The Reasons of Buro Happold's Poor Management - Case Study Example

The leadership challenges for Buro Happold in doing business in its current culturally diverse organizational structure – a case for a more collaborative style of leadership Executive Summary Buro Happold being one of the world’s best engineering consultancy firms is bounded by various challenges that an organization has due to being a small partnership firm operating worldwide. The company’s aim to build some renowned structures has made the organization completely ignore the fact that their success was completely based on their employee’s passion to work hard and their motivation level. The leaders of the organization were more concerned towards accomplishing their individual goals than developing strategies to achieve the common goals. This essay deals with the various areas where the leadership in partnerships faces challenges and what are the possible reasons are behind such challenges. It encompasses some leadership models that is usually followed in partnership and highlights the failure of Buro Happold to implement such standardized model in their business operations (Zand, 1972). The essay also outlines the various challenges that the employees faced due to an inefficient leadership style in the organization. Though the remuneration that the company offered was the best in the industry but it eventually failed to retain the employees in the system. The employees were shifting to other organizations and the leaders were finding it difficult to exhibit a firm control on the organizational system. The essay also highlights some recommended approaches that would help the organization to avoid such leadership challenges. Introduction Buro Happold was founded in the year 1976 by Sir Edmund Happold in England. The company is a professional services firm providing design, engineering consultancy, project management, consulting services, and planning required for infrastructure, buildings and the environment. The company mainly focuses on projects in the Middle East but is now operating worldwide with its offices in seven countries. It now operates in all areas of engineering for the built environment. The firm is a limited liability partnership with around 51 partners in the business organization. When there are multiple partners of an organization the leadership approach is much more complex, and it leads to the formation of collaborative leadership. The collaborative leadership is not just a bigger version of a single organization leadership but encompasses a variety of complex tasks. Collaborative leadership has joint accountability and joint responsibility for a wide range of partnership firms. Even when the partnership organization has decided to work towards the same leadership model but there can be misunderstandings, mistrust, issues of competition, and even differences in culture and purpose. Leadership of such kind of partnership organization is often challenged, as the stability of an individual organization is constantly under threat of the partnership working (Bonnici, 2011). Such collaborative leadership requires very high leadership skills as the leader needs to manage multiple functions of all the partnership. The challenge that results in such a partnership firm is the lack of two way communication. The leaders are more focused on executing the operations of the partnership firms than on the employees. The owner/contractor partnership often affects the project success. It often depends on how well the teams are form and how much is the cultural diversity (Burns, 2012). The leadership style should enclose these factors to enhance the success of the project and that is where the leaders face a major challenge as in the case of Buro Happold. Analysis of the cultural and leadership challenges faced by Buro Happold in partnerships Buro Happold works across a wide number of countries and builds designs that area able to adapt any changes in the future years. The mission of the company is to design and build the most innovative infrastructures which lives up to the expectation of the people and is able to sustain through all of the environmental changes in the current and the future years to come. The company operates in more than 7 countries and is always threatened with a large number of global challenges (Harback, Basham and Buhts, 1994). These global challenges comprise of rapid climate change, a more rapid growth of urbanization, and faster depletion of natural resources that greatly affects the business of Buro Happold. The organization has around 51 partners that carry forward the projects of the company. The company has entered into partnerships so as to reduce the risk level, even the investment, and to maximize the revenue returns (Fombrun, Tichy and Devanna, 1984). Culture The company due to these partnerships has to manage a diverse workforce. The major cultural challenge the company faces is the barrier to entry into a specific market where it wants to implement its designs. The company operates in different markets with its innovative designs that match up with the culture, environment, and climate of the market. They constantly update their technology so as to implement the best of their designs into real time infrastructure. Often the country it operates on does not have the required technology, or the availability of resources to support the business operations of Buro Happold. This is the major challenge that the organization faces in order to build the infrastructure according to the design developed by their expert engineer consultants. Buro Happold works on a contractor owner partnership model (Greer, 1995). There are certain pros and cons of such model that is adopted by the company. The contract rates that the company offers are the highest in the industry. The company does not put any constraint on the working hours for the contractors and the employees. They can easily strike a balance between the work and their personal life. Buro Happold even offers flexibility to the partners and their individual teams to work on different projects at the same time, which enhances exposure of the employees and even develops their knowledge and skill set. The disadvantages that this kind of owner contractor partnership is that there is lack of synchronization (Hajdini, 2010). This lack of synchronization is observed in the software that is implemented in the respective organizations which are not updated at the same time, this results in different employees working on different updated version of the software. The different project layouts are saved in the system in different formats. Since there