Management Functions in Action
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week – Gen George S. Patton Jr.
2015
Module Tutor – David Wallace Course Title – Management – B7MG018Number of words - 5912
A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week – Gen George S. Patton Jr............................................................................................................................................................0
Introduction..........................................................................................................................................3
Planning................................................................................................................................................4
Organising...........................................................................................................................................10
Leading................................................................................................................................................14
Control................................................................................................................................................17
Summary.............................................................................................................................................21
Recommendations..............................................................................................................................22
Conclusion and Minutes.....................................................................................................................23
References..........................................................................................................................................24
Interview.............................................................................................................................................25
Organizational Structure.................................................................................................................25
Questionnaire.....................................................................................................................................26
Introduction 1:.................................................................................................................................26
Planning 2:.......................................................................................................................................28
Organizing 3:....................................................................................................................................33
Leading 4:........................................................................................................................................37
Controlling 5:...................................................................................................................................43
Closing question:.............................................................................................................................45
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Figure 1 Organisational Strategies........................................................................................................4
Figure 2 Reason for Planning...............................................................................................................5
Figure 3 Traditional Goal Setting for Employees...................................................................................6
Figure 4 Characteristics of a learning organization..............................................................................12
Figure 5 Continuum of Leader Behavior..............................................................................................15
Figure 6 Control flow is Specify, Allocate/Trust, Measure, Verify and React.......................................18
Figure 7 Types of Management Control..............................................................................................20
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IntroductionThe group has carry out research on the role of manager within an organisation. Inductive method with combination of primary and secondary research in form of interview was used. After carrying out secondary research on the four managerial roles namely, planning, leading, organising and controlling, the roles were divided amongst the four group members. After the secondary research each member of the group formulated questions to conduct an interview and the organisation was selected. The group decided to conduct the interview with the CEO of Ward Solutions. Two member of the group carried out this task with a senior level manager.
The interview was conducted with a CEO of an Irish based Information security business in Dublin. Key aims of the report were to find out how management theory compares to management practice.
Manager’s profilePat Larkin CEO of Ward Solutions has over 17 years’ experience in the IT industry, the last 10 of which have been involved in commercial IT management. Ward Solutions was founded in 1998 by Pat Larkin, Paul Ward and Paul Hogan. Prior to Pats commercial involvement, Pat was an officer in the Irish Defence Forces serving in both a line role and then subsequently as IT Operations Manager of the Defence Forces Communication and Information Services Corps. This was the driving factor to the creation of Ward Solution Pat is co-founder and CEO of the Ward Solutions business.
Main tasks As CEO Pat is responsible for overseeing the operations of the company and collaborates with the board to define and articulate the company’s vision and develop strategies for achieving same.
The Key Functions of Management In order to accomplish their goals and objectives builds the foundations for management concept. There are key management functions broken into four different areas and they represent:
Planning Organizing Leading Controlling
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PlanningThe function planning is to formulate plans to achieve a balance of needs or demands with the available resources. The process of planning can identifies the goals or objectives within an organisation to achieved, with this they can formulates strategies that creates the means to the desired requirements to implement, direct, and monitor all steps in the correct sequence.
There is 3 types of Strategy which are; Cost leadership Differentiation Cost focus
Ward Solutions use a Differentiation Strategy. The reason why they choose this is this provides them with the why they do not want to play in the cost strategy is you can get communize.
Main sources of information
Figure 1 Organisational Strategies
Ward Solutions has four functions within the business; Sales Administration Technology Operations
Responsibility is delegated to the head of each function. Each function then reports on consensus of objective, achievement and growth. CEO acts as a peer at each function level.
Next level is middle management, comprise of; Sales Department Legal and Risk Department HR Department Operations department
a) Practices leadsb) Security Consultantsc) Integration consultantd) Application consultant
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“According to Koontz and O' Donnell, "Planning is an intellectual process, conscious determination of course of action, the basing of decision on purpose, facts and considered estimates." (ASSAR, n.d.)
Figure 2 Reason for Planning
Part of the planning process, Pat mentions that you must recognize that middle management and employees can contribute to the company plans. There is a clear overall vision and standards for the company but we take input internally from the business at all levels as to how to achieve that vision. They want to grow the business and with this you have to listen to the business as they are your eyes and ears. They also take planning externally by base lining themselves from independent expect and consultancy organizations measurement of how they are performing vs our peers. Planning is good but need to be flexibility enough to change. Ward Solutions understand this and sticking to the original plan in an ever changing demands can paralyses the business leading to the question is what should I do now?
CEO takes a quote from GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON, JR"A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week”.
(Patton, n.d.)
From his experience you can spend a lot of time planning trying to get the perfect plan together. There are those whom are perfectly content to continue down the avenue and analysis everything. The danger is they can find themselves falling behind. From Pat’s experience, it’s always, what is the best instinct? We based our decision on what worked in the past, what your assessment of the market, assessment of the customer, the demand, where you feel profit or opportunity is and how you achieve it.
Pat says that part of your planning is broken into 2 part chairing and listening, but at some point you just need to take that step and make that decision.
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Key thing is are you bringing the backing of the business support with you? Do you have the support of you customers, partners and employees as without them a good plan is not worth anything? This is all part of the consideration. The goals must be achievable otherwise there no point in doing it.
Identifying the organization’s current mission, goals and strategies Doing an external analysis Doing an internal analysis Formulating strategies Implementing strategies Evaluating results
Pat tells us that yes they do use all 6 stage of planning but it isn’t formulated into a rigid plan. It’s not something they would perform all the time but naturally people follow these to some extent. Ward Solutions didn’t always use these methods but found with education and experience using this methods allowed them to have a better understand of their market and competitions by utilizing their strength and minimizing their weaknesses. They use the steps but not in order.In saying this, Ward Solutions are not 100% following the stages and the reason is simple it is not always necessary. In saying this they understand that having plans in place can provide them with the strength to grow their business and with that they have documented their plans for 2017-2020. The company is continuously improving on their planning to align themselves in a strong position within their industry.
Figure 3 Traditional Goal Setting for Employees
Historically Ward Solutions goal setting was very much revenue and sales focus which meant that they had a target and the executed to hit that target.
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Balance Score CardWard Solutions has now adopted a balance score card and management system. The framework is base on which allow them to set down mission, goal, value and objectives. This method has allow them to consider other aspect of the business, such as employee satisfaction, staff retention, personal development all the key element that the business needs to deliver on whatever the top line numbers are. This system has allowed Ward Solutions to consider all aspect of the business not just revenue or profit number. “Drs. Robert Kaplan; “he balanced scorecard is a strategic planning and management system that is used extensively in business and industry, government, and non-profit organizations worldwide to
align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications, and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.” (The Institute way,
2015)
This has allow them to have better visibility to their objectives from each layer of the business and better understanding of any road block along the way of achieving their KPIs all the while you measure, adjust, report, refine, executed and revise with individual performance. It is continuingly assessed and you can set targets to achieve KPI vs agendas. This can be monitor monthly, and everyone will know where they are within this system and empower individuals and become a driver for employee satisfaction.
