LeadershipEssay Preview: LeadershipReport this essayRunning head: PROBLEM SOLUTION: HARRISON-KEYES, INC.Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes, Inc.Problem Solution: Harrison-Keyes Inc.“The important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence” (Cleary and Tzu, 1988, p. 30). This quote, issued by Sun Tzu more than 2,000 years ago, defines the problem at Harrison-Keyes. This 100-year-old firm is in trouble and has decided to change its direction without following the basic steps of project implementation, including:
1. Develop a project management plan — including work-breakdown structure, network plan, baseline plan, budget, and completion criteria2. Get agreement from all stakeholders.3. Evaluate possible risks to the project and establish contingency plans to reduce these risks.These, and other items in an implementation plan, are not new. The best practices for these have been developed over the last 40 years through hundreds of IT development projects.
Harrison-Keyes must get this project under control. There is no alternative to this. The following paper delves into this project and where it has gone wrong. In addition, it performs an analysis of options to resolve the issues and make the project successful.
Describe the SituationIssue and Opportunity IdentificationThe publishing world is changing. The marketing staff of OCLC states, “More than ever, content consumers are вЂ?format agnostic’ in that they do not care much what sort of container—such as a book, journal, BLOG or a Web page—the content comes from. Commercial content deployers are increasingly catering to these more experimental information consumers, providing content in a variety of formats, often with different cost structures related as much to its consumption as to the content itself,” (OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc., 2005).
Meg P. McGill – the chief executive officer (CEO) of the firm – after looking at the profit trends for the last few years and at overall publishing trends, observed that printed-technology books were declining in sales and that electronic books (e-books) were increasing in numbers. She and her staff put together a strategic plan to develop an e-book publishing capability and were able to get the approval of the board of directors to implement their strategy. Unfortunately, the strategic plan was looked at as being a project-management plan, and basic steps were not taken to ensure that the project would succeed.
The project, after almost a year of effort, is behind schedule and over budget. McGill was fired as CEO and William Guardo was hired to replace her. He is faced with the following issues that must be resolved. Based upon their resolution, he has to decide whether to continue this project or cancel it.
1. Risk management — Guardo’s first issue is to develop a risk-management plan. The need for this is evidenced by the firm’s necessity to find a way to digitize books after a flood wiped out the business of the only digitizer — Asia Digital Publishing — with which Harrison-Keys had established relations. He needs much more than just another digitizer; he needs a complete risk-management analysis performed for the entire project before he continues.
2. Organizational politics – Meg McGill, as a proponent of electronic container presentment, allowed the technology side of Harrison-Keyes to control the project — to the point this group has alienated the rest of the staff. It did not perform due diligence in managing this project and as a result has almost destroyed it. It was allowed to do so because of their position with McGill. Under William Guardo, all political gamesmanship has to end.
3. Development best practices — Jan Peters, head of the implementation team, and Mack Evans, chief information officer (CIO), must devise a formal project management plan. This type of plan is not new — IT development projects have been going on for more than 50 years. Over the duration of development projects, a large number of best practices for successful completion of a project has been compiled. The team at Harrison-Keyes needs to implement these practices.
4. Organizational culture — Organizations require a defined culture and without it, chaos will exist, (Gray-Larson, 2005, P. 74). The state of chaos best describes the organizational culture at Harrison-Keyes. The company must develop a common culture.
5. Project monitoring — This project, and all future ones, call for development of formal monitoring tools to prevent the present hysteria from ever reoccurring.
6. Project duration — An essential issue that must be addressed is the duration of the e-book project. This has been under way some months and is not near closure. The e-book-presentment project is time dependent; the first organizations to develop and mass-market e-books will have an advantage over latecomers.
7. Project closure — As quoted in this paper’s opening, victory (also known as closure) is essential. There are no points given for persistence. The firm that successfully produces e-books first will be the market leader. The firm that does a “good job” but never finishes will be left aside.
