The Major Problem
The major problem in HGC is that no standards or goals are predetermined which could enable the management to have a clear vision of where the company is going. This vague vision of aims and objectives leads them to choosing projects based on their self-interest rather than according to the company’s goals. Moreover, the project deadlines are not being met, the financial resources are not being allocated properly and the projects are not handled on a priority basis. These problems can result in a loss of HGC’s market share in the company.
Symptoms of the Problem
Some symptoms of the problem are as follows;
- Communication gap and lack of team work. This symptom causes the inability to meet deadlines.
- Conflicts among the management regarding allocation of budget.
- Lack of guidelines on selection and priority of projects. This causes confusion among the managers and everyone thinks their project is more important than others. An example is that of an international business game for high school students which was highly unrelated to the company’s strategy.
- Peters has not established long term goals for the company therefore there is a lack of leadership and corporate structure. She has also been unable to establish rules for implementing strategies.
- Vague idea of the target market
- Lack of knowledge about how to accomplish the long term strategy
- Potential of losing company’s employees as evident by the efforts of another gaming company to hire a product development employee that worked in HGC.
Major Cause of the Problem
Statistics show that Hector Gaming Company has been growing at a rate of 80% for the past two years but this growth rate is expected to fall down if the prevailing conditions continue. One of the major causes of the problem at hand is the conflicts caused by factors such as organization politics and resource allocation. Lack of leadership has led to lack of direction for employees due to which everyone performs tasks at their own will. Also, it is evident that Sally wasn’t involved in the internal matters of the company as she was shocked when she found out about the underlying problems. Moreover, the organization does not use any proper tools or metrics to determine the relative importance of projects and their urgency due to which they are unable to undergo the projects that are in alignment with the company’s competitive strategy.
Action Plan
In order to cater the problem of prioritizing projects and meeting the deadlines, the Time Management Matrix for prioritizing tasks can be used. This matrix was proposed by Stephen Covey and is a simple approach to prioritize projects on the basis of their urgency and relative importance. By using this matrix, Sally can approve the most relevant projects accordingly and thus have an output in alignment with the company’s core strategy. Moreover, a resource allocation matrix can also be used to allocate and reallocate resources to the initiatives on the basis of their criticality and productivity. This would resolve the budget allocation problem and would enable the management to use their resources effectively.
The case study shows that there is a lack of corporate structure in the company. Thus a proper structure must be introduced with Sally having the major role in approving and directing all the projects in the company. Also, Sally needs to actively participate in the projects that are close to the deadline in order to facilitate satisfactory performance and to make the team realize that leadership support is with them. Moreover, it is evident that there is absence of a proper HR department due to which there is a problem of managing people and handling financial and human resources. Thus Sally should develop an HR department or hire an HR director which could allocate resources for all the projects.
Moving on, the employees exhibit lack of team work. Building up on their team working skills is crucial for the successful running of the company. For this purpose, the company should put their efforts towards providing some employee engagement platforms in which they could enhance personal relationships and understand each other in a better way which would facilitate them to enhance productivity while working on the assigned projects.
Lastly, there is a need to communicate the organizational goals and objectives clearly to everyone in the company in order to ensure that everyone has the same target in mind. For this purpose, a matrix called Hoshin Kanri matrix can be used which gives a visual representation of the long term and short term goals and the action plan needed to achieve these goals.