Understanding Behaviors for Effective Leadership - Essay Example

?Structural Steel Industries Analysis Organisational Structure The organization in the case study is Structural Steel Industries. It is a small division of a bigger steel fabricator. The major function of this organization is taking steel stocks and transforming them into products. Structural Steel is known for making custom steel components. The organization gathers stock of steel products from various suppliers and assembles them at a construction site. Then the steel is cut to different sizes to make specialized and custom products such as special beams, river drilling equipments etc. These products are customized for specialized buildings. SSI is a small division company with a closed loop organizational chart. The company is headed by Charlie who is the chief executive officer. There are three salespersons, two engineers and three project manager who look after the entire bidding process. The production department includes 45 welders, four supervisor and one plant manager. The shipping department consists of 10 employees including one shipping manager. In order to assist the administration processes, the company has two secretaries and one controller (Castleberry and Tanner, 2001). Personal Selling process of the organization The company manufactures custom steel products for specialised buildings. Structural Steel is into business to business marketing. It is a commercial transaction between two or more different businesses, for example between a wholesaler and a manufacturer. B2B transactions are generally characterised by high volume of transactions, higher involvement of sales and marketing team during negotiations and much high value of money involved (Katou and Budhwar, 2008). It is a complex and long process of buying and tends to be based on client-company relationship. As a result of the amount of money and time spent during transactions and negotiations, B2B features high loyalty for brands. Also, the sellers in the B2B process are required to have numerous meetings and interactions with the customers and clients during the process of negotiation. Industrial trade shows, conferences, exhibitions and online communication sites are few of the places where business to business companies interacts with both prospects and customers (Parvinen et al., 2013). In the present case employees who are directly involved in communication with the clients are the sales persons, shipping department and engineers. The major interaction with the client is however done by the sales person, as they represent the organisation. During the process of negotiation, the organisation may involve engineers, shipping managers and sometimes accountants, in order to make the clients clear about the various internal processes and requirements. The purchasing process in B2B marketing is riskier than in business to customer (B2C) marketing, as the transaction amount is more and entire transaction process is based on exact quantities and products (Harrison, 1998). Purchasing process in B2B involves committee meetings as decisions are driven by specifications and expert advice is required all the time. Thus in case of Structural Steel, the personal selling process involves sales person, finance department, engineering department and many times even the CEO of the company. Sales management process Sales management process involved all stages from cold calling, prospecting, negotiation to shipping of final products and billing. It includes an entire cycle where clients orders specific products or services and the company delivers it and gets the payment (Age, 2011). A sales management process is characterised by many features. It includes objectives and goals for departments, staff members and the entire organisations. These objectives and goals must be discussed with every involved and connected staff. Sales management process is a closed loop activity where performance of one department is directly related to another. Also known as sales pipeline, sales management process is one of the most important activities in an organisation. Having fewer employees in the organisation has enabled the employees to take up multiple tasks and interact with various other departments in order to check the sales management process. Once the negotiation process is successfully completed and the product required by the client is finalised, the designing and production process starts. The senior project manager reviews the draft and sends them to the chief draftsmen for further investigation and review. A pre-job meeting is held with the project and crafting team to finalise the draft of the project. The revised draft is sent to the drafting department in order to find out the practical possibility of the project. The drafting department evaluates the feasibility of the proposed draft through shop drawings for practical application. After making appropriate changes the revised draft of the project is sent to the project manager. The project manager updates the changes made to the draft and it is passed. The draft is sent to printing for production. The purchasing agent buys the raw materials and other equipments for production. The production team transforms the raw material into final customised product. After that the final product is either stored in the construction site or shipped to the client by the shipping department. Once the product reaches the client, billing is done and one sales management cycle is completed. Though the sales processes are almost neat there were few obstacles and unauthorised activities which led to mismanagement of the account handled by the company. In the next section the various issues will be discussed which led to the problems between Structural Steel and its client Laredo. Major issues During the processes of building, the client company found out that almost 40 percent of the required steel was Mexican, while it was strictly said that the construction was federal and it needed domestic US steel only. When Jack Belmont, the owner of Laredo Construction called Charlie, the CEO was not even aware of the changes. This shows a clear communication disconnect between the upper management and the employees. In order to find out the root cause of the issue, the CEO had to make a series of calls. Even after calling the project manager and the sales person who was in charge of the account, no definite conclusion was made as to who was exactly behind all these. The construction work by Laredo was for a complex naval base. Though it was an important assignment for Laredo construction, project handlers from Structural Steel did not give full attention that the account required. It is clear from the case study that everyone involved in a particular project should have had direct communication with other project members as it was a closed loop organisation. However, lack of proper involvement and attention to detail resulted in missing of Mexican steel with the US steel which resulted in high displeasure among the client. There was a sheer lack of commitment