.
A stakeholder makes non-critical change suggestions.
Which of the following situations may trigger a change to facility management strategy between major updates?
The organization receives a national quality award.
Analysis reveals previously unknown options that prove superior.
A change is proposed that would fit the budget but disrupt core work unnecessarily.
A stakeholder makes non-critical change suggestions.
A corporation’s real estate master plan has a strategic objective to expand production capacity and a requirement to reduce operational leverage (i.e., lower fixed costs). Assuming each of the following space planning strategies is feasible, which one best reflects this objective and requirement?
Use the facilities register to create derived requirements to rearrange existing space.
Use the corporate balanced scorecard to create a cost-driven approach and construct a new facility.
Use the facilities register to create derived requirements to construct a new facility.
Use the corporate balanced scorecard to create a cost-driven approach and rearrange existing space.
According to best practices, the best source for forecasting space needs is to derive them from:
scenario alternatives using best-in-class benchmarking data.
macro level space forecasts contained in the organization’s strategic plan.
customer surveys.
facility management strategic programming.
During requirements analysis and negotiation for strategic programming, which of the following should facility managers do with tactical-level requirements?
Use the requirements without changes.
Generate derived requirements to move from the general to the specific.
Remove the requirements.
Merge the requirements into a single higher-level requirement if possible.
Which of the following covers a facility manager’s portfolio of facilities and may include elements such as a gap analysis, recommendations for new spaces or buildings, and recommendations for new service programs?
Strategic facility plan
Facilities register
Tactical plan
Statement of requirements
Setting goals and performance objectives are part of which component of the overall management process?
Organizing
Controlling
Leading
Planning
Which of the following is true of the factors that influence the selection of a facility management (FM) organizational structure?
Functional/structural models are designed to mitigate the stovepipe or silo effect.
Decisions to use individual contractors to fill specific positions strongly effects FM organizational structure.
A facility manager at a centralized organization may encounter resistance when attempting to empower employees.
Organizations that downsize middle management positions can be successful if facility managers concurrently reduce contracting services.
In addition to forming a facility management (FM) strategy that is complementary to the organization’s strategy, FM organizations earn satisfied stakeholders by
placing the needs of FM stakeholders ahead of the organization’s goals.
placing the needs of a dominant stakeholder group above other stakeholders.
addressing stakeholder concerns at the tactical rather than strategic level.
understanding and incorporating stakeholder objectives into FM strategy.
A facility manager links the responsibility for each FM function and asset to a job position. How does the facility manager make sure the responsibilities are fulfilled on a day-to-day basis?
Writing the responsibilities into job descriptions
Building strong teams that can ensure all tasks get done
Providing task assignments and scheduling according to the responsibilities
Reviewing all deliverables for completion and correctness
A facility manager is interviewing candidates for a facility position that requires a specialist with a graduate-degree level of technical skills and excellent people skills. All else being equal between the candidates, the facility manager should hire the candidate with
a graduate degree in the relevant field but the third best people skills
some education but practical experience in the relevant tasks and the best people skills
an undergraduate degree in an unrelated field but the second best people skills
an undergraduate degree in the relevant field but the weakest people skills.
Facility management policies, procedures, and practices
specify minimum standards for work but allow workers to define the maximum amount of work.
frequently affect choices that entire organization staff and managers make.
cannot take required skill levels for services into account when assigning expected time or cost.
for contractors vary because they must specify the processes for the required tasks.
When facility managers adopt the techniques of principled negotiations, they
focus on what a fair standard for an agreement would be.
see themselves as friends with the other party.
identify interests and take a position based on that interest.
deal with hard negotiators by insisting a resolution be found quickly.
A matrix model is differentiated from a functional/structural model by its relative increase in the use of which of the following?
High span of control per position
High vertical chain of command
Staff management
Line management
A facility manager sets goals with an employee. The person designs primary goals that are relatively easy to accomplish. How should the facility manager respond?
Recommend revising the goals to be more challenging.
