Celeritas Inc. Leadership Challenges Assignment - Leadership Challenges in a Fast-Growth Industry PDF

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Celeritas Inc. Leadership Challenges - Leadership Challenges in a Fast-Growth Industry....

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Celeritas, Inc.: Leadership Challenges in a Fast-Growth Industry (A)

Celeritas, Inc

1. Celeriatas, Inc. is a leading Technology Organisation, especially in Wide Area Network (WAN) Acceleration. 2. Celeritas had quickly established a reputation for quality and innovation, often being the first to market with product enhancements and new solutions. 3. Annual revenue more than doubled each year until 2008, when growth slowed to 40%. Since then, annual growth had remained above 20% and currently to 17% in 2011. 4. Several competitors had seen better growth during the past few years, threatening Celeritas’s position as a top player. 5. From being the first to market with product enhancements and new solutions to be the last of the six largest industry players to launch products to enhance the new cloud computing technologies added to the negative outlook of Celeritas, Inc. 6. Following are a few problems currently Celeritas, Inc: (a) Slow Growth of Market (b) Declining Market Shares (c) Delayed transition to Cloud Technologies (d) Lack of Coordination 7. The help of External Experts was considered in 2009 for Organisational Effectiveness but failed. 8. Similar help is being considered again in 2011 from Carla Reese an external expert. Steps taken by Carla Reese for better organizational effectiveness are (a) Interviews with SVP’s of the company (b) 2 days Executive offsite with CEO and 5 SVP’s. (c) Followed by a meeting with 21 VP’s

9. Results of the steps taken by Carla Reese after 6 Weeks. (a) Further decrease in Revenue of the Company (b) SVP of the Sale and Marketing Mr.Dave Lloyd is terminated from employment.

(B)

Major problems in the Company as listed by Carla Reese 1. 2. 3. 4.

Lack of trust and communication among senior executives Inconsistent decision making and follow-through Confusion about company goals and priorities Poor coordination among business functions and units

1. Lack of trust and communication among senior executives: (a) SVP’s and Vp’s have problems with the leadership style of Mr. Boyer (CEO) which is more of a Hierarchy Management in nature. (b) There is mistrust amongst the various divisions of the organization. Instead of extending cooperation and support, the divisional heads blame each other for the failure and missing the targets. (c) CEO Mr. Boyer takes his own decisions which represent his mistrust in the abilities of the SVP’s, especially in Decision Making.

Possible Solutions: (a) CEO Mr. Boyer must trust and exhibit his confidence in the employees of the organization. (b) Mr. Boyer can implement an open-door policy where every employee's feedback/ideas are welcome. (c) Establishing trust among the employees helps in increased loyalty of employees as well as encourage them to collaborate and work in unity.

2. Inconsistent decision making and follow-through: (a) Most of the decisions are taken by the CEO Boyer and there are many instances where such decisions are revoked at a later stage.

(b) Weekly Executive Team Meetings with the SVP’s aren’t properly planned to discuss corporate goals and strategies but to discuss only administrative matters.

Possible Solutions: (a) Unlike the past where 3 co-founders would take a decision and next level management carrying out such decisions, Mr. Boyer has to include the next level management in the strategic decision-making process. He must form a strong team of individuals (Co-CEO’s) to aid him in such strategic decision making. (b) Bottom-up Decision-making procedure can be implicated in the organization which can help in making an inclusive decision without going through the trouble of revoking the decisions at a later stage. (c) A leader must act as a role model to the employees especially at times of change. Thus he must change his attitude towards the leadership of the company.

3. Confusion about company goals and priorities: (a) There is a clear lack of Corporate Goals and Strategy which generally unite various divisions of the company to work towards a common goal. (b) Divisional goals do not adequately align with Celerita’s corporate vision and goals resulting in fragmented development without a clear route map. (c) No proper communication with the employees regarding top management goals and direction to achieve such goals confusing the employees.

Possible Solutions: (a) A proper Corporate Vision, Mission, and Goals of the company must be formulated inclusive of the goals of all the divisions and incorporating the input of all the employees. (b) Monday Executive meetings with SVP’s can be utilized for such strategic planning and decision making. (c) Another weekly meeting with other VP’s and executives can be scheduled for considering their input and proper communication of strategic decisions and proper direction to implement such decisions.

(d) Top management can use the internet to properly communicate with all the divisional employees regarding the vision and objectives of the Company.

4. Poor coordination among business functions and units: (a) There is No or rare cross-divisional interaction and collaboration for a project. (b) People are better identified with the division they work rather than to the Organisation as a whole. (c) Lack of communication amongst the divisions when accepting an order or deadline, etc which results in a missed deadline and customer dissatisfaction. (d) Most of the employees are technical-oriented and not customer-oriented resulting in a clash of ideology as well as collaboration failure.