Customers: Who are the firms Customers Markets: Where does the firm compete geographically? Concerns for survival, growth and profitability: Is the firm committed to growth and financial
stability? Philosophy: What are the firm’s beliefs, values and ethical priorities? Concern for public image: How responsive is the firm to societal and environmental issues? Product or services: What are the firm’s major products or services? Technology: Is the firm technology current? Self-Concept: What are the major competitive advantage and core competencies? Concern for employees: Are employees a valuable asset of the firm?
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Ward Solutions has their mission statements1. Mission
a) A statement of an organisations purpose2. Capabilities
b) An organisations skills and abilities in doing the work activities needed in its business3. Core Competencies
a) The major value-creating abilities of an organisationVision “Ward Solutions vision is to continue to be a complete information security solutions and services provider to our customers in the Irish, Northern Irish and Great Britain markets, optimizing our customers’ Information Security whilst reducing their costs and complexity for compliance.Mission statementWard Solutions mission is to continue to be the best at what we do and to be the largest dedicated complete Information Security Solution and Services provider to our customers in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain.” “Larkin, P. (n.d.). Ward Solutions Vision.”
Our Values“Our business and our success is built upon delivering to the highest standards and living by the following 4 values as part of our core ethos: (Larkin, n.d.)Excellence – we will always strive for customer service excellence to existing and prospective customers and technical excellence for all of our solutions and services. We will also strive for internal excellence ensuring a safe and enjoyable place to work for our staff, whilst maximum our efficiency and innovation: (Larkin, n.d.)Integrity – we will always strive to do the right thing for our customers, our staff, our company and our partners: (Larkin, n.d.)Value – we will always strive to add value to our clients and our business in everything we do: (Larkin,n.d.)Efficiency – we will always strive to do everything efficiently – to specification, to time, to budget: (Larkin, n.d.)”
Ward Solutions was guided by 2 things – IT had a recession back in 2002’. They survive that and learnt significant lesson about over commitments, running a well-executed business for the good times and the bad times. Ward Solutions structure the business to ensure no debt and with a healthy balance for growth and were available to hit an opportunity if it was available.
Unlike other business whom were cutting cost, reducing staffing Ward Solutions was about to grow and expand during the recession to opening an office in Belfast without relying on loans. With the expansion they were able to grow 25% year on year and what help is that the market requirement for information security grew. The 2008’ recession had little or no impact to their core business as with the industry moving toward the east for investment and with an increase in technology being deployed, risk and fraud was on an up during the recession which further drove the security requirements.
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Ward Solutions old culture is what they called the mum and pa stage, they went from €1-5 million organisation and are now heading toward €10mil. Only .004% make it past the €10 to €100mil barrier, so they have put planning structure in place to try and get past this threshold by the end of our current business plan 2015-2017.
Ward Solutions are on the process of continuous improvement. They have the structure and management, the facilities, mission, values, and objectives in place. Now it’s just about fine tuning and tweaking every part of the business to achieve that growth. Ward Solutions want to bring the team to the baseline at the respected levels to ensure the readiness as they move the business into a 100+ employee organisation They feel with the right structure and planning they should be able to hit this within the next 18-24 months.
Pat mention that until June 2014 there was no marketing plan. Most business was conducted through the sales team. As of June a Sales director was hire and with his background in marketing, he has brought on a 3rd marketing group to group the brand name. The marketing group conduct a monthly newsletter and manages Ward Solutions social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as well as TV and newspapers. They have also include venue management for gatherings and interview for magazines. They also review content from partner and share within the social media links to gain an audience. They will be working on a campaign to target the UK market in the next 2 years.
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OrganisingThis part covers and examines the second function of the management that creates organizational structure and design. Properly chosen structure and design allow company to accomplish goals and realize effectively established plan, what needs to be done how and by whom it will be done and executed.
Following Tiernan description: ‘Organizing continues the next logical step in the management process. It involves dividing tasks into sub-tasks and allocating resources to achieve such tasks and finally coordinating employees. In addition organizing involves establishing managerial authority’
(Tiernan, 2001). Organizational includes the division of labour, spans of control, hierarchy and departmentalization. Structural operation includes formalization, decision making, responsibility and
authority (Tiernan, 2001).
Ward Solutions company currently employees 60 employees and has 3 offices located in Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. As company CEO Pat states, the company is mainly focused on differentiation strategy: we want differentiation, we want to be distant from our competition, and we want to be seen as unique in the market. You have to deliver value out of this and recognise for being unique or distant. If you can provide this you can get reasonable return.
Ward Solutions organisational structure and design follows the differentiation approach. Ward Solutions has competitive advantage as the only one on the market offering full security range: security consultancy, security integration and application development.
On the level of dividing the job tasks between groups and their activity coordination towards organizational goals Wards Solutions operates via functional structure with chain of command coming downward from the top. Structure main function is as follows:
Sales Technology Operation Finance/legal/ HR.
Each of the functions have a lead manager, who delegates tasks to middle managers leading following departments:
Legal and Risk Department HR Department Sales Department Operations department consisting of following teams: Security Consultants Integration consultant Application consultant
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Such design focused on specialisation allows company to gain some cost saving advantages. Departments are grouped around specific tasks mainly, where employees are specialised in actual field. As company CEO, Pat admits however that the structure is flexible and can be redesigned accordingly to current requirements due to several IT services offered.
Pat mention that “if you look at the solutions we deliver for some of our customers, you can see, we employ multiple people from multiple function. The management structure for that is typically the PMO (project management office) so you need someone at a project level and account level coordinating the overall mobilisation of multiple resources from different diversion for a project or service.”
Pat also acknowledges that company structure will become more complex, due to growth and the plan to enter the British market soon. The sales and operations departments are already, and in the near future will be broken internally into smaller sub teams focused on specific product or customer, resulting in the last mentioned case in designing project teams operating temporary.Following the CEO statement company’s organisation will shift into combination of several different team models.
Another challenge also will be geographic factor:Functional Departmentalization will probably shift to hybrid because Geographic hasn’t been a factor until now as it has only been one geography up till the past year. Geographic will become a factor in the sales teams first and then follow into the delivery and operation function after just by necessity you want to have sales people located in NI, mainland GB as well as engineers and consultants. As company gets larger, you will see it start to break out into product function as in service line as part of the evolution. This is then become a combination of departmentalization.Such combination should actually be very beneficial to minimalize known disadvantage of functional structure, deriving from highly specialised on one field type of employees who are focused on own established targets to be met, internal procedures and policies to follow related just to their field of expertise .
It results in narrowed understanding of company goals overall. The solution of the issue is first of all enforcing constant information exchange via company communication channels and promotion of sharing best practices and decision making model, which should remind all teams that all the departments exist in order to serve one company therefore cooperation is crucial.
Project team gathering specialists from different department therefore increases the understanding of others units priorities and cooperation once the one side knows WHY the other side has different point of view. Members of project team can bring their experience back to their primary teams and share the information with the rest of colleagues as well as provide constructive feedback to their leaders about current issues related to coordination of job design overall.
