Problem Solving - Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited - Case Study Example

Problem solving Introduction The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the track record of the company I previously worked for in using or not using problem solving methodologies. The company of focus here is the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (DTTL). Deloitte introduces itself as the Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited member firms, each being a legally separate entity. Deloitte offers tax, consulting, audit, and services on financial advisory for the private and public entities in many industries (Deloitte, 2015). The company markets itself as a provider of world-class high-quality services and capabilities that deliver insights needed by clients to address the most complex challenges in business. On the company’s website, there is press release referring to the recognition of the company by IDL as the worldwide leader in the business consultancy services targeting public sector. The report by IDC released in November 11, 2013 lauded the company for being better than the peers in the area of improving overall performance of the clients, and integration of awareness about risks and solutions. In addition the report lauded the company for its capability to maximize a project’s value alongside offering reliable industry competence and insights. In response to the report, Deloitte published on its website that it was proud of the recognition by IDC for competence in serving the public sector. The company further states that the strength of its performance not only pegs on the deep knowledge of the member firms in the industry, and the global network constituting of highly competent professionals but also commitment to maximize value for the clients, citizens and communities served. I worked for Deloitte in the consultancy department where I participated in consulting for many private businesses and public sectors. Through consultancy, the company guides business in their investment plans. The company researches about products and services required for certain aspects of business operations. The company then advices the clients appropriately to ensure realization of maximum possible returns and benefits. In its consultancy, the company has partner subsidiaries distributed in 150 countries across the world to provide regional consultancy (Deloitte, 2015). The company has many professional distributed in all the branches, and who are responsible for providing the highly rated consultancy services for the public sector. The company recommends products for clients, and moves steps to train the clients about the operation and performance of the particular products. Despite the successes and the good performances registered, the company has faced numerous problems, both internal and external in its consultancies. The Problem One of the problems concerned with the consultancy sector in Deloitte relates to the lawsuit launch in 2007. In the law, a complainant who is the Marin County accused Deloitte of false consultancy and selling of inefficient program. As a matter of fact, the Marin City County contacted Deloitte to provide services on software made of payment of county dues. The deal between Deloitte and Marin County saw the sale of SPA for Enterprise Resource Planning project (Vijaya, 2010). The new payment software was going to replace the aged HR and payroll system. The county accused Deloitte that the company knew well that county was going too exclusively on the provided resources and recommendations, despite the awareness, the company moved on to assemble trainee officers to provide consultancy services to the county. The Marin County Board noted that the quality of consultancy provided did commensurate the usual high standards of Deloitte consultancy. The SAP software characterized with numerous errors that exceeded those of the old legacy systems. The errors led the county to reduce use of the software and restore to manual mode of payment. According to the complainant, failure by Deloitte Company caused the public great distress and loss of taxpayers’ money. As a result, the complainant requested that the Marin County Supreme Court penalize Deloitte a total of $30 million to compensate the taxpayers. The county also accused Deloitte of failing to train workers on the use of the SAP program despite being the lead party in knowledge of using the software (Vijaya, 2010). The situation presented Deloitte Company real problem that required employment of equally competent problem solving techniques. As obvious, the initial step in solving the problem is for the management to call for a meeting with the consultant manager and other departmental heads such as those in marketing, human resource, and sales. The manger of Deloitte held regular meetings with the company’s top leadership and the lawyers responsible for lawsuit. The meetings of the nature did not employ popular problem solving techniques. The meetings normally involved brainstorming with the leaders sharing their views regarding the case. The CEO used the meetings as a platform for informing the other leadership positions about the status and progress of the case. As such, the meeting only assisted in the generation of short term solutions (Wilson & Wilson, 2000). Through the brainstorming session, discussion was more about maintaining the public image of the company because the problem had involved public interests. The public sector is responsible for greater aspect of the business deals of the company (Wood, Cogin & Beckmann, 2009). Brainstorming is not really a good consideration in attempts to resolve such sensitive problem. Brainstorming erodes the aspect of authority, and makes it difficult to ensure conformance to protocol when addressing a panel of decision makers. In addition, most