3.9 End-of-Chapter Case: Collaboration\'s Missing Link Doris Mauer, Migdi\'s nor
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3.9 End-of-Chapter Case: Collaboration's Missing Link Doris Mauer, Migdi's normally energetic and enthusiastic VP of SCM, was ticked and tired. She sat exhausted in her window seat on Flight 217 from Cincinnati to Zurich. Just a few hours earlier, she had received an unexpected text message. It was bad news! The collaborative planning project with Nestle was underperforming and Nestle had decided to opt out after the pilot concluded. Doris had known the project wasn't going well, but she had hoped that Migdi could smooth ruffled feathers and use the experience as a steppingstone. Now, it looked more like a stumbling block. Migdi's executive council wasn't very patient with programs and projects that didn't provide instant, tangible returns. Doris wondered what the fallout would be. A More Competitive World As competitive pressure from Aldi and Tesco ratcheted up, Doris knew that Migdi had to get its act together. Collaboration with key consumer product companies was the only way Migdi could hope to hold off the hard-charging competition. Migdi needed to get its costs down to offer prices closer to those that made the discounters so popular. And Migdi really needed to leverage its assortment, displays, and special offerings to create a unique shopping experience for its customers. To do either, Migdi needed more than passive support or mere cooperation from its sC partners. Migdi needed their passionate collaboration. Doris hated to admit it, but Migdi was really struggling with collaboration-at every level. Migdi had always had good people, if a bit insular. But Migdi's success had led to a little complacency. Success had also kept feelings of jealousy hidden behind all knowing smiles. Turf protection had always been an issue. After all, Migdi was a marketing company at its core. Everyone knew that. Marketers made the decisions, and marketers received the recognition. People in other functional areas did their best to support Migdi's marketing mission. But, that was before the onslaught of fierce competition. Now, with the discounters changing the rules of the competitive game, resentment was bubbling to the surface. Doris was confident many of her colleagues hadn't even noticed the tension. Some acted as if they hadn't noticed Aldi either. If she weren't battling to stem the competitive tide and trying to drive collaborative initiatives, she might not have seen the threats either. But she saw the symptoms every day: foot dragging, information hoarding, competition for recognition, and other subtle clues that Migdi's culture was dysfunctional. As a result, Migdi had lost touch with the marketplace. If it hadn't, Migdi might have responded to the discounters before they grew into a major threat. Migdi also lacked the discipline to execute and take costs out of its processes while keeping product on its shelves. Worse, the culture had kept Migdi from developing a core of managers who knew how to leverage capabilities and build collaborative relationships internally and with SC partners. A Cultural Diagnostic Doris's greatest fear was that the culture at Migdi had settled into an uncomfortable "comfort zone" that would make embracing the changes needed to win customer's hearts almost impossible. That's why she was in Cincinnati in the first place. She was attending a P&G; sponsored retail development workshop. One of the topics on the agenda-"Embracing Change"- had caught her attention. As she checked into it, she became more intrigued. The focus would be on assessing a company's culture to determine whether it was capable of generating the passion needed to respond to competitive threats and innovate its way to success. Gary Rhoads, the workshop leader, had taken an interesting approach. Before he said anything else, he asked, "Does your company have a culture of despair or delight? Do you know the difference?" His point: If you live at a company with a despair culture, the odds of your being able to collaborate or innovate are zilch! Gary didn't mince words, and he shared both anecdotes and hard numbers from years of research to back up his story Winning companies don't just focus on delighting customers; they build a culture of delight internally as well. It was that culture that captured the hearts and minds of employees, enabling them to bring passion to work everyday. It made it safe for them to take risks, unleashing their creativity. Delight precipitated collaborationExplanation / Answer
Ans 1: The company's culture is all about empowering the people so that they can take risks and learn by failures, they develop a sense of belongingness towards the company and feel that the organization is reciprocative in caring for them as they do. They feel positive energy surrounding them, flowing from the top to bottom of the hierarchy, enabling them to set goals and work for the accomplishments. The culture is subtle, it can be felt everywhere in the organization, right from the way the front desk attends you, to the body language of your client, to the looks on the face of the guard on the gate.It reflects the way the organization wants its employees to behave, work and think. It determines how the workers collaborate and accomplish the tasks.It determines the efforts and dedication put in by the people by passion, not by force. It is important because it reflects everywhere and is tested in difficult times, where companies with good culture thrve and consolidate while those with bad one crumble.
Ans 2: Culture of despair starts with lack of ownership and support from the top management to concerns of the employees who seem helpless and clueless as to what to do. Performers get frustrated because their contributions are not valued and rewarded. Poor performers make merry, as they are let off everytime, being close to some decision maker. Lack of commitment, presence of vested interests, formation of groups based on personal interests and attitude of indifference creeps in. Such environment is very difficult to work in because one knows that he / she is going nowhere with this.
A culture of delight empowers the employees to take part in decision making, they feel attached to the core of activities, develop belongingness and ready to face the new assignment with zeal, enthusiasm and vigour, because they know they can do it.
Ans 3 Steps in development of resources
1. Enhancement of communication channels through increased opportunities for interaction.
2. Team building exercises between cross functional and functional employees to increase collaboration.
3. Assessment of work life balance of the workers and efforts to make it balanced one.
4. Matrix based performance evaluation for rewarding the worthy.
5. Job analysis and job enrichment of key positions to make them more engaging in the job.
6. Identify the roadblocks in employee empowerment and their resolution.
7. Identify the conflict points and resloving them.
8. Training need analysis for employees to notch up their skills at par with the best industry practices.
9. Review of employee happiness index and measures to improve it.
10. Measures to narrow the communication gap between the ranks to fecilitate the exchange of information for effective decision making and enhancing organizational visibility.
11. Increasing involvement of all ranks in decision making process.
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