Title: Effective Team Leadership A small business is expanding its operations bo

Question

Title: Effective Team Leadership

A small business is expanding its operations both internally and externally to meet current customer demands.

To do so, it needs to:

Hire additional accounting, manufacturing, and sales staff

Purchase new machinery and facilities for increased productivity

Imagine that you have been hired as a project manager to work as a team leader to help the small business successfully undergo this organizational transformation.

Provide a detailed plan on how you will lead this transformation to deliver the results while including some difficulties encountered during the process.

4-5 pages

Explanation / Answer

Since this is a small business and it has the requirement of expanding its operations both internally and externally, it implies that the demand for the product is increasing which is a good sign and must be a part of the Demand forecasting tool. Hiring additional accounting, manufacturing and sales staff indicates that manhour needs to be hired even in corporate functions which are not directly part of operations. Accounting is a Backend function and Sales is a Front end function. This will fall under manpower recruitment and hiring.

Purchase of new manchinery and facilities signifies the capital expenditure and investment that a firm needs to make for expanding its operations. This will fall under Finance Budgeting and Planning and Operations Management.

Hence, from the above points it is quite clear that the expansion plan covers a gamut of departments. It will require a complete overhaul in the functioning and operating of the small business. It will have to resort to more professional practises, policies and procedures like that of larger companies.

1. As a Project Manager for this transformation I will prepare a clear roadmap with the buy-in of Senior, Middle and Lower Level Management as well as seek employee opinion and feedback. It is critical to have the whole team working towards a common goal. This will be my main task and objective. Get the team and organisation to work towards a common goal.

2. From my experience, alot of ideas and expansion areas come from the customer. I.e the Sales Team. They bring in rich customer knowledge, feedback on the product and projections of quarterly demand based on prediction of future customer requirements. Hence, I would sit down and brainstorm with the sales team to feel the pulse of the market. The presence of Top Management from Operations, Finance, Marketing and Customer Service for these meetings will be crucial as this is "voice of the customer". In this way, I will follow the top down approach to be in line with customer requirements.

3. The Sales and Marketing Managers along with the Operations team will play a key role in shaping up the Demand Forecasts and a complimentary operations - production, manufacturing and logistics plan. It needs the sign off of the Finance Team and every stage. The Return on Investment nos. need to made visible to the Senior and Middle Level Management.

4. Once the detailed action plan is made with the approval and inputs of all the departments, the HR team will be roped in for Resource recruitment, hiring and training. The Project Team must lay down the detailed Job Profile for each role as per industry standards. They must be clear in the kind of people who need to be hired for these roles. Whether external or internal candidates to be hired will be decided basis job requirements and company strategy. Do we need external candidates to bring in industry experience or do we require top performers who are fit to take on higher roles?

5. The most challenging par of this whole process is hiring the right people. Since this is a small business that is expanding its operations, the key motivator for external candidates will be the salary and the benefits. The other challenges will be as follows:

a. Change of mindset and a set way of working of employees.

b. To make the employees and managers to look at the bigger picture of what is expected of them in the next few quarters and the next couple of years as added capital expenditure and expansion will put pressure on the sales team and targets.

c. Ensure that the operations : Facility planning and set-up is on track with a detailed Project plan and completion date. This is important as each additional day will cost the company.

Roadmap:

1. Devise a clear vision and mission for the company based on the strategy and have a good communication plan to be followed regularly and circulated to all employees to keep them abreast of the transformation that all of them will have to undergo without which the whole objective will not fructify.

2. Detailed Financial plan and balance sheets with demand forecasts to be in place and a regular check on the projected v/s actual nos. on a month on month basis with the reasons for deviation to be discussed on a forthnightly basis.

3. The IT Team must ensure that the employees have the right tools to capture data points for correct analysis like real time sales data, customer service data and billing data.

4. Strong operations and HR team for setting up of operations and the hiring and training of qualified staff respectively.

5. Stretch targets for all Sales team with bonus and incentives as there will be pressure on revenues for 3 - 4 years to increase in capital investment and expenditure.

6. Have fortnighly meetings with all the teams to track the status of the project with all the teams and study deviations if any.

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