aspect of brainstorming characterizes with little theoretical underpinnings that makes it hard for the decision-makers to relate ideas to standard theoretical directions (Froeb & McCann, 2010). Another danger of brainstorming as applied by the management is the difficulty to control members to avoid comments that may offend or intimate others. Furthermore, brainstorming can make a meeting to a few men’s show. Scott-Conner (2008) discusses that people with the ability to generate and relate ideas quickly can capture the general attention. This element has the potential of secluding others participants who process ideas slowly. Additionally, brainstorming sessions may have individuals repeating their ideas several times to attract concentration. This element leads to wastage of time that can be useful in moving onto the other steps of problem solving. As time matured during the initial stages of the problem, and the company being sure that the allegations had reached the public domain, the leadership through the regular meetings resolved to employ the strategic choice of problem solving. Strategic choice can refer to the problem solving technique that resolves the dilemma faced in the process of choosing what to do at what time. The meeting employed the strategic choice due to the awareness that the allegations would ruin the public image of the company. As a result, the leadership involved in deliberations on how to manage the public image and when it would be appropriate to achieve the purpose. The meetings resolved that the public relations manager of the company hold press conferences and organize communication on social media platforms. The theme of press conferences and social media communication would entail public apologies while at the same time clarifying that it was not the mistake of the company, but of the vendors of the program that caused the problem. The meetings also agreed that the public relations manager write emails to other clients informing them that the problem claimed by Marin County was not the fault of Deloitte but of SPA vendors. The meetings resolved that the communication begin flowing immediately. After finishing with the issues of PR and sure about its implementation, the leadership embarked on investigation of claims that the company sent trainee consultants to handle a very complicated technology. At this level of problem solving, the leadership put the head of consultancy to task to explain the quality of the consultant officers sent to conduct project implementation for the Marin Country. The consultancy department managed to prove that it deployed competent officers to implement the project. As such, the leadership faulted the claims by the Marin County Board that incompetent consultant officers presided over the project implementation despite the company knowing about the high levels of dependence of the county on the SPA program. How the Problem was solved Though used in the problem solving process, strategic choice has the disadvantage of likelihood to blur the familiar organizational structure in the Deloitte Company. This view relates to the fact that the technique brings together organizational leadership and stakeholders into making collective decision. For effectiveness, every participant has to share views for consideration and harmonization (Conklin, Pogrow & Williams, 2012). The technique dilutes the usually chain of authority and reduces ranks to one level. It then becomes difficult for the top manager to defend secrete interests of the company since people have to agree to a common idea and ground. Another challenge of using the strategic choice planning in countering the lawsuit problem related to likelihood of having persistent pressure on the participants to prove their commitments to make piecemeal decisions (Tchappeler & Krogerus, 2011). The strategy derided the commitment that the departmental managers and stakeholders of Deloitte could have in theory to the idea of taking broader and more comprehensive view of the present issue. During the decision-making based on strategic choice, the regular meetings encountered the challenge of balancing between urgency and uncertainty. Even though effective PR was important, the meeting was uncertain about the effectiveness and timeliness of the move. It is due to the confusion that the meeting resolved to have PR start immediately. Another challenge synonymous with the strategic choice is the difficulty to distinguish between technical from political decisions. For instance, the resolution to task PR department to organize and initiate communications with the public to improve the company’s image was both political and technical. However, it is difficult to determine the side that the decision lied most. This aspect creates a lot of complexities and confusions that complicate progressive decision-making at each stage of problem solving process (Tan & Matthews, 2009). The use of the technique also led the company into spending a lot of time as the meetings have to arrive on common ground at a given step before moving to the next step. The strategy lacks particular system of isolating and filtering ideas to ensure discussion of the important one only. The figure below show the process used in solving problems in many organizations. Figure 1: A diagram show the problem solving process. Strategic choice method of problem solving would be important for the company in the long-term (Bryson et al., 2004). Through the technique, the company should embark on reviewing its basic policies and measures to avoid future negotiation and conformation of uncertain deals. The company can use the method to establish an investigative framework to understand background of every product and services to recommend so to avoid problems with otherwise loyal clients. Suggested Problem Solving Techniques Since the Deloitte Company is