Structure of the continuous improvement Essay

Matrix organization structure is a hybrid divisional and functional structure. As this company is starting to grow, using this structure will help it develop and manage well. The matrix structure allows for the benefits of functional and divisional structures to exist in one organization. The matrix organizational structure divides authority both by functional area and by project. In a matrix structure, each employee answers to two immediate supervisors: a functional supervisor and a project supervisor which is very needed in this company. Communication is very important for new structure, as clear guidance and information are need between management and employees. The matrix structure has several advantages such as resource coordination, which allows supervisors to focus on their areas of expertise. Functional supervisors focus on hiring, training and managing employees in their field, while project supervisors can focus on achieving the goals of their specific projects or products. Employees will be more specialization as they are placed in functional areas allows them to specialize in a particular field. Instead of being good at variety of tasks, specialized employees can excel at tasks in their field of focus. Matrix structure also allows employee is to develop wider set of skills by working in team with other department member in a project team. Employees have constant contact with members of different functional areas, the matrix structure allows for information and resources to travel more fluidly between those functional areas. The collaboration between functional areas allows projects team to better handle complex challenges and objectives which one the weakness of old structure make them delay delivery causing them to lose major clients. Also this allows for human resources to be shared flexibly across different projects or products. Functional areas maintain a stock of talented employees to meet projects requirements. his organizational structure can help improve the company structure and weakness so that the mistakes made in the past cannot repeat again by employee and continue to improve business and expanded across Australia. As in the detail says that lot of mistakes happen such as missing major accountant with engineering spare parts supplier due to the lack of support that the current IT system could offer in tracking deliveries, also employee are nervous as the impact that losing the major client have on business, which shows lack confidents and professionalism. There have been many formal complaints made to management on the lack of information that is being discussed with them and that they do not feel valued anymore. There is a site manager in each state and they hold a phone conference meeting each month, but the meetings with site department manager and their teams do not occur regularly. First IT system need to improved and handle by experts as it’s very important to keep records and track of business clients. It will also help to see weak areas and improve them. Also help them save the delivery time. The human resource need to provide training to the employees so they can know the work well and feel confident on what they are doing. They need to know how to handle clients and work like professional. This will help them to provide good service to the clients and make company image good in the eyes of clients. The communication is very important in the organization so because of the lack of communication between the information flow between the employees and management has been effective which cause work problems and misunderstandings. So the communication between the employee and management need to be improved. Another problem is meeting, the meeting needs to take place once a week, and meeting is good way to discussed ideas and share problem. It is also good way to improve the relationship. The management should encourage employees to voice their opinion and support them to be more creative. The organization should handle complaint from client sincerely because this can help to organization to improve their service and this also improves the relationship between company and clients. Effective mentoring and coaching process The basic communication skill of a mentor or coach is not only a certain level of verbal communication skill but as well as the non-verbal  communication skill. The difference between coaching and mentoring are that, the purpose of coaching is to improve the individual’s performance on the job, which involves either enhancing current skills or acquiring new skills on areas in which the employee is in need of coaching but only for a short period of time, maybe even just a few sessions. The coaching lasts for as long as is needed, depending on the purpose of the coaching relationship, and once the coachee successfully acquires the skills, the coach is no longer needed. However, the purpose is to develop the individual not only for the current job, but as well as for the future job. It seeks to provide a safe environment where the mentoree shares whatever issues affect his or her professional and personal success, though specific learning goals or competencies may be used as a basis for creating the relationship, it’s focus goes beyond these areas to include things, such as work and life balance, self-confidence, self-perception, and how the personal influences the professional. However, this distinction differentiates the role of the immediate manager and that of the mentor, and reduces the possibility of creating conflict between the employee’s manager and the mentor. The coach or mentor is a facilitator, not an instructor. They support and challenge the employees to lean and to develop. The employees learn by acquiring new awareness, insight, skills, idea and knowledge. Development involves integrating their learning into the way they are. It is more important that a facilitator asks good questions than that they have ‘right’ answers. Good questions provoke new perspectives and change in the employees. The effective coach or mentor reviews the learning relationship and the learning process, and does not take those for granted, and finds learning methods that suit the employee. They need to help the employees to clarify how they learn best, and how to make coaching or mentoring work for them. Moreover, effective coach or mentor needs to understand the importance of what happens to the employees between each time they coach or mentoring them. Company strategy In the following case study, it has stated that there is a problem with the  outdated system that they have been implementing throughout the last few months. Systems that relates to management of the company and its groups has been not updated for a long time hence the result in formal policies and procedures not working as planned and not being that effective. As a result, there is a huge decrease in the performance from the employees such as late delivery and delay on products that should have been mailed to the customers. In order to ensure that all systems and processes that are used to monitor operational progress and customer service and see what ways we can use to identify the ways in which planning and operation can be improved, we as