Chris Peterson at DSS Consulting Essay

This case discussed the events that occurred during a alter in DSS Consultings organisational organize. 3 retired train district administrators established DSS Consulting during the late 1990s. The company offered administrative put up to sm all told school districts located within the mid-west and mountain west region. They specialize in handling the negotiating of labor agreements as well as carrying into action of permanent system solutions normaled to enable those organizations to run efficiently.The blind drunk experient a significant degree of success during their early years, which was primarily attributed to the dampens individualized relationships within to each one school district that utilise their services. The demand for the services offered by DSS grew quickly given the changing self-propelled of challenges faced by each district. Some of those challenges related to reductions in budgets and concomitant reduction of administrative staff. The firm expres siond themselves to accommodate the change in services needs of their nodes. As a result, DSS excogitateed an organizational social organisation that consisted of the four beas of specialization Procurement and Systems, Information Technology, Contract Negotiation and Facilities Planning.By the mid-2000s, DSS experienced some significant changes in their organizational social structure and their customer base. It was during this time that the founders of the company reduced the amount of time they were spending in client engagement and relying upon the expertise of the management teams for each specialized area. As a result, a gap was created surfacing the need for a outline for attracting and retaining new business. This would require adapting their service offerings to meet the demands of rapidly changing commercialise base. These factors led to a halt in the firms addition and forced the company to redefine the organizational structure to remain a competitor.The key issue s of this case involved successfully redesigning the firms strategy, capital punishment of those changes whilemaintaining their level of success. The firm would need to realign their management structure and create functional teams to design, develop and implement product offerings that would appeal to an spread out market (i.e. bigger school districts). A major consideration for the firm was how to achieve this goal and maintain the level of commitment from employees as change in any form can be a daunting task.A new management structure was determined and trillion Cooke was appointed the Chief Operating Officer of DSS. Ms. Cooke and the Board of Directors made the closing to adopt a new structure that created cross-functional teams each assigned to a specific region for which they would design and create products for customers specific to their region that could potentially be marketed to additional regions with similar demands. Based on my review of the case, the major issue s identified can be categorized as communication, leadinghip, organizational stopping point and organizational change.CommunicationThe manner in which the new strategy was communicated at all levels of the organization appeared to lack a clear concise pass along which defined the redesigned strategy, new organizational structure and a detailed carrying out plan to achieve the desired results. The communication of these changes wasnt handled in the most(prenominal) efficient manner and subsequently not received by all employees in a favourable manner. Study results that founder been published by the University of Pittsburghs Katz Business School have indicated that effective communication skills have become one of the most important factors when recruiters are covering candidates for potential managerial positions. Both Ms. Cooke and Ms. Peterson failed to communicate in all phases of the organizational change. Although it appeared that Ms. Cooke met regularly with other depar tment leaders, she and Ms. Peterson never had regularly scheduled provision meetings or informal weekly check-ins to procure that she and her team were on objective lens for successfully delivering the teams objectives.Although, Ms. Peterson communicated and fostered open, collaborative conversations with her team, she failed to communicate with her manager to ensure that she understood expectations for herself as the leader and for her team. Successful communication is only achieved when the sender and receiver of informationhave the same understanding of the information presented. (See get word 1) For example, when Chris Peterson was assigned to lead her team in delivering new products that would appeal to larger districts within and outside of her designated region. She received the message as create/design new product offerings that would appeal to districts within the southwestward region.LeadershipThe stylus of leadership varies with every individual. It has been stated that todays successful leaders have created in their organizations an atmosphere where every employee believes in management, their strategy and the richness of their individual contributions in achieving the organizations goal. Blake Moutons Managerial Grid is a model using in identifying leadership style that is based on the concept that there are two behavioural symmetrys concern for people which can be defined as the degree to which leaders are aware of and consider the needs of their staff, their skill sets and development potential when reservation decisions about specific tasks to be completed. The second dimension is concern for proceeds and is defined as the degree to which leaders place importance on objectives, efficiency and production specifically what it takes to meet the desired result.Based on these definitions, I would classify Ms. Cookes driving leadership behaviour dimension to be in the latter category of concern for production and Ms. Petersons as concern for people. It was evident that Ms. Cookes leadership style resulted in a disorganized and poorly motivated organization. Her lack of leadership to Ms. Peterson resulted in the team being led in the direction of focusing their efforts on a project that would not be approved. Ms. Peterson clearly valued the skills of each team member as well as taking prolonged steps to ensure that a collaborative, innovative environment existed for her team to design and develop a new product offering for the districts in the southwest region that would meet their needs.Organizational Culture and Organizational ChangeThe nicety that exists within any organization plays a vital role in the behaviour and actions of employees. Organizational coating as defined McLean and Marshall is a collection of traditions, values, policies, beliefsand attitudes that constitute a pervasive context for everything we do and calculate in an organization. Based on this definition, DSSs original organizational struct ure could be classified as so-called Power Culture (Handy, 1993). This culture is typical for small entrepreneurial organizations similar to DSS, where the founders had a strong captivate and played a central role in managing the company and securing contracts from their school district contacts.These types of cultures rely heavily on trust, personal communication and empathy. The structure is very informal and there are few rules and guidelines in this culture. However, the changes employ at DSS to redefine their strategy forced a culture change as well. The organizational structure changed from functional to a more organize matrix type. The appointment of the COO position keeled the organizational culture from the personal interactive environment to one of project and task oriented nature. This shift made implementation of the new strategy increasingly more unmanageable as this was new to everyone at all levels of the organization.