Analysis of Procter and Gamble Activities - Case Study Example

Evaluates and assesses the current situation and analyzes if the current culture is sufficient to meet the needs of the future or if it needs to changes. Justification for the assessment is required along with ramifications of doing nothing – keeping the culture the way it is. Proctor and Gamble is one of the largest consumer goods manufacturing, multinational organizations in the world. The company hosts a huge number of products that give value to the customers. The company's purpose is to bring branded products and services of superior quality to the consumers and improving their lives each day. This customer-centric approach has led them to a huge success in the consumer goods market. Since last decade, P&G has adopted this strategy to focus on fulfilling the needs of consumers. For this they have come up with innovative products and services that helped people improve their living standards. P&G no more believes in providing expensive products and serving the higher economy classes, they have been strongly focusing on the BOP markets from last many years. Innovation has definitely been the key to success for this company. From realizing the need to have hygienic diapers for children to creating cheaper razor blades for the lower income group to producing greener products; they have innovated and served the market. As mentioned in the case, the company's value and sense of purpose is: "Invoke the heart and care about human needs, the strategy seems to say, and the money will follow." Bob McDonald wants to take this even further. He believes that caring about human needs come first and cash inflow will definitely follow. The first step is to care about the human needs and improving their lives. Previously, the customer-centric approach was just being practiced in a few parts of the world, and in fewer segments. Bob wants P&G to exist as the leading FMCG in every part of the world, touching lives of various consumers belonging to different demographical areas, and having different lifestyle. He also wants to bring newer products to make the lives of consumers better and serving them completely. With globalization, technological innovations, and international competitions; there is a huge need to innovate and fulfill the needs to consumers in every way possible. Bob has the same vision. He wants to identify the needs of consumers, and fulfill these needs by providing products and services that give them superior value. With this vision and purpose, there is a strong need to change and evolve the culture. P&G's culture varies from country to country. Although the company has a strong culture, there are always improvements required. For their business to grow and to touch more lives in the world there is a need to have very strong core values embedded in everywhere it operates. These core values would ensure that every employee of P&G, whether s/he is in USA or China or Africa or any other part of the world, knows these core values by heart and live by them. Great companies always change their culture according to the needs. No company has the perfect corporate culture. Therefore there is a need to evolve, improve and get better. There are some traditional and conventional practices that still take place in many parts of P&G. These practices need to be forgone and they have to adopt new ways according to the changing times. Things like cultivating diversity, flexible working hours' time, creating leadership and bringing innovation in every aspect of their business are very important for their cultural change. 2) Evaluates whether the current culture is attracting, retaining and motivating the employees who offer the needed knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) in order to achieve the goals of the organization. Employees are no doubt the greatest assets of the company. They provide the knowledge, skills and abilities to the company's products and services in order to excel. In order to enable them to work even smarter, a company has to provide an environment where they feel comfortable and which motivates them to work for the company. P&G has a very strong culture that ensures its more than hundred years of success. Culture, being the essential part of a company's progress has played a pivotal role in P&G's progress as well. However there are a few things that need to be changed with the changing times. P&G's strong emphasize on objectivity while making decisions, is a very positive aspect of its culture. It motivates the employees because they know that there is no biasness involved in the decision making process. The "we" attitude again is a huge motivator for its employees. When employees work in a team, get support from each other, it helps improve productivity and keeps the employees happy. One core cultural element however is not very attractive for employees- “Conform and you succeed, question and you are gone”. In these changing times employees are smarter and like to question from their leaders. There is no more the trend of following the orders of leaders. Employers have now in the world made office work flexible for their employees so that they feel comfortable in working. Thoroughness in business is required. Although employees do not find it very comfortable to communicate in writing, but still it is a useful aspect of their culture. P&G can however, make this thoroughness engraved in the values so that the employees adopt it wholeheartedly. There is no such thing more lucrative in a job than employees' growth. Employees love to work in an environment where their talents are rewarded with professional growth. P&G highly encourages promotions from within the organization and do not usually hire new people at higher positions. This ensures loyalty by the employees to the organization, and they own it. The high level of secrecy that remains in the organization is also a good cultural element for P&G. Although employees might not like the idea of keeping secrecy in everything, but it is important as if things are not kept secretly, there can be many threats for the company. Profit sharing with the shareholders is another very good cultural element. A high profitability is expected and encouraged throughout the company. This encouragement is also a motivating factor to retain employees. P&G follows a set of traditional values. They value diversity but not as much as living by the traditional cultural norms. In this time, when globalization is at its peak and there is diversity among people which is encouraged and cultivated; this approach is not very lucrative for the employees. Employees would like to work in a place where their differences are respected and diversity is cultivated. Overall the culture of P&G is motivating for employees. There are a few things that require changes however and employees are not very happy with them. These problems can be addressed to easily. 3) Recommends changes to the culture with specific involvement and strategies needed to be taken by the leadership of the organization including communication of the changes, metrics that will be used by the organization to evaluate the success of the changed culture. 