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Ward Solutions seems not to face severe issues related to this matter. Still, it should be easy to control regarding the small number of employees and management simple structure broken into three levels.Pat highlights in the interview the meaning of constant learning. He uses the term of listening understood as gathering feedback from employees through the leaders and middle management and drawing right conclusions from the internal reports and examination of competitor strategies.The learning attitude is visible in job design. Employees are taught to work as team, they need to meet targets not only as individuals but as a whole team.
Figure 4 Characteristics of a learning organization
Each team has team leader siting among his team mates. The choice of the lowest management level titles is meaningful as it refers directly to company culture implemented into structure. The low lever management title refers to leading not supervising role. It gives the notion of open communication based on trust and encouraging people to be creative and to share ideas. Interviewed CEO confirms that ideas, opinions and feedback from all employees regardless of their role are always welcome.
This is key from a business perspective to realise the shareholder value. But you have to recognise that peers view from an executive level your direct report down at a middle management level and your employees all have idea to contribute to that. But everybody must buy-in to the overall strategy of the organisation.
The title chosen for employees: team-mates help the organisation to fight already mentioned disadvantages of functional structure.The implementation of hybrid project team model is also perfect solution for keeping the employees for a longer period and enable them to develop their career. It is good way to offer kind of internship and gain additional skills and knowledge. The company also gives external educational possibilities via incentive plan covering study fees.
“All of above can increase job satisfaction as routine can be minimalized via opportunities.”
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Ward Solutions seems also to have effective span of control giving employees the chance to provide their own opinion and to make their own decisions to some extent.
‘Effective spans of control are those where employees can be given a degree of freedom, while at the same time having some form of guidance from a supervisor should assistance be required’ (Tiernan,
2001).
As regards to formalisation which refers to the degree to which rules and procedures shape the jobs and tasks completed by employees, Pat confirms in the interview that Ward Solutions is formal. There are commonly shared rules, policies and procedures. Via clear and up to date communication employees handling several different tasks should be able to recognise the primary nature of company overall goals and adjust their own approach dictated by specific department culture.
At the same time the managers and, leaders are always approachable therefore employee scan always discuss the new idea which might bring greater benefit of all stake holders.
Pat also declares that the company has a Mechanic and at the same time learning oriented structure. Flexibly for Ward Solutions is crucial therefore elements of Organic structure are implemented, for instance the fixed duties evolve to adaptable duties in some cases as we could see in some mentioned examples.
Company uses both formalized and informal communication channels and promotes leadership based on referent type power gained via good communication and expertise skills. The legitimate and reward factors always play role however good team leader can be recognised as part of reward already.
Main decisions are always centralized by authority but the minor rules that are related to specific teams can be modified however they need to be officially reported.
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Leading“When managers motivate employees, direct the activities of others, select the most effective
communication channel, or resolve conflicts among members, they are leading” (Robbins S. P., 2013)Robbin and Decenzo also said that “Leaders are persons with managerial and personal power who
can influence others to perform actions beyond those that could be dictated by those persons’ formal (position) authority alone". (Robbins S. P., 2005)
In the view of the CEO, when leading an organization, everyone within the organization will have an input, though there are limitations and bottle necks. An enabling environment should be created to foster a layer of enabled management and enabled initiative within the team. Pat goes on to explain that informal doors are always open, anyone can walk in as this is an articulated policy of the organization. Pat recognise that though some people don’t want to speak up in front of a group which is usually the first limitation, people with an idea can take it to their line manager.
He goes on to state that "there are reporting lines there for normal operations but if you have an idea or suggestion, question or a challenge you can take it in this door here even though there could
be two or three layers of management between them and us".
Pat also explained that there are suggestion forms, employees are always encouraged to use the forms to make suggestions for people who do not want to speak up. He explained that people submitting these forms anonymously have not been facilitated at this time, not like the organisation does not particularly want it.Pat restated that "I have always said it at staff meetings my door is open for a reason which is if you have an idea bring it in". People get feedback on ideas that they put forward and are encouraged to develop the idea if it’s a great one and there are reward systems in place to for any employee whose idea is valuable to the organisation.
Pat explained that to keep his organisation motivated to achieve set goals and target, a combination of intrinsically or extrinsically methods is used. As he stated he has a bonus reward system for individuals who accomplished a really critical important objectives, but those objectives should not be set too high for people to achieve them so they don’t turn out to be a demotivating factors, instead of a motivating factor. In leading, employees have to be made to understand that if objectives set by the organisation are not met, the danger is that you are standing still and will be overtaken by competitors.
According to Pat, the "idea is if you want to stay and be part of the business and we are making money then there are opportunities for promotion, bonus, pay rises ,training and personal development. If we are not making money those opportunities do not exist". Pat believes that leaders should have employees in the engaged segment as in Maslow’s needs hierarchy. His view is that being committed is acceptable but engaged is the desired need.
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He thinks that when employees are engaged, it shows that they are committed in what the organisation is doing and that is where he wants his employees to be.Pat feels that failures in owner managed business is based on the fact that we spend too much time working in the business and not on the business." Not spending enough time working on the business, formulating the strategy, thinking of the bigger picture and making sure that other people in the business are delivering on that and that is down to leadership".Pat feels that one of the failures of owner managed business is very easy to pick up the tools and forget about the business strategy and this to him is not doing the business any good. To him, proper management structure has to be put in place that allows time to grow the organisation.
Figure 5 Continuum of Leader Behavior
The three leadership styles, autocratic style, democratic style and Laissez-Faire style according to Pat are not suitable. In his view, a leader cannot bring people along with him in an autocratic style and one cannot run a business using democratic style (votes). In his words, "Best is combination of all three. Someone at some point has to make a decision. Review the process flow and find solutions".
Pat believe that delegating functions in a team, choosing who to delegate those functions to and monitoring the delegated functions depends on, if the function areas are clearly defined as this will make delegated functions very obvious. In his words," So we delegate to relevant department and the manager delegates within the team. Difficulty arises when the decisions are cross functional. Decision is made on ability and existing workload. Monitoring is score based cards. Move the object up or down the priority list".
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In the CEO’s view, the key to developing and retaining a good team is selecting good people in the first place and if people leave, that creates opportunities for new people to come in with new ideas which further boosts the company. He feels a leader should be able to have a career path for his team, in his words, “If you hire a person who wants to be technical for the rest of their life then they have to see progression, so you have to follow the right trends in the market and ensure that the person is up to date with current skill sets”, so he provides training and cross skilling training for his employees.
Pat’s view on the characteristics of a good leader is that all characteristics are important in any business, but honesty and integrity is the core value of his business and nature of trust with customers is key. He feels that self-confidence is outwardly driven by self-doubt, not content with what they have and fear of failure. He feels that something can always be improved on as long as there is self-confidence.
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ControlControl is a managerial functions simpler to planning, organizing and leading. It is a function that ensure the business has to meet a minimized standard and sets goals of any organization for the desired achievement.
A modern concepts of control is an overseeing action whereas earlier concept of control was used to detect if an error had occur. Setting Control within a management team is therefore required and it set the means for standards, measuring actual performance within the business in order to take corrective action when required.
