Chapter 19
Managing Community
Nutrition Programs
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Learning Objectives
• Differentiate between strategic and
operational planning.
• Describe the four functions of
management.
• Describe methods to coordinate an
organization’s activities.
• Outline methods for obtaining peak
performance from employees.
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Introduction
• Community nutritionists must be
good planners and managers.
• Management - the process of
achieving organizational goals
through planning, organizing,
leading, and controlling.
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The Four Functions of
Management
• Planning - the forward-looking aspect
of a manager’s job and it involves
setting goals and objectives, and
deciding how best to achieve the goals
and objectives.
• Organizing - focuses on distributing
and arranging human and nonhuman
resources so that plans can be carried
out successfully.
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The Four Functions of
Management
• Leading - influencing others to
carry out the work required to
reach the organization’s goals.
• Controlling - the function that
regulates certain organizational
activities to ensure that they meet
established standards and goals.
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Planning
• Involves deciding what to do and
when, where, and how to do it.
• Focuses on future events and
finding solutions to problems.
• Planning is ongoing.
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Planning
• Types of Planning
– Strategic planning - long-term
planning that addresses an
organization’s overall goals.
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Planning – Types
• Strategic planning (continued)
– Occurs over a period of several years,
and includes:
• Formulating objectives
• Assessing past, current, and future
conditions and events
• Evaluating the organization’s strengths
and weaknesses
• Making decisions about the appropriate
course of action
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Planning – Types
• Strategic planning (continued)
– Typically done by senior managers.
– Guides development of the
operational plans.
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American Dietetic Association
Strategic Plan, 2004–2008
• Mission
• Vision
• Values
• Strategic Goals
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Planning – Types
• Operational planning - shortterm planning that focuses on the
activities and actions required to
meet the organization’s goals.
– Deals with specific actions,
expenditures, and controls and with
the timing of these activities in a
formal, structured process.
– Typically done by midlevel managers.
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Planning – Types
• Project management - coordinates a
set of limited-scope activities around a
single program or intervention.
– Requires setting goals and objectives and
outlining the project’s critical path
• Critical path - the series of tasks and
activities that will take the longest time
to complete.
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Organizing
• The process by which carefully
formulated plans are carried out.
• Managers arrange and group human
and nonhuman resources into workable
units to achieve organizational goals.
• Organizing function includes:
– Organization structures
– Job design and analysis
– Human resource management
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Organization Structures
• The formal pattern of interactions
and activities designed by
management to link the tasks of
employees to achieve the
organization’s goals.
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Organization Structures
• In developing structure, managers
consider the following:
– How to assign tasks and
responsibilities.
– How to define jobs.
– How to group individual employees to
carry out certain tasks.
– How to institute mechanisms for
reporting on progress.
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Organization Structures
• Organization charts
– Give employees information about the
major functions of departments,
relationships among departments, channels
of supervision, lines of authority, and
certain position titles within units.
– Help establish lines of communication and
procedures.
– Do not depict rigid systems.
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Nontraditional Organization
Chart
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Organization Structures
• Departmentalization - the
manner in which employees are
clustered into units, units into
departments, and departments
into divisions or other larger
categories.
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Organization Structures
• Departmentalization (continued)
– Span of control - the number of
subordinates who report directly to a
specific manager.
– Although the ideal span of control has not
been identified, some researchers argue
that the range is about 5 to 25 employees,
depending on the level of organization.
– Another method of coordinating an
organization’s activities is through
delegation or the assignment of part of a
manager’s work to others.
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Organization Structures
• Line and staff relationships also help
clarify an organization’s structure.
– A person in a line position has direct
responsibility for achieving the
organization’s goals and objectives.
– Staff - commonly used to refer to the
group of employees who work in a
particular unit or department.
– An employee in a staff position assists
those in line positions.
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Job Design and Analysis
• Determining the various duties
associated with each job in their
area.
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Job Design and Analysis
• Job analysis - used to determine the
purpose of a job, the skill set and
educational background required to
carry it out, and the manner in which
the employee holding that job interacts
with others.
– The formal outcome of a job analysis is the
preparation of a job description.
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Job Design and Analysis
• Job description - a basis for
rating and classifying jobs, setting
wages and salaries, and
conducting a performance
appraisal.
