Learning and development concepts and applications

Business

Leadership Learning & Development

The reorganization of a business can take many forms. One of the most crucial areas for reorganization when expanding a business, buying a new business, or even restructuring because of bankruptcy, is to focus the new management team and to incorporate viable solutions for leadership learning & development protection. This report aims to draw up a management development program, devise a program that ensures that the learning needs of the organization are met in a sound and reliable strategic plan and illustrate how a well formatted strategic plan can tie in the objectives associated with learning and development planning.

In addition, the report must also justify the management development program including the strengths and weaknesses of this type of program. By explaining the importance of learning and development in the strategic direction of an organization, the management team is more likely to successfully evaluate what is and is not necessary. Strategic human resource management is a great reason to draw up plans that are based on realistic activities that clearly meet the development needs of the directors.

History

The Craiglock Nursery, set up in 1974, was originally a consortium of local businessmen from Edinburgh who provided individual gardeners and nursery services. The business thrived during the 80's and 90's so it expanded to six dispersed units across the city and in some surrounding towns. These individual units were more self sufficient in the terms of management structure and systems and served their own market areas. As the industry evolved, larger garden centers in addition to more gardening programs on television reduced the nurseries' market share. Another concern was that in 2008 the original owners retired and left the organization to their children James Malone, Catherine Neale and Susan Willson.

Susan Willson has worked with the company since she was 18 and has a good grasp of the business, including the organization's strengths and weaknesses and has a good report with the staff. James Malone also has worked with the company during summers and weekends during his days in school. He currently works in London as a financial manager and will therefore serve as a part time financial advisor. Catherine Neale worked during summers and weekends during school. She has managerial experience from a large hotel chain and her Post-Graduate management qualifications. She has been working hard to gain insight into the business to ensure future business success. The new directors get along well together and have come up with a common vision to make and expand Craiglock Nurseries into strong company that has local, national and international market success.

New organization

Brian Tracy is one of the best-known motivational speakers and leaders of our time. In his book The 100 Absolutely Unbreakable Laws of Business Success, Tracy draws on his more than thirty years of business experience and knowledge and presents the reader with a set of principles or what he terms "unbreakable universal laws" that are at the root of each person's business success (or failure). "These are natural laws that work everywhere for everyone, virtually without exception. Every year, thousands of companies underperform or even fail, and millions of individuals underachieve, frustrated by thwarted ambition and dreams -- all because they either attempt to violate or did not know these universal laws." (Tracy, 2000, p. 13)

The laws were broken by the original company in many ways. The current situation is that the company has a staff of 50 employees scattered across the 6 sites and directors are based in a main city office apart from the main nursery. Seventy five percent of the staff has been with the organization over 10 years and some are nearing retirement age. There has always been an ingrained culture with the 'old crowd' and at all 6 sites this carries over to Craiglock being seen as a local supplier of each local community.

The new organizational structure that the directors have come up with for the Craiglock Nurseries moves in a new strategic direction. The company aims to combine the six smaller units into a single centralized unit that would be based just outside Edinburgh city in a well established shopping complex. The company's new name would be Craiglock Garden Centre and the new facility has already been completed and the business would be fully operational over the next 18 months.

Combining the six individual units will help the company take advantage of the economies of scale and the there will also be a 25% reduction in human resources saving additional costs. Any gaps in the labor pool will be filled with temporary and agency staffers. The Human Resource policies and procedures will be examined and reshaped to ensure an effective performance management output and Craiglock strives to also become a learning-based organization and achieve Investors in People status.

One challenge may be that the move to a central location will affect the staff even though some of the staff would be quite happy in the new setting. Other staff may become very upset about these new proposed changes causing some inner conflict issues.

Strategic Planning & Organizational Development

The success of the Craiglock Garden Centre will depend on a variety of critical factors. The organization must set the right goals to become profitable while also meeting unstated objectives to protect the environment and human health. Craiglock Garden Centre will have a close collaboration and good communications with the various governmental partners, suppliers and vendors because they are a critical aspect of a meaningful business development strategy. The company and partners will need to use the best available economic and technical information in order to establish priorities and make decisions. Incorporating the right technology will help the company determine whether problems pose mission critical risks to the organization, the environment, human health, or the quality of life. By incorporating sound economic information will ensure the company's ability to make intelligent and cost effective decisions.

