Question One
Case study
LALinK is a leading chain supermarket (grocery) company with over 50 stores doted across the nation Ghana. Alps Isaacs, the general manager adopted a mind-set in which he assumed that the best way to keep project team members and employees in general working hard was to unilaterally trim their task duration, cost, and other estimates by 20%. This was introduced to the employees and applied to the letter. In the first six months, the company made a lot of savings and costs including project costs appeared to be on the decline. However, despondency grew among the employees and they dreaded being appointed to work on a team or be asked to estimate the cost of anything.
Those who could not avoid such appoints especially to projects decided to adopt the “gotcha!” attitude where employees inflated the activity estimates by 20% hoping that when it is slashed, then they will hit the exact figure. In a heated discussion between a project manager and Isaacs regarding the issue of trimming the estimates, the project manager said “if you don’t take my estimates seriously, I am not going to give you any serious estimates!” The situation deteriorated until profits started dwindling and employee morale was very low. Projects that are projected to be profitable always ended in commercial disaster. Employee performance was low and profits could no longer be achieved. For three years running, LALinK could not declare any profits. The board of directors of the company decided to replace Isaacs as the general manager and Mustapha Ib-Ku was appointed to take over from Isaacs.
Ib-Ku introduced a new approach to managing project teams and the employees of the company as a whole. His approach was based on team work and employee empowerment, which he termed “using teams as a recipe for success”. He began by granting autonomy to project teams and each of the 50 stores. He created teams of 5 members each. Each team was responsible for either a new project or a branch. Each team has a team leader and specific team goals carved out of the goals of LALinK. The team’s function as autonomous units and meet monthly to share information, exchange stories, solve problems, and talk about how to improve performance. This team concept quickly caught up with the entire organization and just one year, projects become more profitable, estimates came down and employee morale began to rise. The district team leaders constituted a regional team and the regional team leaders constituted a national team.
Why teams? The chairman of the board of directors asked Ib-Ku and he explained that first, it was to promote cooperation among the LALinK’s employees and second, to facilitate a strong sense of community, which engenders pride and discipline in the work ethic of the employees.
This was exemplified by the fact that employees rather than store managers or team leaders approved new hires for full-time jobs. The store managers do the initial screening, but it takes a two-thirds vote of the team, after what is usually a 60-day trial period, for a candidate to become a full-time employee. This type of exclusivity helped to promote the team bond, and facilitated the cooperative atmosphere. The cooperation LALinK is enjoying also comes from the fact that each team holds a meeting at least once a month and there is no rank at these meetings. Everyone is afforded an equal opportunity to contribute to the discussion.
LALinK is seeing a high team competitive spirit among the employees. The individual teams, stores, and regions of the company compete against each other in terms of quality of service and profitability. The results of the competitions determine employee bonuses, recognition, and promotions. To facilitate this competition, the company is extraordinarily open in terms of team, store, or regional performance measures. For example, sheets are posted next to the time clock on which is listed the previous day’s sales broken down by teams.
A separate sheet lists the sales numbers for the same day the previous year. This information is supposed to be used by the teams to determine “what it will take” to be top team for the store, or region, during a particular week. This type of competition also exists at the national level. Near the same time clock, once a week a fax is posted that lists the sales of every store in the nation broken down by team with comparisons to the same week the previous year. There is one note of caution that LALinK has learned through these experiences and that is the fact that sometimes competition between teams can become too intensive. As a result, the company has had to “tone down” the intensity of the competition between teams and stores on some occasions. The overall results of LALinK’s management practices have been very encouraging.
The company in just four years added 13 new branches across the nation. The supermarket (grocery) industry is intensely competitive and LALinK’s decision to use teamwork as a “recipe for success” represents a novel and innovative approach to management.
I. Do you believe that LALinK’s emphasis on teamwork is appropriate for the supermarket
(grocery) industry? Why or why not? (4 marks)
II. Discuss in sufficient detail how LALinK’s practice of sharing performance data with all
company employees’ benefit or hurt the interest of the company. Support your stance
with relevant information from the case. (6 marks)
III. Discuss the statement “if you don’t take my estimates seriously, I am not going to give
you any serious estimates” What four lessons can a project manager gather from this
statement. (10 marks)
IV. Explain the idea that as a team, “we should focus on interests, not positions.” How does
this principle apply to this case? (10 marks)
Question Two
Case Study
The Tacoma Narrows Suspension Bridge (the third largest in the world after the Golden Gate and George Washington bridges) is a legendary example of a project that failed through a combination of poor planning, unforeseen technological effects, and blinkered optimism on the part of the bridge’s developers. Though it fell over 60 years ago, less than four months after being opened for use, the Tacoma Narrows case illustrates a number of important lessons for proper project scope management.
Opening in July 1940, the bridge was built at a cost of $6.4 million and was largely funded by the federal government’s Public Works Administration. The bridge was intended to connect Seattle and Tacoma with the Puget Sound Navy Yard at Bremerton, Washington. It had a centre span of 2,800 feet and 1,000-foot approaches at each end. Interestingly, the bridge was designed for only one lane traffic in each direction, making it not only very long but also very narrow.
Even before its inauguration and opening, the bridge exhibited strange characteristics that were immediately noticeable. For example, the slightest wind could cause the bridge to develop a pronounced longitudinal roll. The bridge would quite literally begin to lift at one end and in a wave action, and the lift would “roll” the length of the bridge. Depending upon the severity of the wind, cameras were able to detect anywhere up to eight separate vertical nodes in its rolling action. Many motorists crossing the bridge complained of acute seasickness brought on by the bridge’s rising and falling! So well-known to the locals did the strange motion of the bridge become that they nicknamed the bridge “Galloping Gertie.”