a big multinational enterprise, it should always adopt complex and flexible problem solving techniques. Instead of quickly rushing for the strategic choice of problem solving, the leadership of the company ought to have started with visible thinking. Through visible thinking, the leadership would have the opportunity to understand the presenting situations through critical analysis, and use causal mapping techniques to create sense of the problematic situation. According to Friend and Hickling (2005), causal mapping refers to a simple technique for resolving situations that require individual or group thinking. Causal maps are word-and-arrow diagrams that relate and link ideas and actions through the use of arrows. The arrows show how an idea or action influences another. The mapping assists in the articulation of the interconnections of many ideas in a manner that it is easier to know the appropriate actions in the area of concern (Friend & Hickling, 2005). The map also gives reasons and timeliness of taking an action bearing that the arrows show the consequences of ideas and actions. With consideration to visible thinking and causal mapping, the top management could initiate meetings with the departmental managers, and lead the participants into visible thinking. The top management being in charge of the meeting would then invite sharing of visual thoughts by the participants (Forgang, 2004). As the participants air their views, the CEO would be mapping the ideas causally with arrows. The mapping is brief but inclusive. For example, the point of identifying the vendor includes other discussions such as the criteria of evaluating competence of the vendor and the credibility as well as performance record of the SPA program. The point of identifying the vendor would also involve discussion of the nature of agreements to determine if the vendor agreed to train the program users at the county establishment and help in maintenance. The point of consultancy would also broaden to include other issues. For instance, the point would involve analyzing how the consultant department presented the SPA program and the vendor to the Marin County Board to the point of influencing demand. The consultancy point would also entail analysis and evaluation of the technicalities of the program and if the consultants informed the client about any technicalities. At the litigation point, the meeting would consider issues such as the reasons stated by the complainant to show the mistakes of the company. The litigation point would also involve analysis of the magnitude of the complaint leveled against the company. Obviously, issues such as the public image of the company would arise at the litigation point. It is also likely that the issue of selecting and identifying lawyers to represent the company would occur. Using the causal mapping would guide the meeting into realizing the need to investigate allegations about it for deploying unqualified consultant to an otherwise crucial public project. At the visible thinking stage, an idea to consider the allegations of trainee consultants being used in the project must arise. The obvious actions would be to punish the head of consultant department should there be substantial proof of the allegations. So, investigation of the allegation internally would provide the company with adequate clues on how to approach the issue in court (Smith & Barnhart, 2012). The causal mapping technique would also inform the company about the need to gather intelligence. Intelligence gathering is necessary to understand the number of consultancy firms sued for inefficient SPA program. Intelligence gathering will also be important in determining if the client (Marin County) altered the software so that it could not serve the actual purposes for its installation. It is at the visible thinking or framing stage that the decision-makers may realize the need to invite a lawyer to advice on the appropriate approach based on experience to counter the allegations. Causal mapping of this idea would enable the company to have a view of the financials costs likely to go into defense as payment for lawyers (Baker & Doran, 2007). It is also at this stage of causal mapping that the decision-makers would be able to think about reviewing the contract leading to sealing of the deal with Marin County. Reviewing the contract is important in helping the decision-makers identify possible flaws or breach of the contract that would lead to the reported inefficiency of the SPA installed. On settling on particular ideas and basis for actions, the meeting to pursuing solution for a problem can permit a test on the resolution to be sure of the effectiveness (Adair, 2013). The causal mapping would assist the company narrow the ideas gathered through visible thinking and lead to arrival to desired goals sometime in an automatic manner. The visible thinking and causal mapping techniques of problem solving have good advantages to consider. The first advantage is that the technique has the ability to allow every member of the decision-making panel opportunity to reconstruct and visualize the situation (Russo & Schoemaker, 2002). The members of the decision committee have the right to share their views without fear and have them considered in the causal maps for analysis. Dismissal of any idea bases on objective and collective agreement of the decision makers rather than on an individual. The techniques also ensure preservation of responsibility roles in an organizational structure. The top manager enjoys the platform to exercise authority even when negotiating for decision-making with other managers. There are areas that the team members had to solve by making decisions. The following table displays the information on the key areas that the members solved using decision making technique. Decision areas Label Should we Improve the