Introduction
Managers must create an operation strategy by emphasizing essential factors, including corporate strategy, operational experiences, business strategy, and ideas involved in an operations strategy. An operation strategy is vital to any organization because it facilitates the achievement of the goals of an organization (Reid and Sanders, 2019, pp. 1-10). This essay focuses explicitly on the operations strategy adopted by McPherson Charles, organizational objectives, and how the company addresses them.
This essay also describes McPherson Charles’s leading processes, the company’s problems, and how the company can address the issues. Operation strategies are vital to businesses because they determine the goals and functions of a company.
The Operations Strategy Adopted by McPherson Charles
Operations refer to resources that develop commodities and services. There are four perspectives relating to operation strategy because there is no clear definition of operation strategy. Varying authors have different meanings and views of operations strategy. The four perspectives include top-down and bottom-up strategies, market requirements, and operation resources, among the descriptions (Slack and Lewis, 2019, pp. 20-40).
Operation strategy may reflect what a business aims to do, translate market necessities to operations decisions, improve operations or exploit the abilities of operations assets. The four perspectives give an idea of what an operation strategy is. McPherson Charles adopted the corporate operation strategy, which consisted of the decisions concerning the business categories the staff wanted to engage in, the areas the team wanted to operate, and the enterprises they were to acquire and divest in.
The company required each business group to assemble their business strategy, including their objectives and mission and how they would compete in the market. McPherson Charles adopting the corporate approach aimed to increase its efficiency by allocating its resources, establishing business expectations, and improving its competitive position. Initially, McPherson Charles had restructured into 15 groups headed by lead partners and specialized in one category of law.
The reorganization was a good structure that motivated each group to organize themselves for their handling customers. The design highly contributed to the success of the three teams. The corporate strategy enabled McPherson Charles to divide its staff into litigation, property, and family law. The managing partner of the company, Grace Whelan, visited the lead partners of the three teams to work out the issues raised by the staff after reorganization.
The family law team was concerned with divorce trauma, break up, and separation. Most clients visited the family law team because other customers recommended them. The litigation team aimed to handle bulk debt collections by working with the accounts sector for debt collection. The property group was concerned with domestic engagement for people selling or buying their homes or second homes.
Some of the issues that Grace Whelan realized among the McPherson Charles staff include; the division among the staff handling high value and routine work clients whereby experienced staffs were against taking standard works. In the litigation team, other staff members despised some employees due to their varying experiences. The property team had an issue entailing particular difficult jobs.
The McPherson Charles manager listened to each of the issues raised by the teams to develop a solution that would facilitate the smooth running of the operations within each group. Moving from one team to the other to know the main reasons for dissatisfaction of the staff members would enable McPherson Charles to understand the processes the company should engage in to eliminate or reduce worker dissatisfaction.
Grace Whelan (McPherson Charles manager) divided the teams into three groups to quickly identify the businesses each group could engage in, the resources the groups required, and how the groups would allocate work among the teams. By acknowledging the issues that resulted in staff dissatisfaction, the company quickly identified how to improve its competitive position.
The Main Organizational Objectives and How they are Addressed
Organizational objectives include the medium-term and short-term goals that firms seek to attain to reach their general strategic aims. Corporate objectives play a significant role in settling a firm’s policies and resource allocation. Attaining corporate objectives helps companies to achieve their strategic goals. Corporate objectives are crucial to businesses because they facilitate planning, strategy development, and the direction of organizational activities.
They help companies to define their aims, conflicting operations and guide decision-making elements. The corporate objectives include survival, stability, growth, efficiency, and profitability (Objectives of management: Organizations, social, personal, 2021). Organizations mainly aim to utilize material and human resources to the extreme possible advantage, including fulfilling a business’s economic aims.
Profitability
Generating profits is among the main objectives of organizations. Businesses aim to generate profits for shareholders or business owners. Businesses earn profits by adhering to the regulations and rules governing them or following ethical activities. Profit generation is vital to a business because it determines whether a corporation can secure finances from banking institutions. The profitability objective is evident in the case study whereby McPherson Charles has 15 groups headed by lead partners specializing in one category of law. The team leaders manage each group depending on the category of clients they are dealing with hence; increasing the organization’s efficiency.
Grace, McPherson Charles’ manager, makes a follow-up of the issues contributing to the dissatisfaction of the staff to acquire a long-term solution that will increase the organization’s productivity. Businesses can drive their profitability by decreasing their costs, maximizing turnover, increasing productivity and efficiency. Reducing costs maximizes profits when the quantity and price of sales are constant (Increase your profitability, 2021). Nevertheless, it gets higher profits when a company efficiently cuts its costs without impacting sales, fees, and quality. High inventory turnover stimulates high prices, which generates a company’s high profit by fastening goods and services. Increasing efficiency maximizes the profitability of a business by increasing revenues and decreasing expenses.