is no standardization in the design being drawn, and other details of the project that creates a lot of confusion in searching some important project details that can be required in a particular situation. There is no transparency in the system which makes it very difficult for people of the organization working across different countries to easily access the necessary information (Iqbal, 2011) There is no such tradition in the work culture of the company to share the information related to project layouts, designs etc with other team members working across the globe. Leadership The employees rather save their respective projects on the desktop of their system rather than sharing with the employees on the server. The server of the company is split on the basis of regions so there are mirror projects, which states that there would be the same project file on the server of the London unit and also in the Bath unit. This results in unnecessary duplicity in the system which ultimately slows down the network. This even states that the entire business system is not well organized and there is lack of synchronization in the business operations. Leadership has been disintegrated into the system with the invention of so many partners who act as individual owners of the company (Kellerman, 2013). Since the leadership style of one partner differs from the other partner there are a lot of disagreements in the company. The multi leadership strategies fail to give a coherent strategic direction to the company. The common problem in leaderships in partnerships is lack of coordination which leads to misunderstandings and arguments. This kind of problem is very common in Buro Happold where there are constant fights in the management level. The company faces a high employment turnover rate and has a very low morale for the general staff. The company only demands skilled workforce but do not put an extra effort to enhance the skills of the employees. The work pressure is high but there is lack of training and development programs to motivate the employees and enhance their enthusiasm level (Kochan and Barocci, 1985). Motivation The company offers a very relaxed atmosphere for working and the partners even enjoy the benefits of partnerships without any pressure from the shareholders. The company due to various kinds of leadership in partnerships lacks strong management and professional behaviour. There is a lack of control in the organization and hence the staffs seem to get over with any mistakes they do. The management of the company imposes their decision on the employees and ifthey do not agree they are advised to leave the organization (Legge, 1995). This kind of authoritative leadership style is followed in certain offices of Buro Happold like that of Los Angeles. This strategy has resulted into very high turnover rates and highly dissatisfied employee base. The senior partners and directors of the company are focused on accomplishing individual goals rather than focusing on common goals of the company. Often the management people fight very fiercely so as to prove their point of view correct (Leopold, Harris and Watson, 2005). The common leadership challenges that are faced in partnerships are:- Developing managerial effectiveness Leading a team Inspiring and motivating employees Effective training and development of the employees Guiding change Buro Happold offers the world’s best design but due to lack of effective managerial skills the employees are not motivated towards their job which has increased the employee turnover rates. The individual partners needs to develop a workforce that can be easily retained in the organization (Lussier and Achua, 2009). The company offers good remuneration but lacks the culture of rewards and recognition. The employees are often subjected to rivalry amongst the partners. The leaders are more focused on individual gains rather than achieving common goals of the organization and benefiting the employees through career growth and development. The kind of leadership that is often seen in partnerships is shared leadership structure. The partnership firms have different teams with their respective team leads (Mehrotra, 2005). The leadership in partnerships requires effective coordination amongst all the different teams and then formulation of a single strategy that would enhance the growth of the company and even its sustainability for the future. The shared leadership model can be described by the following diagram: (Moon, 2013) This leadership model comprises of various tasks, the team identification, and role modelling of the project leader along with the empowerment of the respective project leaders. The information is then co related with various other units of the business to arrive at a strategic decision enclosing the task uncertainty so as to achieve project success and the common goal of the organization. The shared leadership model is concerned with maximizing the human resources by empowering the employees of the organization to hold charge of leadership position in their respective areas of expertise. The shared leadership structure is highly successful in the partnership firms. As this kind of model encompasses the involvement of all the team members and gives them empowerment to share their expertise with other group members. However Buro Happold do not follow such a shared leadership strategy, they rather follow an authoritative leadership style which has made it not a satisfied workplace for its employees (Rost, 1993). The partners of the organization who act as individual leaders are more task oriented rather than building employee relation. The major challenge the leadership strategy faces is that of lack of transparency in the system, one way communication, less empowerment on the individuals, low employee motivation levels, and higher employee turnover rates in the organization (Lundy and Cowling, 1996). On the contrary some units of the organization gives so much flexibility to the employees that they do whatever they feel like and result into a disorganized business system with lack of control from the management (Yukl, 1994) . There is no such standardized model of leadership followed in the organization, and the partners are more concerned of achieving the higher profit margins by extracting the best out of its employees without having any efforts towards the retention of the employees (Stewart, 1986). The company’s focus on only high design quality has made all of the partners ignore the fact that the organization’s success relies on the satisfaction level of the engineers. If the employees are not motivated and are constantly subjected