Accept the goals because the process of producing goals is more important than their challenge level.
Accept these goals because they guarantee success.
Give the employee a new set of goals that may not be feasible.
Which of the following would sustain a change management effort over the long term?
Convert the effort into a reengineering effort.
Initiate the next change management effort immediately upon the completion of the last effort.
Allow employees go back to their regular work at project end.
Transition the effort to one of continual improvement.
A facility management organization has a backlog of tasks that require staff to work a great deal of overtime. Staff are clearly under duress. To offset the duress, the manager uses job enrichment to add some high content tasks. According to Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy which of the following is true of this scenario?
The job enrichment changes will not provide motivation.
Job enrichment will fail unless it is accompanied by strategic planning.
The job enrichment changes will provide the second highest degree of motivation possible.
The job enrichment changes will provide the highest degree of motivation possible.
When developing goals for the facility management organization, facility managers start with
an external focus on the entire organization.
an internal focus on FM employee and contractor needs.
an external focus on laws, standards, and regulations.
an internal focus on FM mission and vision.
An internal staff facility management employee works five days a week. Two days are spent on grounds maintenance and three days are spent on inspecting and repairing plumbing systems. This is an example of
job rotation
job simplification.
job enrichment.
job enlargement.
A facility manager working to build personal influence over subordinates should practice which of the following in daily interactions?
Always summarize and then provide an opinion.
Avoid bias and be detached from other persons’ perspectives.
Serve as a gatekeeper for information requests.
Listen actively and be able to be influenced.
Which of the following methods of innovation are concise and practical examples, tools, and methods that often originate from external sources such as the benchmarked results of other organizations?
Reengineering
Change management
Best practices
Continual improvement
Which of the following is an example of the use of leadership skills to promote work coordination?
Generating tactical plans and schedules.
Establishing shared accountability with other departments.
Ensuring that the failure of one FM staff member doesn’t affect the rest of the team.
Promoting technology to coordinate daily short-term crisis management.
According to the Belbin Team Role Inventory, a completer finisher would benefit most from a job design that emphasized which of the following job characteristics models?
Skill variety
Task identity
Task significance
Feedback
According to McGregor’s Theories X and Y:
Theory X managers believe the average person dislikes work but seeks responsibility so he or she can delegate the work.
Theory Y managers believe poor performance is caused by poor management and leadership.
Theory Y notes that innovative problem solvers are narrowly distributed in the population.
Theory X notes that the carrot-and-stick approach is the best way to inspire commitment to organizational goals.
Which of the following is an aspect of group dynamics that is positively linked to empowerment?
Minority rule
Emergent behavior
Required behavior
Ad hoc informal team forming
After some team members challenged the goals of their project, the team leader clarified the purpose of the project and team roles. Currently, the team is moving as one. Which of the following stages of Tuckman's team life-cycle model is this team occupying?
Norming
Forming
Performing
Storming
A best practice for conflict resolution is to
use face-to-face resolution only for high intensity, high difficulty problems.
make organizational changes that enable rather than prevent conflict.
allow parties to resolve conflicts themselves whenever possible.
determine and consistently apply a single style of conflict resolution.
Which of the following is an incremental effort that can be used to keep the organization from getting behind in quality, efficiency, and effectiveness relative to its competitors and operating environment?
Continual improvement
Reengineering
Change management
Laissez faire
A benefit of a facility manager sharing power with subordinates and investing in training to create a culture of leadership is that the strategy will
reduce job dissatisfaction even though it cannot produce job satisfaction.
be effective even if the facility manager feels insecure in a leadership position.
empower staff even though initially all staff will perceive the additional training as a penalty.
allow everyone to reach their potential if facility managers have confidence in their workforce.
Allowing staff to participate in planning, setting goals, and determining how to monitor performance is an example of
employee/contractor involvement.
job sharing.
delegation.
job enlargement.
According to Hershey-Blanchard's situational leadership theory, which of the following styles of leadership should a facility manager take when a subordinate has high technical skills for a task but expresses unwillingness to take responsibility for the task?
