Strategic Management-C209 Task1 PDF

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Different strategies to use to have a successful business....

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Strategic Management -C209 JRMI-JRMI TASK 1 Melanie Ginn- Williams Western Governors University

Table of Content A. Evaluate what makes a strategy either successful or unsuccessful by doing the following: 1. Discuss how the creation of the vision, mission, and value statements are critical in the formation of the overall strategy. 2. Discuss the importance of leadership team buy in of the strategy. 3. Discuss the use of at least two analytical tools in performing a situational analysis. 4. Discuss the importance of having the appropriate alignment between strategy, people, and corporate culture. 4a. Discuss the role that this alignment plays in determining the success or failure of the business strategy. B. Perform a SWOT analysis for a company with which you are familiar or where you are presently employed by doing the following: 1. Analyze the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats of the company. C. Discuss how the SWOT analysis from part b impacts your company’s strategic decisions. D.References

A. Evaluate what makes strategy either successful or unsuccessful by doing the following: A1. Discuss how the creation of the vision, mission, and values statements are critical in the formation of the overall strategy. The creation of the vision, mission, and value statements are critical in the formation of the overall strategy, because they provide the framework/ structure for everything else in the organization to make an once dream or idea into a successful reality. The mission statement details the purpose of why the organization exist. It is a brief statement of why an organization exist. The vision statement is an idealistic desire for a company /organization to achieve. It provides a concrete way for stakeholders, and employees to understand the meaning and purpose the business. The value statement is the guidelines to how the organization and its personnel will conduct themselves and behave. The value statements help to define and sets the tone of the organization’s culture.

A2. Discuss the importance of leadership team buy-in of the strategy. Implementing corporation strategy requires a team effort headed by your leadership team. When leadership buy into their organization’s employee engagement strategy, employee engagement increases. When employees are confident that their leaders value their people, set the right course, and are committed to making it a great place to work, engagement increases. (Wickham, 2021) When a business is receiving leadership buy -in its strategic plan, it must be able to make sure the business’s goals are laid out clearly and connected to other specific resources and activities. Leadership buy-in if positive in its efforts to engaged will lead to employees being more relaxed, comfortable, and feeling like a part of the organization. A3. Discuss the use of at least two analytical tools in performing situational analysis. A situational analysis is utilized to determine the status of a business and what course of actions may be needed for the business to progress in the future. These tools and techniques can help you to understand your organizational environment and force you to think more strategically about your business. Two analytical tools that are used most often in performing a situational analysis are SWOT

(strengths, weakness, opportunities(unmet), and threats) and PESTLE (political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental.) A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique that is used to help a person or organization identify its own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities(unmet), and threats (internal and external) PESTLE analysis is a framework to analyze what could possibly influence an organization from the outside. It offers people professional insight into the external factors affecting their organization. Political- To what extent or impact does the government have an on it economy of the Country. Since Barrow Child Development Center Is federally funded there are some special military factors that must be upheld. The center must maintain national and federal accreditation. There is also an Air Force Inspection criterion that must be followed. Economic- How will the economic climate affect the business? Things to watch for and closely monitor would be unemployment, employee turnover rates, and expenses. One of the economic factors that Barrow CDC must face in 2020 and 2021, was the result of lost consumer spending due to Covid-19. Covid-19 impacted the childcare center hard, because if parents are not working or for fear of

quarantine than they are not bring in or need childcare services. This resulted in staff members hours being cut. Social- How does society / social environment affect the organization. Examples of this is the demographic of the market, religious, and cultural factors and lifestyle trends in place at the time. Barrow Child Development Center is located on a military base. The culture is to serve and support the men and women that serve in the military. The demographic is very diverse with its participants of all racial backgrounds. Technological- The changes in technological environment can either be an opportunity or a threat to the firm. Some possible technological changes are new innovations and maturity of technology. Barrow has implemented a new system where payments are no longer made by cash or checks. All payments are done by credit cards and withdrawn from accounts electronically either once or twice a month depending on the participants payment plan choice. Legal- The laws that are made by the government that the company must follow to continue its operations. Some examples of these are Health and Safety guidelines and Inspection Criteria. Environmental – These factors affect the company and their ability to function smoothly. Such factors to consider are Environmental Issues,