Craiglock Garden Centre will also collect and maintain environmental information that can be used to make the facility assess how to best serve its customers while also improving its green objectives and the global footprint. The company will establish a baseline of current conditions from the six outlets and identify how to best incorporate this information into the single new facility. Craiglock Garden Centre will also use this baseline data to help create new and viable business objectives and goals and to assess the progress and evaluate the performance.

Craiglock Garden Centre's new director base will continue to explore new and creative ways to achieve the organizational goals and they will look for new and innovative ways to address environmental needs and how to best use this information to serve their customer base. Craiglock Garden Centre's future success will be greatly influenced by the company's ability to develop and sustain a highly skilled, adaptable, results-oriented workforce and they aim to hire an employee workforce that consists of a proper mix of technical expertise, experience, and leadership capabilities to achieve the company's goals and to carry out the company's mission.

Recommendations and Action Plan for Human Resources and Management

Craiglock Garden Centre will maintain a modern work environment and will hire a fluid and dynamic workforce. Hiring and keeping accurate job analysis data and up-to-date personnel information will be a vital part of the organization and the overall industry. By implementing the following Human Resource and company objectives, this strategic plan will help Craiglock Garden Centre become more streamlined and efficient. The hiring process will be greatly improved by using sound business focused methodologies that will greatly increase productivity and will create an atmosphere that is performance based.

First and foremost, the three directors will utilize strategic business planning techniques that will focus on offering the management team a sound guide to thinking in a Craiglock Garden Centre way. This training process that the directors will implement will make the entire management team apply a comprehensive systems thinking approach that will enhance the manager's strategic and business planning process. The directors will explain how the management team will develop departmental strategic plans that ensure successful implementation of the overall organizational plan while also building and sustaining a high level of performance by each and every employee of Craiglock Garden Centre over the long haul. "Continuous practice of a key skill reduces the time required to perform the task and increases the output achieved." (Tracy, p. 285)

Employee management will have to address their current aging population. The company will need to create processes that allow them to enable Craiglock Garden Centre managers to recruit, train, motivate and retain new young employees. In simple terms, Craiglock Garden Centre will actively make Generation X employees feel welcome. The Directors aim to implement strategies to have the management team understand how to best put the new younger employee's unique skills and characteristics to work for to improve the company's goals and objectives. Craiglock Garden Centre will also actively recruit the newer cohort of young adults, called generation Y The mangers will be well trained to best understand traits that pose the greatest challenge to Craiglock Garden Centre managers when they have to use best practices and that they stay up-to-date with the new upbeat, techno-savvy workers.

The management team will also be required to implement systems level thinking and learning by using more down to earth concepts and specific tools to move from theory to practice. Craiglock Garden Centre aims to eliminate chaos and complexity from the day-to-day operations by making a shift from seeing elements, structures, and functions to seeing the process, interrelationships and successful business outcomes. For example, in the hiring process, Craiglock Garden Centre management will incorporate competency based interviewing techniques that will provided the organization a very detailed strategic focus by allowing its hiring managers to integrate job-specific, future-oriented competencies into their interviews and will teach the management team to identify the key competencies of reliable employees and build those competencies into the hiring and selection process. This is all in order to build on the organizational strategic focus. In other words, Craiglock Garden Centre will hire the right people for the right job.

The hiring process will never be a guessing process because this way of doing business is no longer an option for companies in this more global oriented atmosphere today. The mangers who hire for Craiglock Garden Centre will use assessment information for hiring because the legal environment demands it and maintaining a competitive advantage requires it. There will always be a process in place that will allow Craiglock Garden Centre mangers to make informed decisions that will greatly expand the potential new hire, strengthen legal compliance, and revolutionize the way Craiglock Garden Centre understands their people and their performance.

