Organisational Behavior
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The Company (historical background)
QNIE is one of the FMCG market leaders company in Qatar. It has been in the market for thirty years. It started as an entrepreneurial venture selling one brand (frozen chicken) and it was very successful which allowed the company to grow steadily as it acquired more brands and the market boomed because of the oil and gas Qatar is rich of. QNIE was for long known as a conservative company that provided its employees with jobs for life. The owner has strong customer focus approach to sales and the whole company was built around and for his sales team. As the one who built the company and recruited most of the employees himself, he kept involved with all operational details. The employees, too, knowing about his desire of knowing every single detail about the day-to-day work activities made sure that he is apprised of all things happening in order to score points with him.
His success has encouraged local business men to join him as partners. And as the business grew beyond his abilities to keep track of all financial, market, logistics, admin and IT work; he started to get into the company some professional managers to help in managing the growing business. However, he kept a strong control of all decisions.
Now the company sells more than 1500 SKUs with annual selling revenues around US$150 millions, has more than 200,000 square meters of storing capacity, 300+ distribution vehicles and 600+ employees.
The opportunity
And, yet, with only recently acquired theoretical leadership and management competencies, all of the above will be put under my full control, although for a short time. Therefore, I have put a road map to achieve the following goals:
Carrying out a strategic audit of the company using the McKinsey 7s model designed for analyzing and improving the company effectiveness.
Put forward a plan for action to address needed changes on both the longer and shorter terms.
Implement some changes to achieve a quick win for the company that would boast performance.
In addition, the above strategy will help me:
Apply my newly acquired learning into practical application.
Increase my chances of, hopefully, keeping the position for more than three months- or at least to be put seriously among the candidates.
The 7s Audit
Strategy:
There is no formal agreed upon strategies adopted by the company. However, the implicit strategies were all related to aggressive sales, defending market share, cost cutting, and cheap labor.
Structure
The centralized structure was built around functions: three divisions of sales, warehouses, fleet, HR & admin, accounting, IT and purchasing. The departments managers were reporting directly to the co-owner/ general manager (exhibit 1).
Although the company did invest largely acquiring the services of one of the big 4 consulting companies to put in place a detailed organization charts and job descriptions for all positions in the company, the work did not help in clarifying roles and accountabilities. The reason was that the consulting companys work was not tailored to QNIE needs. This, partly, made the consultants work remaining unimplemented formally which resulted in roles and accountabilities to be ambiguous. And partly because the general manager was reluctant to delegate and empower his first line executives.
Systems
The management systems in place were related to sales, warehouses and accountancy. In short, only the operations part of the business processes are being controlled via a sophisticated IT infrastructure that helped the company monitor and run the business. However, other business processes like financial, business planning, marketing and human resources are almost none existent. This is directly because the centralized style of management kept all of these processes under the direct and personal judgment of the general manager.
Style
The management style of the co-owner/ general manager basically evolved around his own values and character. It is extremely centralized, very hierarchal and directive. Risk-taking is strictly not allowed. The managers, especially sales and marketing, are very reactive to market trends and competitors moves. Imitation is favored over innovation. In short, managers should stick to whatever worked in the past. Teamwork does not exist since all managers are trying to cover themselves within a blaming culture. Although the co-owner/ general manager always encourages his staff to work as a team, however, the structure and the systems in place acts as continuous sources of power conflicts and evading accountabilities. The managers were almost like consultants; they advised the general manager of what to do and the final decision rested only with him.
Staff
The workforce is much diversified in term of nationalities and race; but exclusively male. There are two reasons behind this:
The local people are all employed in government or have their own business. It is only allowed for locals to own businesses and properties. The non local individuals or companies have to either rent or get into partnership with local business men.
The imported labor is largely male because they are easier to administer, in terms of accommodation and they are more culturally acceptable- Qatar is a Middle East culture thus highly masculine.
Shared Values
The Management and staff share socially and religiously based values. As a Middle East culture and largely (if not all) Muslim staff, values like honesty, integrity, commitment to traditions and empathy dominate how the company does its business. Loans from banks to finance operations are strictly not allowed since the interest that the bank charge is against Muslim faith. Credit sales to customers are not interest based even if they became outstanding for a long time. Staff also are not fined should they made an unintentional mistake resulting in a loss for the company since it is also against Muslim faith.
Skills