“Identifying weaknesses and errors by controlling feedback, and conforming activities to plans, policies and instructions. Fayol's management process went further than Taylor's basic hierarchical model by allowing command functions to operate efficiently and effectively through co-ordination and control methods. For Fayol, the managing director overlooked a living organism that requires
liaison officers and joint committees.” (Fayol, 1916)
“Principle of efficiency of controls The more control approaches and techniques detect and illuminate the causes of potential or
actual deviations from plans with the minimum of costs or other unsought consequences, the more efficient these controls will be.“ (Koontz, 1964)
There is a close link between planning and controlling. Planning for an organisation is to establish their objectives in order to achieve their goals. Controlling measures and directs the actual performance versus the establish goals of that organisation. Therefore, goals and objectives usual referred as twins of management structure. The managerial function of performance is to make sure that organisation objectives and the goals set out is attain within the scope of the business.
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Figure 6 Control flow is Specify, Allocate/Trust, Measure, Verify and React.
Control within Ward Solution is very much a trust and react type of model used with the staff in conjunction with the Balance Score Card measuring system. The general flow of the project is set and controlled by “Specify, Allocate/Trust, Measure, Verify and React”.
So for example, Ward Solutions set a project to the sales team to deliver over the course of a year and this project is officially reviewed monthly by management using Balance Score Card.
Specify: The goal is set for sales team to deliver a product (or sales) over a certain time period. Here the trust is laid out in so far as the sales team are expected to deliver the agreed project. This trust is earned because the staff employed are deemed capable of delivering the project. The project lead is selected and resources then allocated to achieve the required results.
Allocate/Trust: Certain resources are assigned to the project. This could involve one individual, team of individuals and/or team of individuals from various departments. Resources could also involve, budget, extra training of staff, new software, more floor space etc. Staff who are assigned are deemed to be responsible and proactive, thereby ensuring that concerns are raised within the project team sooner rather than later. Each employee can see the Balance Score Card and self-evaluate. The managers or team leaders’ doors are always open to encourage discussion between employee and management.
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MeasureOngoing assessment of the project takes place within the team either on a daily basis or weekly. Initially the meetings are more frequent but as the project becomes more embedded and known the meeting are less frequent. There are monthly managerial meetings which are set aside to discuss the progress of the project and its growth. These meetings involve open floor discussion between senior management, project leads and relevant major contributors to the project. The Balance Score Card is used to determine in which direction the project is going.
VerifyIf the result and analysis from the monthly meeting are within acceptable variance then the project is left to continue as it is going in the right direction. There is no need to further tweak the process as it is within acceptable control. If however the results are way behind or ahead of the set control standard and going in an unexpected negative or positive direction then maybe the goals were set incorrectly or sales team are not delivering or exceeding on expected goals. If this happens then the Balance Score Card comes into operation to determine where the issue is.
ReactAction depends on the result of the Balance Score Card and managerial discussion. Systemic corrective action needs understanding (project complexity, project manager not effective, employee issue etc.) and correction. Systemic correction is acted on immediately as it could affect the outcome of the project and affect the company’s reputation and professional reputation both internal and external. Determine what the issues are and act immediately.
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In general, Ward Solutions use Feed Forward Control. Employees know what needs to be achieved to deliver a project. Ward Solutions understand they have to deliver for the customer also they have to deliver for the business. There is an expectation and there in overall metric goal and employees are presently measured monthly but in the next few years there is hope that there will be continuous ongoing or real time measurement. However Ward Solutions require tools to measure real time and these have been identified and will be put in place. The expectation is to have these tools in place within the next two years. So at the moment it is primarily a feed forward control loop with analysis and concurrent control throughout the project with active feedback control. Figure 6 shows the general steps employed by Ward Solutions to control situations and projects within the organisation.
Figure 7 Types of Management Control
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SummaryWard Solution since 2015 has moved their strategic plan into a new model which is closely model to a traditional concept. They have put in place some more modern planning which includes a balance score card to track performance and company Kpi’s to align the business with a best practice. As this is a new concept to the business, it is in the period adjusting and aligning different areas of the business to insure a buy in from Pats’ team. The formula is in place to move the business to the next level and as long as the business do not lose sight of the goals and continue along the best practice within their balance score card, they have a strong chance to work within their business to become a role model for other business management system.
Ward has previously used a lot of the traditional model from authors 1. Henri Fayol, 2. Frederick W. Taylor, 3. Max Weber, 4. Maslow’s Theory, 5. McGregor’s Theory, 6. Herzberg’s Theory,7. McClelland’s Theory.They have been successful but with growth within the business and expansion plans as the driving factor, Ward Solutions has to restructure the business to adopt the traditional concept with a mixed of modern model such as the balance score card.
Ward Solutions has an understanding of traditional model but found that by mixing and adjusting between modern and traditional methods is key to their success. This takes in consideration to employees and business objectives which suits Pat Larkin management style. As this is still early days within Ward Solutions, Pat believes that there will be more adjustments to follow to ensure that he is able to completely embed the best practice for his team and customer alike.
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Recommendations.With Ward Solutions current plan to expand to the UK market, they will be using a 3 rd party marketing group to help their growth. The plan is to expand this through campaign over the next 2 years. As Ward is using a 3rd party marketing company, the control is not fully in their hands. As it stands the Sales director has taking that role as a (side role) and with this it will mean that some of his time is spent reviewing content and marketing material. This can cause issue at a later stage as the focus of the sales director with an expanding team may have an impact on the material going out and may also miss out on opportunities or gaps in the market. We would recommend that as the company grows, they may be worth investing in developing in a dedicated marketing team to ensure their focus is solely in this areas rather than have a split in a role.
Another recommendations is for Ward Solution to instil with the middle management team to ensure readiness to ensure that the balance score card is working at it optimal capacity is rolling out a Prince 2.
“According to industry “OGC, Best Management Practice” It an organisation delivered success against a range of business requirements. From project implementation using Prince 2 methods it can establish an effective ongoing service management within an organisation.Successful programmes can support the company to run multiple project and provide guidance for those dealing with risks that weave themselves through almost all business operation. “(Best-management-practice).
“Managers who are anxious and confused when confronted with corporate challenges can find that a piece of sound advice from a colleague can instil a sense of calm and clarity that leads to more thoughtful and strategic business decision. In turn, offering advice to other is consider an important mark of a leader” (Harvard Business School 2015)
Secondary research show that "Entrepreneurial leaders must relentlessly—but not recklessly—pursue opportunity. They must look beyond the resources currently controlled to harness the power, resources, and reach of their organizations and networks". (L.M Applegate and J.B Harreld 2009)
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Conclusion and Minutes We formed a group of five people and we divided among ourselves the five core tasksLeading, Organising, Control, Planning and Poster development. The team met mostly on Wednesdays after lectures for a short time to update each other on the progress of our secondary research. Initial we had teething problems with regards to getting all members of our team together and this greatly impacted our team goal of having our primary and secondary research completed two weeks ahead of schedule. The Team came together on the 7th and 8th of March to design the questionnaire and review questions to be put forward within the scope of the project. The team conducted skype call on 12th and 16th of March 2015 to review final questions. We did seek further clarification on some of the interview question was very limited to address the management practice.