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Sample job
description
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Human Resource
Management
• Staffing - the set of human
resource activities designed to
recruit individuals to help meet the
organization’s goals and
objectives.
• Recruitment - attracting
applicants and hiring candidates.
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Human Resource
Management
• Both direct methods...
– media-based advertisements in
newspapers, mailing personalized letters to
potential applicants
• and indirect methods...
– holding training sessions for professionals
• can be used as recruitment strategies.
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Human Resource
Management
• Affirmative action - all activities
designed to ensure and increase
equal employment opportunities
for groups protected by federal
laws and regulations.
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Human Resource
Management
• Evaluating Job Performance
– Evaluating job performance and
providing feedback to employees
about their performance is essential
to maintaining good working
relationships and can occur informally
at any time.
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Human Resource Management –
Evaluating Performance
• Performance appraisal - a formal
method of providing feedback to an
employee that involves:
– Defining the organization’s expectations for
employee performance.
– Measuring, evaluating, and recording the
performance compared with those
expectations.
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Human Resource Management –
Evaluating Performance
• Keys to conducting a good
performance appraisal interview:
– Start with clear objectives.
– Focus on observable behavior.
– Avoid vague, subjective statements of
a personal nature.
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Leading
• The management function that
involves influencing others to
achieve the organization’s goals
and objectives.
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Leading
• Motivating Employees
– Set high standards and stick to them.
– Put the right person in the right job.
– Keep employees informed about their
performance.
– Allow employees to be a part of the
process.
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Leading
• Communicating with Employees
– A critical managerial activity.
– Can take the form of both verbal
communication and written communication.
– Being a good communicator means paying
attention to people and events, observing
the nuances of nonverbal and verbal
communication, and becoming a good
listener.
– Open communication results from the daily
use of certain techniques and skills that
promote communication.
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Controlling
• The management function
concerned with regulating
organizational activities so that
actual performance meets
accepted organizational standards
and goals.
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Controlling
• The control function involves:
– Determining which activities need
control
– Establishing standards
– Measuring performance
– Correcting deviations
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Controlling
• Financial and Budgetary Control
– Balance sheet - lists the organization’s
assets and liabilities.
– Income statement - summarizes the
organization’s operations over a specific
time period and lists revenues and
expenses.
– The difference between revenues and
expenses is the organization’s profit or loss.
• a.k.a. the “bottom line”
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Controlling – Financial and
Budgetary Control
• Financial control is typically
managed through an operating
budget.
– Budgeting - the process of stating,
in quantitative terms, the planned
organizational activities for a given
period of time.
– Closely linked to planning.
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Controlling – Financial and
Budgetary Control
• Managers who can justify their
budget requests are more likely to
be successful in appropriating
funds for their program’s projects
and activities.
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Better Health Restaurant Challenge
– Demonstrates how health professionals,
HMOs, restaurants, consumers, and health
organizations can benefit from partnership
– Month-long, annual contest to determine
the best-tasting low-fat restaurant menu
items in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area
– Sponsored by HealthPartners, a large
Minnesota-based managed-care
organization
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Goals:
– Increase the availability of tasty, lowfat menu items in restaurants
– Increase restaurant patrons’ selection
of low-fat menu items
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Objectives:
– Promoting participating restaurants, menu
items, HealthPartners, and low-fat eating to
the community
– Encouraging the long-term availability of
low-fat items
– Providing low-fat dining options in a variety
of eating establishments
– Increasing consumer/restaurant
participation in the BHRC
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Methodology
– Restaurants in the Minneapolis area were
contacted
– Participating restaurants worked with
HealthPartners’ registered dietitians to:
• Create at least 2 low-fat menu items
• Train restaurant staff to promote the healthful
items
• Keep at least 1 low-fat item on the menu for one
month
• Extend a 20% discount on low-fat food items to
members of HealthPartners
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Methodology
– Created ballots so that diners could
rate the low-fat items based on taste
– Restaurants with the highest overall
taste ratings were declared winners
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Results
– The number of participating
restaurants/locations has more than tripled
– Number of different menu items has
increased from 60 to 280
– 14,000 diners completed ballots
– > ½ reported that items tasted better than
expected
– Average taste rating = 4.13 out of 5
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Results (continued)
– Majority said that they would order
the low-fat item again and that the
BHRC program increased the
likelihood of their ordering low-fat
items in the future
– > 90% of restaurants kept their lowfat menu items on the menu after the
program ended
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The Better Health Restaurant
Challenge
• Lessons Learned
– Treating diners as food critics
increased participation...