Leadership, Performance and Training

In order for every single employee to become leaders at Craiglock Garden Centre, the employees will go through a continuous, consistent and thorough training process from the day they are hired until they become company mangers themselves. One of the best ways to ensure that employees are happy and have similar objectives to the company is to train them in such a way that they can see how and why they are performing their daily duties. Both aid both new and experienced employees and leaders will be concentrating on the necessary and required skills to first perform their own job, but they will consistently be trained to do the skills one level above them in order to fine-tune their future leadership skills and abilities while also enhancing the work experience. Next level up training will be conducted in a straight forward "how-to" format by whoever is the next level higher employee or manager. This process will provide opportunities for advancement while also allowing the organizational planning process to understand the skill set of current employees throughout the entire organization. Existing leaders will also gain valuable insights into why some of their past leadership efforts may have failed because of the implementation of this type of next level training process while improving their own performance.

Craiglock Garden Centre can explore the importance of effective leadership by knowing the capabilities of its supervisors, managers and the director team. Craiglock Garden Centre will base future requirements for all promotions into the ranks of the management team on a premise that Craiglock Garden Centre leaders will be required to have some basic human resource development responsibility and therefore must engender personal growth among the employees in order to increase organizational productivity, service and quality of our human capital.

Change Management

Because Craiglock Garden Centre is a single operation that at one time may have been considered to have been six separate and individual entities, organization change will be a major issue to be addressed. "To the extent that managers understand worker needs, the organization's reward systems can be designed to meet them and reinforce employees for directing energies and priorities toward attainment of organizational goals." (Daft, p. 529) There have been some employees that have not accepted the need for a more structured single location opportunity.

In order for individuals to be successful in our changing environment, they will need to come to understand their own reactions to change and will be required to develop common sense practical techniques to constructively deal with the personal impacts of change. This line of reasoning is appropriate for all levels of the employee base because it addresses the natural resistance to change, differing individual reactions to change, and developing tools to cope with change.

Another area of concern for current and future employees is conflict resolution. Conflict resolution occurs daily for managers and employees of all levels. These scenarios are always with us and cannot be escaped. Therefore, teaching all Craiglock Garden Centre employees and mangers how to handle conflict more effectively will be a major marketing tool for the organization. Perhaps the greatest quality you can develop in business is a sense of urgency...a bias for action" (Tracy, p. 36) Tracy tells us that only about 2% of people have developed the habit of acting quickly when opportunity or danger presents itself. "These people tend to move to the front of every line, of every organization or area of endeavor." (Tracy, p. 294)

Conflict continually causes stress, low morale and decreased productivity so developing tools for all of the employees will provide viable tools that will prevent and resolve conflicts and ensure a better working environment for all. The management will also be required to learn how to recognize patterns of conflict, identify causes of conflict, prevent conflicts from developing and applying reliable conflict resolution techniques. This process will allow for the managers to better serve their employees and the employees will better serve the customers. Most conflict resolution is a response to conflicting personality styles so the management team will also view potential sources of conflict such as employee and customer perceptions, facts, methods, goals, or values. The sales team will also incorporate the conflict management styles of avoiding, smoothing, bargaining, forcing and problem solving into all sales presentations.

Integrity

Each and every employee of Craiglock Garden Centre will be required to continuously improve their skills of persuasion because every single employee is a point of contact with the current and potential customers. It is favorable for all of the employees therefore to become capable of making themselves present a company face of influence and a sphere of integrity. This compendium of tips will help any manager learn survival tactics of public speaking. The management team will also be held to a very standard of integrity and personal conduct. Persuasion and the ability to influence are of paramount importance in almost all business situations, but that influence must come in an honest and sincere effort to promote the organization without any undue, immoral or illegal persuasion. Today's competitive environment and workforce which is and will continue to become more and more diverse also requires the Craiglock Garden Centre leadership to approach all individuals in a fair and respectful manner. Management aims to improve the workplace, strengthen relationships, and achieve the stated organizational goals. This organization does not discriminate based on race, creed, nationality, disability or gender.