Business Leadership Case Study

Dunn has decided to expand his business.  For some time, Dunn noticed that the Deli next door picks up a lot of his business from the waiting repair customers and he has seen the Deli customers step in to purchase gloves, goggles, and other merchandise after eating at the deli.  The Deli would make an interesting addition to his future business plans.  The Deli, like Dunn, has always done a brisk business especially in season.  Designed in a similar western motif Dunn thought he would be able to expand easily to include the Deli into his Emporium.  The cross traffic might even increase business.  However, Dunn knows nothing about the Deli business. The deli’s owner, George Atkins, knows and loves his business a great deal.  

Dunn has known George for years and he is aware that he is thinking of retiring in the next few years.  If he buys the Deli now and can get George to stay on at the Deli, George could train and mentor a new managerial staff comprised of some of his local staff and return employees who work the seasonal rush. The trick to the mergers success would be to get everyone on board including George.  Dunn wondered how he could ensure George’s best efforts to make the transition stable while Dunn’s Ski Emporium grows.  He cannot help but wonder how he would feel if he were no longer in charge of his own company.  The future is bright for both businesses and Dunn wants to keep it that way. 

Dunn has decided that his best-selling point to George is to design an organizational structure based on George’s vision and mission.  The design will have to feature and utilize George and his employees to the best of the company’s advantage while empowering and allowing the staff at the Deli and Dunn’s to grow the business.

Dunn’s vision for the organization

Mr. Joseph Dunn has been in the ski business for twenty five years. His business offers ski equipment as well as repairs. Furthermore, the business hourly turnaround on repairs has allow Mr. Dunn’s business to be a recognized name in the industry and has built a clientele of loyal customers. Nonetheless, Mr. Dunn wishes to expand his business and purchase a nearby dely. However, Mr. Dunn has no experience in that area, but knows that acquiring the deli would help him achieve a greater market share. Thus, Mr. Dunn now faces the dilemma of how to proceed on with his new endeavor. The following analysis will employ the leadership techniques to propose possible solutions to Mr. Dunn’s new business endeavor.

For the organization, the vision is to increase satisfaction of customers. By offering products with better quality, providing quick services, providing a wider variety of products in the product portfolio along with being hospitable and friendly to customers, satisfaction of customers will be increased. Furthermore, the objective of the company comprises the expansion of its market share across the dissimilar states. This organization, hence, is a for-profit organization. A for-profit organization is a business with key goal of generating revenues, as against a non-profit organization which emphasizes a goal for example assisting the community. Being a for-profit company, increasing the profits and sales of the company is also included in the objective of the organization. By providing satisfaction to customers, offering multiple services and products, selling affordable products while keeping low costs, profits and sales will be increased. Also, the business will make plans for competing better, which can be attained by selling reasonable products, promotion accompanied by providing higher quality services and products. Furthermore, by purchasing Deli, the company is looking for expanding into the food business. Under the brand of Dunn’s Ski Emporium, customers will be offered with drinks and foods after purchasing Deli. This will in turn increase the profits and sales.

Enhancing the role as a Leader

Good leaders are supposed to ensure that they use the stipulated values to come up with good plans that will help in achieving organizations’ goals and objectives (Vineet Nayar, 2013). Apart from taking total responsibility over process issues, Dunn is also supposed to offer genuine care to his team members, teach them and train them in matters they see important. According to Kanaga & Kossler (2011), placing love, empowerment and service at the heart of leadership ensures high performance in organizations. By dedicating themselves to the welfare of their employees, Dunn will not only be strengthening leader-employee relationship but will also open the doors to high performance in the organizations. Dunn can also earn his team members’ trust, by making them feel valuable and then assigning them meaningful challenges that tally with the organizations’ strategic plans. This will help the team produce extraordinary results. Alongside valuing and caring for their team members, Dunn can always restrain from intimidating them. According to Winter (2003), showing authentic interest in the members’ progress outranks payment incentives as the best technique to motivate them. Leaders are also supposed to act in an ethical and fair way in guiding their teams. A high-performance environment is only created when the leader is impartial, promotes cultural diversity within the workplace and ensuring that the team members have the spotlight most of the time. According to Hawkins (2011), leaders are supposed to make decisions based on the competitiveness of their employees and not cultural differences. Dunn can also promote openness and collaboration among the team members. Dunn can be also tasked with setting up a mutual support culture whereby decisions are made effectively and conflicts are resolved amicably.

Dunn as a Change Agent

According to Sullivan (2012), some leaders always find it hard to cope with the new environment or even come up with crucial changes in their initial plans. This means the leader can no longer stick to the initial plan but instead, should develop a new strategy that will work with the new environment. Furthermore, high performance in any team does not just come easily. According to Kanaga et al (2011), high performance team leader should be able to display to the team members that he or she is not their superior but just one of them in accomplishing the group tasks. Dunn can bring candor, vision, ability to listen and vision. Once the team members realize that Dunn is relying on them for high-end results, they will be able to perform highly. Dunn can define the vision and communicate it to his group. According to Hawkins (2011), many organizations have visions and missions just for formality but do not really stick to them. Dunn can ensure that once employees enter an organization, they should be able to understand the vision well. The organization’s vision should always be a top as the main motivating factor to make team members stick to it. Dunn can always communicate the vision to the team members, tackle hurdles against goals, reinforce progress and equip them with the necessary tools and techniques to achieve the high end goals. Steps for changes for the short term

First step for change in short term is to classify the benefits and costs of acquiring Deli. Operation costs, costs of purchase, and cost of remunerating workers will be included in the costs. While, satisfied customers, profits as well as increased sales will be include in benefits. After acquiring Deli, deciding whether altering the shop’s Brand name to Dunn’s Ski Emporium is the second change. Within Delis’ workforce, policies in addition to the Dunn’s Ski Emporium’s culture will be incorporated.