Delegating
Selling
Participating
Telling
When facility managers are collecting quantitative data to audit the current FM organizational structure, facility managers should collect
at least two years worth of data on quality and timeliness of customer service and project outcomes.
information on staff personalities and their likely behavior.
information on staff (but not contractor) sentiments on organizational structure.
at least one year of organizational strategic objectives and likely FM organization funding.
According to Fiedler's contingency theory, which of the following would be the least effective response if a manager's leadership style is not proving effective?
Train the manager to change leadership styles.
Work to increase the manager's leader-member relations.
Change the manager's position power.
Change the definition and clarity the manager gives to tasks.
A facility manager regularly visits staff on the job and expresses concern for helping each individual accomplish his or her work and it seems to have a positive motivating effect on work output. Which of the following management styles is this facility manager using?
Manage through employee empowerment (manage with a loose rein)
Hybrid management style of responsibility to executives and management as a linear process
Manage by walking around
Laissez faire management
Which of the following is true of conflict management?
Conflict resolution is designed to first diagnose and then treat the symptoms of the conflict.
Drops in performance levels or nonverbal cues may be the only way to detect when some conflicts are occurring.
Facility managers designate themselves as mediators using position power and policy, ensuring they will always be used to resolve conflicts.
Facility managers realize that conflicts reduce team cohesiveness and find ways to prevent all types of conflict.
Facility staff treat a facility manager with more respect because of his attendance at corporate strategy sessions. Which of the following is the type of personal influence this facility manager has?
Representative power
Referent power
Information power
Reward power
Which of the following is true of marketing the facility management organization?
Focusing on delivering services as efficiently and effectively as possible sufficiently shows the value of the FM organization.
Marketing the FM organization is not a political task except in a dysfunctional organizational culture.
A primary value proposition is that the FM organization is a critical sustainer of core business effectiveness such as production capacity.
FM organizational marketing plans are necessarily complex and costly.
A tenured facility management employee is given added responsibilities such as planning, organizing, controlling and evaluation. This is an example of
job enrichment.
job specialization.
job rotation.
job enlargement.
Which of the following team decision-making techniques supports fast response time?
Lack of response
Consensus
Authority rule
Unanimity
To increase the job satisfaction of a key staff member, a facility manager removes hazardous work conditions and gives the person a raise. According to Herzberg’s motivation-hygiene theory which of the following is true of this scenario?
Neither of the measures will provide job satisfaction.
Only the raise will provide job satisfaction.
The facility manager needs to promise additional job security to generate job satisfaction.
Both of the measures will provide job satisfaction.
Which of the following is an example of an effective communication technique?
Start off with the good news first in reports so that when the bad news is presented it will not seem so bad.
Know your audience and tailor presentations to promote things likely to promote a favorable response.
Avoid asking personal questions or socializing with staff to maintain an air of authority.
State the true benefits of the project even if some executives/clients being presented to deprecate some of these benefits.
Which of the following is true of power versus influence?
Position power cannot be exercised without personal influence.
Personal influence is solely at the discretion of subordinates.
Position power is necessary but not sufficient for effective leadership.
A superior uses reward power to grant a subordinate personal influence.
Which of the following is true of the marketing duties of facility managers?
Facility managers have a responsibility to promote the safety of an organization even if it sometimes requires taking an unpopular stand.
While facility management is generally a well understood profession, the role of facility managers as business leaders needs some marketing.
Facility managers cannot use their staff to market the department; they alone must perform this marketing task.
Facility management is a service and simply managing the successful delivery of that service naturally results in good customer perceptions of that service.
Which of the following is true of Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
Mental independence is reflected in "you" such as "you are to blame."
Covey believes the personality ethic is the long-term path to success.
Independence is the highest form of self development.
Covey believes a person failing to uphold principles cannot decide on the consequences.
Which of the following is prescriptive and indicates when to apply a particular standard?
Procedures
Codes of ethics
Policies
Practices
Which of the following is a speaking and writing technique that a facility manager should consider using to market facility services and ensure that facility management needs and priorities are met?