in the sales management process. When call was made to the project manager of SSI, she was unaware of even the basic details of the project’s progress. There was also a lack of integrity and respect among the production and shipping department for their supervisors (Davies and Chun, 2002). It was clear from the case study that the project manager Mary was unable to control her subordinates. From the interaction between Mary and her project team many indications were drawn. The production manager and shipping manager did not give any importance to her instructions and walked straight off her face. They also did not follow any order given by Mary. Also, other members sitting in the lounge walked off without listening to Mary. Conversations between Charlie and Angela Davis, salesperson handling Laredo also threw light on various aspects. During this whole process of resolving the issue, Charlie never thought about the root cause of the problem. Every time Charlie calls someone, it’s new news for them too. It indicates two possibilities. Either employees already knew about the changes and were simply hiding or some of the employees were engaged in unethical and illegal practices in order to warm their pockets. However, the CEO was more concerned about short term solutions for the problem. A thorough study of the case study revealed that the company had issues in personnel selling processes too. The salesperson was not aware of the shipping and production processes. Also the shipping manager and production manager were not aware of the fact that only domestic steel was to be used. When the sales person, Angelo called at the Laredo construction site she did not show any enthusiasm to resolve any query or building the relationship again. Her blatant and unapologetic statement was example of a lack of commitment towards company as well as her own job (Fisher, 2000). Analysis and recommendations The case study reveals many loopholes in the overall management of the organisation. First there is lack of proper communications between the project members. Even though projects need high amount of coordination and regular communications, SSI was lacking a proper communication order (Kim, 2002). Lack of attention to details was another aspect which rigged the whole project. It was very evident that even those team members who were in charge of critical parts such as productions and shipping were not well informed about the complexity of the project. Also the commitment level among employees was found to be very low. Another major aspect discovered in the case was lack of relationship between the organisation and clients/ customers. Discipline and development of a common language should be the first priority in order to resolve these issues. Getting a quick fix for a problem might save the company from short term losses but the overall integrity of the company is lost. In the long run the organisation might fail to establish good relationships with clients and stuck with a retarded growth. In the case study, apart from resolving the issue with immediate quick-fixes the CEO should also have looked into the bigger picture. It is very important to make strategies and amendments in the implementation plans so that issues such as these do not arise in future in the first place and if occurred, can be handled with tact (Storey, 2001). Few of the major recommendations are: 1. Establishment of proper communication channels It was very clear that one of the major causes for the mess was lack of communication. Employees handling the assignment should have established authority line and proper communication during every step of the project development. Clear communication will not only speed up the process but also reduce the reoccurring misunderstandings among the team members (Welch and Jackson, 2007; Guest, 1997). To increase internal communication, the CEO should implement regular and scheduled meetings. The objective of these meetings will be to evaluate the progress of current projects as well as issues, suggestions and feedbacks related to the project. Through these meetings the overall internal bonding will also be strengthened. 2. Establishment of positive leadership The case study concluded that there was a lack of leadership in the organisation. The CEO was too distant to get involved with the internal team and the project manager was not able to control the team members (Howell and Costley, 2001). The other strategy recommended is establishment of effective leadership in the organisation. Leadership has been evaluated as an important factor is bringing positive culture in an organization. When people feel that they are doing a meaningful work, they get internally motivated to do the work with precision. This strengthens the internal organizational culture (Alas, Tafel and Tuulik, 2007). The work should be challenging and should bring the inner hidden talents of the individual. The success of the team depends on motivating skills of the leader. The potential of an individual needs to be challenged in order to bring out their true potential. When a team leader provides an employee with proper environment to excel only then an employee can be effectively motivated and a culture of competitiveness and high performance can be achieved in the organisation (Bruce, 2006). Conclusion Business to business marketing runs in a complex environment. The case study represented a true example of how improper communication and lack of thorough knowledge can lead to an unsuccessful project. Even after communicating with the team members and making various new changes, the company was not able to fix the problem. Management competency is very critical for the success of any organization. Various recommendations have been suggested in order to resolve the reoccurring issues. A proper implementation of these practices can help an organization to remain competitive and its employees happier. Reference List Age, L.J., 2011. 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Understanding Your Organization’s Culture. Harvard Business Review, 50(5), pp. 37. Howell, J. and Costley, D., 2001. Understanding behaviors for effective leadership. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Katou, A. A. and Budhwar, P. S., 2008. The effect of business strategies and HRM policies on organizational performance: The Greek experience. Global business and Organizational Excellence, 27(6), pp. 40-57. Kim, S., 2002. Participative management and job satisfaction: Lessons for management leadership. Public Administration Review, 62(2), pp. 231-241. Parvinen, P., Aspara, J., Kajalo, S. and Hietanen, J., 2013. Sales activity systematization and performance: Differences between product and service firms. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, 28(6), pp. 494 - 505. Storey, J., 2001. Human resource management: A critical text. 2nd ed. London: Thomson Learning. Welch, M. and Jackson, P.R., 2007. Rethinking internal communication: A stakeholder approach. Corporate Communications: An International Journal, 12(2), pp. 177 - 198. Read More