Departments and Innovation Teams - Essay Example

DEPARTMENST AND INNOVATION TEAMS Affiliation DEPARTMENST AND INNOVATION TEAMS Introduction Organizations are usually structured intodiverse departments with each level assigned a particular duty that leads to the common goal of the organization. These departments are headed by leaders who coordinate the various functions and provide a response to the executive. In the process, the various departments are construed in their desires, needs and culture that the management must embrace for the successful implementation of any system. The paper outlines departmental objectives that affect the innovation of the organizations and those cultures that encourages leaders and other stakeholders to engage more in new ideas of opportunities. (1)To what extent do departmental efforts to align goals affect the foundations of business intelligence for use at the departmental level? Departmental efforts can be described as the shared responsibility that comes with teams working together to the many parts of the organization to achieve a universal goal (Freeman, 2012). For instance, in many cases within the organization, one department may predominantly be aware of the company project as the project exists within their ranks. In this regard, the other units within the organization are rendered idealess regarding the same. Due to the sense of shared enterprise, leaders must then coordinate the various teams to provide awareness and help so that the objective achieved. Business Intelligence is an information system that organizations adopts to enable them perform their function with ease. The company can collect data from both internal and external sources. Through the enterprise intelligence, it can be analyzed in the process as it comprises of many applications and tools of methodology (Reddy,Reddy & Hebseeba,2013). The executive and other departmental heads can then make informed decisions. Business intelligence has the capability to increase the organization revenue, provide a competitive advantage over the rivals. It also leads to efficiency in the operation while the management has the power to detect current market trends and outline any problem that requires urgency. Due to the immense benefits of the business intelligence, many organizations have embraced their usage within the body as it relatively eases operation and makes the organization achieve their target. But the systems are used by staffs who works from the many departments within the organization (Reddy,Reddy & Hebseeba,2013). Its foundation implementation must then be a concern to any department level. First the management must develop a clear and vivid vision for the organization of all the departments before they can lay its foundation within the organization. The outlined goals of the departments will then determine on how the staffs will be trained, their role and usability of the system. The management can then identify on how to implement the system within the departments while ensuring the goals conforms to the primary organization objective (Freeman, 2012). The process ensures that all departmental goals aligned to the principal purpose of the business intelligence. For instance, many organizations have adopted the use of cloud computing within their systems. In cloud strategy, sharing of information and communication is made possible through video conferencing and emails. The management can then have all data within the organization to make clear decisions. The departments should be trained on how to use the devices so that they make parallel to the goals of the organization. (2)To what extent does department culture support or restrict efforts by innovative teams to address department needs? Nothing is serendipitous about innovation even though many leaders and individuals have misunderstood how it occurs within their organization. Change happens since the teams, and departmental members involve in innovative thinking throughout their work (Apekey, McSorley,Tilling & Siriwardena,2011). Those organizations that are capable to innovate on a more frequent basis can implement valuable ideas by the leaders, culture and practices to achieve their goals. It is because many organizations in the modern environment do experience an amalgamation of mixture problem that are multifaceted and complicated. Leaders are then forced to identify each problem and uses the right thinking to enable them overcome the problem (Freeman, 2012). They must think on all fronts beginning from standardization, ways that are productive and being innovative. Management must be seen to undertake some actions and to think so that the various teams can become creative. The innovation gap that has existed among many organizations can be traced to the difference in knowledge between the departmental culture and change teams. Up to almost eighty percent of leaders believes that innovation is crucial to their future success. But of what they say is quite contrary to what their organizations can produce which sounds is very ironical (Peak, Guynes, Prybutok, & Xu,2011). A few though are not impressed by the level of their innovation standards and are encouraging other ways of thinking. Due to the knowledge gap between the department culture and needs, it has become extremely difficult for the innovation teams to have systematic change. Despite the massive resources at their disposal, the leaders still find it hard to reduce the gaps of innovation within their organization. Apekey, McSorley,Tilling & Siriwardena in their study of (2011) observed that, the leaders bridges this gap by simultaneously working on areas such as department culture and