The project was comprised of five members who were focused on enhancing entrepreneurship and business management in Beaumont Leys, which is a suburb in Western Leicester. Cooke e-Learning foundation provides charity for promoting education and jobs in the community of UK. The study will deal with the fund raising activities of the group for completing the project. The five members were Ahsan Khan, Aditya Lolage, MeethalAkralFuad, PachatAswin and Riddhima Solanki. Ahsan Khan was the team leader, and his role was project planning and guiding the entire process into three stages. I 6was the fund raiser and concerned with identifying the suitable contributors and possible expense calculation. MeethalAkralFuad was the market analyzer and concerned with competitor analysis and developing statistics. PachatAswin was the marketing and promotion analyzer and concerned with communication strategies with the community. Riddhima Solanki was the requirement analyzer who was concerned with material, premise, labor, equipment and facility management.
Reflection on Overall Project
Beaumont Leys Project was actually intended for promoting internet and computer literacy skills, English and financial skills to the local community. Apart from that, the project was also designed for providing business management and entrepreneurship to the community. Moreover, the initiatives with Cooke e-learning foundation were thought to be quite successful for conducting this project. The project group of is collaborative in approach, where the group has collaboratively researched the market for analysing the scope of such educational projects. Collaboratively, the group has performed market research based on the theory of market analysis. Moreover, as a group, we have adopted porter’s five force theory for identifying the strength of the competitors in the market. This theory explores the level of competitive pressure in the marketing along with the threats and opportunities of the organization or any project (Achrol and Gundlach 2014). The analysis demonstrated that there are almost 10 vocational institutions in Leicestershire. Most of them were funded by Government for promoting educational projects in the community.
As an effective group, we have also adopted cooperative approaches, where we all have separate roles in getting success for the project. Through this approach, we have successfully analysed the requirements of the project and predicted the amount of funding required in this project. We have also applied the theory of porter generic strategy for making our project more competitive in the market. Generic theory suggests the way of creating competitive edge for a specific project (Jennings et al. 2017).
The sources of finding have been assumed like politician and ordinary citizen having good source of income. The politician would be perfect source of funding, as they are often interested to perform charity and social development for the sake of their positive image in the society. Moreover, some ordinary citizens may also be interested towards providing funding for such social causes. Their intension is to enhance the quality of the social life and making feel that they are also the part of social development.
Some new ideas have also been thought for attracting the sources of funding. The project team has tried to convince their Government bodies for contributing some form of resources for the completion of the project. They have also convinced the government bodies for taking a closer look on the situation of the community development. Apart from that, the project group has also decided to approach the celebrities for getting some fund towards contributing in this project. Such celebrities would also be interested to contribute in the project for sake of creating increasing popularity among the public.
One of the most important fund raising activities, which have been considered to perform, is campaign promotion. The project group has thought to conduct campaign for making the society aware of such project. In this way, the social awareness can enhance the potential for effective funding sources for the charity. Apart from that, the group has also made effective advertisement on the social sites by inviting the people to provide funding for this project. It will definitely attract all kinds of funding sources towards contributing in this project.
Behind the success of our huge fund rising, there was extensive influence of our promotional activities. We have successfully promoted our project over the social media platform, where the electronic word of mouth was extremely beneficial for attracting the contributors to contribute in the project. Apart from e-WOM, we have also promoted out projects through flyers, billboards, signpost and posters, which attracted students, teachers, community people and fund contributors towards involving and fostering the success of our project. Moreover, we have used effective tools for conducting out project an efficient manner. All these tools have assisted Beaumont Leys foundation towards providing high quality learning to the community people.
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Strength and Weakness of Project |
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Strength |
Weakness |
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Promotion of entrepreneurial culture through high quality entrepreneurial training Proper integration of local context with individual attention towards learners Promotion of personal development within the community Overall societal well being Quality education in reduces cost Proper collaboration of UK online towards improving digital skills of the citizens Improving financial management skills of the community people Large source of funding for the project |
Lack of enough resources in terms of books and proper capital Lack of adequate Government support Lack of high quality teachers Lack of support from citizen Lack of proper integration within project group |
Table 1: Strength and Weakness of the Project
(Source: Created by Author)
Role and Contribution in Project Team
I participated in the project of Beaumont Leys foundation as a project team member. Basically, my role was to communicate within the team for rising fund for the project. According to Fulkerson, Thompson and Thompson (2015), the role of project communicator is to prepare project communication plan. Likewise, I prepared the communication plan for the project stakeholders towards getting success of the project. Mir and Pinnington (2014) opined that project communicator is also responsible for drafting communication plan for keeping the project members intact with the progress of the project.
In the same way, I was also responsible for drafting flexible communication plan for making an alignment between the project stakeholders. Apart from internal communication, I was also responsible for communicating the external information to the project members. Moreover, I have contributed vital information regarding the funding sources to the project head and accountants. In this way, I was also able to maintain effective communication with the external stakeholders of the project. Apart from that, I have also maintained effective communication with the external stakeholders for enrolling their name in this project. I have contributed my innovative skills and knowledge for maintaining flexible communication in project and keeping integrity in the project progress.
