Affecting_Change

Introduction Smith and Falmouth a mid-sized mail order network and tele-shopping company operating in the United States and Canada is currently experiencing a decentralized organizational structure within the online business unit. The current leadership structure is the Irene Seagraves, Chief Executive Officer (CEO); Project Manager, James William Argyle (currently heading up Operations); Logistics Manager, Brian Kervor, and Marketing Manager, Adam Searle. The company started the online retailing division entitled S&F Online to stay competitive in the industry and increase financial stability to the parent company. To get the program off to a good start, Ms. Seagraves assembled various teams to help develop a program that would essentially manage the inventory and successfully market the new branch of the company. Ms. Seagraves wants to consolidate Operations, and has hired a new Chief Operations Officer (COO) to streamline online operations, increase the reach of the Online Sales Channel, and make S&F Online a profitable business unit. She is confident that with the seating of new COO, the teams will be able to accomplish the goals of creating a profitable online division that will complement the parent company. Currently, most decisions of any significance are made by one of the three managers. Empowering employees with the discretion to make day-to-day decisions about job-related activities is consistent across the organization. The empowerment system is a necessary element of a customer-responsive culture that allows service employees to make on-the-spot decisions to satisfy customers. Changing a Culture The culture of S&F Online is fairly young, and still developing, however, as with most organizations undergoing growth phases, S&F Online will go through many cultural changes as it grows to a successful organization. According to Robbins and Judge “An organization’s current customs, traditions, and general way of doing things are largely due to what it has done before and the degree of success it has had with those endeavors. This leads us to the ultimate source of an organization’s culture: its founders” (Robbins & Judge, 2007, p. 581). Whereas the culture of S&F Online may be largely in place based on the culture of the parent company, as a separate business unit it will have its own distinctive culture. The culture at S&F Online is fairly open and informal. By adding a COO to head up the operations division, the CEO is attempting to modify the culture just enough to move the organization forward with a bit of formalization. The current low formality culture has allowed empowerment of the current team managers, and created a culture with a freedom decision making, and implementation. The last thing that the CEO should want to do is minimize the productive thinking and implementation that got the organization this far. By adding the COO position and filling it from outside, her obvious goal was to bring in new ideas, and create a level of management and a single point of interaction from her to the operations group. This will change the culture to some extent, and as the scenario indicated, created an atmosphere of negativity, and resentment toward the new COO. This resentment is due mainly to the addition of the COO, and a shift of each individual’s manager within the organization. As the scenario unfolds various sub-cultures within the organization become apparent to the new COO. Identification of these sub-cultures and playing on the strengths of each team leader to meet the goals Ms. Seagrave the CEO has set for the organization is the COO’s obligation. As the new COO learns these sub-cultures a sociogram comes to light which shows how each of the sub-cultures interact with each other, and who the true leaders are in the organization. In the beginning of the scenario these sociograms show that the teams are strongly aligned to their leaders, and the leaders are not strongly influenced by the new COO. There is a minimal influence the new COO has over the Marketing Manager. However, all other employees restrict interaction with the new COO to official business only. The COO aligns himself with James Argyle the Project Manager to help influence positive momentum in the organization. In doing so, he also took a directive style of approach. This approach only realized an increase of ordered serviced by the business unit of 30%. However, James did agree to work with the COO and was pleased with the forthright approach the COO took. Ms. Seagrave suggested a modification of leadership style to gain the results she desired (doubling the current customer base by the end of the quarter). During the next phase, the COO decides to upgrade systems and recruit specialists to help meet Ms. Seagrave’s goals. The existing team members are hostile toward the specialist and perceive them as a threat to their jobs. In an effort to resolve the issues with the perception of the specialist’s role in the organization, the COO implemented a new plan of action but stayed aligned with James. The new plan identified employee competencies and gaps, offered training to fill the gaps, and a redesign of roles to augment skills. A team meeting was called to take input regarding how to accomplish Ms. Seagrave’s goals, and establish common goals for the team. Finally a mentoring program was introduced to promote learning for all employees. This plan did help to increase productivity, but only by 70%; not the desired 100% outlined in Ms. Seagrave’s goals. In the final phase of the scenario, Ms. Seagrave convinced the leaders of S&F to allow an additional quarter to increase the profitability of S&F Online. At this phase, the COO continued to align with James, and implemented additional action plans to help reach Ms. Seagrave’s goals. First teams were empowered to mutually decide targets, and expand job roles and responsibilities. Next additional resources were offered in larger budgets for machines, training, and software to bridge the skill-gap. Finally, performance bonuses, recreational facilities, and utilities were implemented to motivate the team. With this plan of action the senior leaders allowed S&F Online to retain its independent identity, and Ms. Seagrave was well pleased with her new COO, and the restructured team. The supportive leadership style the COO took helped the individual teams to work together and the company to realize its goals, and retain its independent status the CEO desired. The items that might have helped would have been to provide metric sheets and progress reports to employ the resources more effectively. Personal Experience As a manager in the health care industry, I have found myself in similar situations. I have been brought in to implement change to increase productivity and accountability of various operational teams. As in the scenario, I found that my leadership was resisted by my team, and in some situations, my peers. This is not a position I would wish on any leader, but it did provide me excellent experience that I otherwise might not gain. Through these challenging positions, I learned a great deal about empowerment, and how to achieve desired results without a complete implosion of the existing team. There were casualties in each case, but overall, each team became more productive and accountable to the organization. Each situation required that I adjust my leadership style to accomplish the goals set before me, and the team I managed at the time. I am not the same type of leader I once was, and am I feel I am a better-rounded leader as a result of these experiences. Although I believe I am a very flexible leader, I still made some errors in the scenario. I still have aspects of leadership I can learn about, and this course helped me to gain some of that knowledge. Conclusion The success of each leader is dependent on the ability to adjust one’s leadership style to the situation placed before him or her. According to the scenario, “Leadership is defined as the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of goals. The first step of effective leadership is to identify the various needs and concerns of the followers and the social network at the work place” (University of Phoenix, n.d.) Situational leadership is the way to go in most, if not all organizations in business today. The quick-shifting needs of organizations today require leaders and teams that can quickly shift with those needs. The leader who maintains a fixed style of leadership will ultimately fail in today’s business world.