Interpersonal and People Management Skills in Delivering Organisational Success - Essay Example

Personal Reflection Student’s Name: Course Code: Lecture’s Name: Date of Submission: Personal Reflection In this section, I reflect and cover topics and subtopics/ themes covered under strategic organisational excellence. Under strategic organisational excellence the principle issue that I feel was undertaken squarely lies on how flaws in principal business processes can be pinpointed and removed in any business organisation. Specifically, the study exposed me to numerous domains, themes and topics. For instance while undertaking the unit, one of the issues I did relate to strategic management. Strategic management helps organisations develop road map on the path they expect to undertake so to outdo competitors. Secondly, I was exposed to models of organisational excellence. The next critical topic covered was the learning organisation concept. This was critical expose as it highlighted how organisations can manage knowledge for prosperity and thus, guaranteeing organisational excellence. Further, the unit covered the concept of corporate social responsibility which constitutes significant expression excellence as it allows organisations to balance expectations of different stakeholders. Additionally, the topic exposed me to the concept of supply chain management and how it aids in attaining strategic organisational excellence. The realisation is that organisational excellence is delivered in a holistic framework that adopts a systems approach. Apart from these, I was exposed to issues such as quality and organisation culture, management of risks and communication & cascading organisational vision, mission & values. By being exposed to these topics, my technical knowledge was refined, perspectives changed and thus able to learn numerous concepts that I can apply in future undertakings. The overall learning point is the realisation that business environment is a highly complex and dynamic sphere and this call for implementations of various strategies so as to overcome competitions and deliver value to customers so as to guarantee market leadership which will in-turn leads to higher profitability. As such, this calls for implementation of strategies at internal level/ within the company anchored on strengths, opportunities, key success factors and best practices; and implementation of strategies geared to overcome the industry level and macro-environment factors. In this regard, one of the realisations is that attaining business excellence plays a critical role in ensuring competitiveness of an organisation as it aids in reducing operational flows. This in-turn ensures higher quality goods that deliver value to consumers. Specifically, I learnt that at the core of attaining strategic organisational excellence, quality management occupies a central position in the whole discourse and encounter. Quality management ensures that products delivered conforms to the expectations of consumers; are fit for utilisation and surpasses the customers’ expectations. Within this domain, the significant realisation is the role of ‘triangle of excellence’. The whole ‘triangle of excellence’ is premised on how organisations can attain excellence by creating a balance between price, quality and delivery. This I saw as eye opener as all organisational processes have to be conducted in a context that takes care of low cost strategy that can be transferred to consumers and quality so as to create unique value that can be delivered to consumers. The other critical learning point connects with the topic of learning organisation and knowledge management. I was able to establish that it is critical for organisation to adopt new ideas and transform them into reality so as to attain organisational excellence. Moreover, I established that this should not be limited to learning alone, but these integral pieces of information should be stored and shared for the purpose of prosperity and strategic advantage. moreover, I was able to learn that performance gaps in supply chain system heavily impacts on organisational excellence as such organisations should invest in a collaborative supply chain framework that ensures delivery of personalised and customised products that suits management purpose. Finally, I learnt that there are other integral aspects that have to be looked into to deliver a holistic strategic organisational excellence that will contribute to making me a strategic quality professional. For instance, I realised that management commitment is core to delivering organisational; excellence. Additionally, I established that leadership and people management is critical to the whole processes since it leadership that offers a sense of direction while well managed people are critical in delivering flawless process. Other critical aspects include resource management, partnership, policy & strategy and management process. Initially in earlier stages, I had a nervous experience. However, later as we progressed the anxiety declined and my confidence improved is able to conceptualise and build nexus between the unit and the whole business units I have learnt. As a budding strategic quality professional who is aiming to be a whole rounded holistic professional that is able to critically identify