to continuous fight of the management their productive level would be greatly affected (Chandler, 1962). As per the statistics on the employee turnover rate, Buro Happold is subjected to high employee turnover rate, and the main reason behind this is the inability of the partners to maintain a common leadership strategy for arriving at a decision faster. There is no effective coordination amongst the various units and the individuals are only bothered with their own profit share in the total revenue of Buro Happold (Terpstra and Rozell, 1993). Since the company has its units in various countries with diverse workforce, more of a democratic approach of leadership style is required to handle the workforce, and even analyze the cultural dimensions of the employees. The organizational culture of the company follows a top down approach and this limits the employees from sharing their issues or expertise. Though all the partnership units are a part of the bigger organization that is Buro Happold but they behave as separate entity with no sharing of information or problems. The partners do not provide much flexibility to its employees in terms of empowerment which in turn may affect the enthusiasm level of the workers. The profit driven work culture increases the work pressure and affect the motivational level of the employees which is even due to a lack of continuous training & development programs hosted by the partnership firms (Meena, Michael and Leonard, 1996). This kind of unsynchronized owner and contractor partnerships can results into failure of many projects undertaken by the company. Recommendations Buro Happold having its operations across 7 countries with 51 partners is facing a major challenge in terms of not effectively managing the work force and not having a strategic leadership model adopted by the organization. The recommended approach towards a better leadership in this kind of partnership structure is to incorporate more of a collaborative leadership structure rather than following individual leadership strategies (Larson, 1995). A more transparent system with clear access of information amongst all the partnership firms, and even the collaborative leadership approach would provide a strategic direction and help to resolve the challenges faced in leadership in partnerships (Schyns and Meindl, 2005). This collaborative leadership structure benefits an organization by exploring the best talents in the system. In this structure the leaders are those who have the required expertise in their field and share their skills with other leaders in the organization as to enhance the productivity of the overall organization. The common leadership challenge that Buro Happold faces is the leaders or rather the partners do not have firm has less control over their employees, and there is not a combined strategic decision from all the leaders it is more for individual benefit rather than whole organization’s benefit (Larson, 1997). Buro Happold has gained its market share by constructing some unique designs that was not only innovative but even could withstand all of the future environmental changes. The company even renovated some old historic monuments into well structured monuments, may that be an Opera house or even a small theatre Buro Happold has set high standards in the construction business. The underlying reason behind the success of the company is a team of very talented and skilled workforce. The partners of the Buro Happold gain a high percentage share of the revenue and hence are not so concerned with any relationship building with the employees. The leaders of the various partnership regions of the company follow a more of top down approach (Beckhard and Harris, 1987). They are more concerned about the task, which created the major challenge of high turnover rate and unsatisfied employee base. The recommended approach for the leadership challenge that the company is facing is to introduce a two way approach so as to incorporate all the employees in the decision making process. This would initiate more of a two way communication which is essential for such a complex working atmosphere (Mosley, Moore, Slagle and Burns, 1991). Even the leaders or rather the individual partners should aim at providing a common platform for all the employees through which they can share their individual experiences and skills so as to develop more innovative ideas and resolving the various issues that Buro Happold are facing in a global market place. A democratic approach would resolve many of the challenges that the individual partners are facing, by engaging their employees to form various parts the of strategy formulation, and even to recognize their hard work with rewards. The leaders can even design the work place such that it is challenging as well as interesting for the employees (Weston and Gibson, 1993). Further constantly motivating the employees instead of imposing their ideas on the employees and giving them space to think differently and implement their ideas would be an effective measure that can be taken by the leaders in Buro Happold. Conclusion Buro Happold is one of the best engineering consultancy services with 51 partners operating worldwide. To manage such a diverse work culture it requires effective involvement of the leaders and the employees so as to arrive at a common decision. The organization faces a lot of problems in terms of effectively managing the employees, and controlling the employee turnover rate (Northouse, 2012). The partners struggle to reach at a common decision and are often found quarrelling even about a small issue. This creates a negative impact on the minds of the employees and they are always under the pressure to deliver high standard work else they would be terminated. The leaders are not good at sharing information across other partnership regions so there is an unavailability of required information whilst implementing particular projects. The employees are not always given the chance to share their innovative ideas or at times communicate with the management to resolve their issues. The lack of two way communication creates a lot of misunderstandings between the employees and the leaders. The employees cannot trust their leaders and this result in a lack of motivation level in the employees. The leaders do not take effective participation towards training and development of the employees (Sadler, 2003). The leaders don’t always form a collaborative approach towards a common goal of the organization and this can lead to fierce arguments and even failure towards deriving at a clear strategic direction for the whole of Buro Happold. Read More