Organizations and the Business Environment - Essay Example

Risk Plan Project management is one of the most important and complicated areas which requires knowledge and expertise of a manager and team members.Project organization is a crucial component of project planning. The main risks LRH financial could face include: (1) a completely new advertising campaign after the gold tournament; (2) the first deadline that is due one week before the golf tournament; (3) the same three persons who are overload; (4) a person, Betty, who is involved in both activities; (5) low team morale; (6) negative attitude of staff towards changes and resistance to change. An advertising campaign implemented after the gold tournament could not have an expected impact on consumers and their choice. It is better to organize it before the event and familiarize the target audience with the company and its activities. In spite of its significance and popularity, it requires additional publicity and advertising to inform potential visitors about the company. Integrated marketing communication is an important part of every marketing activity before the event which helps organizers to achieve high response rate and popularity. The second risk is that the first deadline is due one week before the golf tournament, so there will be no time left for changes and improvements (the leaflets, ads, etc. are printed, and all arrangements are made). The third negative factor is that the same three persons are involved 100% in the final preparation, so neither of them will be able to make possible changes and help with new promotion opportunity. If Betty is involved in both activities, she could not objectively define the threats and drawbacks of the new advertising campaign. When morale is low, and feelings of frustration or alienation are found to exist, it is important that positive action is taken to remedy the causes. The sixth risk is that the staff can resist strongly changes in adverting campaign. They would be frustrated because the company does not appreciate their efforts and time spent on 'the old adverting plan". 1. The best solution for the first risk is to implement adverting campaign before the gold tournament according to the previous schedule. The new promotional opportunity an be added to the previous plan. It will not take much time and efforts of employees and ensure that the company will reach the main target audience. Senior management needs to develop a broad strategic vision, which calls for redesigned business processes (Campbell, 1997). 2. To meet the first deadline and avoid changes, it is important to consult the responsible persons during the preparation process. Also, it is possible to develop a rough plan if the primary plan would not work well. In order to leverage change, the manager can identify primary and secondary activities. Primary change activities are most directly related to the project. Primary change activities will include inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, sales and marketing, and service. The other group is support activities which will not have a direct impact on the project. It will help to avoid uncertainty and haste. 3. It would be possible to appoint the forth person in order to solve secondary problems of the plan. The project manager should identify a few core processes to be redesigned, focusing on those with the greatest potential payback. Symptoms of inefficient processes include excessive data redundancy and reentering information, too much time spent handling exceptions and special cases, or too much time spent on corrections and rework. The analysis should identify what organizational group owns the process, what organizational functions or departments are involved in the process, and what changes are required. The methods for identifying organizational information requirements described earlier in this chapter may be useful here. 4. Before the changes are made, the project manager should inform Betty about recent changes and ask her opinion about additional duties. Also, the company could pay her for additional hours, and in this case she will not refuse to work overtime. The new duties can be presented as a new challenge for Betty's professionalism and commitment to work and organization. 5. The role of the manager is to maintain friendly relations among employees and healthy atmosphere. He/she should clearly define new tasks and importance on new strategy for the entire project. It is important because organizational climate will influence the level of morale and attitudes which members of the organization bring to bear on their work performance and personal relationships (Robbins, 2002). 6. If staff are kept fully informed of proposals, are encouraged to adopt a positive attitude and have personal involvement in the implementation of the change, there is a greater likelihood of their acceptance of the change. With the participative change cycle, a significant advantage is that once the change is accepted it tends to be long lasting. Since everyone has been involved in the development of the new adverting campaign (or additional part of the previous one), each person will tend to be more highly committed to its implementation. Participation will ensure the persons involved in the change take part in the planning and redesigning of the change. They are then more likely to feel a part of the new project as the element of uncertainty about its impact will have been removed. 3. Matrix. All risks will be accessed using five level ranking system: very high, high, medium, low and very low. Likelihood Following the skim proposed by Designing an Effective Risk Matrix (2002): A Risk (project failure) B Risk (substantial financial resources required) C Risk (additional budget required) D No further risk The matrix suggests that the level of risk is medium so the company should pay a special attention to planning processes and employees morale to overcome possible threats and the project failure. In sum, a special attention should be given to the nature of the main tasks and changes in order to avoid risks and their negative consequences. So, the need of effective management is to reach a balance which is in the best interests of the organization, which ensures that what is done adds value to the organization that the best possible use is made of scarce resources. References 1. Campbell, D.J. (1997). Organizations and the Business Environment. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. 2. Designing an Effective Risk Matrix. (2002). Retrieved from archives1.iomosaic.com/whitepapers/risk-ranking.pdf [accessed 09 Dec 2006] 3. Robbins, S. (2002). Organizational Behavior. Pearson Higher. Read More