Lee and Brendan was assigned as the interviewers. Lee was tasked with carrying out the interview with the nominated manager had problems getting the dates for the sit down interview. After eventually getting the interview done, the interview was completed on 23rd of March 2015 with Pat Larkin CEO of Ward Solutions.
We met twice as a group during the two in class workshops that were allocated by the lecture to go through the interview notes. From this Lee scripted planning and organisation and Brendan scripted leading and controlling. Frank was assigned leading and Gabor was section organisation. Brian was assigned as the poster developer.
Brendan reviewed and edit the document for spelling and language, once all members of the team had completed their assigned sections. Frank completed reference review and journal article for best practice. Brendan completed the format of the document and layout. Lee reviewed the format and layout. Lee completed the introduction, conclusion and recommendations. Brian worked on the secondary research for best management practice from journal and book reference. The team reviewed the provisional document. The team met on 30th of March to review recommendation and was signed off on 31st of March 2015
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ReferencesError: Reference source not foundError: Reference source not foundError: Reference source not foundError: Reference source not foundError: Reference source not foundError: Reference source not found
All Diagram Figures – reference DBS Moodle – management powerpoint http://elearning.dbs.ie/course/view.php?id=3392
ASSAR, R. (n.d.). Definitions, Meaning & Characteristics of Planning. Retrieved March 2015, from http://www.publishyourarticles.net/knowledge-hub/business-studies/planning.html
Fayol, H. (1916). General and Industrial Management. Retrieved March 2015
Koontz, H. (1964). Principles of management. (3, Ed.) McGraw-Hill. Retrieved March 2015
Larkin, P. (n.d.). Ward Solutions Vision. Retrieved March 2015, from http://www.ward.ie/about-us/our-vision-and-mission/
Patton, G. G. (n.d.). Retrieved March 2015, from http://www.generalpatton.com/quotes/
Robbins, S. P. (2005). Fundamentals of Management (5 ed.). Pearsons. Retrieved March 2015
Robbins, S. P. (2013). Fundamentals of Management. Retrieved March 2015
The Institute way. (2015). Balanced Score Card. Retrieved March 2015, from http://balancedscorecard.org/Resources/About-the-Balanced-Scorecard
Tiernan, S. &. (2001). Modern Management (3rd Revised ed.). Gill & Macmillan Ltd;. Retrieved March 2015
Harvard Business School: Leading Innovation in Good Times and Bad.By Lynda M. Applegate and J. Bruce Harreld - http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6186.html
Harvard Busioness School, 2015. Advice on Advice. [Online] Available at: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7622.html [Accessed March 2015].
Best-management-practice.com
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InterviewOrganizational StructureThis questionnaire will be used to produce a report based on the organizational structure of a business. The course is Business Management Course - B7MG018 assignment in Dublin business school (DBS) David Wallace.
The business that has been selected to conduct the interview is Ward Solutions with Pat Larkin (Chief Executive Officer)The timeline allocated for this interview is 1 hour. The interview will be recorded in order to gather notes that may have been missed during the interview. Consent must be provided from all parties involved.The purpose of the interview is to gather insight knowledge on a modern organization management structure and to compare these traditional methods. Comparison will be made to approaches and theories from authors
1. Henri Fayol, 2. Frederick W. Taylor, 3. Max Weber, 4. Maslow’s Theory, 5. McGregor’s Theory, 6. Herzberg’s Theory,7. McClelland’s Theory
DBS Management group will send a copy of the questionnaire to Pat Larkin of Ward Solutions on the 18/03/2015 in order to review and prepare before the actual interview.The content of questionnaire is general queries and will NOT involve questions in trade secrets, finance or any other sensitive information. Should any questions are deemed sensitive it will be marked out by Pat Larkin.Ward Solution will receive a copy of the final product as reference.
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QuestionnaireIntroduction 1:
1. Tell us about yourself and your role in the company?Pat: Pat Larkin chief executive of Ward Solutions information security business, role is to provide over guidance and leadership to the business in terms of agreeing what the objectives are and making sure that we mobilize and deliver and achieve those objectives.
2. What is your company, what is your mission statement and what do you want to archive in the future?“Vision Ward Solutions vision is to continue to be a complete information security solutions and services provider to our customers in the Irish, Northern Irish and Great Britain markets, optimizing our customers’ Information Security whilst reducing their costs and complexity for compliance.Mission statementWard Solutions mission is to continue to be the best at what we do and to be the largest dedicated complete Information Security Solution and Services provider to our customers in Ireland, Northern Ireland and Great Britain.Our ValuesOur business and our success is built upon delivering to the highest standards and living by the following 4 values as part of our core ethos:Excellence – we will always strive for customer service excellence to existing and prospective customers and technical excellence for all of our solutions and services. We will also strive for internal excellence ensuring a safe and enjoyable place to work for our staff, whilst maximum our efficiency and innovationIntegrity – we will always strive to do the right thing for our customers, our staff, our company and our partners.Value – we will always strive to add value to our clients and our business in everything we do.Efficiency – we will always strive to do everything efficiently – to specification, to time, to budget.”Pat: To be the largest complete information security provider on the island of Ireland. Want to be a significant player over time in UK in the same capability and real term the business is about increasing a customer’s information security, reduction the risk and their cost of dignity business. Optimizing a customer information security to get the balance between an approbate level of information security of their information assets vs that customer business objectives.
3. As a successful entrepreneur why did you choose the security industry?
Pat: background with military defense security. Worked in technology in this area, natural skill and experience from this area. After leaving army, there was a boom in the information technology in ’97. Opportunity come up and with the experience I have develop into commercial offering and commercial market. It is a boom area and we just want to continue to explore the opportunity in this market
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4. How did you start your business and what funding was available? Self-funding Bank loan Joint funding Sponsored
Pat: Business was funded through organic cash flow. No seed funding. Went direct into consultant. With a client base and good business process, consulting turns into reasonably good cash flow. Once you do the work, bill at the end of the month and paid within 30 days as long as you have good work streams this will fund the business.Ward has been debt free throughout it life with organic growth. The challenge now if we wanted to grow is there is a lead time to growth which could be accelerated by utilizing funding.Business has been funded through organic cash flow and grows through organic cash flow.
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Planning 2:1. Could you describe your relationship to your subordinates, to your lateral teams and to your
own managers?
Pat: Executive team- Pat Larkin, 3 function heads and the relationship is more a chairing role. Delegating responsibility to the function heads and gaining consensus of the business objectives and how to achieve and grow areas. This is a leading and chairing role.Act as a peer at function level by taking on the sales, administration and maps to technology and operations functions. Next level is middle management, comprise of
Legal and Risk Department HR Department Sales Department Operations department
Practices leads1) Security Consultants2) Integration consultant3) Application consultant
Brendan: Who directs the direction of the company?Pat: It a listening role. If you separate your executive from your shareholding. As shareholders, you want to achieve shareholder value as your funds are at play. So this is key from a business perspective to realise that shareholder value. But you have to recognise that peers view from an executive level your direct report down at a middle management level and your employees all have idea to contribute to that.
