1. Should Bison be taking a more hands-off or a more hands-on approach to the business Justify your response?
2. How far has the senior leadership change been effective What else might senior leadership do to influence change more positively in the near future?
3. To what extent has MeatPack’s flatter structure helped create cultural and performance change? Have there been any barriers to the cultural change?
1. Derek Bison is the founder and CEO of MeatPack, which is a food-processing business in Australia. MeatPack is a family-owned business and Derek Bison belongs to the fourth generation of his family. Bison is an ambitious person, who is actively involved in the development of leadership competencies of strategy team. Bison is very competitive and obsessive about the business and has been thriving energetically to bring out positive change in the culture of the company. Bison has made huge investment in the training and development of the employees, which has also yielded results by pushing the executive level employees towards the managerial level. The employees have also gained from the activity and have enhanced their overall skills and abilities. This hands-off approach is also called Laissez-faire or delegative leadership style (Pride, Hughes and Kapoor, 2009). In a delegative leadership style, leaders give the members liberty to make their own decisions without receiving any guidance from the top leaders (Northouse, 2014). The leaders are only responsible for facilitating the resources and equipments which are required in the process and the team members have to resolve their problems on their own. The followers have the complete authority to take decisions and are accounted for the consequences. In the present scenario, Bison also adopted the same approach wherein, he facilitated the training program for the employees without intriguing in the process. He has already made huge investment for conducting the training programs for employees. Delegative leadership style has been proved to be ineffective in the company and has been found to yield the lowest productivity among the team members and has also led to the investment of money, time, manpower and other resources of the company (Chaudhry and Javed, 2012).
On the other hand, hands-on approach is facilitates effective management wherein, leaders have complete involvement into the day to day operational activities and always strive to bring best from their employees. In this kind of management approach, leaders drive the workforce towards common goal and mission which yield better results by increasing the productivity of the team members.
Since, Bison has already experimented with the hand-off approach and it might have been proved to be successful for short term duration, but would not support the growth of the organization for longer duration (Gavriletea and Wague, 2014). Thus, in order to maintain the sustainability of the company, Bison needs to adopt a hands-on approach which would help him to understand the company and industry trends in a better way. Hands-on approach would develop trust and enthusiasm among the team members through continuous feedback process and engagement of the employees. This approach would lead to the development of new plans and approaches at the senior management level. After developing the layout of the plan, manager would need to give their efforts and time to implement the activities laid out in the plan.
Further, the approach would also build credibility of Bison among his team members because of his involvement in the decision making process and his concern with the final product of the company. In a hands-on approach, a company works in collaborative fashion demonstrating teamwork, which is directed towards common vision.
Thus, hands-on approach would help Bison to maintain his reputation among the senior strategy team members through the following ways:
Regain trust and re-build relationship: Bison needs re-establish his position in the firm to gain trust among the senior strategy members. He needs to take active participation in the business decision instead of just dumping the responsibilities on the training companies (Newman and Ober, 2016).
Sharing the Views and Opinions: Employees are always keen to know the thinking pattern of their leaders. Though Bison has been very active in his management approach, but he could still adopt more hands-on approach and influence the culture of the organization through his values and beliefs instead of facilitating the training courses for the employees.
Reconnecting with the Business: Instead of investing his time on facilitating training programs for the employees, he should engage himself more with the employees and clients to create bond with them (Llopis, 2012). Bison has got involved in the office politics which has distracted him from the company’s goals and objectives. He needs to understand that in order to maintain his reputation and position, he has to align himself with the company’s goals and objectives.
Innovation and Creativity: Innovation and creativity has become an integral ingredient for the sustenance of a company. Bison needs to look for opportunities to explore his creativity and extend his power and authority in the company. The leader of a company plays a very significant role in maintaining the sustainability in the changing global business context.
Drive Focus: Focus is the key ingredient for any successful organization (Gilbert, 2007). The employees have become distracted because of so many ongoing activities within the company. Bison needs to take control of his authority to drive focus within the environment of the company.
2. Bison has adopted a hands-off approach in the process of senior leadership management by facilitating the training program for the team. Bison prefers a hands-on approach of intervening, but has struggled with himself to stay away from the team to incorporate hands-off approach. Bison has also realized the scope for improvement with the organizational cultural values for the growth of the company. He has also assessed the need for a more horizontal culture which would empower the employees with authority and accountability. The employees have become more open and can now raise their queries and concern with the Bison. In spite of Bison’s consistent efforts, the company has lost some of its influential leaders, which has incurred huge losses for the company. This has triggered the need for structural change within the company and the senior strategy team looks forward to remove the Bison from the CEO position to hand over the responsibility to COO of the company. This has shocked Bison and shattered his aspiration to move from CEO to executive chairman in the next ten years.
The decision of senior strategy team is correct from their behalf as they are concerned about the growth of the company and have strategically devised this decision as a plan to succeed. The decision would demoralize Bison by depriving him of his current position and handing the responsibility to the COO of the company. Bison has made consistent efforts to contribute towards the growth of the company. He has taken initiative to bring about cultural changes in the organization so that people become more flexible and open to new ideas. Though Bison’s efforts did not bring the desired results, yet it did enhance the skills and abilities of the employees through extensive training program and the employees have become more focused towards the company’s goals and objectives.
Looking at the situation from another perspective, Bison has wasted company’s resources for nothing. He has invested ample amount of money, manpower, time and other resources of the company without giving any results. MeatPack has to achieve the target of 1 billion dollar by the year 2020 which seems difficult under the leadership of Bison. Apart from this, many influential senior leaders have left the company under the leadership of Bison because of their conflicting personalities. The company has lost some its clients under the leadership of Bison.
