FREE ESSAY ON ORGANIZATION CHANGE

ORGANIZATION CHANGE

Organization Change
-  Describe the present of situation of the company, and the main reasons that causes the
problems. 
3J Tech Company now is faced with high percentage of sales drop and huge amount of its
customers complaining. The situation is overwhelming because the customers have been
asking not to continue the contract with 3J Tech, and turn around to do business with its
competition. Therefore, this results that the company is losing its market share and
reputation in the market. All of these problems are occurred is because of its product
with poor quality. Moreover, the main reasons that causes "poor quality" of the product
are its inefficiency and inefficient material, people, production of technology, and
management style. 
-  Introduce the company's history and the principle of business and its environment such
as its competitors.
3J TECH Corporation was found in 1984, and the CEO is wenj Huang. The company's main
business that is involving in computer network products such as Fax Modem, PCMCIA Cards,
Tel Talk etc. Actually the company was doing well in the beginning because of its sales
and marketing ability. However, because of Huang's management style, it has been
destroyed the company's performance. Huang asked the employees must work hard to the
company but he did not take care what the employees' need; for example, the employees in
sales department asking for sales commissions that was totally ignored by Huang. The same
situation also happened to the engineering department asking for the need of experts to
support the performance was not concerned by Huang. In addition, Huang slashed costs and
funneled the cash to other enterprises in which he was involved. Needless to say, 3J Tech
members despised him. When the time went by, the employees lost his or her enthusiasm to
work for the company because of largely unresponsive to worker concerns. Therefore, the
quality of the product went down because the employees did not work hard as before. Then,
it results the order went down. When the company received more complaining of poor
quality from its customers, the only thing Huang did was to put a lot of pressure on the
managers of each department. Alan Guo, who has so many working experience in sales and
marketing, the manager of sales department has no moral in malpractice. Kiwi Huang, who
was hired with high salary from Wenj, the manager of production department and he was the
senior engineer form one of most famous TECH corporations. Basically, he obeyed to Wenj's
order, and he followed Wenj's management style. Peter Zhuang, who has professional
knowledge in technique of research and development, the manager of engineering
department. The managers then blamed all these problems on the workers; therefore, it
caused high turnover rate in the company. In contrast, Huang did not feel bad because of
employees' often resignation because he believed he could always hire the employees who
have more loyalty to the company. When the new employees come to the company, they won't
work hard to the company because of the company's culture tell them that "you gain not
thing from the company even though you work very hard for them; the only thing you will
have is a lot of blaming." Therefore, the employees won't stay longer than two years on
average in the company. 
Actually there are more than 100 organizations which are doing the same business like 3J
Tech in the market. Comparing with its competitors, the company is considered as young
and developing company in this market. Therefore, in order to gain the market share, the
company's strategy was to offer cheaper price than its competitors to the customers.
-  As a new CEO, give my assessment of the situation in global. Use fish bone to analyze
the main reasons that causes poor quality of the products. 
Eventually Wenj Huang was forced out because his poor management style resulting the
company's poor performance, but Huang era left deep internal organizational wounds.
Jing-Wen Hsieh, the new CEO, who came to the company after Huang left. Hsieh finds out
that the company's sales go down dramatically is all because poor quality of the products
which resulted its customers replacement, and she realizes that if she wants the
company's business back, "quality" of the product is the key. However, in order to know
how to improve the products' quality, she must first analyze the main reasons that cause
poor quality the products. And they are poor management style, unhappy employees,
unprofessional technology and inefficient and inefficiency material. 
What surprised her is that Huang's management style left the organization with serious
internal problems. There are no effectiveness communication channels that established in
the company; there are no open communication and extensive information sharing in the
organization. Therefore, it resulted the employees of each department worked on their
own, and they do not have general knowledge and information what others department does.
The organization's system, which means its organization of processes, does not consider
each process should not only complete in itself but also need to work together. This came
out obviously that there is lack of cooperation in the environment. In addition, there is
lack of committed leadership through the organization. Needless to say, the managers or
supervisors are less caring to the employees. Of course, this poor management style
directly affects to the employees in the organization. Hsieh find out that the reasons
why the employees are unhappy to work in his or her job is because they are lack of
support and lack of training, when the problems occurs. Moreover, there is lack of trust
in the organization. Most of employees are afraid to take responses and to make mistakes
because there were only blames not rewards. The employees do not see their future if they
continue to work for 3J Tech Company. Therefore, the organization's employee turnover
rate is extremely high. According to the organization's culture, when the new employees
come to the company, they won't work hard for the company because the environment clearly
show that they gain not thing from the company even though they work very hard for 3J.