Energy/ Power consumption, and safe waste disposal. A4. Discuss the importance of having the appropriate alignment between strategy, people, and corporate culture. The best laid out plan will not achieve any success if it does not fully align with a company’s people, strategy, and organizational culture. Organizational alignment is the glue that makes execution of any strategy occur. Alignment between strategy, people and corporate culture is critical for a favorable outcome. When a culture does not align with the strategic goals, mission, and vision of a company it is impossible to achieve success and positive results. When the alignment fails, many employees will resort to self -serving behaviors and the sense of the mission is lost. Mix signals and actions from leaders/management lead employees to feel frustrated, confused, disoriented and overwhelmed with the organization’s lack of direction in reaching goals. If a business’s core internal environment is considered toxic, it can and will affect the whole company internally and creating an external reputation via word of mouth from unhappy former employees. The staff will become disengaged in the company and their work behavior and attitudes will begin to become negative and suffer. Some staff may also begin to look for other opportunities outside of the company that is less toxic, stressful and chaotic.

A.4A. Discuss the role that this alignment plays in determining the success of the business strategy. The alignment between the people, corporation culture, and strategy are critical in determining success or failure, because when strategy and a strong corporate culture are aligned, they give staff a sense of clarity and a mission that will be guided by their actions and decisions. When the connection of a strategy has a sense of chaos and confusion, the employees will start to think only of themselves and not as a team. A clear and aligned workforce alleviates negative tensions, drama, and uncertainness. Unclear signals and actions from leaders are a major factor and influence in an organization not being align with the vision and mission of the business. An example of this notion is that Barrow Child Development Center’s assistant supervisor Betsy always comes into the building with a negative attitude and has stated on a few occasions that she does not like children. How can you manage a child development center when you do not like children? That simply does not align with the business’s mission , vision, or business culture. B. Perform a SWOT analysis for a company with which you are familiar or where you are presently employed by doing the following: 1. Analyze the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the company.

B1a: Strengths: One of the strengths that Barrow Child Development Center has is that most of the staff enjoy their jobs. They enjoy coming to work and interacting positively with the children. Another strength is that the center is federal government funded so that paychecks are covered. The center offers a benefit package with medical, vision, and dental coverage. There is also a 401k retirement plan for all regular employees. There is a separate annual leave and sick leave banks after 90 days of employment. They also offer flexible hours and paid trainings. B1b: Weaknesses A few of the weaknesses that were on frequent display were the rude attitudes and lack of compassion on the part of the managing leadership staff. On one occasion, the assistant supervisor verbally assaulted a customer that had brought in her children for childcare after she had put in a vacation notice saying the children would not be attending. The woman left so distraught that her husband came in thirty minutes later to pick up the children and went to the Base Commander about the treatment of his wife. The Base Commander had a “special” meeting with all the childcare center directors, their flight chief, and

trainers. The result was that the children were moved that day to another center. Another weakness that Barrow has is when the childcare center is short staffed, the managing staff did not discuss or ask staff members if they could work extra hours. They just assumed that the staff members would be team members and just do it. Staff would be expected to stay until ratios would go down. The most complained weakness was the blatant a rapid act of favoritism shown by supervisors. There are some staff members that constantly call out from work, and nothing happens to them, but when a staff member that rarely to never called out sick were made to feel guilty for staying home when did. They were told that the center in now short staff with them being the whatever number call out for the day. Another provider that was higher ranking in her classroom was told that even though she was higher ranking in the classroom that she was not the lead teacher. The lower ranking staff member was given the title as lead teacher and the higherranking staff was told that she was still responsible for completing all of the work such as lesson plans, student files and other reports that were the responsibility of the lead teacher. The result was that resigned her position and took another opportunity somewhere else.

