This is a literature review relevant to leadership qualities and the methods implemented to achieve results in today’s complex organizations.
Methods to identify appropriate problems in an organization
Establish internal controls
An effective control environment is essential in helping to identify problems in an organization. Rules must exist and deviations from these rules must be dealt with immediately. For small businesses, investments in expensive systems is not necessary. Control can be as simple as having one person handling the accounting activities versus two people.
If a business is losing money internally, a set of internal controls would help safeguard the financial assets such as cash and accounts receivables. Internal controls are as simple as a requirement that certain duties be performed by specific people each day such as posting accounts or opening the mail.
Fraud is a problem in business that can be controlled through internal controls. Steps taken to create awareness that controls are in place to detect such activities will yield dividends. Making employees take vacations would require cross training of duties and would make it difficult for an individual to conceal a fraudulent activity over an extended period of time.
Get involved with daily operations
It pays to get out into the company and view the operations. Whether the company is 10 employees or 100 employees in a manufacturing environment, if the employees see you enough they may be more willing to talk with you. You may even observe inefficient processes taking place in operations.
Businesses experience incidents of employees taking home food from the restaurant at the end of the night or serving extra drinks for free in order to get larger tips. In the case of the bartender, an inventory process can be established where inventory is taken at the beginning and end of shifts and could be checked against the detailed sales transactions of a point-of-service system.
Another effective method of identifying business problems in the operational process can be to start a suggestion box. Give rewards to employees who identify solutions to operational problems or cost saving ideas.
Create accountability
Create involvement in everyday operational procedures. Have department managers submit summary reports outlining budgets and forecasting. Hold these managers accountable for their forecasts. Compare these numbers with actual numbers and identify variances known as operational problems.
Budget variance reports can be distributed to each manager listing variances and a quick meeting can be held. The practice of holding these meetings helps hold managers accountable and informs everyone as to why operational costs were higher or lower than expected compared to the formal budget.
Absolute accountability helps identify mistakes when they occur. For example, a company that reviews its electric bill and realizes that they paid twice as much this month than last month. After further review it was identified that the electric bill was posted twice by mistake. This discovery resulted in a change in the process which prevented this from happening again. If expense reports are not reviewed on an ongoing basis this could result in a permanent loss to the organization.
Reasons for the failure of organizational initiatives
Several reasons for the failure of organizational initiatives include poor communication, poor change management, lack of leadership, poor project management, poor planning, and a lack of sound business practice.
Poor communication
Corporations require communication. Companies both large and small depend on communication whole heartedly. Communication can be achieved through email, blogs, group meetings, wikis, bulletin boards, and any other method you can think of that will help create communication. Communication can be handled by an employee as a full time position.
Poor change management
Resistance to change can cause problem in organizations. People want to know how their involvement involves them and how they can benefit from their involvement. A leader that will help catapult the initiatives and constantly promote the initiatives will help promote the vision. People feed on positive energy.
Lack of leadership
A leader must show excellence in the key areas of technology, business, and people. If one of these things is missing then failure is imminent. A leader must exemplify devotion and hard work. A leader cannot assign loads of work to his or her team and then leave early for the weekend. This will cause much discontent among the team members. People skills are also a must for a leader. Without people skills, projects cannot succeed. The needs of the team must always be kept into consideration.
Poor project management
Managing scope and requirements is key to any project. Logistics need to be identified and managed properly. Tasks can span across several teams and across several departments. Communication across these levels to all people is necessary for success. Risk management also plays a role in project management.
Poor planning
Initiatives require well thought out strategy. Unrealistic expectations and rushing into projects head first without any idea of how goals will be accomplished is a recipe for failure. Teams must take the time to put a road map together from beginning to end. This will ensure that the initiatives are given the proper chance for success.
Lack of sound business case
SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) projects can make perfect sense but if they do not carry any business context then they are a waste of time. Initiatives must be justified with business drivers. Merely having lots of documents and a nice service oriented architecture does not convince businesses to use the plan.
Why solutions fail during implementation and do not yield sustainable results
Several reasons why solutions fail during implementation and do not yield sustainable results include a lack of strong executive sponsorship, trying to do things cheaply, and lack of technical knowledge.
Lack of strong executive sponsorship
There needs to be someone in place that carries a little clout. Someone that can help clear hurdles and remove obstacles so that work can be completed. This is an important factor in change management.
Trying to do it cheap
Businesses want everything for nothing. They want all the bells and whistles but are unwilling to invest the time and money it takes to get those bells and whistles. Projects that use this strategy will run over budget, are late, are missing many features, and have many quirks and glitches due to the approach taken. Doing things quick and dirty will create gaps in resources that can cause an entire project to fail. Shortcomings such as lack of documentation, and not enough bandwidth to test all case scenarios are two examples of doing things quick and dirty. These resources are needed eventually and the lack of them during the process causes stress and aggravation among team members. This quick and dirty approach always ends up costing more in the long run. Not providing the proper time to architect the process out completely can cause burn out among team members.
Lack of technical knowledge
Enterprise Architecture initiatives require a comprehensive understanding of architecture, application development, infrastructure, process, security, and the business. All the leadership and communication in the world cannot make up for a lack of technical know-how. If you do not have this person or persons then the initiative is dead in the water.
Suggestions for improving performance
Three successful initiatives for improving performance in American organizations have emerged from successful performance excellence initiatives. First, TQM was a strategic management approach (Wruck & Jensen, 1998) that required strong management support for quality improvement and leadership commitment to a cultural change (Beer, 2003). Second, leaders got employees emotionally connected to the organizational mission and involved in quality efforts (Trahant & Burke, 1997). Third, successful performance excellence initiatives required a strong customer orientation where satisfying customers was a priority for everyone (Beer, 2003; Zemke & Schaaf, 1989).
The ideal scenario is to be able to provide a mission statement in which each employee would follow without hesitation. The mission statement must be equivalent in its definition, and how that definition is interpreted, by both the employer and the employee. Both the company and employee must be driven toward the same goals of success. By shining the light, you give your employees the idea of what a well-run company should look like.
A successful mission statement providing a well thought-out vision, which connects with the emotions of your employees, will drive the entire company in the right direction. Employees do not want to be part of the fiscal results. Employees want to know they make a difference in someone’s life. They want to follow a goal that will help them feel good about themselves and the beliefs they represent.
Dr. Abraham Maslow’s five levels of human needs are survival, security, social acceptance, self-esteem and self-actualization. Self-actualization is at the top of the hierarchical pyramid. This structure defines everything a person is capable of becoming.