Program? Program? Should we focus on Deploying unqualified? Deploying? The solution focus be on? S. Focus? How much longer will take us? Time? How many members were involved in the project? #S.D.? How are the resource requirements handled? Such as associates and laptops among others) #R.H.? Should we focus on deploying the employees? Partner? Table 1: Decision Areas In order to focus on decision making for solving the problem, the decision areas are related to the choice of the problem focused on. This aspect enables the top management to defend the sensitive interests of an organization that may be vulnerable to the consequences of the decision proposals. In that case, the top management of Deloitte can have the opportunity to defend the secrete interests of the company that are not known to many in the panel. Following the decision areas that were focused on by the team, the options that were available to make are displayed in the table below. Decision areas Label Options Should we Improve the Program? Program? Use the old program Improve the program Should we focus on Deploying unqualified? Deploying? Deploy unqualified employees Work with the unqualified employees. Provide training and skills to the unqualified. The solution focus be on? S. Focus? Interim workarounds to reduce impact priority Complete fix How much longer will take us? Time? 6 days 3 months The process requires how many associates? #S. D? Renegotiate contract Look for new partners How are the resource requirements handled? Such as associates and laptops among others) #R.H.? Extend the working hours Shift based Table 2: Options Available on Decision Areas In addition to the available decisions to make, the team discovered further decisions to make on the decision areas. Table 3 below represents the options to making further decisions on the decision areas. Decision areas Label Options The process requires how many associates? #S. D? Addition of twenty more Addition of 50 more Adding 100 more How are the resource requirements handled? Such as associates and laptops among others) #R.H.? Extended working hours Hire contractors/ from other projects Furthermore, the problem solving approach ensures inclusivity and accountability of the members of the decision-making panel (Goetz, 2011). Moreover, the technique ensures proper prediction of the consequences of each action or idea. Through this capability the technique supports decision-makers to avoid unnecessary dangers and risks that the decisions may subject the business. The figure below show the relationship as well as the link between the problem focus and the decision areas. Figure 2: Relationship between Decision area and Problem Focused The diagram below show a compatibility grid showing the interconnections between the decision areas chosen and the options that were available. Deploying? Partner? Time? Deploy Solution Workforce Cooperation 5 days 3 Months Program Same Improved Other option X X X Deploying? X X X Partner? X X Time? X Table 4: Compatibility Grid After using the causal thinking technique, the decision-makers should consider applying the decision tree to weigh and make decisions. Figure 3: Decision Tree In the decision-making diagram, the Deloitte Company could only respond to the case rather than do nothing. Doing nothing would be very detrimental to the company as it would amount to disrespect the court. Going for a lawyer to handle the case is one option but it would put the company into public limelight for a longer time over negative accusation, which may taint the company’s image (Rokach & Maimon, 2008). The alternative value would be to ask for out of court resolution of the problem. On grant of the request, Deloitte Company to present two options. The first being repair of the program with the alternative of paying a lesser amount of money to compensate for damages rather than the $30 million demanded by the Marin County Board. Marin County agreeing for repair of the program would necessitate following of the vendor. In case of confirming knowledge of the possibility of the problem and agreeing to maintain, would make the company foster business relation with the vendor. In case of confirmation and refusing to repair would lead the company to cut business relations with the vendor. From the tree, declining to confirm knowledge of the problem would lead the company litigate the vendor for dishonesty with alternative options of returning to court or paying the complaint as would be agreed in the out of court resolution. Conclusion In the current time, it was appropriate for the Deloitte Company to consider the use of value thinking and causal mapping to understand the development of the problem from identification of the program vendor to the litigation points. This problem solving should only last as long as the ligation remains active. Upon completion of the case, the company should embark to the strategic choice technique of decision making and problem solving. Strategic choice is an efficient technique for establishing frameworks of problem solving in the future and in the long term period. When effectively considered and designed, strategic choice has the potential of guiding the company in avoiding similar problems and others. The view relates to the ability of the strategic choice technique of decision to act as the basis for formulation of policies and long-term plans. It is for the reason that its use in the current time is objectionable for it would involve rushing over issues and undermining the institutional set policies. References ADAIR, J. E. (2013). Decision making and problem solving strategies. Philadelphia, PA, Kogan Page Ltd. BAKER, J. R., & DORAN, M. S. (2007). Human resource management: a problem-solving approach linked to ISLLC standards. Lanham, Md, Rowman & Littlefield Education. 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