a Continuous Improvement Manager who has been hired by the Fast Forwarding company should create a company strategy that can improve the bad situation that has been occurring in the company. First of all, we can suggest that the company can use the KPI indicator system which can be very helpful to identify each and every person in the office and how they are performing. Recording each and every action and converting the performance of how well they are doing, the company can understand what the weakness of the employees and the workers are as well be able to identify the needs and requirements that they have to complete to reach the indicated priority that they want to be in. The indicators also tell the company how well they are doing and also measure the overall performance of the business itself. By applying Key Performance Indicator as a company strategy, they will be able to update every members of the company about the objective and therefore find and solve the weakness that has been affecting the performance of the company. Second of all, the use of SWOT analysis can help indicate and scan the company’s strength, weakness, opportunity and threat. If the company uses the analysis to effectively figure out the weakness and threats of the company itself, they might be able to see what problem is occurring and how much effect it has on the business performance and sales. After they find out what the weaknesses are and what threats might be there that has been creating a barrier from any improvements in their business. They can  implement different alternatives and solution to minimize the problems or completely wipe it out. Apart from the above use of the systems and analysis, there must be a custom of creating a daily check and updates on the system so that it doesn’t get outdated and create a big problem later on for the future. Since it affected formal policies and procedures as well as the whole system that the company is using for the business, the employees are unable to keep up with current system and therefore they lack enough information to be able to hold their performance in a stable way. Other alternatives to be able to improve the company’s problem, the organization can use the Management information system which provides information that the organizations require to manage themselves efficiently and effectively. Since the IT system of the company Fast Forwarding has been outdated for a long time and haven’t been reviewed by any of the company’s men, we suggest that they apply the MIS to be able to update any information that they have crucial need in. It provides a fixed schedules and reports regularly which can provide vital updates to the company when they need it. The MIS also contain systems such as Decision Support System (DSS), Executive Information System (EIS), Office Automation System (OAS), School Information Management Systems (SIMS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). 1. Decision Support System (DSS): It’s a system that helps in the decision making for the middle and higher management to complete information from a wide range of sources to support in problem solving and decision making. It mostly helps in structured and unstructured problems. 2. Executive Information System (EIS): This is a system that concludes all the information that has been provided by all the departments and organizations so that they are able to summarize them with ease and convenience through proper order. 3. Office Automation System (OAS): The system supports the communication and  productivity in the enterprise by automatically sending all the information and work flows for each of the employees easily. This helps in an efficient way to spread all the working information to everyone in the workplace at the same time and as fast as possible. 4. School Information Management Systems (SIMS): This system covers the administration on teaching and learning materials that can help in assisting the employees with the training and experience providing necessary materials for them to utilize during the session for training and mentoring. 5. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP): The system facilitates the flow of information inside the organizations throughout each departments as well as mange the flow and connections of stakeholders that are outside the boundaries of organization. To conclude, the system that they used had many flaws because they haven’t updated or review for a long time. Therefore, as given solution regarding company strategy up above, if they implement it with care, the company can overcome the problems that they have having and finally be able to improve the performance and the status of the business. How to informing Stakeholders are those person, group or organizations that are interested in the project that the company has been working on and therefore have trusted them enough to invest on the company. So in order to inform all the stakeholders about the new company strategy, we can use different communication strategy to be able to give them all the details and information concerning the new changes. Firstly, we can create a schedule for all the stakeholders so that they can be gathered up for the meeting. We can provide all the stakeholders with the notice through person, all the stakeholders can gather up in a precise location and discuss the new changes and be able to confirm that everybody gets it. Another way is to use technological factors to inform all the stakeholders. Different alternatives such as mailing the information to the stakeholders can also be used as one of the communication strategy to immediately inform every stakeholder as well as give them a softcopy of everything that needs to be included as changes of the new company strategy. As a conclusion there can be different ways to use communication strategy to forward different details and information to the stakeholders so that they can be updated every now and often. Future planning One of the biggest challenges faced by any kinds of companies and organizations are how to plan for the future, what to invest in, where to place your bet? It is really hard to perfectly predict the coming future and prepare for those upcoming situations, but we do have the creative thinking skills and behaviors to build an imaginative look at the future and to help the company to create powerful future scenarios and plan appropriate implications create powerful future scenarios and plan appropriate implications. I believe, the only way to lead a company to succeed is to be able to build new, advantaged knowledge that others do not know but we discover through powerful designs. Also, it is important to discover the unknown future opportunities that we do not know. In order to higher the chance to be successful, we have to do more than long term strategy, which an advanced model for foresight requires treating it as much more than the prediction of futurists or a technology development exercise. It should involve both analytical and imaginative thinking, which reaches beyond typical corporate approaches to strategic planning. However, it typically does not have a single answer, so we must consider multiple scenarios and make some collective bets in order to avoid worse-case scenario.