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Turn-Around Strategy for Failing Division
The management task of turning around a failing division is not an easy feat. To grow a
business in normal conditions is hard enough but when faced with dated product lines and an
adversarial inter-departmental environment, makes it even more challenging. There are
numerous factors that directly affect the outcome of a business. However, an important element
to a turnaround strategy is a strong leader who can create an execution plan with action items,
clear expectations and definitive timeline. A leader who can effectively communicate with
everyone involved; manage the effect of the ensuing changes and measure the results (MacLeod,
2009).
As the new manager, in an effort to turn the failing division around, the first order of
priority is to change the organizational structure. To address outdated product lines, one must
assess the market and evaluate customer demands in order to consolidate product lines and
reduce the number of product offerings rationally. This will promote efficiency, allow the
division to be focused while meeting the demands of the current market and improve customer
service. Furthermore, to cut costs, support functions such as Finance, Information Technology
and Human Resources can be centralized to service the entire company and gain economies of
scale.
In order to improve inter-departmental communications, as the new manager, I would
establish the rules of engagement and process for communicating between teams and employees
for addressing issues. Then I would meet with the different teams and with each staff
individually to lay out the new process as well as my expectations regarding their behavior and
attitudes towards one other. I would establish an open door policy to promote more frequent
communications and to hedge-off potential problems before they become serious. One of a
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manager’s responsibilities is to listen to employee frustrations and determine the appropriate
course of action to come to a resolution.
Competition for internal resources can be addressed by establishing an enterprise-wide
policy for determining project priorities and resource allocations according to resulting profit
margins and return-on-investment. All request for resources have to be justified accordingly and
the allocation of internal resources will be made based on the merits of the project and its
justification. As a result of consolidating product groups, resource availability should increase,
thus competition for internal resources should decrease.
To manage the transition from the old organizational structure to the new, I will utilize
Project Management as a planning technique; create projects, assign team leads and establish
deadlines to give employees a greater sense of their roles and a definition of what they are
working towards in fulfilling them. A workforce with a clearly defined purpose will get much
more work done than a poorly defined one as it can focus on the task at hand rather than wasting
energy trying to figure it out alone (Lonegran, 2009).
The planning stage of project management requires the manager to assess the external
environment before creating project objectives, deliverables and timeline. Michael E. Porter
identified the five competitive forces that most commonly have the biggest effect in business
planning; competition, bargaining power of suppliers, the influence of customers, barriers to
enter the market and the threat of substitute products or services (Wylick, 2007). The team leads
will be required to assess these five competitive factors and the analysis will allow the division
managers make better decisions to integrate into the turn-around plan.
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Works Cited
Lonegran, K. (2009). Project Management. Retrieved February 24, 2010, from:
http://www.epmbook.com/projectmanagementoverview.html
MacLeod, Fiona. (2009). A Change Agent Sees Change ‘Addiction’. Retrieved on February 25,
2010 from: the Knowledge at Wharton Web site:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2280
Wylick, Vincent. (2007). Porter's 5 Forces - How They Work. Retrieved on February 25, 2010
from:
http://lh5.google.com/vincent.vanwylick/Rx8sydUk04I/AAAAAAAAAMM/koRN4F7a2
Ww/Porters_five_forces.PNG%3Fimgmax%3D800&imgrefurl=http://foodandretail.blog
spot.com/2007/10/porter-5-forces-how-they-work-3.html&usg