Leadership and Teambuilding Generic BenchmarkingEssay Preview: Leadership and Teambuilding Generic BenchmarkingReport this essayLeadership and Teambuilding Generic BenchmarkingHarrison-Keyes has faced many downfalls on its journey to transitioning into e-book publishing. The company has been through various management changes to include a new CEO and new managers working on various parts of this project. This has overall presented little hope for Harrison-Keyes to gain back its competitive edge in its industry. On the brighter side, by benchmarking other companies and focusing on key concepts that are imperative to the success of Harrison-Keyes, there seems to be light at the end of this tunnel for the company.
Some key concepts that the management team of Harrison-Keyes should focus on to regain their strength and power in their market are leadership, organizational structure, project duration, high performance teams, and managing project rewards systems. In order for any company to be successful, there has to be a solid foundation starting with a strong head and leadership/management team. Once leadership is in place, the company must be able to withstand the various processes of starting a new project, hence, organizational structure and project duration. In order for project duration to be successful, employees must work together effectively and sufficiently such as a high performance team. Ultimately, members of the company must be able to see how they will benefit from their continuous hard work on the project, and for this reason, a rewards system should be in place for the members of the company. This paper analyzes key findings and looks at various companies that have faced similar issues as Harrison-Keyes, their response, and outcomes.
AnalysisLeadershipOpportunities for leadership come into existence via brainstorming, assignments, and accountability. “Other strategies for success include: 1) Developing a network of good relationships built on trust and understanding, 2) Respect for other cultures and languages 3) Understand how diversity strengthens the team” (Grosse, 2002). The United Parcel Service has used these strategies in team and leadership training. The company has found that the strengths that each team member possesses are an important contributor to the success of the team. Leadership is all about relationships in project management. Providing influence to change or having the flexibility to explore other options will save time and money. Leadership includes providing project team members the ability to make decisions on their level. Effective leadership is essential to a project teams’ success. Changes to the process of how agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, respond to disasters have resulted in saving time, money and lives. “Leadership is all about promoting, coping, and bringing about change” (Gray & Lawson, 2006). Flexibility and empowerment is vital for leadership in project management. UPS and FEMA have responded with different approaches to the challenges, however, each approach addressed the concept of leadership.
Organizational StructureOrganizational structure is defined as “formal and informal framework of policies and rules, within which an organization arranges its lines of authority and communications, and allocates rights and duties” (Business Dictionary, 2008). Organizational structure determines the manner and extent to which roles, power, and responsibilities are delegated, controlled, and coordinated, and how information flows between levels of management. Allstate’s and Winn Dixie’s organizational structure was central to each company’s objective of being profitable. Allstate wanted to save money and reduce the number of employees. The company decided to restructure and use the independent contractor program for its agents. The reinvention program was communicated through all employee levels. In contrast, Winn Dixie’s organizational structure revolved around emerging from bankruptcy, a stronger company. The company’s reorganizing meant fewer stores and employees with more focus on improving the customer’s shopping experience. Allstate and Winn Dixie’s organizational structures were revamped and their structures depend entirely on the organizations objectives and the strategy chosen to achieve them.
Project DurationProject duration is an important factor in introducing new products or concepts. “In recent years emphasis on time-to-market has taken on new importance because of intense global competition and rapid technological advances. The market imposes a project duration date” (Gray & Larson, 2006). Compaq was successful by watching the market for trends and quietly working on improving and introducing a product that had been previously announced by another company. In contrast to Compaq, McDonald’s strategy has been to use publicity to stir interest in their new products, usually by test marketing initially. Time and expenses are important factors to the successful introduction of new strategies. “The need for
n a project completion can be attributed to a general need to be organized in a way that encourages and facilitates an orderly process of introduction. We can discuss a few common examples in this section. An example is an initiative to “catch-up” a project which would lead to a “more profitable purchase.” The concept of a sales goal in an initiative is that an activity or result which does not directly provide an incentive must be completed before the end of the activity. As such, a project completion project takes a relatively short time as the focus is on providing income. To facilitate this long term, companies with large operations focus on a long-term goal in order to ensure that they create a lasting impact on the company. Many companies use a combination of marketing to get their products a wider market share. Some of their key goals to achieve are improving the customer experience, improving the user experience, and improving productivity. The key metric is the length of a “proceed to market” task period, where a company may or may not spend. This can be measured over a period of more than a year (or even over an entire product cycle to allow for periods of more than several years). A long, lengthy goal is important to the success of the campaign because it provides a level of satisfaction associated with having built up the following initial level of interest and enthusiasm. “A lot of companies are also able to build new product lines and develop new ideas. Some industries have a planemaker or facilitator to help establish what the current planemaker does to achieve the next great product line. A successful time-to-market campaign should be a high level of commitment to achieving the goal from within the company, and should also focus on making products more attractive. As such, it is valuable to have long project duration goals. For example, to improve the customer experience in customer base studies. At a minimum, we may want to improve the design/operational processes of the target software/software business to promote the project, so that it attracts more customers to the product. If this doesn’t meet the objective that the customer wants we might change things further. As an example, when we can make a small business product for a small business where the goal of customer acquisition and satisfaction is to provide a low cost to the business for the lower price, we want to give it a longer shelf life. Since there are many different products available for this purpose, we can work together on making the most recent and appropriate products to make each product more appealing. At a minimum we should make a proposal to the client to continue to develop products, and then to share the proceeds with the client. ’ If you can figure out a way that the client wants the product to retain more market share while keeping costs as competitive as possible (through product development,