Steps for changes for the long term

In the long term, steps for change include the expansion of both Dunn’s Ski Emporium and Deli into other ski resort areas, along with the development of employee career plan that will get capable workers both in Dunn’s Ski Emporium and Deli diversifying and promoted into other businesses for example hotel for tourist or sportswear.

Vision and Mission Statement

In terms of the POLC framework the mission and vision statements are developed during the planning phase and its purpose is to inform stakeholders, investors, as well as the public the business’s reason for being and its long term goal. Since the mission states the business’s reason for being and how it intends to serve customers and employees; it should be communicated in the form of a written statement. Thus, everybody that is involved with the business would know what its purpose is. Moreover, without a vision statement in place the business’s strategy is ineffective, because the strategy derives from both the mission and the vision statement and its intend is to accomplish the business’s vision (Principles of Management 1.1, 2014). Thus, the following are examples of Mr. Dunn’s mission and vision statements for his business:

Vision Statement

“To be the leading food and ski business in the state of Colorado”

Mission Statement

“We strive to become the largest food and ski business across the nation; using the creativity and innovation of our employees. With the firm belief in business ethics, we have developed and incorporated transparent practices and policies in our organization.”

Organizational Structure

“An organizational structure indicates the method that an organization employs to delineate lines of communication, policies, authority and responsibilities. It determines the extent and nature of how leadership is disseminated throughout the organization as well as the method by which information flows.” (Colette L. Meehan, 2015). The organizational structure would be as follow:

The democratic organizational structure would better serve Mr. Dunn’s new business. This is because such structure would not only allow but encourage the employees’ participation. Mr. Dunn’s new business success will be dependent upon its employees’ knowledge, customer service, and sense of urgency to comply with the assigned work. Thus, by employing this structure the employees will feel valuable and willing to collaborate to fulfill the business’s mission.

The Organizational Culture That Supports Dunn’s Vision

Being the leading ski and food business in the Colorado state is the vision of the company, which can be attained by providing the appropriate business culture to workers. Culture styles, for example, clan style and laissez-faire promote contribution among employees and corporation. Thus, the clan culture in Mr. Dunn’s new business would complement its democratic structure. Such culture would encourage the employees to arise with new ideas that are valuable for the business both in the long and the short term. Such ideas comprise, introduction of a newer product or service, ways for lowering the costs of the company, and ways for attracting new customers. The clan culture would empower employees by allowing them to be participative with valuable ideas (Ari Weinzweig, 2015).

Thus the clan culture would help to achieve the business’s mission. By empowering the employees, they will feel a sense of belonging that would help to provide and offer a convenient services and products of affordable and high quality, along with offering the services in an appropriate way. Furthermore, such culture would encourage the employees to make sure that the clients are quickly serviced, whether it is solving a complaint or selling a product.

Strengthening the Vision

For attaining the vision, Dunn needs to

· Act in a moral way.

· Concentrate on workers, the services and products, and finally the customers.

· Use the 4 Ps’ (product, price, place and promotion).

· Classify and exploit opportunities in the marketplace.

· Involve workers in making of decisions.

The Critical Elements

The following critical elements must be kept in mind in order to have a successful venture:

The first critical element is to offering the services and products that must be cheaper as compare to those that are accessible in the marketplace already. This will assist in attracting the new customers along with retaining the old customers. Also, it will allow the business for competing better in the marketplace as compare to its rivals. Secondly, with the intention of remaining profitable, there is a need of selling services and products above their costs of production. Finally, there is a need of providing good salary to workers with the intention of retaining them, and also there is a need of providing training to employees that can impact their abilities positively. Through the proper implementation of the mission and vision statement as well as the proper development of a democratic organizational structure and a clan organizational culture which would encourage and reward employees’ participation, Mr. Dunn can rest assure that the critical elements would not only be met, but the company’s vision will be achieved.

References

Hawkins, P. (2011). Leadership team coaching: Developing collective transformational leadership. NY: Kogan Page Publishers.

Kanaga, K. & Kossler, M. (2011). How to form a team: 5 keys to high performance. LA: Centre for Creative Leadership.

Sullivan, J. (2012). Multiunit leadership: The 7 stages of building a high-performing partnerships and teams. Washington D.C: Business & Economics.

Winter, G. (2003). High performance leadership: Creating, leading and living in high performance world. NY: John Wiley & Sons.

Ari Weinzweig, 2015. Five Steps to Building an Organizational Culture. Retrieved from

http://www.zingtrain.com/org-culture-steps