Growth
Organizations achieve growth by increasing their profits, revenues, capacity, employee prosperity, and the number of workers. Growth impacts organizations by raising profits, productivity, innovation, and efficiency of an organization. Growth also reduces the costs of a firm by decreasing worker absenteeism and turnover. Businesses address their growth by understanding the cause of their development, prioritizing customers, selecting their team wisely, measuring staff needs carefully, adapting business changes quickly, and mentoring employees (6 ways to handle rapid growth, 2017).
The growth objective is evident in the case study whereby the manager is concerned with staff satisfaction. Employee satisfaction is crucial because it enables workers to deliver quality outputs, increasing the productivity of an organization. Satisfied employees are productive and contribute towards the achieving of organizational goals.
Survival
The essential objective of any industry is survival. For a company to survive, it must earn sufficient returns to cover expenses. A firm should have the ability to endure market shocks and jolts by having a long-term vision. To be prosperous and continue operating a given business, growth and profitability play a significant role in the survival of a trade by attracting more clients. Profitability is crucial in the existence of a company, but transition determines the long-term presence of a corporate (Objectives of management: Organizations, social, personal, 2021). The survival aim is apparent in the case study where the company manager divides the team members into 15 groups to reduce staff complaints about survival. Businesses address their survival by saving cash, narrowing profit margins, laying off workers, and cutting costs.
The Organization’s Main Processes
Organizational processes refer to the sequence of activities that determine a company’s business objectives and create resources, products, and procedures that help a firm attain its goals when applied. Some of the practical techniques adopted by McPherson Charles include planning, organizing, and leading processes.
Planning
The planning processes require managers to establish organizational objectives and develop actions to attain them. During this process, the management makes decisions to know the direction of a company. Managers brainstorm varying alternatives to achieve objectives before selecting the best actions. Managers analyze an organization’s current situation, considering its mission and vision and evaluating its resources to achieve its aims. During planning, managers assess external and internal factors that impact competitors, clients, and the economic growth of an industry. They also determine a realistic period for attaining organizational goals depending on the available resources, finances, and personnel. In addition, the strategic, tactical, and operational planning approaches are crucial in the planning process.
Strategic planning enables top organizational managers to create organizational goals, analyze threats, evaluate their weaknesses and strengths, and develop how to compete in their surroundings. The middle management performs tactical planning of an organization and aims at personnel, facilities, finance, and production. Companies use operational planning to attain their strategic goals and planning (Slack and Jones, 2018, pp. 1-10).
Operational planning develops a timeframe for converting strategic objectives to functional purposes. The planning process is evident in the case study when McPherson Charles’s manager notes the staff’s dissatisfaction despite varying processes and tasks. Hence, the manager plans on how to work out the raised issues. She then visits each of the lead partners in the three groups to obtain more information concerning their dissatisfaction to know how to address the problems.
Organizing
The organizing process aims at distributing resources and tasks among the workers to obtain the objectives established during the planning process. Managers may require to work with other sectors of an organization to organize staffing (Slack and Jones, 2018, pp. 1-10). The managers also create an environment for productivity by motivating employees to perform their tasks effectively. The organizing process is apparent in the case study whereby the firm had rearranged its staff into 15 teams, each headed by a team leader and specialized in practicing one law category to reduce team complaints. The strategy proved to be better as it motivated the staff to arrange themselves appropriately for handling clients.
Leading
The leading process includes influencing and encouraging employee behavior to attain the goals of a business. It emphasizes managing groups, teams, and individual workers rather than activities (Slack and Jones, 2018, pp. 1-10). The leading process is evident in the case study. The company assigns each of the 15 teams a lead partner responsible for the general project operation and curriculum management structure. For instance, Simon Reece led the family law team; Hazel Lewis led the litigation team; her main tasks were providing critical services for commercial clients. Kate Hutchinson controlled the property team; she was responsible for the processes set by the property team.
The Main Problems Facing the Organization and How They Can Be Address
Every organization has challenges that face their employees or the company in general. Challenges hinder organizations from achieving their objectives by interfering with employee morale and organizational operations. Challenges within organizations also negatively affect an organization’s growth by slowing employee outputs (Yeh et al., 2020, p. 119584). McPherson Charles’s challenges faced include; inadequate support, lack of communication, difficult employees, poor teamwork, and weak workplace culture.