4) Presents the rationale and justification for their recommendations along with the risks anticipated. In order to grow, excel and innovate; an organization needs to improve its culture regularly. Culture change is not an easy job. Culture is etched in the hearts, minds, behavior of employees. It slowly and gradually changes. A sudden change in culture might make the employees uncomfortable. To change organization's culture, leadership needs to first understand the current culture. After studying the current culture, they need to identify the reasons they want to shift their culture, where exactly they want to head to and what strategy they will adopt. After chalking down the strategy, they need to win the hearts of their employees, make the desire for this change, and involve them in this process so much that they feel positive about. (Heathfield) This culture change is however a very tricky task. It requires a lot of effort. There are many people who stick by the older values and traditions and find it difficult to let go of the old cultural values. We will look into each of the changes required in great detail. ADAPTABILITY FOR CHANGE A change-loving culture is the one where employees are very comfortable with the changes that take place be it in the technology, communication styles, cultures, or even work practices. A change-loving culture means the employees will be innovative and more flexible to newer ideas. This is one such thing that needs to be adopted in P&G's culture. The culture still asks for employees to stick by their traditional values. This creates a resistance among the employees for a culture change. P&G needs to create a culture where change is encouraged, where innovation is considered excellence, where adopting newer techniques become a norm. There is dire need for the company to let go of the traditional values and create an environment where change is considered positive. Action Plan: In order to create a culture where employees are adaptable to change, there are very strategic measures that leadership needs to take. This culture cannot be evolved in a jiffy. It needs time to evolve and grow. First thing that they need to do is to hold trainings regarding this. Bring newer ideas in front of the employees and make them realize that creative thinking and new ideas bring life to business. They need to make the employees undergo trainings and workshops where they are taken out of their comfort zones and traditional mind set. They need to give newer situations to them so that they come out of their comfort zones and actually like the idea of change and newer ideas. If there is a new technology implemented in the company, they must give the technical assistance and training to all employees so that they understand how to use them and feel comfortable while using them. They need to reward people for excellence in creating newer ideas and innovation. Whenever a new technology is implemented, they should reward the one who best performs in adopting the technology and understand its usage. This motivates the employees to learn, grow and adopt change. Risk Involved Older people are naturally reluctant to change. This creates a lot of problem while bringing change in an organizational culture and making them change-adaptable. Some employees might see this as letting go of their traditional values and consider newer ideas "too modern" for their style of working. While implementing a new technology, there will be many who will be either not willing to learn newer methods & technology, or even if they learn, they will be very slow in this learning process. It creates a lot of hindrance in achieving the objective of bringing change. CREATING LEADERS P&G requires a culture where leadership is supportive, flexible and friendly with their subordinates. Gone are the days where employees would only follow what the leader tells. Employees now need to know the rationale behind every decision that takes place. They need to know the 'why' for most decisions taken by the leadership. At P&G, the leadership is still not very comfortable with the idea of letting employees ask reasons and questions about the decisions that they take. But this is not the way employees like to work now. They like to question, they require reasoning for every decision, every task given to them. For example, during appraisals, employees would like the leader to justify the scores given to them. Employees want their leaders to make them grow into leaders themselves. They want them to delegate them tasks that give them at least some decision making power. Many employees now are not comfortable with the idea that the leader decides on how something needs to be done along with what needs to be done. Employees want to explore for newer options, do work in their own style and look up to their leaders to gain strength and improve their work by putting in their creativity. Action Plan Leaders need to delegate work such as that it gives the employees enough power to exercise their creativity and come up with innovative solutions themselves. Leaders also need to understand that they should give reasoning for their decisions to employees so that they maintain a friendly relationship. Leaders need to groom their subordinates to make them leaders in future. Since promotions take place within the organizations, it is very important that senior management prepares their subordinates beforehand to take up their leadership position. Risk One of the risks involved is that if leaders give too much authority to their subordinates then it will create problems for the organizations. Decision making by different employees will generate solutions that are not in sync with each other. Therefore it is required that only a degree of decision making power should be given to the employees. It should be according to the position they are in. Too much power to decide if given to the employees, can hamper productivity and create a chaotic situation. CENTRALIZED VALUE SYSTEM Values form the belief and culture of an organization. They are the guiding principles by which employees work in the office environment. These values need to be taken care of and should be deeply engraved within each employee so much that they believe them to be the bible for their office work environment. By centralized value system, I mean that same values must be shared across the globe. This is to make sure that wherever P&G operates, its employees have the same values; and thus the same culture. Values actually create the culture. When the guiding principles for each P&G employee in the world are same, their culture will obviously have some correlation. However, it does not mean that by creating same values for every P&G office, there will still not be any differences remaining among the employees. It is obvious that each employee carries a distinct set of beliefs and lives his/her life by it. But creating the same values will make them think for the organization from relatively the same perspective. Action Plan Leaders need to communicate a set of values to the people of P&G. They should know that these values are same for every country. This creates a natural bond between the employees of P&G whether they are in Pakistan or France. These values must be written at a visible place for everyone in the office. Employees must be given trainings on the values and must be told that these are the guiding principles for their work environment. Employees should be rewarded for sticking by the values system. Leaders should involve the values as their Key Performance Indicators so that they can measure how much the employees follow them. By adding them to their KPIs, it is obvious that the employees will follow. Risk The only risk involved is that the employees all over the world do not think the same. Therefore even the upper management thinks differently and carries a different value system. Implementing the same values can be a huge task for the senior management and it definitely takes time to do so. CONCLUSION Overall, the P&G has a very strong and evolving culture. It is a company with great values that have been built from many years of hard work. With the changing needs and changing environment, the company needs to bring a change in its culture as well. The new vision of CEO, to serve the customers more completely; needs a culture full of innovation. Although the current culture itself is according to the needs, there were little things that need to be improved in order to achieve the objectives that they had set for themselves. If the mentioned changes are taken care of, and the leadership communicate the change as mentioned in the report, then soon P&G will be able to achieve what it had aimed to achieve and will continue to give the best to its consumers and fulfill their needs more completely. Bibliography Heathfield, S. M. (n.d.). How to Change Your Culture: Organizational Culture Change. Retrieved April 24, 2011, from About.com: http://humanresources.about.com/od/organizationalculture/a/culture_change_2.htm Read More