Case Study Performance Plus

Performance Plus Case Study

To stay competitive, organizations have to keep themselves abreast of the changes in their business environment and customer preferences. Rapid developments in Information Technology, increasing trend towards Globalization, and day by day increasing industry size are some of the factors that essentially require the business organizations to keep themselves dynamic in their respective industry. Therefore only those organizations can achieve a sustainable future that continuously keeps on bringing improvements in their business operations.

The Performance plus Team, under the supervision of Steve Cook is assigned with a new target 'new product development'. The main objective behind establishing this team is to improve company's current product offerings as well as ensure a better financial performance than previous years. The implementation of this Change Strategy will also bring some big challenges for the Performance Plus team that will make it difficult to achieve the desired results within the given span of time. These challenges include; bringing improvements in the quality of the products but keeping the costs at the minimum possible level, ensuring a higher financial performance than previous years, and giving a strong emphasis on exceeding customers' expectations in the presence of a fierce competition.

To meet these challenges, Performance Plus team should follow the internationally acceptable Change theories and principles. In the light of Melione's interventions, the Performance Plus team should focus on the following factors to achieve its target in an efficient and effective way:

Involvement and commitment of all the team members towards the success of the project,

The team should follow a Cross-Functional Team structure which will ensure the contribution of all the team members in improving the overall performance,

The Supervisors should redesign and restructure the job responsibilities and assign a particular task or sub-targets to each of the team members, etc.

According to Kurt Lewin's Field Theory, the behavior of team members should also be changed in order to keep them motivated and directed towards the desired goal (Brown, 2011). This behavior can be change by persuading them towards organizational commitment; asking them to adopt a friendlier attitude towards customers and co-workers, be efficient in their job responsibilities, and coordinating with all the departments in a well-organized and efficient manner. The Performance plus team has to achieve a difficult task that requires a strong commitment and contribution by every team members (Brown, 2011).

In the light of Kurt Lewin's theory, Mr. Steve Cook should the make the Performance plus team members realize that the desired results can only be achieved if they will coordinate with each other, share important information, help the co-workers in their job tasks, and never lose heart if the business environment turns unfavorable for the project (Burnes, 2007). If any of the team members is dissatisfied with the new job responsibilities or sub-targets, he must be motivated by the supervisor.

In order to ensure that the Performance Plus team delivers a high quality product on time, Steve Cook should follow the main dimensions of Organizational Development. The ten dimensions of Organizational Development will help him in every step of the process and will act as a framework for the team itself (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010).

In the light of the first three dimensions 'System, Alignment, and Participation Perspective', it can be recommended to Steve Cook that he should ensure that there is an open communication among the team members; i.e. how they interact with each other to resolve the issues and hurdles that may arise in the process of achieving the targets. The 'Social Capital Perspective' will ensure that team members have a mutual trust. This mutual trust is essential for the overall team performance (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010).

Steve Cook should persuade the team members that they do not create personal issues as they may negatively impact their individual performance and overall productivity. Further, he should follow the guidelines of 'Multiple Stakeholder Perspective' which recommends him to motivate the team members to keep a positive attitude towards all the key stakeholders of the organization (Sherman, Updegraff, & Mann, 2008). He should also follow the other perspectives of Organizational Development that will help the team in completing the project within the given deadline (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010).

The biggest hurdle and cause of difficulties for the Performance Plus team in achieving its target is the limited financial resources. The team has to implement the Change strategy within the available resources in such a way that they do not impact the profitability of the company for the current year. Steve Cook wants to regard the Quality Management as the highest priority. Ensuring the highest quality of business operations also requires heavy investments in the field of Research and Development. Another cause of difficulties is the time span to achieve the target. The Performance Plus team has to complete all the process of new product development in a short period of time.

The short deadline will itself put certain pressures on the Management. For example; it will have to increase the number of members in the Performance Plus team, utilizing the available resources in such a way that they give the maximum output to the Organization, etc. The Performance Plus team is not hired specifically for this project; they are the existing members of the organization that are assigned with additional job responsibilities along with their routine job tasks. It means they will have to work under high pressures which may decrease their performance level (Baudler, 2011).

The Company also wants to improve the current business operations in addition to developing the new products. The recommendation to make the binding of the books stronger is a good strategy that will increase its preference among customers. But this strategy will increase the Company's costs of production and it will have to increase the prices for all those books. In order to resolve this issue, the Company should either adopt this strategy for all its books products or use the strong binding only on the expensive books. It will help the company in achieving the cost leadership position in the industry.