B1c: Opportunities (unmet) One of the unmet opportunities at the Barrow Childcare Center was that they did not offer tuition assistance to employees. Any training that was offered to the employee were mandatory trainings and the staff needed them for employment, yet they were an expense out of the staff’s pocket not the employer’s. Another unmet opportunity was not offering monthly staff meeting. The meetings would be held at one set time, on one agreed upon date quarterly. Example, Sitka has a staff meeting every three months on the first Monday of the second month at 6:00 p.m. This would be considered a scheduled meeting and the employees would get paid for two hours of overtime. The meetings would allow the director to be about to get vital important information to all the staff members at the same time. The management could answer and question about any procedures or policies. This would cut down the amount of miscommunication and issues within the center. The employees would be able to share problems and concerns. The employees would be more inspired to share solutions and suggestion if they felt like they were being heard and feel like a part of the team.

B1c2: An external opportunity provides an organization with a means to improve its performance and competitive advantage in the market environment. One external opportunity for Barrow Childcare Center would be that since it is already federally funded, the staff and management does not have to worry about their wages/paychecks. They are covered. Another opportunity is with that center being federally funded the rates that a family would have to pay are a lot lower than what a family that was attending a non-federally funded program would have to pay. What a family would have to pay is based on their total family income. Another external opportunity for Barrow would be that the childcare center could experience extreme growth which would increase that would include not only hiring more staff, but the possibility of opening up another building to help with the growing demand to enter Barrow childcare center. B1d: Threats A very possible threat that the organization is that families would want to stop bringing their children to the daycare and look to transfer to other centers or relocate to other outside agencies due to management being hostile and unprofessional in their behavior and attitudes towards the families.

An example of this was when Betsy, the assistant director cornered a mother in the hallway and started yelling at her for bringing in her children after she said that they would not be attending that day. The mother tried to explain, but Betsy kept speaking over her and would not listen. She kept verbally attacking the woman. The woman signed her children into the center and left crying. Thirty minutes later the husband and father of the children arrived and asked to speak to the person in charge. When he learned that the director was on vacation and that Betsy was in charge, he asked for a termination slip. The father took his children home. An hour later, high management informed us that the child would be reassigned to another center. A special last minute after hour meeting was also announced. At that meeting we told what happened with that family and informed that that type of behavior towards families or anyone would not be tolerated by anyone. Another threat that the daycare faced was the slow recruitment process to replace the staff that had left for various reasons. Slow recruitment led to the center being under staff and that lead to closing of some classrooms. At one point, Barrow had four infant rooms, and two preschool rooms opened. Now, due to being short staffed there are only two infant rooms and one preschool room being utilized.

An example of external threats are new and existing regulations, new and existing competitors, new technologies that may make products or services obsolete. A possible external threat to running a childcare business is the competition. The offering of quality care at a lower rate and in-house childcare facilities that offer better hours, lawsuits claiming child neglect, abuse and child endangerment. C. Discuss how the SWOT analysis from part B impacts your company’s strategic decisions. For Barrow Child Development Center to elevate and move beyond being its current situation and be seen as a professional business. The SWOT analysis showed that The flight chief, the director, assistant directors, trainers, and staff members would need to start having more monthly meetings to discuss the vision and direction of the center. The meetings would also address the strategies to bring in new families and recruit new staff members. It is at these meetings that the staff will also be able to voice their concerns and offer feedback and suggestions to improve relationships within the organization. By looking at the SWOT, under unmet opportunities the business has begun to offer tuition assistance to any employee that wishes to further their education. To keep up with competition, the childcare center has implemented new technology and a process where everything will be completed electronically. There will be

no more paper files or having to deal with cash or checks to make payments. Everything will be available to the families through their own personal home computer. By using a SWOT analysis, many needs and concerns were met and implemented to offer better customer and employee relationships. This is the ultimate goal of have a great strategic plan.

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HTTPS://WWW.AMANET.ORG The Dangers of a misalignment between culture and strategy....