Leading the Learning Organization - Essay Example

Heading: Communication Your name: Course name: Professors’ name: Date Introduction Organizational leadership and management styles often reflect the existing communication practice in an organization. These strategies are developed at the inception of the company and are nurtured as the organization develops with a few variations along the way. Research reveals that successful organization have an effective communication practice. Organizations with less developed communication practice often face difficulties in the industry as they try to remain relevant amidst intense competition. Globalization has increased both opportunities and threats, for existing companies a constant threat from new entrants is always a concern while new companies face stiff competition for customers in an existing market environment. This report analyzes communication and management issues facing Engin Ltd, an Australian VoIP provider company. The company has existed for nearly a decade and has since grown tremendously despite the existing internal challenges. This report will also provide recommendations for the organization on how to handle the existing communication challenges. Company background The organization selected for analysis is Engin Ltd; an Australian based VoIP phone provider which was founded in 2003. It currently has a reasonable customer base of 58,000 with revenue of A$3.5 annually. Engin Ltd is headquartered in Sydney Australia and has about 80 employees. The company has a potential for growth as it is dealing in VoIP, a business sector which is yet to be fully exploited. Over the past years since inception, Engin Ltd has launched a number of promotions which have played in major role in increasing its market base. Engin Ltd is still a small business when compared to the large companies in the same telecommunication sector such as Telsra Ltd. Engin Ltd is in the growth phase and it could see an increased growth in the near future if WiMax implementation wins the battle against LTE as the main technology towards 4G globally. The firm is also well positioned to adapt WiMax technologies to boost on its existing VoIP products and services. Engin Ltd is selected for analysis because it is still a developing organization and experiences fundamental organizational management and communication challenges. Organizational profile Engin Ltd management is effective; the management has adapted a hybrid of top down and lateral communication. This mainly depends on the information that is to be communicated. The organizational structure of the company is as follows, it has a CEO, Charles Solomon, the human resource department, head of different lines within the organization such as finance, sales and marketing, technical, legal, procurement and IT. In every line, there are managers and employees. Every employee reports to the immediate manager and the manager reports to the head of each line department. Each heads reports directly to the human resource and the CEO respectively. Important information is passed in a top down manner that is from the CEO or heads to the managers and employees. The appraisal process is also done in the same manner, the managers are responsible for establishing if the employees are using the resources and the tools at their disposal well enough. In turn, the managers are appraised by the heads with respect to the performance of their teams (Engin, 2013). Organizational culture of Engin Ltd is structured in a manner that allows communication between the employee’s managers and heads in a free manner. The communication is however not as effective as it should be because of the existing barriers among the different departments. Each department has adopted their communication styles and basically how they communicate with each other. The IT department for instance is concerned about the internal network of the organization and the communication with the outside through its WAN. The technical team on the other hand is only concerned with the company’s operation outside the company. This mainly involves implementation or deployment of VoIP boxes in client premises, or CPEs. Despite the close relation between these two functional departments, there is a communication gap between the IT and the technical departments. This is one of the major concerns of the existing lateral communication which is necessary for the company’s efficiency in service delivery. The same issue exists in the finance and legal department; this often slows down the internal processes of the company. Essentially, the top down communication process is more dominant as compared to the lateral communication process (Engin, 2013). This is mainly evident when two different departments have to work together to achieve a specific purpose. When the communication is from the top, the process becomes easy and every team works more effectively as compared to when the source of communication is from the employees themselves to other employees of different departments or management to management level. The rationale for this difficulty is because of the communication process which was established at the onset of the organization. Engin Ltd maintains reasonable approaches to ensure ethical and moral considerations as well as social responsibility as a company. Most of the organizational tasks are managed in a professional manner despite the existing challenges in the industry. The humanistic management approach employed by the management in the organization helps in maintaining ethical and moral standards both internally and externally (Engin, 2013). The CEO values professionalism and hence emphasizes on the need to maintain sound ethical considerations when making any organizational decisions. The management level has since adapted the same approach as they move towards attaining their objectives. Engin Ltd has not been actively involved in corporate social responsibility issues mainly because it is still a developing company but the CEO has a keen interest in starting projects that will mainly aim at fostering sustainable environmental exploitation. As noted, Engin Ltd is a developing company with reasonable potential; its communication process is dominantly a top down approach while lateral communication is also supported. There is a communication breakdown between different departments within the company, a factor that has been slowing down some processes. The company takes a keen consideration of ethical issues and has continually worked towards achieving its CSR objectives of sustainable environmental exploitation. Strategies to address weaknesses in management and communication practice The existing organizational structure of Engin Ltd has a number of weaknesses that may potentially slow down the company’s growth. In order to address these issues, the following approaches should be adapted to reorient the company toward achieving its core objectives. Firstly, the company needs to work on its communication strategies; there are a number of ways to achieve this. The recommended way of addressing communication barrier between the management and employees as well as communication between different departments is by emphasizing more on lateral communication process (Wefald, Reichard, & Serrano Shawn 2011). This can be achieved by firstly managing fundamental aspects of communication. Trust for instance is one of the most imperative communication ingredients. It is important for the management to develop trust in the communication process. According to Gillis & IABC (2011, p.52) one Fortune 500 employee relations and communication department provided an example of how trust development has become an international department strategy. The vice president for the employee relation and communication adopted a five-dimensional trust model as a framework for his department. Upon review of the trust model by his department and outside consulting firm, the review of the mission and the organizational values and annual worth of internal communication and annual responses to the employee satisfaction survey yielded positive results. It was established that competence and identification were least represented while trust development was highly represented. Within a period of two years, the department was able to present the management with employee satisfaction survey improvements as well as reduced turnover rate data. It was clear from the findings that trust development played a significant role in shaping the communication process within the department. The rate of performance was also improved as a result of an effective trust model in place. Engin Ltd needs to adapt a trust model that fit the existing organizational structure in order to create room for effective communication development within different department. Trust will also aid in the development of a more lateral communication process which will reduce the communication breakdown that exists in the organization (Griffin, 2009). According to Sims (2002) the management should also be proactive in understanding the operations of the company as well as the challenges that the employees are facing in their daily duties. A proactive management is an important part of creating an effective communication process. The rationale for this is because it will create a free atmosphere where employees can easily interact with each other and hence boost their relationships. This will decrease the existing departmental communication gaps and thus enable the company function more effectively in handling the existing challenges. According to I-Fei Liao (2009) communication improvement is a continual process that should be sustained in an organization in order to ensure that issues which impede communication are resolved in a timely manner. It is the responsibility of the company’s stakeholders to put in place measures, such as feedback mechanism that target communication issues in order for the management to be more proactive in initiating preventing measures to communication issues. As noted by Cushman & King (2007) an effective communication process is developed from the hiring to induction of a new employee. This is important in ensuring that the new employees not only adapts to the organizational culture but also the existing communication mechanism. By doing so, there will be minimal communication issues that will be carried along by the incoming employees. Since communication improvement is a continuous process, there is no one strategy that is best for the purposes of improving communication. In fact, a holistic approach for improvement of the management structure as well as the existing communication practice is required. More so, improvements will be determined by prevailing industry environment (Marquis & Huston, 2009). The industry performance has profound impact on how organizations conduct their businesses. It is therefore the responsibility of the Engin Ltd to determine new approaches to align the existing communication process to the prevailing needs of the industry. Flexibility is the key issue in management approach (Belasen, 2000). The more flexible the management to changes in the business environment, the more adaptable the organization will be to the prevailing challenges that it faces. A flexible management trickles down to employee and hence making the organization to adapt more to its environment and as such react to the changing needs (Downs & Adrian, 2012). This is specifically important to Engin Ltd because it is in a very dynamic industry, communication tools and technologies constantly change. This necessitates the need to adapt these changes in order to remain relevant and sustainable in the foreseeable future. Conclusion As evident from this analysis, Engin Ltd has faced a number of communication and management challenges since its inception. Communication between departments is a problem while the top down approach practice which is a dominant communication strategy of the company is impeding on the overall communication. In order for the company to deal with these challenges, it is recommended to adapt new communication approaches that mainly emphasize on trust. As research shows, trust is fundamental in the creation of an effective communication strategy. Trust improves communication by creating an enhancing atmosphere that supports improved communication. It has also been recommended to adapt a holistic approach that addresses issues relation to management structure and the existing communication practice. With the ever changing environment, the Engin Ltd management should put in place a continuous system that addresses communication issues in relation to the prevailing industry environment. Future recommendations for Engin Ltd is to conduct a survey on communication issues facing the organization in order to develop a more tailored approach that best suits the organization based on the existing issues that a qualitative survey may not fully address. References Belasen, A.T.(2000). Leading the Learning Organization: Communication and Competencies for Managing Change. New Jersey, NJ: SUNY Press. Cushman, D.P., & King, S.S.(2007). Continuously Improving an Organization's Performance: High-Speed Management. New Jersey, NJ: SUNY Press. Downs, C.W., & Adrian, A.D.(2012). Assessing Organizational Communication: Strategic Communication Audits. Melbourne: Guilford Press. Engin. (2013). Australina Leading VoIP company. Accessed from http://www.engin.com.au/default.aspx Gillis, T., & IABC.(2011). The IABC Handbook of Organizational Communication: A Guide to Internal Communication, Public Relations, Marketing, and Leadership. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. P.52-59. Griffin, E. (2009). A First Look at Communication Theory. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. I-Fei Liao, C. (2009). Individual Characteristics, Organizational Justice and Job Attitudes of Employees under Non-standard, International Journal of Management, 26(3), pp.23-34. Marquis, B.L., & Huston, C.J.(2009). Leadership Roles and Management Functions in Nursing: Theory and Application. London: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Sims, R.R.(2002). Managing Organizational Behavior. London: Greenwood Publishing Group Wefald, Andrew J. Reichard, Rebecca J., & Serrano Shawn A.(2011). ‘Fitting Engagement into a Nomological Network: The Relationship of Engagement to Leadership and Personality.’ Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 18(4), pp. 521-537. Read More