Your direct reports, middle management and employees all have idea and contribution. We have an overall vision but we take input internally from the business at all levels as to how to achieve that vision. Overall we want to grow the business and with this you have to listen to the business. We also listen externally over the last 3 years we spent a lot of time base lining ourselves and getting independent measurement of how we are performing vs our peers. Go to expect and consultancy organisations in the field to say how other organisations are doing this, reviewing ourselves base on competitive analysis. Overall it’s listening and researching what is the best way to do this and making that decision.
The danger is you can achieve paralyse which is you have all these option and then the question is what should I do? At some point you have to make that decision. With my military background, there is a quote from Patten;
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week”.
The danger is I met too many characters, people within the business that just perfectly content to continue down the avenue and analysis everything but at some point you need to take that step it’s never perfect. It’s always, what is the best instinct? We based our decision on what worked in the
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past, what your assessment of the market, assessment of the customer, the demand where you feel profit or opportunity is and how you achieve it.
At some point while you chairing or listening, you need to make that decision. The key is are you brining people with you? You can make those decision and head off on your own, and it can get lonely out there on your own because you don’t have the business engine behind you then your committed to that direction without the business support behind you. You need to bring the business with you, the remainder of the partners, executive, middle management and the individual employees as well as you customers. This is all part of the consideration. The goals must be achievable otherwise there no point in doing it.
2. What type of strategy have you been pursuing (Michael porter). Cost leadership Differentiation Cost focus
Pat: Differentiation – in the sense that, the danger with cost is you get communise very quickly. In our case, we want differentiation, we want to be distant from our competition, and we want to be seen as unique in the market. You have to deliver value out of this and recognise for being unique or distant. If you can provide this you can get reasonable return.
3. Do you know the six stages of planning? Identifying the organization’s current mission, goals and strategies
- The first step is to create a business continuity roadmap that identifies where you are now and where you want to be in the future. A statement of an organization’s purpose
Doing an external analysis PEST/SWOT- Astute company leaders need to identify risks to critical systems – both IT and
business – and establish just how much risk the company is prepared to accept Doing an internal analysis SWOT/PEST
- By cataloguing and rating the threats to a company's survivability, the organization demystifies them, making them approachable and resolvable.
Formulating the strategies- Corporate Strategy
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Implementing strategies- How do you evaluate and implement new strategies?
Evaluating results- How do you evaluate results? Continuous or end of project?
What are the planning models within your business and do they follow the above six stages. Do they diverge from the above and if so where and why?
Pat: We would use all 6 stages, the question is if it’s formulated into a regicide process, do you sit down and say today we’re going to plan the business and walk through these 6 steps. I think naturally people follow them.
In early stage you may miss a step where we did internal analysis we didn’t rate ourselves to competition but through experience and education, we learnt through external analysis we found if we though an offer we though was good but then find that our competition has a better, faster and cheaper offer then we were able to reprise ourselves on our strengths and weakness.
This is a continuous process we set times so for example we execute a 3 year plan. We sit down formally, document the business plan based on 2017 -2020 and walk through that process and what you do then is continuously form your process.
4. How did you manage the recession and what are your plans for the future business of the company?
Pat: We were guided by 2 things – IT had a recession back in 02’. We survive that and learnt significant lesson about over commitments, running a well-executed business for the good times and the bad times. From our experience during that time meant that we were well structure with no debt and meant we had cash in the balance sheet for growth and if there was an opportunity in the marketplace unlike our competitor we were able to invest during the recession.
We opened our Belfast office during the recession and if we relayed on funding from banks there was no way we would have achieved this. We were also fortunate that while there was a recession there was a continued growth in the information security market, so we experience a continued growth of 25% year on year.
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There was a combination how we were able to ride out the recession, competition were dying off and the market expanded. There was a market requirement due to increase risk and fraud as a result of the recession and companies un-investing during this time.
With the industry moving toward the east for investment and with an increase in technology being deployed, the increase risk drove the industry toward information security. As we didn’t have debt, we were able to invest into our industry to increase growth.
5. How do you set goals and develop plans for teams and individuals?
Real Goals- Those goals an organization actually pursues as shown by what the
organization’s members are doing Traditional Goals
- Goals set by top managers flow down through the organization and become sub-goals for each organizational area
Means End chain- An integrated network of goals in which higher level goals are linked to lower-
level goals, which serve as the means for their accomplishment Management by Objective.
- A process of setting mutually agreed-upon goals and using those goals to evaluate employee performance
Pat: We have adopted a balance score card and management system which when you lay down your overall missions, goals, value and objectives. You then increasingly work through the process of the planning process that’s described above.
Similarly you work through a process of metrication of that, so if you say we want to grow then you got to articulate growth “What, Where, When and how. Increasingly you got to put that down into specific, measurable numbers or objectives that it’s either a yes/no or by 25%, 50% or that figure is 100k. This balance score card has help us as historically the planning was very much revenue and sales focus.
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We would have previously set the target and executed it but didn’t metricized other aspect of the business, such as employee satisfaction, staff retention, personal development all the key element that the business needs to deliver on whatever the top line numbers are. So this balance score card is a much more rounded system where you get to consider all aspect of the business not just revenue or profit number.
This can help for the like of reducing staff retention by 10%, we will employ an ENPS employee net promoter score of 85% etc.
The balance score is adopt for ourselves it’s been around 10-12 years may be a carnage or melon framework, to describe this method it’s a rounded metrication of a business, that you measure, adjust, report, refine, executed and revise with individual view of performance and it is continuingly assessed and we can set target to achieve KPI our agendas and be able to monitor monthly, and everyone should be able to know where that are within this system.
6. How are you developing your business and culture?
Pat: The culture is we have now broken out of what we call the mum and pa stage, we have gone from 1mil, 5mil we are heading toward 10mil. Only .004% make it past the 10 to 100mil barrier, so in planning terms we are putting the structure in place to try and get past this threshold by the end of our current business plan 2015-2017.
We are on the process of continuous improvement so we have the structure and management in place, we have the facilities, mission, values, and objectives in place. We now need to tune and
Tweak every part of the business to achieve that growth. We need to bring everyone in the team to the baseline at the respected levels as we need to ensure the readiness as we move the business into the 100+ organisation which we will hit on in the next 18 months that we are optimize for that next scale point.
7. Do you have any marketing in place to develop the business as you have mention you like to expand into the UK?
Pat response is that until June 2014 there was no marketing plan. Most business was conducted through the sales team. As of June a Sales director was hire and with his background in marketing, he has brought on a 3rd marketing group to group the brand name. The marketing group conduct a monthly newsletter and manages Ward Solutions social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook as well as TV and newspapers. They have also include venue management for gatherings and interview for magazines. They also review content from partner and share within the social media links to gain an audience. They will be working on a campaign to target the UK market in the next 2 years
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Organizing 3:Can you please identify which functional structures does the organisation take?
