C200 - Task2 Resubmitted Revision (Management Analysis (05-17-21) Final Drft PDF

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Organizational and Leadership Analysis Robert W. Buchanan Jr., BSBA College of Business, Western Governor’s University C200 – Managing Organizational and Leading People Dr. Vincent Franklin MAY 10, 2021

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Table of Contents Organization Description…………………………………………......…………………………3-4 Leadership Practices…...…………..…….………………………………………………………..5 Effects of Current Leader on Culture…………………………………………………………...6-7 SWOT Analysis………..………………………………………………………………………7-10 Transactional Leadership Evaluation ……….…………………………................................10-14 References/ Cited Sources……………………………………………………………………15-16

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Organization Description

THE ORGANIZATION – HISTORY

Monro Inc., has historically provided services in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, New England regions, Southeast, Louisiana, California and as of November of 2019, Monro has been providing automotive services for consumes in the Nevada region. Monro, is an automotive repair center, that went public in 1991, and to date the company is displaying exponential growth all over the US.

THE ORGANIZATIONS – BACKGROUND

Monro Inc. is a leading and independently owned and operated automotive and tire service provider. The company operates more than 1,264 stores – automotive centers nation-wide and is headquartered in Rochester, NY – United States. The company was founded in the 1960’s and went public in 1991. Monro specializes in all automotive repairs, both as a consumer service provider as well as a fleet and commercial vehicle servicer.

THE ORGANIZATIONS – VISION

Monro’s vision as an organization is to be America’s leading automotive repair and tire service centers in the automotive industry. Their vision as a company is to also be the number one recommended and trusted automotive centers in the eyes of all automotive consumers, as well as the best place in their neighborhood’s for quality automotive service and tires.

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THE ORGANIZATIONS – MISSION

Monro’s mission as an organization is to encourage the vision and insight of all of its companies' leaders, so that they may shape a better future. Their mission is to do this through team collaboration, integrity, ownership at every level in the company and through being a steward of their employees and capital.

THE ORGANIZATIONS – PURPOSE

The purpose of Monro is that they want to become that household name, the one household name that when it comes to consumers needing or requiring automotive repairs. Monro other purpose is to increase shareholder’s earning’s quarterly and positively impacting the organization’s neighboring communities.

THE ORGANIZATIONS – OBJECTIVE

The organizations objective is to develop a long-term strategy in order to build a scalable platform capable of driving Monro’s sustainable future growth, in decades to come. This platform is being referenced as “Monro’s Forward Strategy,” and centers around the company’s four key pillars, to improve their guest experience, optimize products’ and service offerings, accelerate the productivity and team engagement with all employees and lastly, to enhance customer centric engagement.

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Leadership Practices

The first leadership practice my District manager Shane Ely demonstrates as one of his routinely and daily practices is, that every morning Mr. Ely will call for prior days “KPI Number’s (“Key Performance Indicator’s”). In collaboration with each on-site General manager, these number’s that are collected must be completed by six-thirty am. and gives Shane an indication of how each General manager lead his or her team of employees toward that particular location’s organizational goals for each business day. This could also be seen as leader accountability. The second leadership practice my District manager Shane Ely demonstrates as routinely and daily practices is that every morning Mr. Shane Ely will then ask for all service managers to produce and send him that locations “Yelp and Google review score’s. Which may be looked upon as the location’s way of community networking. These scores give the district manager a pulse on the surrounding communities consumer experiences at store level. The third and last leadership practice that my district manager Mr. Ely demonstrates is that he leads daily district strategy meetings via conference call for all district locations, these meeting’s will generally include himself, both assistant district manager’s and regional manager Tim Gould. The expectation of this strategy meeting is to ensure that general managers are leading as per corporate expectations, policy and procedural practices. That any and all information corporate wide is being translated and communicated to all employees, from senior management down.

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Effects of Current Leader on Culture The first example of the affect that District manager Shane Ely has had on the culture of the people who works under him in the organization, has been negative. This is due to his transactional style of leadership. In 1974 R.M. Stogdill identified a list of the ten best traits and skills that effective leaders possess. The list also includes the leadership style that he uses in order to lead and encourage, not to mention how he was able to get more productivity out of his employees at all levels of management (R.M. Stogdill, 1974). For the sake of my giving a negative example, the author’s intentions were to demonstrate the positives of these best trait’s. Mr. Ely leads his team by way of transactional leadership style, but if we were to look at the ten positive leadership traits, certainly in my opinion Mr. Ely possess only two out of the ten and only in a negative manner. Let’s began with my first observation, the ability to influence other persons behavior. Mr. Ely influences by way of not using the desired modeling behavior model that is mentioned by the author. Mr. Ely leads by division and the categorizing of classes (location’s in his district that are doing well, verses those that are doing poor). According to the author, leaders are to lead by example in a manner where modeling desired behavior serves as exemplars to clearly communicate what he or she expects from employees to increase the levels of those behavior’s among followers (Brown & White, 2009, p. 126)., where a leader’s behavior and actions are consistent with his or her belief appraisals (Emiliani, 2003).