I have effectively maintained the role of fund raising for the further success of the project in future. Moreover, in many extents, I have personally contacted with the funding bodies towards making them more interested in this project. However, I have faced huge problem for convincing the funding bodies for making charity for our project. It becomes quite tough for making them convinced for providing charities in this project. However, I have solved this issue through effective campaign program and proper discussions with the funding bodies. I have effectively analyzed the significance of such project towards community development. In this way, I have become able to convince the funding bodies towards providing charities.
According to Lo Coco et al. (2016), working relationship defined as the level of interaction of a project member with other members. It also defines the behavioural aspects of the project team members. On the other hand, Abu Bakar and Sheer (2013) opined that adequate level of cooperation in working relationship fosters high level of project success. Accordingly, I have worked collaboratively with other group members of the project. Moreover, in some cases, I have also considered their ideas and concepts for uniquely performing my roles in the project. In this way, I have maintained group collaboration within the group of the project.
On the other hand, I always have maintained accountability in communicating with other members of the project. Moreover, I have provided right information regarding the fund sourcing to the project members in right time. Apart from that, I also have maintained transparency in communicating vital information to the other project group members. Such working relationship has helped me to contribute in the success of the project. Furthermore, I have become able to build co-operative culture in the project, which helped in fostering helping manners of the project group towards each other. Such culture fosters a shared common purpose with the project, where every project members were highly involved in the success of the project.
At my University, I have effectively learnt about team building and team effectiveness. According to Hogan and Coote (2014), team culture in a project helps the project group to share their common views on the particular project. In this way, group culture can help in better facing the challenges and obstacles of the project with shared ideas for mitigating project challenges. In this way, I have applied this knowledge of team culture in my project and able to build effective team for the project.
Apart from that, I also applied my actionable intelligence for maintaining healthy relationship with the funding bodies. According to Nica (2013), actionable intelligence can be acted upon for the success of a project with its further implication. On the other hand, Glisson (2015) opined that actionable intelligence also boosts the organizational position on the top of the industry peers. In this way, I applied my actionable intelligence for presenting our educational project as the favor for societal wellbeing. In this way, it has attracted the funding bodies towards contributing fund for the success of the project. As per Büschgens, Bausch and Balkin (2013), innovation is an effective way of bringing uniqueness in the project and helps in competing with the market competitors. Hence, I have applied my innovative power for attracting the internal as well as external stakeholders for participating in our project.
Description of Decision Making Process
The entire project will be focused on raising funds for an entrepreneurship and business management course within the existing Cooke e-learning foundation, and for that the distinctive roles were divided among the members in our team. Our initial decision was to identify which member would be suitable for communicating with the community and raising funds through marketing strategies for accomplishing the project. On the other hand, other members are assigned for identifying the best marketing strategies and competitor evaluation. Transformational leadership style indicates such teamwork where both the leader and team members would work equally with motivation and enthusiasm to accomplish the objectives (Aktas, Gelfand and Hanges 2016). Same style will be followed in our project.
I will be assigned for raising funds and for that the decision would be to identify the feasibly and suitability of the project. The decision making process was divided into three stages and I was mo6stly active in stage two. In this stage, I was concerned with communication with community members, who would support funding and integration with project deliverables. I have to communicate mostly with the other members who were dealing with marketing strategy; as without marketing, the communities would not contribute funds to support our project. Transformational leadership style helps in smooth informal communication through both verbal and electronic media (Carter 2015), and the same is supposed to be followed in our team.
Critical Analysis of Stages in Process
According to Kloppenborg and Tesch (2015), a project must be segregated into stages, so that time bound deliverables are achieved. Same was followed in our team and those are below:
Figure 1: Stages in Decision Making Process
(Source: Created by Author)
Stage 1 was basically based on planning and for that the policies of Cooke are identified. However, I believe there are some flaws in planning due to inexperience among us which might result in poor fund raising and response from the community. In stage 2, it was mainly about marketing, communication, fund collection, competitor analysis, risk assessment and material handing requirement. However, our team lacked coordination, cooperation and communication gap in this stage. This resulted in poor word-of-mouth marketing as multiple ideas were shared in the community by different team members. Community was not perfectly directed about our core objectives and due to this until now we could not get enough support from ordinary citizen and local politicians, but got adequate support from teachers. Krishnan and Ahmed (2015) pointed out that for a teamwork groupthink, member participation and communication is extremely important. However, in our team proper planning was lacking and therefore optimal member participation was missing.
On the other hand, I must highlight that our team acquired enough knowledge about competitors, vocational education market analysis statistics in UK and the actual investment required for material and equipment. Also, we have good planning about the process and the consecutive steps that are to be followed once the plan is approved. However, due to lack of experience we faced ethical challenges and information accessibility from foundation’s representative.
Project Effectiveness
While considering the outcome, it must be highlighted that project is still under consideration and will actualized in future. Within this process, we might get success but this would be quite different from what we had proposed. The proposed and projected outcome may have differences considering the areas such as marketing, funding and citizen response. I believe that the number of student enrollment may be very less and less number of high quality teachers can be assigned at the initial stage. However, as highlighted by BBC News (2017), vocational education is getting good response from the past decade in UK, I assume that similar positive outcome can be achieved as even though the stakeholder involvement might be less still we can reach fifty percent of our proposed benefits.