Moreover, the more ideas they contribute the more responsibilities they have. If the
things are not going well, the only thing they would have is a lot of blaming. Therefore,
the employees wouldn't work for the organization, and they treated 3J Tech company as a
training institution or their springboard for next job. As long as they attain they need,
then they leave the company. Mostly the employees will not stay longer than two years on
average in the company. 
At the same time, Hsieh figure out that the organization foes not build up the good
relationship with its suppliers. There are two reasons result this bad relationship with
its suppliers: the first one, the organization often delay the payment to it suppliers;
therefore, it causes that the suppliers are not willing to do business with the company.
Moreover, the second reason is that the company does not range the purchase timing, and
it results the suppliers could not deliver the material on time. Therefore, it then
affectes the company's production line which somewhat needed to stop producing the
product until they received the materials. Moreover, because the company's strategy was
to offer cheaper price than its competitors to the customers in order to expand its
market share, therefore, most of components of the product were offered cheap prices by
the small and low technical suppliers. In addition, there are no long term partnership
with its suppliers because the company often changed the suppliers, when they found out
other suppliers which could offer them even cheaper prices of materials than their
current suppliers. This changing around suppliers which caused high degree of chance to
buy incorrect quality of the materials.
Furthermore, Hsieh also realized that production department and engineering department
were lack of the professional technology. This not only caused more chance of deviations
that occurred in the process of production, but also prevented research and development
of the product. Moreover, there were poor equipment maintenance and old equipment existed
in production department; needless to say, it easily caused that the products did not
have good quality. At the same time, there was lack of experts in production department
and engineering department to handle the work. Only few professional engineer work in
these two department, but most of employees did not have professional skill or knowledge.
And this often caused more mistakes, then end up spending more time to fix the products.

-  Use SWOT analysis to know the company's strengths, weakness, opportunities, and
threats. Gather the additional information which is needed in order to implementing
change by survey or past experiences (similar situation) happened to other organizations.

Although she had clarified main reasons that cause poor quality the products, she still
needed to analysis what the company's strengths, weakness, opportunity, and threats
because this would help her to understand the company's internal and external condition.
She then found out that the company's strengths were its marketing and sales ability, and
price competition that was lower than its competitor. The company's weakness were its
inefficient production process, high employee turnover rate, poor management style,
financial limitation etc. On the other hand, the opportunity was that the company needed
to figure out how to reengineer its production process in order to reduce cost and
wasting resources. Of course, competitions were the company's threat. 
Moreover, she saw by knowing these information were not good enough to implement change;
therefore, she decided to gather addition information from the managers in each
department and the employees. She has the inform meeting with these managers and asked
them how they think about the company, their perceptive, their suggestion, and what
changes they would like to make. Moreover, she uses survey to ask the employees their
thought such as what they liked or disliked the company, what changes they would like to
see from the company, what they needs are etc. At the same time, she goes through the
information which had similar situation happened to other organization in past
experiences which gives her more ideas how to implement changes. 
-  Describe the process of change. (How do I make these changes happen? who needs
involved, what things can or cannot control, developing new structure, etc.) 
She knows that to persuade informed and demanding customer that 3J Tech is a different
company, she has to persuade her own employees. Some of her initial actions are to change
the product's package, remove some products that have outdated in the market, and take
away the time clock system out of the company. The purpose of changing the product's
package is to refresh the company's image. By checking the company's financial report,
She find out that the company has invested in many products that did not contribute
profits to the company or did not attract the customers; therefore, she decides to remove
these products out of product line. This action will help the company not wasting its
resources by only concentrating in certain products that brought profits for the company.
The reason why she eliminates the time clock system is because she does not believe that
the employee of time clock system can tell the company who does work hard or who does
not. In stead of the time clock system, she establishes the humanized working time
schedule for the employees. This will somewhat help building trust between the
organization and the employees, and it shows that the company does understand the
employees may have some inconvenience in some situations that cause for being late or
leaving early.