and offer organisational solutions so to ensure competitiveness, organisational success and service to humanity, I feel that the unit was a step towards modelling me in my pursuit for professional development. I presently feel comfortable as strategic quality professional since I am in a position to apply technical skills learnt in this course singly/ selective or in wider scope approach to formulate strategic policies that delivers flawless organisational process. This technical capacity development makes me feel that I can serve in any capacity and in any organisation in the globes. As such, I am not only leaving as a technically equipped individual in organisational excellence, but also as a global profession since the unit drew a case example and experiences across the globe. After the whole encounter in the unit, I can explain strategic organisational excellence as a processes implemented by organisations to curtail any performance gaps so as to deliver flawless process and quality product through implementation of quality management and supporting processes such as key success factors, leadership and organisational culture. There are numerous theories that I have encountered while undertaking the course. However, I want to relate the unit with two theories that I feel are of interest to me. The first is the expectation theory and the second is the blue ocean strategy vs. red ocean strategy theory. Expectation theory argues that business exists not for their own sake, but to meet the needs of customers and other stakeholders. Thus, if an organisation cannot meet the expectation of customers adequately, they are likely to underperform or be pushed out of business (Iamandi, 2007, p.5). The relation of the unit with such theory is that strategic organisational excellence is significant in attaining expectation of customers as it empowers organisations to churn out products that are flawless under quality management (Foley, 2000, p.17). The same is affirmed by Magd, Ahmed & Hamza (2007, p.2) who notes that “models of excellence, essentially customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and a favourable impact on society are achieved through leadership driving and strategy, people partnership, resources and processes, which lead ultimately to excellence in business results”. On the other hand, blue ocean strategy has been fronted as an alternative to a red ocean strategy that is most anchored on outdoing each other on the restricted market share. Blue Ocean relates to the creation of new markets spaces as opposed to urge of outperforming competitors through basic traditional competitive model that employ either cost leadership strategy or differentiation strategy. The role of blue ocean strategy is the ability to deliver value innovation by combining low cost strategy and differentiation strategy so as to deliver high quality products at low cost (Kim & Mauborgne, 2004, p.3). Indeed, this is where strategic organisational excellence fits in as it seeks to deliver quality products that are flawless at lower cost (Ionică et al., 2010, p.126). While I had technical approach to addressing strategic business excellence, my future behaviour has been impacted by the critical realisation that soft skills such interpersonal and people’s management skills are critical in delivering organisational success. Thus in future, through deliberate practice so as to make perfect I will employ people’s management skills to attain business excellence. The two issues that intend to apply in my future behaviour are the leadership aspect and organisational culture. Shelton, Darling & Walker (2002, p.49) notes that leadership is important as it offers sense of direction to all subordinates and anchored on the realisation that certain flaws are not as a result of process dysfunction, but as result of human omissions. Such leadership is critical in creating organisational culture that embraces total quality management (Irani, Beskese & Love, 2004, p.644). References Foley, K. (2000). From quality management to organization excellence: don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. In Proceedings of the 1st International MAAOE Conference on Organizational Excellence (pp. 12-17). EFQM. Iamandi, I. (2007). Corporate social responsibility and social responsiveness in a global business environment: a comparative theoretical approach. Romanian Economic Journal, 23(1),1- 16. Ionică, A., Băleanu, V., Edelhauser, E., & Irimie, S. (2010). TQM AND BUSINESS EXCELLENCE. Annals of the University of Petrosani Economics, 10(4). Irani, Z., Beskese, A., & Love, P. E. D. (2004). Total quality management and corporate culture: constructs of organisational excellence. Technovation, 24(8), 643-650. Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2004). Blue ocean strategy: How to create uncontested market space and make competition irrelevant. Harvard: Harvard Business Press. Magd, A. E., Ahmed, A. M., & Hamza, S. A. (2007). Organization Excellence Journey: Critical Success Factors of Engineering firms in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. Going for Gold~ Kaizen & Org. Development, Paper, 05-08. Shelton, C. D., Darling, J. R., & Walker, W. E. (2002). Foundations of organizational excellence: leadership values, strategies, and skills. LTA, 1, 02. Read More