Evaluating Leadership at Cargill Corn Milling - Case Study Example

? Leadership evaluation Leadership Evaluation At any particular time, leaders require reliable tools to provide information about how successful their ventures are and how possible it is to make it right in their business. Various evaluation tools have been created to aid this assessment with different traits, characteristics and developmental features being examined. Some look at the management skills of the leader while others look at how flexible the leader is while handling their company’s operations. Others carry out reviews on how crucial operational services, the workforce, the results and the customer-worker relationships are. This is just to show how different these criteria are and with them come different expectations and results. One such criterion that has stood out in the US is the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. This is the award offered under the Baldrige national quality program which is the nation’s highest presidential honor for organizational innovation and performance. Several companies have been awarded and their results have reflected their innovative attributes that were recognized under this program. One such company is the Cargill Corn Milling North America. A closer look at the company will detail how significant this award is and how leadership evaluation can be used to increase a company’s worth as well as output. The different strategies used will be highlighted and compared to the way the company has been operating since its inception in 1967. The baldrige Criteria for Performance and the Cargill Corn Milling (CCM): The criteria used by the Baldrige Program are mainly embodied in seven key areas. These are leadership, strategic planning, customer focus, measurement, analysis and knowledge management, workforce focus, operations focus, and results (BPEP, 2012). These areas are analyzed and assessed in that order in a way that shows their relationship. They have to look at the organizational profile since it sets the context of the way the organization operates. It is at this top spot that the guiding attributes are found, which allow one to venture into the company’s organizational performance and management system in a systematic manner. The performance system deals with different triads. First, there is the leadership triad that consists of leadership, strategic planning, and customer focus categories. If the leaders are not in touch with the way each of these three goes on, the company is likely to stagnate since operations will be stalled. The other three categories that are under the performance system include the workforce focus, operations focus and the results category which form the results triad. These three represent the recipe towards the success of the company and should be idealized by the management to ensure each attribute is running smoothly and is devoid of any hiccups. It should represent a sure way of handling any queries that may arise and how to effectively handle them. These two triads are the core attributes that form the performance mantle. They directly link leadership to results entailing their interdependent relationship (BPEP, 2012). The system's foundation consists of the fourth category that focuses on measurements, analysis, and knowledge management. This offers the path through which innovation will take place and how crucial each attribute is towards the continuity of a company (BPEP, 2012). With CCM being in the manufacturing category, these seven attributes have to be intertwined to help achieve the best results and increase their market presence. The criterion stated above was applied in its entirety and the results were evident from the detailed report provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology which oversees these awards. The company has over the past few decades been on an upward trend with its earnings after tax nearly tripling from the 2003 to 2007 financial period. They have received numerous awards for their customer relations with each individual, from top to bottom and bottom to the top, providing the client with some room to criticize their products and their way of doing things. This has allowed them to factor such reviews and improve their service delivery (NIST, 2008). The performance system is thus locked tight from the way the leadership takes their clients’ reviews. This has also helped them identify flaws and work on reducing customer incidents such as rejections and declines from 0.3 in 2005 to less than 0.2 in 2008. They have also maintained an error-free delivery rate of about 99%, given their innovative technology-based services. The results triad was not neglected with their processing capacity rising steadily from 10,000 bushels of corn per day to close to 1 million bushels a day. By focusing on their employees, they were able to save more than $15 million from ideas generated by their employees. Knowledge management attributes have led to the creation of development groups and employee teams which help foster cooperation, communication, skill sharing and improve in the diversity of ideas offered for the well-being of the company. Analysis of the employee-customer engagements allows for better company prospects since they are able to engage in the best practices that help initiate more results and more diversity in what should be done to counter some of the issues arising. This has kept the company at the top with awareness levels of safety being at 92% – way above the 85% set by the behavioral science technology Inc (NIST, 2008). Importance of Evaluation Every company wants to improve its production, increase its customer base and enhance its operational services. But this cannot happen if there is no marking scheme for what they require to see their company grow its shares annually. The coming up of such an award as the Baldrige national Quality Award was a way of ensuring that companies recognize what is critical and how this can be achieved without losing their primary focus. Performance and innovation all lead to excellence. However, the way to