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My second and final example of why I feel that the District manager does not have a positive effect on the people that work under him. Depending on the political realm and category that you may or may not fall into, in regard to your belief system and moral compass. All of these things will determine the type of leadership style that Mr. Ely will decide on whether or not a particular system is appropriate to use when having a dialog with a particular manager. Mr. Ely has demonstrated three such styles of leadership, Management by Exception (Passive). Management – by - Exception (Passive), is the style of transactional Leadership in which the leader purposely will avoid specifying an agreement with a particular employee and fail to provide organizational goals and standards to be achieved by the employee. The author states that because of this, sometimes a leader will wait for an issue to arise before taking action (damage-control), (Bass & Avolio, 2004).

SWOT Analysis

S – STRENGTH’S (Internal-Aware)

Internal strengths that are being demonstrated by the organization that the higher-ups are aware of, is that there are many other automotive repair facilities in the surrounding community, excluding car dealerships. Monro takes pride in being able to provide pick-up and drop off service to their customer’s. Most of Monro’s client base are the elderly, single working individuals and single car families. I believe that by Monro being able to provide these kinds of services for their customers is one of many reasons that as an organization that they are doing so well.

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Another great strength of Monro is that as an organization they also accepts and honors group-on discount’s, competitor coupon discount’s and has developed great relationships with what most would consider competitor automotive shops. They have done this through their weekly competitors in-house market visit’s where the service manager will visit any and all competitors in the neighboring areas to see if there are any services that their competitors are not able to provide to their existing customer’s that we may be able to provide through are shops at a commercial discounted price for the competitor. For example, four-wheel alignments, Uber and Lyft vehicle inspection certificates, air conditioning, all vehicle fluid exchanges etc. The few services that I just mentioned, require specific machines in order to perform these services, which also requires special licensing as well as very costly fees in order to operate. Due to the exuberant cost associated with using these machines, most automotive facilities may not be able to provide these kinds of services to their client’s. W – WEAKNESSES (Internal-Aware). Internal weaknesses that are being demonstrated by the organization that corporate management is aware of are Monro’s training processes. Monro has yet to implement a standardized hiring process that requires all automotive technicians to complete some if not all of the necessary “Automotive Service Excellence (ASE)” certifications in the areas in which the technician is to be specialized in. It is required in most states that a technician must be certified or qualified in the repairs that are being performed. These rules and regulations are governed by a government agency known to those in the automotive industry as “Motorist Assurance Program,” which is a national automotive industry initiative built on quality vehicle inspections, repairs and maintenance standards in the U. S.

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The second and final current organizational weakness that I will discuss is the way that Monro determines how a general manager will hit his or her monthly bonuses. The organizations bonus structure is based off of that general managers profit and losses for the month. The numbers that determine the stores profit and loss categories are given to the areas district manager, and then those numbers are distributed throughout the entire district to each of Monro’s locations. The reason that I am mentioning this as one of Monro’s weaknesses is because I have received monthly numbers from the district manager that were contradictory to the numbers given to the district manager on several occasions within the four-year span that I was employed with monro. Because there is very little policing where the district manager is concerned. When I complained, my district manager gave me an excuse as to the reason this had happened. Mr. Ely proceeded to gone on to say that this was his way to motivate his general manager’s in exceeding monthly year-to-date numbers. O – OPPORTUNITIES (External-Unresolved). Monro’s external opportunities that are apparent, and the organization has not benefitted by nor resolved would be the way in which they market the monro brand in neighboring communities. This would definitely triple Monro's customer count in each of their location’s. In the Las Vegas Market as an ex-general manager, the resources that are being used for marketing are mailers and news paper adds. Very little of the resources used go toward television adds on the west coast, nor do they use or have in place marketing strategies in are communities to let the consumer know that there is an automotive center nearby. This strategy makes it almost impossible for a general manager to drive their business in the surrounding and neighboring communities.

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Another missed opportunity is all of the commercial account’s that are not being pursued, such as car rental and government agencies. All of which has a great demand in getting their vehicles serviced by someone other than the car dealership. Lastly, providing the installation of customer purchased parts, and providing a labor warranty with the installed parts, rather than declining to provide any services at all.