Stakeholder Perspectives/Ethical DilemmasA number of stakeholders are involved in this scenario. Although all seem to have valid perspectives, their viewpoints do not necessarily conform. This disagreement leads toward a number of significant ethical dilemmas:
1. The owners, as represented by the board of directors, versus the authors under contract to Harrison-Keyes — The owners and the board are interested in maintaining the viability of Harrison-Keyes, Inc. The owners desire the firm to remain profitable as their income is based upon this. Over the previous year this group has witnessed a significant expenditure of human and financial resources, while not seeing the expected return on investment (ROI) from this expenditure. The authors also are concerned with maintaining their incomes. They see digitization of books as a way for a single copy of the book to be disseminated multiple times, thereby reducing sales and royalties. The authors want digital-rights management included in the e-book
3. The ownership of the publisher and the authors, as represented by the board of directors, has remained private.
2. A number of factors other than the existence of a physical copy or the need for a publisher’s e-book were considered in its design. Although digitization of books is the largest step of the original, e-books are not considered for any specific specific purpose.
2.1. The authors believe that a physical copy or digital-rights management system may be considered and may provide financial support for keeping their books active, regardless of how well published or the number of books they sell.
2.2. The authors believe that the primary function in digital services is the distribution of a novel, so that books on e-books, or eBooks in general, are easily available to a broad wide audience.
2.3. A number of factors have been presented previously, including:
The authors believe, or have been proven wrong, that digital-rights services have become more relevant to their customers than traditional means of publishing.
1. In the past, the authors have supported traditional publishers with online book sales, which enabled local publishers to promote their published books. While the authors agree that digital-rights services have become more relevant than traditional e-books to the small and medium-sized business, to the larger market, such purchases have not yet yielded significant ROI. The authors believe that the use of digital-rights services to help small and medium-sized book markets increase is still not proven. The authors see as more likely today to continue developing digital-rights services. However, there is no definite proof that the current digital-rights system provides any economic benefit for the authors, so the authors will continue to pursue digital-rights sales as it currently is.
1. The authors will continue to work on these areas for the next year or so. The Authors Committee will also continue to consider all of the issues raised by the review committee, which include: a) our potential impact on book-selling in the future on e-books; b) how we can further enhance our digital-rights content portfolio; c) the implications of new digital-rights service capabilities and services for authors and publishing organizations; and d) the extent to which digital-rights service alternatives can support digital-rights. We are currently exploring additional digital-rights options and have also identified specific opportunities for further work. However, we remain committed to working cooperatively on any new digital-rights opportunities.
2. The authors will conduct research in order to continue to improve the content on which most of our sales depend and ensure the quality of our online materials that consumers are able to access. They will continue to further develop their digital-rights content portfolio and to continue to pursue a wider range of digital-rights services. They continue to research and apply their technology into digital-rights sales and online acquisition. Content creators in our industry will continue to benefit, grow and improve by focusing on digital-rights in their marketing campaigns and by using the digital news cycle as an opportunity to gain more insight into the most significant digital-rights issues going forward.
3. The Authors Committee will continue to consider all of the issues raised by the review committee. We will continue to investigate potential new business opportunities within publishing organizations around the world and as relevant to the future, we will also look at the potential commercial impacts that digital-rights could have on the future growth of e-books. We will continue to consider other business opportunities in their area – as will our ongoing focus on digital-rights, where and how we may be able to continue to increase our digital-rights business growth. In the future, we plan on continuing to monitor relevant news sources, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. By working with the Authors Committee and working in isolation with other authors in an effort to develop digital-rights services, editors and publishers are taking advantage of the increased visibility of online books, the increased digital access to print materials and digital-rights capabilities to support e-books and other traditional media. The authors hope that they have made significant progress in providing the digital-rights service to authors and publishing organizations, and we look forward to continuing to improve its service and work in cooperation with partners like the Creators Group, Authors Guild and other members. We will continue to consider all of the relevant issues raised by the Review Committee and plan a follow-up conference call with the authors that examines and assesses the possible outcomes by the early 2016 season and the next one to 2017. In March 2016, our New York Times, Washington Post and New York Daily News readers’ top ten bestselling e-books of all time were listed on Amazon as the top 100 bestseller lists in the U.S. On December 15, 2016, we launched our first interactive news portal for authors in the e-book world with news stories and stories on the subject. Over 20,000 stories from more than 1,200 publishers were published,
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