On November 7, 1940, a bare four months after the bridge was opened, with steady winds of 42 miles per hour, the 2,800-foot main span, which had already begun exhibiting a marked flex, went into a series of violent vertical and torsional oscillations. The amplitudes steadily increased, suspensions came loose, the support structures buckled, and the span began to break up. In effect, the bridge had seemed to come alive, struggling like a bound animal, and was literally shaking itself apart. Motorists caught on the bridge abandoned their cars and crawled off the bridge as the side-to-side roll had become so pronounced (by now, the roll had reached 45 degrees in either direction, causing the sides of the bridge to rise and fall over 30 feet) that it was impossible to walk. After a fairly short period in which the wave oscillations became incredibly violent, the suspension bridge simply could not resist the pounding and broke apart. Observers stood in shock near the bridge and watched as first large pieces of the roadway and then entire lengths of the span rained down into the Tacoma Narrows. Fortunately, no lives were lost, since traffic had been closed just in time.
A three-person committee of scientists was immediately convened to determine the cause of the Tacoma Narrows collapse. The board consisted of some of the top scientists and engineers in the world at that time: Othmar Ammann, Theodore von Karman, and Glenn Woodruff. While satisfied that the basic design was sound and the suspension bridge had been constructed competently, they nevertheless were able to quickly uncover the under-lying contributing causes of the bridge collapse.
First, the physical construction of the bridge contributed directly to its failure and was a source of continual concern from the time of its completion. Unlike other suspension bridges, one distinguishing feature of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was its small width-to-length ratio – smaller than any other suspension bridge of its type in the world. That ratio means that the bridge was incredibly narrow for its long length, a fact that contributed hugely to its distinctive oscillating behavior. Although almost one mile long, the bridge carried only a single traffic lane in each direction.
Another feature of the construction that was to play an important role in its collapse was the substitution of key structural components. The chief engineer in charge of construction, Charles Andrews, noted that the original plans called for the use of open girders in the bridge’s sides. At some point, a local construction engineer substituted flat, solid girders, which deflected the wind rather than allowing it to pass. The result, Andrews noted, was that the bridge caught the wind “like a kite” and adopted a permanent sway. In engineering terms, the flat sides simply would not allow wind to pass through the sides of the bridge, which would have reduced its wind drag. Instead, the solid, flat sides caught the wind, which pushed the bridge sideways until it swayed enough to “spill” the wind from the vertical plane, much as a sailboat catches and spills wind in its sails.
A final problem with the initial plan lay in the location selected for the bridge’s construction. The topography of the Tacoma Narrows is particularly prone to high winds due to the narrowing of the valley along the waterway. As a local engineer suggested, the unique characteristics of the land on which the bridge was built virtually doubled the wind velocity and acted as a sort of wind tunnel.
Before this collapse, not much was known about the effects of dynamic loads on structures. Until then, it had always been taken for granted in bridge building that static (vertical) load and the sheer bulk and mass of large structures were enough to protect them against wind effects. It took this disaster to firmly establish in the minds of design engineers that dynamic and not static loads are really the critical factor in designing such structures.
Source: Kharbanda, O. P. and Pinto, J. K. (1996), What Made Gertie Gallup? New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
Discuss the following based on the information on the case.
- When did the planners begin taking unknowing or unnecessary risks? Support your answer with relevant statements from the case. (5 marks)
- Discuss any four project constraints and three other unique aspects of the bridge in the risk management process. Were these issues taken into consideration in the execution of the project? Why or why not? (15 marks)
- What forms of risk mitigation would you consider appropriate for this project? Explain (10 marks)
Question Three
- In this assignment, you are to use the same corporation you selected and focused on for Assignments 1, 2, and 3.
Consider the corporation you have selected to use in your first three assignments.
Research the company on its own website, the public filings on the Securities and Exchange Commission EDGAR database, the University’s online databases, the Nexis Uni database, and any other sources you can find. The annual report will often provide insights that can help address some of these questions.
You will do a 15-minute presentation to the Board of Directors of the corporation. Develop an eight- to twelve-slide PowerPoint presentation with speaker notes based upon Assignments 1 through 3.
Requirements
Determine the impact of the company’s mission, vision, and primary stakeholders on its overall success as a competitive employer in the industry.
- Create a SWOT analysis for the company to determine its major strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
- Based on the SWOT analysis, outline a strategy for the company to capitalize on its strengths and opportunities, and minimize its weaknesses and threats.
- Discuss the various levels and types of strategies the firm may use to maximize its competitiveness and profitability.
- Outline a communication plan the company could use to make the strategies you recommend above known to all stakeholders.
- Assess efforts by this corporation to be a responsible (ethical) corporate citizen and determine the impact these efforts (or lack thereof) have on the company’s bottom line. Provide specific examples to support your response.
- Develop an executive-level PowerPoint presentation with 8–12 slides with speaker notes and appropriate graphics or professional video.
- Go to Basic Search: Strayer University Online Library and locate at least three quality references. Note: Wikipedia and similar Websites do not quality as academic resources.
- References must be submitted on a Works Cited page using SWS format.
Use the Assignment 4 Template [PPTX] to ensure that your assignment meets the above requirements.
The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is as follows:
- Develop a corporate presentation based on a SWOT analysis, strategies for maximizing competitiveness and profitability, a communications plan, and an assessment of efforts related to ethics.
Grading for this assignment will be based on answer quality, logic and organization of the paper, and language and writing skills, using the scoring rubric.
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