There is a dilemma in the situation and the CFO is unable to understand whether, the board of directors should hold the senior strategy team more responsible or the CEO.
The senior leadership changes have created a chaos within the company and all the leaders are having arguments regarding who would be the CEO. The structural changes have created a very complicated situation which would cost time and money to the company. Asking a CEO to step down from his position is a very huge step for a company and needs to be taken very wisely.
From the case study, this can be analyzed that there was a need to bring the change within the company’s senior management structure. The structural changes would bring the following changes in the company:
Efficiency and Productivity: A company’s structure is responsible for the productivity of the operational processes (Andersson and Zbirenko, 2014). Senior management plays significant role in affecting the communication strategy of the company and communication affects the pace at which activities work within the organization. Changing the structure of the senior management would affect the communication strategy of MeatPack, which would affect the efficiency and overall productivity of the company. The employees would have to go through several changes because of the new structure. The employees would now be more efficient which would increase their overall productivity.
Innovation: A company’s structure has great affect on the idea generation and its implementation within the company (Agbim, 2013). New ideas lead to innovation which is the key ingredient for the sustainability of the company. MeatPacks’s structural changes in the senior management may also encourage the employees to come up with new ideas.
Though there are chances that the structural changes may have positive impact on the organizational culture of the company, there are greater chances of hampering the organizational culture of the company.
Changes in senior management questions the credibility of the company and employees begun to think that the senior management is unable to manage the company’s operations effectively. The employees would become insecure in terms of their own positions in the company after realizing that the CEO of the company has been asked to step down. This would bring down the morale of the employees which would affect the overall productivity of the company.
Recommendations: Teamwork through effective communication
In future, the company needs to adopt more holistic approach to implement change effectively in the organization. CEO and the team must work collaboratively to bring out the effective changes within the company instead of misbalancing the effectiveness of the organization.
The senior leaders should rather focus on extending teamwork through effective communication in the workplace. Their focus should be creating positive environment within the company which is necessary for the birth of innovative ideas (Hao and Yazdanifard, 2015). Thus, the focus of the team should be on improving the productivity of employees which could be achieved through different ways.
Lead with Culture: In order to implement any change within an organization, leaders must lead with the culture. According to the Katzenbach survey, 84 percent of the people considered change as a critical tool to bring change management within an organization. The senior management of MeatPack must also consider this in mind while taking future decisions.
Beginning from the Top: The next thing that the senior management needs to consider while taking a decision is that it must first discuss the change within the top management first and then bring it down to the lower level (Schermerhorn, Osborn, Bien and Hunt, 2011).
Involving every layer: Senior management must try to include every layer of the organization to ensure that the change is being implemented in the correct fashion.
Make the rational and emotional case together: The new change must blend with the values and beliefs of the people so that they also feel that they are also a part of it (Nelson and Quick, 2013).
Creative and Innovative: The change must ensure that it brings out the creativity and innovation within the company. The change must foster innovative ideas by encouraging employees to participate in the meetings and discussion and share their views and opinions. Innovation is the key ingredient to establish sustainability on the organization.
Engagement: Any new change implementation requires strong communication to communicate it to the employees (McCalman, Paton and Siebert, 2015). MeatPack must ensure that it thrives towards long term change through strategic planning.
Leading outside the lines: In order to bring effective change, an organization need to lead outside the side lines (Reiss, 2012). MeatPack should identify the people who are great motivators and have stayed with the company for a long period of time to include them in the discussion. These kind of people are pride builders, trusted nodes and culture ambassadors.
Leveraging formal solution: Last but not the least, the company must also adopt leveraging solution to bring effective change (Finch, 2011).
3. Meatpack has consistently focused on improving its organization culture and introduction of ERP was one such thing. The company’s flatter structure has supported to improve the company’s cultural values by empowering the employees to take more responsibility and accountability. This has resulted in increased productivity of the employees. Further, the extensive training programs conducted by Bison have also given an opportunity to the employees to enhance their skills and abilities. The employees have also appreciated the training program and have gained new insights from it. Further, employee empowerment has also given room for discussion of the problems and working on the solution. The managers not just manage their teams rather lead their teams. Thus, the overall development has led to firmly establish trust among the employees and created very healthy environment within the company.
MeatPack’s flatter culture has helped to establish strong communication within the organization and employees can easily share their problems with their managers or leaders, which has helped to maintain healthy environment. New changes are implemented quickly within the company such as ERP implementation was quickly enabled by Bison. Bison has encouraged the managers to lead instead of just managing. Further, the company has also been able to retain its employee in an industry where employees find it difficult to stay committed to a company. The company also does not face any cross-cultural clashes in spite of having diverse workforce. The employees have also gained from the growth opportunities provided by the company and the employee who joined as an accountant has become CFO of the company.
Thus, the flatter structure of the organization has been very supportive for implementing the cultural changes in the company because of strong communication within the company. The mutual trust among the employees helps to implement the changes quickly because they are of the view that any change would be introduced with the best intention and would be in the favor of the employees.
Bison has always acted with the best intention for the company but has overlooked the fact that conducting training programs becomes a costly affair for the company. MeatPack’s flatter structure has acted as an obstacle in the growth and development of the company (Giang, 2015).
Further, there is another concern regarding the shift of the employee which affected the priorities of the shift and the employees are expected to improve their performance.
References
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