Case Study
The Procurement Officer of Barry Corporation, Polly Louis (Louis) stepped out of the conference hall in a pensive mood after an important meeting called by the CEO. The meeting was attended by the heads of various departments in the company and was convened to discuss the targets for the coming assessment year. Louis had a formidable sales target to achieve and wondered how she would be able to meet those seemingly impossible goals. This fear was further aggravated by the fact that the productivity levels of employees in the company had been falling. Louis was under tremendous pressure from the management to improve the performance of her team. She also had to deal with the decreasing levels of employees’ morale in her 24-member team. As a first step, Louis informed her team members about a meeting that she planned to hold the next day. She then drafted a plan of action that she intended to discuss with her team.
The next day, Louis began the meeting by informing her team members about the corporate meeting she had attended. She then said, “We have a difficult task ahead for this year, and your participation and involvement is essential to achieve the goals”. She then invited suggestions from her team members regarding the role to be played by each of them. The meeting then progressed on to setting of individual targets for by each team member as, it was felt that this would help in accomplishing the organizational goals. Specific goals were, therefore, set and agreed upon by all the team members. The team aimed to increase the organizational profits by 18% over the next six months. They sketched out a plan of action to achieve the targets set for the team and decided that they would meet once every two months to monitor their progress.
Two months later, the team met again and received their progress. Louis also gave a feedback on the performance of every member of the team. The team then collectively identified the areas of improvement and decided upon the measures they would take to overcome their deficiencies. This continued for the rest of the year. The final review meeting was held just before the yearly corporate meeting attended by the top management. The team was surprised to see that they had achieved their targets.
Thus, effective planning and control mechanisms helped the team achieve their short term goals, and this in turn, helped in the achievement of the organizational objectives. Besides, the employees were also motivated as the management gave adequate recognition to their involvement and participation in achieving team goals. The target to be achieved by the team was highly challenging. This further motivated the team members as they had better opportunities to prove their problems solving skills.
Thus, the outstanding performance of the sales team helped the organization achieve in the long term.
Questions for Discussions:
- Polly Louis followed the practice of management by objectives (MBO) while setting goals for team members. Discuss the various phases of the MBO process that helped her team achieve its goals.
- Explain briefly the process of MBO and the various advantages of implementing MBO in organizations.
- If you would have been in place of Louis what had been your way of working with your team?