T – THREAT’S (External-Unresolved). The organizations first external threat that I will discuss is the mobile repair age has come upon us and most likely here to stay. These small mobile repair companies are beginning to demonstrate the potential to produce more revenue, than a lot of the smaller automotive shops in the Las Vegas market, despite the overwhelming saturation of automotive repair facilities in Clark County alone. The second and final organizational threat externally are the car dealership’s combined with all neighboring automotive small businesses, the do-it-yourself consumer by way of online ordering of parts and being installed by the consumer at a lower cost. More prominently, the mobile repair companies that will come to you whether it be by the request of a consumer or by word-of-mouth referral. Transactional Leadership Evaluation

In this section, I will discuss the leadership theory that I selected for my ex-employer and district manager Shane Ely based on my opinion and observations in the way that he led manager’s in his leadership role as a district manager. As a transactional leader it is said that this

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kind of leadership style comprises three components. The first component that will be discussed is contingent reward, in which the author states that contingent rewards provides rewards for an employee’s effort and recognizes good performance (Odumeru & Ifeanyi, 2013, p. 359). The first non-attribute weakness of Mr. Ely that I will discuss, is that he uses contingent rewards as a contingency of quid pro quo rather than as a recognition of good performance. Performance rewards are used for a way to aid leaders in providing positive feedback and dialog in response to collective and individual accomplishments where contingent rewards provide rewards for an individual’s effort while at the same time recognizing great performance (Odumeru & Ifeanyi, 2013, p. 359). My first recommendation on how Mr. Ely may improve upon his leadership effectiveness. Mr. Ely can do so by re-tooling his ideals of what the purpose and true intentions of contingent rewards are, by using the method correctly and as it was intended as stated by the author, (Odumeru & Ifeanyi, 2013, p. 359). The first strength that I will discuss is that Mr. Ely is very knowledgeable when referencing the automotive industry. He has many years of experience as a mechanic and then later in his life he attended trade school so that he may become a licensed and ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) master technician. There’s not much that Mr. Ely does not know about vehicles old or modern. This aligns with transactional theory on the basis, of the authors theory that transactional leaders believe in contractual agreements as principal motivators and use extrinsic rewards systems in order to enhance and motivate and get employees to follow them (Bass & Avolio, 2004).

A second observation and leadership style that is practiced by Mr. Ely’s that is negative in nature and has had a great impact on the organization and those that work under his charge. Is his practice of management-by-exception, this particular style is considered to be an active

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component. This component has been observed by me and other co-workers as a second weakness that has been demonstrated in yet another leadership style of Mr. Ely’s. The author states that leaders who follow this component of management by exception - active have an inherent trust in their employees to follow instructions and complete any given task that has been assigned. Management at the store level is responsible for getting the task completed to a satisfactorily standard, while the leader leaves the ending results of the hands of lower management without any challenge in order to avoid rippling the waters. Management-byexception (active) style of leadership does not inspire nor encourage employees to achieve beyond a leader’s expectations (Bass & Avolio, 2004). My second recommendation on how Mr. Ely may improve upon his leadership effectiveness, would be as a leader you must always inspect what you expect from your employees. Most importantly, when you assign task’s to be completed by management and staff members, it is always suggested that leader’s and managers should follow-up with supervisor’s and employees assigned the task periodically and hold everyone involved accountable. Mr. Ely has a tendency of passing task’s on to employees that he may find less desirable. As a second strength, Mr. Ely demonstrates the capacity and strangely, the patience in most situations to be a person of great teaching abilities. This is due to Mr. Ely’s vast knowledge in most areas of the automotive industry. This aligns with transactional theory on the basis that, poor communication, maintenance of the status quo, and lack of confidence (Bass 1985; 1990; 2000; 2008; Burns, 1978). The transactional leadership style comprises of three components - contingent reward, management-by-exception (active) and management-byexception (passive) (Bass & Avolio, 2004).

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(3rd) My last and final analytic observation of Mr. Ely as a leader will be another component of transactional leadership style, management-by-exception (passive). This style of transactional Leadership in which leaders makes it a point in the avoidance and specifying of agreements that are made between the leader and the employee. In this leadership style, the leader will purposely fail in providing his or her expectations, goals and standards to be achieved by employees at all levels. Sometimes, a leader waits for things to go wrong before taking action (Bass & Avolio, 2004). My third and final weakness that I observed in Mr. Ely’s transactional leadership style is one he has trouble being consistence with the disciplining of his team across the board. Two, Mr. Ely is inconsistent and very vague in his explanation of task’s assigned to each location. As a general manager, I would spend all day on the phone having task’s and other important information that would seem to be vital for a district manager, so that he may pass it on to his team. My third and final recommendations on how Mr. Ely may improve upon his leadership effectiveness. Would be to learn to be consistent across the board with all manager’s, and not to display his preferences of specific managers in his district that are not performance based. People should be rewarded on their own merit, and not because of the personal time and friendships that he has invested in these individual’s. It is suggested that leaders not lead nor manage their people passively or take the lazair-faire approach when leading. Lastly, my third and final strength that I observed while being employed by Mr. Ely is that he has acquired great customer service skills and techniques on how to resolve and de-escalate problems. I believe that this is also due to his many years of experience in the automotive retail industry. Mr. Ely demonstrates many attributes at both, organizational and store level. My additional recommendation would be that Mr. Ely’s immediate supervisor at the corporate level implement training for all upper and middle

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management in order to help train them on how to be better leaders. This also aligns with transactional th...