– as did the challenge’s focus on foods
that taste good.
– Big advertising budgets are not
necessary.
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Controlling
• Information Control
– The community nutritionist manager needs
to collect, organize, retrieve, and analyze
many types of data and information.
– Data - unanalyzed facts and figures.
– Information - data that has been analyzed
and processed into a form that is
meaningful for decision makers.
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Controlling – Information
Control
• To be useful, information must be:
– Relevant
– Accurate
– Timely
– Complete
– Concise
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Management Issues for “Heartworks
for Women”: Case Study 1
• There are 3 management issues
related to the “Heartworks for
Women” program:
– The critical path
– The budget
– Grantsmanship
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Management Issues for “Heartworks
for Women”: Case Study 1
• The Critical Path
– The nutritionist develops a timeline early in
the planning stages, when the program plan
is outlined.
– One example of a timetable shows key
marketing activities for the program.
– A team leader lays out the paths that must
be completed to ensure that all program
elements have been finalized before the
launch date.
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Time Line for Determining
the Critical Path
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Management Issues for “Heartworks
for Women”: Case Study 1
• The Operating Budget
– Operating budget - a statement of
the financial plan for the program
that outlines the revenues and
expenses related to its operation.
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Management Issues for “Heartworks
for Women”: Case Study 1
• Extramural Funding
– Early in the planning stages, one of
the team leaders identifies several
activities for which extramural
funding might be obtained.
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The Business of Community
Nutrition
• Individuals need strong management
skills, whether they work in the public
or the private sector, and must be able
to:
– Set a direction for the business or program.
– Define goals and objectives.
– Organize the delivery of the product or
service.
– Motivate people to help the organization
reach its goals.
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The Business of Community
Nutrition
• Community nutritionists must be
able to (continued):
– Allocate materials, equipment,
personnel, and funds to operations.
– Control data systems.
– Provide leadership.
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The Business of Community
Nutrition
• Management and leadership skills
are needed to gain a competitive
edge in an increasingly competitive
health care environment.
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The Business of Community
Nutrition
• Four strategies for success should
be kept in mind:
– Continually assess the competitive
environment.
– Continually assess your strengths.
– Build organizational skills.
– Build managerial (people and
process) skills.
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Time Management
• Control Is Essential
– Control - recognizing that it is easy
to become overwhelmed by the
number of decisions we face about
how we spend our time
– Taking control of your time means
planning how you will spend it
– Planning starts with deciding what
your priorities are
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Time Management
• Quadrant II Is Where the Action Should
Be
– Quadrant I = activities that are both
urgent and important
• Focusing constantly on these tends to lead to
stress, burnout, and a sense that we are always
putting out brushfires.
– Quadrant II = not urgent, but important
• Highly effective people spend their time in
Quadrant II activities
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Time Management
• Quadrant II (continued)
– Quadrant III = urgent, but not
important
• Some people spend time in Quadrant III,
thinking that they are in Quadrant I.
• Likely to feel out of control
– Quadrant IV = neither urgent nor
important
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Time Management
• It’s as Easy as ABC
– The first step in taking control of your
time is setting priorities
– Write down all of the things you
should accomplish
– Assign each item a priority of A, B, or
C (A = top priority)
– Rank each activity within each
category: A-1, A-2, etc.
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Time Management
• The Top-10 Time Wasters
– Telephone interruptions
– Drop-in visitors
– Meetings (scheduled and
unscheduled)
– Crises
– Lack of objectives, priorities, and
deadlines
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Time Management
• The Top-10 Time Wasters (continued)
–
–
–
–
–
Cluttered desk and personal disorganization
Ineffective delegation
Attempting too much at once
Indecision and procrastination
Lack of self-discipline
• Learn to Say No
• Work Smarter, Not Harder
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