Turning Around a Declining Organization: Strategies for Smith Widgets Inc.

Introduction

An organization under decline needs top-notch strategies to steer it around and become more profit-making again. As the president of Smith Widgets Inc., there are crucial elements that will enhance the change and make it profit making organization again. The key among the strategies is ensuring the existence of short as well as long term organizational goal. The short term strategies include cutting on budgets for the materials and supplies to enhance the increase in profit and minimizing spending. In the long term, the company will introduce new products with advanced qualities that will make it have a competitive advantage over others in the industry. Another strategy includes downsizing the sales force for those who have been in the job for a more extended period. Additionally, a plan would be put in place to build a competent and capable human resource department that will ensure the organization gets the best-qualified employees and that their welfare is taken care of at all times. This department will be crucial in motivating the employees to work and come with innovative ways of increasing sales jointly. Also, the department will deploy new interns who have high technology literacy and are aware of the merging trends. This will be key in allowing the transition for the older sales staff to be retired early and at the same time recruit young and capable individuals.

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Appropriate Type of Organizational Structure

Matrix organizational structure will be ideal for the company. This mainly because it incorporates both the functional aspect and the projected structure. This allows the employees to report to more than boss depending on a given situation making the employees to be given more attention. When employees feel they are given attention and listened to, they will be motivated consequently leading to increased sales. Besides, the organization should involve influence and collaboration as opposed to the structures that support controls and commands. Through this teamwork will be made possible to gear the company towards recovery.

Influencing Change in the Culture of the Organization

Ideally, changing organizational culture tends to be difficult and in this case changing the culture that is much embedded in Christianity values to accommodate other religions which in turn will make others feel part of the organization. As a transformational and motivated leader, observing how employees and customers respond to the current culture will be vital in coming up with the best measure to increase sales. The human resource department should come up with appraisal strategy based on merit and not religion hence ensuring that employees are focused on fulfilling the vision of the organization. Extensive training will also be offered to new sales staff to ensure they have the adequate product knowledge and they behave accordingly when representing the company outside. Also, employees should be trained on handling those with different beliefs and religion from their own since this will enhance peace and harmony in the organization.

Appropriate Leadership Skills

The complete turnaround in sales and margin needs a dedicated leader to enhance coherence among the teams. In this situations, the leader should be able to motivate the employees and make them feel part of the company, and this can be made possible by involving the human resource department that takes in the concern of the employees and addresses them thereby contributing to motivation. Additionally, a leader should recognize the efforts made by employees and in conjunction with the human resource department come up with reward systems to keep employees motivated.

Leveraging Intellectual Capital

Leveraging intellectual capital will enable the company to manage knowledge which in turn will influence the competitive edge of the interns and their ability to come up with innovations. The company can achieve this by ensuring self-awareness is created thoroughly among the interns who will enable them to capture data relating to customers clearly and in a manner easy to understand.

Type of Power and Dealing with Organizational Stress

The ideal kind of power to be applied is referent power. Here the president and the management team should act as role models to be emulated and admired by the staffs and the new interns. This will motivate and enable employees to work hard to be where their seniors are, and as a result, positive change in sales will be noticed.

Changes within the organization are accompanied by turbulence which most of them provides a learning point for the leaders. Most at times, this brings stress, and effective management is required. The team requires challenges to keep them stronger and be more innovative to cope up with the ever-changing business environment. As a leader, the importance of the turbulence needs to be communicated to the employees for them to see how important it is in strengthening the organization.