Employee dissatisfaction
While the performance of employees dictates workplace productivity, supervisors and managers also impact employee performance. Supervisors increase productivity by ensuring the satisfaction of employees. The disconnection may cause employee dissatisfaction among desired outcomes and actions. Outside circumstances may cause the disconnection and lead to poor quality, decreased productivity, and low customer turnout. For instance, in the case study, the staff morale had slumped among the three teams even though their lead partners were outstanding first-class lawyers and good leaders.
To mitigate this challenge, McPherson Charles should ensure its employees are motivated and empowered (Employee dissatisfaction, 2021). The organization should motivate its employees by creating a good workplace culture, compensating them well, set goals, and recognize their success. In addition, McPherson Charles should empower its employees by providing them with what they need to attain the organizational goals.
Inadequate Support
Managers sometimes require approval from a company’s executive teams or owners before starting a project. Decision-making processes that take a long time impact a business’s general performance (12 common management challenges and how to overcome them, 2021). For instance, McPherson Charles’s manager lacked enough support from other senior staff, making it hard to recognize all the issues affecting employee satisfaction. Inadequate support also contributed to long decision-making in the organization because going from one group to another to identify all the problems contributing to worker dissatisfaction was time-consuming. To address this challenge, McPherson Charles’s manager should organize a one-on-one session with the team members instead of asking them general questions to know how they are dissatisfied and the cause of their dissatisfaction.
Lack of Communication
Lack of communication is another issue managers face among team members because each team associate has a varying personality, there is a chance of miscommunication. For instance, in the case study, McPhersons Charles’s staff did not communicate the issues hindering their satisfaction with their lead partners. The staff was also not sharing the problems that were facing them with the manager. The miscommunication made it hard for the manager to detect some of the issues hindering their satisfaction.
Hence, they decided to move from one group to another to recognize the problems. To solve this challenge, McPherson Charles should increase frequent communication to guarantee the staff knows their roles and what the organization requires them to perform (Phogat and Gupta, 2017). In addition, the organization should implement a platform that allows the team to communicate their challenges confidentially.
Poor Teamwork
Sometimes, workers may lose their focus by spending more time completing their tasks. For instance, in this case study, poor teamwork is evident whereby some individuals in the family law perform high-value cases while others take routine ones. Individuals of high-value cases are not giving their junior workmates a chance to handle the high-value cases. Hence, the junior staff is always perceiving itself as “second class citizens”. To avoid this challenge, the company seniors should ensure appropriate communication between the staff members on handling cases without categorizing them into senior and junior. Proper teamwork will enable the junior staff members to have the experience of handling high-value cases. Hence there will be a smooth transition of roles amongst the members.
Conclusion
McPherson Charles implemented the corporate operation strategy, which comprised the decisions regarding the business categories the staff wanted to engage in, the areas the team wanted to operate, and the enterprises they were to acquire. The corporate objectives include survival, stability, growth, efficiency, and profitability. Businesses earn profits by adhering to the regulations and rules governing them or following ethical activities. Growth impacts organizations by raising profits, productivity, innovation, and efficiency of an organization. To be prosperous and continue operating a given business, growth and profitability play a significant role in the survival of a trade by attracting more clients.
Some of the practical techniques adopted by McPherson Charles include planning, organizing, and leading processes. Organizational processes play a vital role in creating a framework that enables organizations to achieve their objectives. The company’s challenges include inadequate support, lack of communication, difficult employees, poor teamwork, and weak workplace culture. Organizations should overcome the challenges they face by empowering employees, organize a one-on-one session with the team members instead of asking them general questions, communicating effectively with employees, and being open-minded to employee solutions.
Reference List
12 common management challenges and how to overcome them. (2021). Web.
6 ways to handle rapid growth. (2017). Web.
Employee Dissatisfaction. (2021). Web.
Increase your profitability. (2021). Web.
Objectives of management: Organisations, social, personal. (2021). Web.
Phogat, S. and Gupta, A.K. (2017) Identification of problems in maintenance operations and comparison with manufacturing operations: a review. Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering. Web.
Reid, R.D. and Sanders, N.R. (2019). Operations management: An integrated approach. 7th ed. John Wiley & Sons, pp. 1-10.
Slack, N. and Brandon-Jones, A. (2018). Operations and process management: principles and practice for strategic impact. 5th ed. UK: Pearson, pp. 1-17.
Slack, N. and Lewis, M. (2019). Operations strategy. UK: Pearson, pp.20-40.
Yeh, L.T., Tseng, M.L. and Lim, M.K. (2020). Assessing the carry-over effects of both human capital and organizational forgetting on sustainability performance using dynamic data envelopment analysis. Journal of Cleaner Production, 250, p.119584.