achieve this excellence is not readily available unless companies are willing to engage all the resources and mechanisms within to ensure they succeed (Hannum, Martineau, & Reinelt, 2007). Establishing an evaluation criterion allows companies to understand what factors and sub-factors are of importance to an agency in making its decisions. A good evaluation scheme will by all means ensure the companies maintain their consistency, their efficiency, discipline and rationality in the source selection process. They will utilize their resources as well as possible to achieve much more than the world has targets of. Each company, as witnessed under the CCM, can be better at what they do if only they pay attention to the small details that threaten to expose them to stagnation (Wart, 2005). However, it is necessary to note that evaluation criteria work best if they reflect areas necessary to determine the growth and performance potentiality of an organization. It must also reflect what the leaders are doing to ensure each sector within their company works for the betterment of the group. Knowledge management, for instance, may be ignored but its effects are numerous. By creating a formidable team, an organization can achieve much more since they will be in sync with each other at all times (Hughes & Beatty, 2005). As a company, meeting the needs of the organization cannot be relegated to the final stage. Instead, each attribute is carried with the same weight with each department having an independent working zone that assists it in accomplishing its target (Runde & Flanagan, 2006). As a matter of fact, the leader should draw up teams that will motivate better skill-sharing and the use of knowledge management as a way of ensuring that employees can generate ideas based on their expertise. This will happen best if the criteria used meet the professional standards expected by the auditing companies (Wart, 2005). As a leader, therefore, coming up with strategic plans will lay a great foundation on how the goals, objectives and the mission of the company will be portrayed to the rest of the workers (Rugman, 2003). Leaders are directly linked to results. But in between, there are certain steps that must be fulfilled before coming up with strategic goals and plans. The leader must be influential and transparent. Integrity is a key virtue in achieving results and this is laid out in the way each goal is set and how well it is achieved. Without an evaluation criterion or a leadership evaluation program, achieving great results may be a far-fetched wish for a company (Hannum, Martineau, & Reinelt, 2007). Application of the Evaluation Criteria The best way of ensuring that the evaluation criteria suggested by the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence Framework is applied is by changing the way things are run in the organization. The company needs to come up with ways of better customer relations which will help engage both the employee and the customer in the creation of a product that satisfies them. This will ensure that products are tailor-made to suit the needs of the client (Rugman, 2003). The workers must be free to generate ideas and have support from the management on realizing some of these innovations as a way of encouraging not only loyalty but also participation. Each employee has some experience, skills and talents that need to be exploited for the benefit of the company as well as the increased requirement for new ideas in the rapidly advancing markets and changing client needs also need to be taken into focus. Ideas from reviews, market research and customer criticisms should be turned into an opportunity for change (Runde & Flanagan, 2006). This way, client incidents such as rejections will be reduced drastically, increasing the company’s output as well as managing the current resources to enhance future growth. Communication needs to be two way. Workers should be aware of the leadership expectations and the leaders must be aware of what the employees need for their proper participation. Open communication channels ease tensions and provide ample time for disputes, issues as well as ideas to be tackled without wasting time (Wart, 2005). This will also mean better technological resources to counter competition in the rapidly globalizing markets as well as internal markets. This will help create a sustainable organization that can cater for its needs adequately (Runde & Flanagan, 2006). The future must thus be thought of in advance, with a SWOT evaluation allowing for better planning and adequate time being accorded to instinctively achieving the best results out of the resources available. This way, the company will be able to deal with its flaws in advance and ensure that each department attains its target as stipulated. References Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP). (2012). Criteria for Performance Excellence. nist.gov. Retrieved July 12, 2012 from http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/publications/upload/2011_2012_Business_Nonprofit_Criteria.pdf. Hannum, K., Martineau, J., & Reinelt, C. (2007).The handbook of leadership development evaluation. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Hughes, R. L., & Beatty, K. C. (2005). Becoming a strategic leader: Your role in your organization's enduring success. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Wart, M. V. (2005). Dynamics of leadership in public service: Theory and practice. Boston, MA: M.E. Sharpe. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). (2008). Cargill Corn Milling North America: national quality award Recipient. Nist.gov. retrieved on July 12, 2012 from, http://www.nist.gov/baldrige/publications/upload/Cargill_Corn_Milling_Profile.pdf. Rugman, A. M. (2003). Leadership in international business education and research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Emerald Group Publishing. Runde, C. E., & Flanagan, T. A. (2006). Becoming a conflict competent leader: How you and your organization can manage conflict effectively. San Francisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons. Read More