1. What is the design of the organisation? Formalization
- How standardized an organization’s jobs are and the extent to which employee behavior is guided by rules and procedures
Centralization- The degree to which decision making takes place at upper levels of the
organization Decentralization
- The degree to which lower-level managers provide input or actually make decisions
Mechanistic- A bureaucratic organization; a structure that’s high in specialization,
formalization, and centralization Organic
- A structure that’s low in specialization, formalization, and centralization
Pat: 2 shareholders hold two distant parts of the business. The sales, administration and the technology and operations. That translate into an executive team of 4 where there’s 4 functional structure. Sales, technology, operation, finance/legal/ HR and underneath that middle management that further breaks that down more granular part of the business like security consultancy, secure development, secure integration project management, HR and finance, sales and legal and then they break into teams.
The challenge is pulling all these area into a working silo.
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2. Could you describe your organization layout from top to bottom and the interaction to various departments? Is it? Departmentalization
- How jobs are grouped together Functional Departmentalization
- Grouping activities by functions performed Product Departmentalization
- Grouping activities by major product areas Customer Departmentalization
- Grouping activities by customer Geographic Departmentalization
- Grouping activities on the basis of geography or territory Process Departmentalization
- Grouping activities on the basis of work or customer flow Cross-functional Teams
- Teams made up of individuals from various departments and that cross traditional departmental lines
Pat: Functional Departmentalization and this will probably shift to hybrid because Geographic hasn’t been a factor until now as it has only been one geography up till the past year. Geographic will become a factor in the sales teams first and then follow into the delivery and operation function after just by necessity you want to have sales people located in NI, mainland GB as well as engineers and consultants.
Then there will be followed by middle management and senior management so I think it will become hybrid over time.As its gets largest you will see it start to break out into product function as in service line as part of the evolution. This is then become a combination of departmentalization.
3. Has this change over the past number of years due to the economic environment?
Pat: It has change in the sense of our growth, we haven’t change in the sense of contraction of the economy. Whilst we have grown ie. The environment for us has been growth and positive so we have change based on growth and scale but not based on the macro economy.
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4. The are 2 types of Organizational StructuresTraditional Organizational Functional Structure
- An organizational design that groups similar or related occupational specialties together
Divisional Structure- An organizational structure made up of separate business units or divisions
Contemporary Organizational Team Structure
- A structure in which the entire organization is made up of work teams Matrix Structure
- A structure in which specialists from different functional departments are assigned to work on projects led by a project manager
Project Structure- A structure in which employees continuously work on projects
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Pat: Its hybrid again because, if you look at the solution we deliver for some of our customers, employ multiple people from multiple function. The management structure for that is typically the PMO (project management office) so you need someone at a project level and account level coordinating the overall mobilisation of multiple resources from different diversion for a project or service. SO it’s a hybrid.
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Leading 4:Regarding to your role in the company what is your management style, are you a The “do it the way I tell you” manager The “firm but fair” manager “People first, task second” The “everyone has input” manager The “do it myself” manager The “developmental” manager - coaching or do you use an all-inclusive management
stylePat: I’d say it’s probably, everyone has an input and developmental so trying to bring, you know, one of the limitations is of key managers, key shareholders, senior executives become the bottle neck you know they are instrumental in everything that is going on in the business then they are the bottle neck. So what we are trying to foster is a layer of enabled management underneath and an enabled initiative within the teams, so I‘d say it’s everyone has an input and developmental.
Brendan: So if everyone has an input how do you encourage everyone who has an input to speak up, because they may have a good input as well.
Pat: We do it a couple of ways. We have an informal door is always open, anyone can walk in, that’s an articulated policy. We recognise that some people don’t want to speak up in front of a group which is usually the first limitations. So literally anyone with an idea can take it to their line manager so we are not too tuck on the reporting lines. There are reporting lines there for normal operations but if you have an idea or suggestion, question or a challenge you can take it in this door here even though there could be two or three layers of management between them and us. We are leaving it for the time. So that gives it form for people to articulate it here that they might not in a group, in front of their team or something like that then you can play it back with appropriate consideration as to whether they want it visible or invisible or whatever.
We have forms, so there are suggestion forms, so there is a staff briefing next Friday we’ve solicited for people who do want to speak up, say look, if you have an idea that is positive for the business so half the form is rather than us speak you guys getting up and pitching your ideas on suggestions like, do we need decaffeinated coffee to why don’t we change the service to do x, y and z. … allows the guys who want to speak up to get some recognition to speak up and we also those who don’t want to do it but still have concerns to
Brendan: Can they submit anonymously?
Pat: I don’t know it’s there, no. It’s not that we don’t particularly want it, we just haven’t facilitated it.
Brendan: I guess that the fear for some people is that they could be ridiculed if they have a whacky idea.
Pat: Yeah, I mean in general terms, I have always said it at staff meetings my door is open for a reason which is if you have an idea bring it in. People get fair feedback which is, we have thought about that or done that or that is an interesting idea.
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I suppose one thing that we kinds of do is if people have ideas and they are committed to those ideas then we kind of expect them to bring skin to the game “That is a great idea, can you develop it. Can you put it down on paper” It is easy to have loads of ideas, keep tossing them out but we have only so much bandwidth to get through and process the ideas. Where a person really has an idea, then they will commit it to paper and go with it. Example, two years ago some proposed that we should commoditise one of our security awareness training offerings.
Individual was very committed so we said we will give you three months, put money behind it but that means you need to lead it. And he did and now we have it in out catalogue. What you saw then that the enthusiasm of that person was warning. So what you learn from that is the idea needs a champion and the champion is normally the person who suggested it. You enable them but you just don’t say, go develop it, typically test their enthusiasm and their commitment to it by saying, we’ll give you some bandwidth to bring some skin to the game.
If an idea you really believe in then why don’t you lead it at a technical level, why don’t you lead it here, why don’t you do this this and this and that is an asset test to see if they have real appetite to deliver it. And then we turn around and say if this thing takes off, it’s your idea we give you some reward for it. So we tie some objective behind it, like we are selling sheds loads of this so there might be some profit share. So I think we are really ok at incentives for all people across the organisation but we don’t have an anonymous suggestion mechanism. So people have an opportunity to bring it up through their normal reporting line (line manager upwards), they can bring it to the executive shareholders of the organisation and they also have opportunity to bring it publicly but they don’t have anonymous contribution. It’s not a philosophy we just have not thought about it.
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1. Today managers are expected to be leaders, do you find that in your position you have to lead as well as managed?
2. How do you keep your organization motivated to achieve the goals that are set. - Intrinsically (self-motivated) or extrinsically (motivated by rewards/ punishment)?
PAT: Combination of both. We do have direct reward for really critical important objectives. So there is a bonus rewards for everybody in the organisation and to achieve those objectives. We have tweaked those objectives to make them more reliable. In some cases we may have set the objectives too high too few people achieve then it then can become a demotivating factor if they are unachievable for most people.
So I think we have shown willingness to tweak those to a more manageable criteria to enable more engineers to achieve it. The interest of the incentive are tied to the strategic business objectives so the balance score card idea works. But if the rewards are truly financial you are screwed so trying to bring the organisation with you is trying to convince them of the merits of allowing them to have some input into the formulisation of the strategies and objectives, etc.