Conclusion
While concluding the study, it can be said that the project of educational program for community development may quite successful. Moreover, Beaumont Leys foundation has successfully taken initiatives with Cooke e-learning foundation for effective completing the project. The project successfully developed the entrepreneurial skills and business management skills with the student of the community. However, the group of the project faced lack of proper funding bodies towards getting adequate funding for the project. I was in the role of communication with the project and maintained effective communication both with internal as well as external stakeholders of the project. I was responsible for communicating the information regarding the funding sources for the project. I have taken decisions for arranging proper fund raising bodies towards successful completion of the project.
Proper Funding Sources
One of the prime issues faced by this project is funding issue. The project was lacking adequate funding towards arranging all required tools for the success of the project. Hence, the project group should arrange proper source of funding for arranging all required materials for the project success. Apart from that, the project team should also maintain effective relationship with the Government. It can help the project team towards gett6ing adequate Government support for getting project success.
Proper Marketing Communication
It has been found that Beaumont Leys foundation has faced lack of student enrolment for adequate success of the project. This situation indicates that the project team was incapable of communicating the project properly to the community. Therefore, the project team should properly communicate the importance of the project towards societal wellbeing to the community people. Therefore, more and more students will be willing to enrol their names in this program for developing their entrepreneurial skills.
Hiring Skilled Teachers
The skill level of the teachers is highly important for getting the success of such educational project directed towards community development. However, this project has faced lack of highly skilled teachers towards providing high quality learning to the community people. It actually damaged the effectiveness of the overall project success. Hence, the project should look for highly skilled teachers, who will be able to provide high quality learning to the students enrolled in this program. Moreover, high quality learning towards developing entrepreneurial skills and digital skills of the community will definitely attract the students towards enrolling their name in the program.
Encouraging Community Development
In order to get success of such educational programs towards developing community, encouraging community development is high required. The project group should make the community aware of the benefits of the project. It will help in creating interest within the community people and sup66porting the project through rising funds for the project. It will also encourage the funding bodies towards making more charities for community development. Encouraging community development will also increase the numbers of students in the program and enhance the effectiveness of the project towards ultimate community development. Therefore, the project group should actively participate in encouraging community development.
Reference List
Abu Bakar, H. and Sheer, V.C., 2013. The mediating role of perceived cooperative communication in the relationship between interpersonal exchange relationships and perceived group cohesion. Management Communication Quarterly, 27(3), pp.443-465.
Achrol, R.S. and Gundlach, G.T., 2014. Network organization and systems competition: A marketing analysis. The Antitrust Bulletin, 59(4), pp.743-768.
Aktas, M., Gelfand, M.J. and Hanges, P.J., 2016. Cultural tightness–looseness and perceptions of effective leadership. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 47(2), pp.294-309.
BBC News. 2017. Vocational education’s global gap – BBC News. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-35061496 [Accessed 16 May 2017].
Büschgens, T., Bausch, A. and Balkin, D.B., 2013. Organizational Culture and Innovation: A Meta?Analytic Review. Journal of product innovation management, 30(4), pp.763-781.
Carter, R., 2015. The changing face of leadership: Connecting financial performance with effective leadership. Training & Development, 42(6), p.10.
Fulkerson, R.E., Thompson, R.L. and Thompson, E.H., 2015. Team Member Perceptions of Software Team Leader Communication Influencing Motivation for Achievement of Project Goals. Journal of Psychological Issues in Organizational Culture, 6(3), pp.24-39.
Glisson, C., 2015. The role of organizational culture and climate in innovation and effectiveness. Human Service Organizations: Management, Leadership & Governance, 39(4), pp.245-250.
Hogan, S.J. and Coote, L.V., 2014. Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: A test of Schein’s model. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), pp.1609-1621.
Jennings, D.F., Narayanan, A., Nepal, B. and Clark, N., 2017. On value activities and competitive advantage: an empirical study. International Journal of Business Excellence, 11(3), pp.320-343.
Kloppenborg, T.J. and Tesch, D., 2015. How executive sponsors influence project success. MIT Sloan Management Review, 56(3), p.27.
Krishnan, L. and Ahmed, A.A., 2015. Team Dynamics-an essential ingredient for Team Success. International Journal of Management, IT and Engineering, 5(7), pp.116-133.
Lo Coco, G., Gullo, S., Oieni, V., Giannone, F., Di Blasi, M. and Kivlighan Jr, D.M., 2016. The relationship between attachment dimensions and perceptions of group relationships over time: An actor–partner interdependence analysis. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 20(4), p.276.
Mir, F.A. and Pinnington, A.H., 2014. Exploring the value of project management: linking project management performance and project success. International Journal of Project Management, 32(2), pp.202-217.
Nica, E., 2013. Organizational culture in the public sector. Economics, Management, and Financial Markets, 8(2), pp.179-184.
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