Hsieh also acts quickly to get employees focused on specific targets. Rather than
emphasizing generic cost-cutting efforts or zeroing in on simplistic reactions to
competitors' actions, she puts everyone on notice that they would be measured together on
what mattered most to customers—the quality of products. Her fist step is to need
the commitment from the managers. She tell Kiwi Huang, the production of manager, that
she needs his commitment to make the production department working inefficient. She also
mentions that she would support his need to help the changes happened; however, there
would be a time limit which meant if he does not come out any contribution, he would be
laid off by the company. Then, the idea they come out is that changing technology. To get
rid of old equipment and introduce the new equipment such as efficient handling
equipment, furnaces, and presses have been installed to reduce the cost of manufacturing
Modem and PCMCIA cards. Moreover, she also hires some exports to test and fix the process
of production in each step in order to decreasing the deviation or error that occurs
randomly in production line. In addition, she sent the employees who were involved in the
work for technical training in order not to be threaten by the change. On the other hand,
she found out that there was a lot of wasting resources that caused by incorrect quality
of materials. To reduce cost of these wasting resources, she asked the purchasing
department to test the quality of each material from the suppliers. She understands it is
impossible to improve the product's quality if the company uses inferior components.
Moreover, she tells purchasing department that the way to get the least expensive, best
supplier is to work with one supplier for each item in a long-term relationship. She
believes that once the company finds the good suppliers and by working together, the
organization might find more effective methods to reduce costs for both while the company
and the supplier both improve itself products. Moreover, they must range the purchase
time and make sure the accounting department gives the payment to suppliers on time.
For the engineer department, after meeting with Peter Zhuang, the manager of engineer
department, she then hired more professional engineers to support the department. She
also saw how to deign the product by using less material but more functions would be an
important issue; therefore, the engineer department must have strong ability in research
and develop of products. So, she very focused on engineering updating skills, knowledge,
information etc. On the other hand, she thought it was easy to deal with sales department
because she knew what bothered them was that the company did not provide sales
commissions. After she had the commitment form Alan Guo, who was the manager of sales
department, she decided to provide the appropriate percentage of sales commissions in
total sales that made by sales person as a reward, but it would not start until the
quality of product had been improving. Moreover, she required sales people must not only
have a clear understating of the products, but also learn the knowledge of the produce of
the product process in order to provide the high quality of customer service. 
To emphasize her commitment, she led employees know she will be using the monthly sales
report and the survey of customer satisfaction rankings as the company's new performance
yardstick. To make sure employees were motivated to meet these new performance targets.
Hsieh promises to pay every employee a separate $40 check in any month the company
finishes in above average of rankings. Although $40 check may not seem like a lot of
money, the checks symbolize to 3J employees that management is now willing to pay rewards
instead of constantly asking for givingbacks. 
Moreover, she knows it will take a lot of time to change the organization's culture.
However, she tries to unify people and give them a vision. She wants the employees feel
that the company does provide them the future, and the company wins means they win, too.
-  Address the possible effects of any recommended changes that might effect on other
organization units, and how I would deal with these ripple effects (open communication,
training, and creating no threaten environment.).
Hsieh knows it is possible the changes she made will affect on the organization units
especially each department has been always work on their own; for example, the sales
people did not want to get involved in technical support to the customer. Therefore,
whenever the customers had any technical problems or question, they send them to the
engineer department or production department. Just like her decistion that the sales
department needs to learn the produce of the product process in production department.
She knows this might cause resistance of the sales department because they think they
will need to handle more work that should be other department's responsibility. However,
to make things work smoothly, she clarify her idea to the employees. All she wants is
each department can work and support together. How she achieves her want is that she used
cross-functional team strategy to make employees work together. And open communication to
make sure employees' perception and attitude. To reduce resistance of the sales
department, she provide a series of product technical knowledge for salespeople, and she
told them that she does not require they have to become a experts in production or
engineer field. She only expects them in providing better service with the customers, and
in cooperating with engineering department and production department. 
-  Evaluation of the change program (benchmarking, customer surveys, or TQM-actual
results vs. plan). 
How can she know if all the changes that she made in organization do improve the
organization's performance? She will determine performance evaluation by quality experts,
customer survey, employee survey, employees' turnover, revenues and market share. Through
quality experts, the test will tell whether the company do improve the product quality or
not. At the same time, through customer survey to know customer satisfaction in quality
of the product. Moreover, through employee survey to know employee satisfaction with the
organization after the changes occurred in the company. She believes the changes she made
should bring the company's business back and even bring more revenue for the
organization.