There is by in from what you are trying to achieve and when a strategy is decided on it has to be communicated back and you have to continuously communicate it back, it has to be relevant in their terms so if we are communicating a strategy of growth (one of the biggest concerns from day one was we are going to change this small comfortable friendly company to a much bigger organisation and culturally it is going to change) you have to allay the fears, have to listen and recognise that we have to retain the best elements of the culture and recognise that some of them have to go, so be truthful. Also you have to inform that if we don’t do this then the danger is you are standing still and be overtaken by competitors. So idea is if you want to stay and be part of the business and we are making money then there are opportunities for promotion, bonus, pay rises and training and personal development.
If we are not making money those opportunities do not exist. Try and have employees into the engaged segment of Maslow’s needs hierarchy. If they are not at least committed than they are not in the correct business. Committed is acceptable but engaged is the desired need. Engaged = believe in what we are doing are committed, see benefit for themselves, peers, customers and the organisation. That is where we want our employees.
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e
Pat: Failures with owner/managed businesses is probably we spent too much time working in the business and not on the business. So doing sales or delivery and execution etc. Not spending enough time working on the business, formulating the strategy, thinking of the bigger picture and making sure that other people in the business are delivering on that and that is down to leadership. One of the failures of owner/manages business is it is very easy to pick up the tools and forget about the business strategy. When you do that you are not doing the business any good. So we have put in place a management structure that allows us time to grown the organisation.
3. There are 7 characteristic of a good leader? Would you be able to tell me which ones match your own and why? Can you give me an example?
1) Drive – leaders exhibit a high effort level and desire for achievement2) Desire to lead – strong desire to influence and take responsibility 3) Honest and integrity – build trust and show high consistency between word and
deed.4) Self-confidence – absence of self-doubt.5) Intelligence – leaders need to be intelligent to gather, synthesize and interpret to be
able to create visions, solve problems and make correct decisions
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6) Job-relevant knowledge – leaders have high degree of knowledge of company and industry and technical matters. In-depth knowledge allows leader to make well informed decisions
7) Extraversion – leaders are energetic lively people, they are sociable, assertive and rarely silent or withdrawn
Pat: Drive, (ambition not to stand still) Desire to lead to drive the business. Need people to deliver. Honesty and Integrity is our core value, nature of trust with customers is key.Good understanding knowledge of business but core experts in the business. Self-Confidence – outwardly driven by self-doubt. Not content with what they have. Fear of failure. Something can always be improved – how can we consistently improve on things. Need confidence to drive but there is always self-doubt. Looking for continuous improvement.
4. What type of leadership style best suit you and why?Autocratic Style
- A leader who centralizes authority, dictates work methods, makes unilateral decisions, and limits employee participation
Democratic Style- A leader who involves employees in decision making, delegates authority,
encourages participation in deciding work methods, and uses feedback to coach employees
Laissez-Faire Style- A leader who generally gives employees complete freedom to make decisions
and to complete their work however they see fitPat: None of the above are suitable. Can’t bring people along with you in an Autocratic style. Democratic – can’t run a business on votes.
Best is combination of all three. Someone at some point has to make a decision.Review the process flow and find solutions.
5. How do you delegate responsibility within the team? Who do you choose? Then how do you monitor or follow up?
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Pat: If you define clear functional areas then delegation becomes obvious. So we delegate to relevant department and the manager delegates within the team. Difficulty arises when the decisions are cross functional. Decision is made on ability and existing workload. Monitoring is score based cards. Move the object up or down the priority list.
6. How do you encourage your employees to participate in community team work and/or social projects?
7. In your experience, as an entrepreneur, what is the key to developing and retaining a good team?(Please share with me an example of how you helped coach and mentor someone. What improvement did you see in the person’s knowledge or skills?)
Pat: Select good people in the first place. Got to have a career path for them and also interesting work. If you hire a person who wants to be technical for the rest of their life then they have to see progression, so you have to follow the right trends in the market and ensure that the person is current with skill set and provide training and cross skilling training. Recognition if we retain people for 3 to 4 years is above norm and if people leave then opportunity for new people to come in with new ideas which further boosts the company.If person leave on a positive note to a customer then that can be seen as a win situation for both companies.
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Controlling 5:1. As a manager you have to have control of the organization, how do you implement your
control process
PAT: Control is a trust measure of verifying and then react kind of model. So we have set the standard for the sale side and we give that to sales team, then at end of the month we have format review of situation. So are we there or within acceptable variance then we leave it continue if it is going in the right direction. If we are way behind and not going in the right direction then maybe we didn’t set the bar high enough.
Specify Allocate Measure Verify and React.
2. How does this affect the organization and to the management team. a. Would you have direct control over your lower level workforce or with your
management team?Pat: Delegate, at end of month review. Discuss and be aware of the exceptions.With continuous exceptions either over or under – understand why.
3. When do you set in motion goal planning or When Does Control Take Place?a. Feedforward Control
i. Control that takes place before a work activity is done b. Concurrent Control
i. Control that takes place while a work activity is in progressc. Feedback Control
i. Control that takes place after a work activity is done.
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Pat: Feed forward control, people know what needs to be achieved. Measure monthly but in the next few years hope to be continuous ongoing.
4. Personal Reviews – goals setting and evaluation after a certain time period.5. What Management Action Can Be Taken? Any examples?
a. Immediate Corrective Action b. Corrective action that addresses problems at once to get performance back on trackc. Basic Corrective Action d. Corrective action that looks at how and why performance deviated before correcting
the source of deviationPAT: All of the above. Immediate action depending on issue at hand. Systemic corrective action (underestimating project complexity, no project manager etc.). Depends on impact to business.
6. What type of measures do you have in place to determine action required by the management or employees?Four common sources of information frequently used to measure actual performance are
a. Personal observation – walking around, chit chat etc.b. statistical reports – job measuring, Goal reviews and setting (PRM)c. oral reports – meetings, weekly, monthly, annuallyd. written reports from managers and supervisor
Pat: Focused on a b c. Statistical reporting from balance score card. Oral reporting to put more information on the balance score card. Reports for something like an issue that is not a one off.
7. How do you manage personnel performance reviews?a. Job measuring, Goal reviews and setting (PRM). b. Does your managers or team leaders perform job and goal reviews?
Pat: Balance Score Card is granular to everybody in the business. This is the first year that this has be applied across the business. Personal development plans. Appropriate layer in business perform the review and review it monthly reviews. Also employee can see Balance Score Card and self-evaluate.
8. How does your line manager’s measure set goals for their teams against goals set by the business requirements?Pat: Using Balance Score Card.
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Closing question:1. What advice would you give anyone who is thinking of starting their own business?
Pat: Go for it. Do research, but take the chance. Danger is you could talk yourself out of starting your own business. I.E. market is saturated, you will find 100s of ideas why something will not work so you need to balance research against idea. Quote Patton. If the data says that there is an opportunity there and it backups your research then go out and do it.
2. If you could change something over all these years in business what would you change or would you change anything all?Pat: Much more aggressive at early stages, working in the business instead of on the business. Probably lost many years on this. Build team and step back and run the business, probably would have halved the time that it took us to get where we are today.
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