Using detailed arguments
Dismissing the audience’s concerns
Focusing on statistical and technical data
Using hooks or "grab" paragraphs
According to the Belbin Team Role Inventory, which of the following teams would function best?
A coordinator as team leader and the team includes an implementer.
A shaper as team leader and the team includes a shaper.
A plant as team leader and the team includes a completer finisher.
An implementer as team leader and the team includes two shapers.
When assessing whether to change a practice in the facility management organizational structure, facility managers should do which of the following?
Make the change and carefully observe FM staff behavior for a while.
Survey FM staff to determine how many always do the practice that way.
Discover the history of the practice.
Ensure the practice is identical to core organizational structure practice.
Which of the following is an example of an employee who is showing true acceptance to a change in work processes?
An employee who is seeking creative ways to make the new process work for him or her.
An employee who seems unaware of the new process and continues to use the old process.
An employee who has seen similar change efforts fail and expresses self pity about the current project.
An employee who complies with the change to the extent that she must but shows little enthusiasm.
When facility managers make a change to organizational structure, they should
abandon the changes if problems start occurring that never occurred before.
continue to promote the structure even if it is the root cause of significant problems.
make additional changes immediately if problems start occurring that never occurred before.
assess the structure over time before declaring it a success or failure.
Which of the following is an example of using leadership influence to enforce compliance with an organizational code of conduct?
Requiring all employees to read the code and sign off on it.
Establishing a confidential “whistleblower” hotline.
Doing whatever it takes to gain an advantage for the organization.
Living by a strong personal commitment to ethics.
Which of the following is the best explanation of the relationship between facility managers and corporate social responsibility (CSR) policy?
Facility managers cannot enact CSR policy on their own and cultivate relationships to have influence due to their peripheral connection to CSR policy.
Facility managers are responsible for setting CSR policy and use leadership to ensure the policy is implemented and followed.
Facility managers are responsible for setting CSR policy and primarily manage stakeholder expectations of policy results.
Facility managers cannot enact a CSR policy on their own but are ideally placed to promote it in the organization.
Which of the following can be a valid tactic to assume when managing customer expectations and perceptions?
Distribute monthly customer satisfaction surveys.
Present customer executives with the results of space planning and strategy.
Establish a liaison with the customer separate from other business functions.
Under-promise and over-deliver, within reasonable limits.
Which of the following is an advantage of having close relationships with selected suppliers?
Suppliers have the opportunity to suggest process improvements.
The relationship protects confidentiality.
Closer partnerships require maximum commitment.
Internal politics with purchasing are minimized.
Which of the following is true of customer relationship management?
The philosophy that the customer is always right has a positive effect on facility management customer relationships.
A policy of zero errors is a best practice for maintaining customer relations.
Excellent or creative error recovery can be a source of customer satisfaction.
Facility staff empowerment can be detrimental to customer service due to reduced service delivery consistency.
When facility managers link the necessity of their services to customer perceptions of that service, they are establishing which of the following elements of a value proposition with their customers?
Risks
Costs
Importance
Results
Which of the following is an example of a facility manager who is in compliance with the IFMA Code of Ethics?
A facility manager who gives a private verbal warning after observing unethical behavior.
A facility manager using any reasonable means to resolve conflicts of interest.
A facility manager who uses the end of an IFMA member training session to market a complementary service that her private firm offers.
A facility manager who offers a contractor a very low pay rate due to a poor economy, saving the facility function money.
The key leadership task of customer relationship management is
management of expectations and perceptions.
ensure that errors are corrected before customers detect them.
to ensure facility staff seek approval for any action affecting customers.
stating that the customer is always right.
Which of the following is true when developing rules for organizational codes of conduct?
Rules generally need to be more detailed than principles.
Rules that reinforce organizational culture should be included even when not enforceable.
Rules are intended to replace reason with position power.
Rules intended only for facility management staff need not be compatible with the organization’s rules.
