119Applying the 9 Rules
submitted in a written report to the vice president of operations. The recommenda-
tions included four technical enabling initiatives that were deemed to be critical to
the operations department and the company.
Identication of plan shortcomings (lack of detail support data) highlighted the
need to develop a forecasting capability. When the ndings describing how the rev-
enue forecast was determined reached the ofce of the president, he called the senior
staff together and directed the heads of the various divisions to redo their forecasts
and base them on hard data. Frank also recommended development of specic man-
agement skills in order to realize operations department improvements in efcien-
cies and utilization. ...