ORGANIZATIONS FAILED IN RUNNING THEIR SYSTEM - A CASE STUDY

Maintaining a start-up after going through an incredible development in the 1st stage is a huge problem. Even the most talented and famous executives cannot assure that their seat could stay at where it is or their company could avoid bankruptcy.

Steve Jobs–a well-known CEO of Apple Inc. once got fired by his own company in 1985 and it took him exactly 10 years to take back his position.

Right here in Vietnam, it’s Dao Chi Anh’s failure with here startup brand–the KAfe even though this food and beverage company had received $5.5 million fundraising.

Two essential factors which help companies stay healthy is that the system works smoothly, without overloading, procrastination; teams and departments collaborate effectively, closely with each other. These two elements sound easy, nevertheless, fostering an engaging company culture along with carrying out good business results is tough. Goalify will show you a case of running a business the case below will illustrate one of the worst ways to operate your business.

1. Lam’s case study

A friend of mine, let say his name is Lam. Lam works as a finance officer in one of the biggest food and beverage company in Vietnam. In the latest visit, just as we sat down, he started to complain about his job continuously. The first problem is that sometimes he has too much to do, but sometimes there is nothing to bat an eye. Thus, as a finance officer, he has to collect a lot of signatures from high position staff. However, he has no choice but to wait about 3 or 4 days to gain the approval. Each document requires 3 to 4 signatures, and it means you need half a month to complete the paper. Furthermore, most of the time, working processes of departments and teams are not the same, the issue may cause argument. This guy Lam, as a result, becomes the in between and the one who takes all the blame. But is it this employee who suffered the most in this case? Of course… it’s not! For many reasons the company and its executives are affected the most:

• Time-consuming makes productivity decreased.
• Staffs get stressful.
• Negative arguments and competitions happen.

Image: Alium.

This causes unengaged and workplace, unfair and your employees may even leave their position for this reason.

2. Main reasons

Many organizations, no matter how big or small are still bearing redundant, cloudiness, clumsiness method of management. The consequence is easy to see, their products and services are still making money but the revenue is not as high as expected. Due to losing capital to system operation. So here are some reasons explaining why your company is working ineffectively

a. Poor communication

If the manager is not able to fulfill their responsibility via communication, then firstly, information will be stuck, the workload will not be divided equally as I’ve mentioned above. Secondly, organizations cannot work agilely if its communication stream is broken meanwhile, an agile organizational structure is a golden goal which every company trying to be to develop its system easily catching up business trends, expanding and also staying balanced.

b. Lack of good management strategy

Lack of communication does not only produce negative effects inside the company but also could become a factor which helps customer lower the price, putting more conditions on the contract, etc. when information of the working process is not transferred well.

Another side-effect created when information flow got issues is that employees, employers get unengaged because of wrong information, fake news, rumor, the turnover rate may increase, put a thread on company financial plan (find out more here).

Not everyone could draw out best management strategy for their organization but if a company want to move forward, they have to plan its steps for a long time. Once you – the leader – cannot plan its vision for the organization or other strategies like sales, marketing, recruitment, etc.

• Controlling resources is difficult. You may go short of resources (capital, people, etc.) if you have no backup plan to cover.
• The working process of one department is duplicate with others.
• Employees cannot exploit the best of them (this is like a pain in the neck of all most all companies, putting a lot of affords on their products and services, however, it just brings a small amount of revenue back to the organization).
• Organizations meet difficulties in defining their vision, missions and core values via management strategies due to poor company culture.

Image: My Customer.

Management strategies also increase the level of transparency and synchronize working processes of teams and departments, prevent the risk of internal conflicts, etc.

c. No common goals for the whole organization

Objectives and key results play a big role to adjust and assign work for each and every department as well as individual. Teams are able to access their mission thanks to the cascade model of OKRs. Based on S.M.A.R.T, people know what to do, how much time they have to finish the task, how to deal with issues arising amid the working process.

Furthermore, units which are lack of common goals work by themselves, do not engage with other teams, or other people. Though they all act as a team, their workflows go uncertain and are not linked. As a consequence, papers, documents, etc. require up to half a month to process and carry out.

Besides, setting objectives creates better concentration for the employee since they already have a plan including steps to follow in a suitable time-bound.

3. Solutions

You can estimate the system condition according to its statistics and reports.

If the condition is getting serious, you may need an organizational change asap. Our suggestion is to leave your old management method behind and adopt new ones like OKR, MOB, KPI which are used by many industry-leading companies such as Google, Intel, LinkedIn, etc. However, before working on a re-organizational process, you need some stepping stones to soothe the pain resulted from the previous move:

• Develop an engaging, effective and easy-to-use communication method: interactive, idea-exchanging, including two-way feedback from employers and even employees. The new concept of communication allows information transmitted from-top-to-toe of the organization. Slack, Goalify, Skype are some of the best communication apps for offices.
• Establish common goals based on core values, vision, missions of the company, the trend of business, etc. for its system. Objective-setting requires not only planning tools but also your human resources, employees need to acknowledge what they have to focus on.
• After the first 2 steps, managers must design detail strategies, plans, draw out synchronized processes, maintain suitable workloads. The G-suite of intelligent apps will assist you here, you can build an internal software to solve the problem (setting goals, assigning, aligning, and tracking them), or you may rely on third-party SaaS company like Goalify.

Image: Upraise.

One last recommendation, don’t be like Lam’s company. Factors that influence the stability of a company may be its leaders, they must own a mind full of strategic vision, know what they are doing and are able to plan a proper path of development for the company. Nevertheless, forming a healthy system of the company depends on organization’s human resources and tools to reduce the complication of company’s working processes consisting of crystal-clear purposes, and interactive communication stream too.