Possible Solutions: (a) Top-level Management must encourage its employees to collaborate and work together to achieve organizational goals. (b) As in the case of a 2-day executive off-site where an informal meeting has yielded in the better relationship among the SVP’s compared to formal meetings. Such informal gatherings must be organized frequently by the company to promote harmony and build trust among the employees of all the divisions. (c) Group and team-building training activities across all the divisions must be organized by the company at least on a semi-annual basis. (d) Employee involvement must be adequately rewarded to encourage other employees. There are a few other minor problems such as high employee turnover which can also be solved by the above-mentioned solutions such as creating value for the employees by involving them in the decision-making process, improving trust amongst each other and on top management which would, in turn, result in the loyalty of the employees. To summarize, Celeritas, Inc. must implement a change of culture at the organization level to improve the performance of the company. As a leader is supposed to be a role model for the employees of the organization, Mr. Boyer must start such a change of

culture from him in regards to his leadership style. The Hierarchy Management system must be replaced by the Flat Management system. Bottom-up decision making should become the standard decision making procedure. In general, Organizational change is resisted by the employees. But top management must find ways to reduce such resistance to implement such change in the organizational culture. (1) Top Management must properly communicate the need and urgency of the change to all the employees. (2) Any change without the inclusion of all the employees is expected to fail. Thus management can start the “Organizational Development” change process to reduce the resistance from the employees as well as gather the inputs for the change and take help of the employees in designing such change culture. (3) The organization must adopt a Shared Vision approach instead of a Vision shared approach while communicating the Vision and goals of the organization. (4) Reinforce the new ways of change by rewarding the employees who actively adapt to the changing culture to encourage other employees and be very critical with the employees who actively oppose such change. (5) Aim for attainable short term accomplishments and all the while monitor and assess the progress of the change process. To get his senior team back on track toward growing sales and increasing market share, Mr. Boyer must make sure that the Culture change process is carried out successfully. As the new culture encourages the collaboration of work among the divisions, proper communication amongst the divisions can help improve the sales as well as the market share of the company. For example, in the new culture employees in the marketing division would communicate with the operating and Engineering divisions before accepting the rigid deadlines from the costumes which would, in turn, result in meeting the client expectations untimely changes in the production schedules.

Organizational Culture Change is not an easy process and takes a certain time to settle in the Newly changed culture. Immediate short-term results cannot be expected from such a change procedure. Management must be patient and resilient with the process of change. Management must keep Reese on to help salvage the process of change despite negative results in the short-term to attain the long-term objectives of the company.

Question 2. How effective was the team-building effort at Celeritas? What worked well? What didn’t work? Ans. Team Building efforts at Celeritas are not up to the mark as there exist high resistance and skepticism from VP’s to such efforts. Efforts to develop teamwork and increase organizational efficiency started in 2009, as CEO Mr. Boyer has worked with an expert to make necessary changes but nothing has come of it. Boyer believed that his executive team never took the consultant’s work seriously, and had resisted implementing any changes. Mr. Boyer has appointed Carla Reese, to try to build teamwork and enhance the effectiveness of the organization. Efforts that worked well: 1. One-on-one personal interviews with the SVP’s of the organization have worked well as they have helped Carla Reese to understand the problems in the organization and also helped her to develop a framework for discussion among the SVP’s. 2. The informal gathering on the 1st day of Executive offsite has worked well to a certain extent as the SVP’s have already ventured out their emotions and cleared their mind during the discussion about problems in the organization. They have spent some time together and even laughed about the arguments they have had on the day. 3. The 2nd day of Executive offsite has worked very well as the team got down to facts and numbers and as a result, there were no emotional outbursts. Efforts that didn’t work well: 1. The official gathering on day 1 of Executive offsite didn’t work out as well as expected because of many emotional outbursts during the discussion and blame game by SVP’s for failure to meet the targets. But that day is not entirely a waste of time as it helped in releasing the stress and made them feel good to open up the things.

2. The VP’s Meeting didn’t work out well as there is a lot of resistance to the sudden implementation of change and without considering the involvement and issues of the next level management. 3. As the change process has once failed in 2009, most of the VP's are neither interested nor optimistic about Change Management. 4. As a whole Planning for the change and team building has worked to a certain extent but the implementation of such team building and change in the organization is not up to the mark and didn’t work as effectively as expected. 5. After 6 weeks of the implementation of the change process, the events such as third-quarter results which showed a continuing decline in revenue and income followed by the termination of Mr. Dave Lloyd without any argument is one of the signs that the effort to build a team with Mr. Lloyd alongside other divisional SVP’s hadn’t worked well....