needs so that they can develop the right thinking process. Management should encourage departmental units that adopt the culture of innovation. Culture is what outlines the rules and regulations that monitor the operation of the business. How the individuals behave, say and do while in the organization is all elaborated by the group culture (Apekey, McSorley,Tilling & Siriwardena,2011). The departmental culture that encourages innovation makes the innovation team have an excellent systematic ways of change that conforms to their needs. Those cultures that do not support change leads to inadequate systems of innovation and new ways of thinking may never exist at all. Management should analyze those cultures that encourage innovation and do away with those that hinder systematic ways of thinking. For example, organizations with strategic innovation across their departments attract various new ideas that lead the emergence of new opportunities that will encourage changes in the organization. (3) Describe an example of supportive culture and an example of restrictive culture and explain how the culture has encouraged or prevented innovative teams Organizations work hard to achieve their goals and objectives but some always finds a hindrance to this central business value by performing poorly which may be attributed to having a restrictive culture. Supportive culture leads to superior results when the culture works on all fronts in a cylindrical manner with other stakeholders to provide a better outcome for the organization. Leaders have the responsibility of adopting and modifying the culture in their organizations that drives innovation. It is because culture stipulates the values and norms within the group, determines the mode of behavior of both the leaders and employees that allow for performance (Wales, Monsen, & McKelvie, 2011). Supportive culture hence swung innovation just like in fashions, achieved most in real arts and takes a downward spiral as at the restrictive cultures. Since the change has become an essential component of growth and performance in major organizations, adopting the right culture motivates innovative teams so that organizations can achieve their maximum potential. Leaders have developed ideas of worthless rewards as a way of supportive culture within their organizations. Recognition of success of the employees is essential to their performance within the organizations, and the only problem is that majority of them tends to stop from there (Wales, Monsen & McKelvie, 2011). The awards are usually provided in annual meetings but look not to be enough to encourage the culture of innovation. In reality the standard rewards given to employees is a good supportive culture but the question remains if the formal gifts are enough to engage the innovators. Organizations should, therefore, develop regular rewards as it is a powerful phenomenon to recognize the group values. For example, employees return for lunch and find them distributed with some form of nickels as recognition at their desk will sound unique to them. This encourages a free flow of employee ideas as they find it is more fun and substantiation. The new plans provide other ways of thinking about the leaders and leads to more innovation ideas. Innovation is a venture that does not occur on the rapid basis but is a gradual process within the organization. Leaders and agencies with reduced time cultural behaviors will not maximize on their innovative teams since they have unstructured time within them. This mode can be described as a restrictive culture and it a hindrance to the world of innovation. Employees will end up on short term targets at the expense of long-term goals that inhibits the generation of new suggestions. For instance, assume an organization that provides humble time for the innovation team so that they can explore ideas from a wider perspective before they can have measures that provide real change. The innovative teams will be more encouraged as the period of exploitation is abundant. Conclusion Leaders recognize the efforts of all the departments for them to lay a sound foundation of any business intelligence. The employees are tasked with their usage, and they must be trained well if the organizations are to maximize on their systems. The systems though must align to the culture and needs so that they encourage the management to embraces systems that conform to their desires. Retrogressive culture should be abolished and allow for those norms that motivate innovation within the organization. Leaders will have to develop more ways of change and encourage all the departments to enable them achieve their target with ease. References Apekey, T. A., McSorley, G., Tilling, M., & Siriwardena, A. N. (2011). Room for improvement? Leadership, innovation culture and uptake of quality improvement methods in general practice. Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 17(2), 311-318. Freeman, M. (2012). To adopt or not to adopt innovation: A case study of team-based learning. The international journal of Management Education, 10(3), 155-168. Peak, D. A., Guynes, C. S., Prybutok, V. R., & Xu, C. (2011). Aligning Information Technology with Business Strategy: An Action Research Approach. Journal of Information Technology Case and Application Research, 13(1), 16-42. Reddy, B. L., Reddy, T. B., & Hebseeba, M. V. (2013). Business Intelligence Impact and Future Trends. International Journal of Computer Science & Applications (TIJCSA), 2(05). Wales, W., Monsen, E., & McKelvie, A. (2011). The organizational pervasiveness of entrepreneurial orientation. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 35(5), 895-923. Read More