The Best Way to Evolve a Business

Transformational Leadership The data set in the scholarly sphere that pertains to transformation leadership and what goes into the practice thereof is quite voluminous and massive. As such, pinning down one theorist or idea is not the easiest thing to do when trying to select something to focus on for a report like this.

However, the author of this report chose the work that is cited in this report because making the changes needed for a firm are important but maintaining business operations and continuity as the changes are made is even more important. Indeed, making needed changes will pale in comparison to if those changes wreak havoc and cause a slow-down (or dead-stop) with the operations and efficacy of a firm.

While improving and evolving a business and its processes is important, it is even more important to maintain business continuity and cohesion at all times regardless of what is otherwise going on. Analysis The main source form which the author of this report will make the point espoused and asserted in the introduction as written by Kaplan and was published in 2006. Kaplan starts off his treatise by asserting that expensive restructurings, in addition to being expensive, can be a shock to the system that makes up the business.

Indeed, he asserts that it is far more effective and efficient to design a system that works reasonable well and then slowly attune and shape the business to meet the strategic ends identified and shown from the strategy in question. When it comes to businesses in modern history trying to pull off one of the two of those approaches, the overall outcomes are decidedly mixed.

Regardless, the stated aim of many to most of those changes have been to "unlock value" in the business and trying to match the pathways and procedures of a business to the strategies that are crafted and developed. A sterling example of this in motion, as explained by Kaplan, was realized when mass production of goods became the norm in businesses starting in the nineteenth century. Indeed, businesses started to centralize and coalesce key functions like operations, sales and finance.

They would also generate rather substantial economies of scale to accomplish what they were after. However, that general strategy took a major shift when strategy and setup became more regional and disparate in nature. This was seen as a bit of a downside from the centralized model in some ways but allow for more regional flexibility when the situation and geographical area called for it. Both of the structures mentioned above remained quite strong for a number of years with the latter clearly being the more dominant one in place.

However, fundamental flaws emerged in both models in more recent years. This has led to many firms engaging in consistent restructurings to realize an ostensibly better business model but some of those changes have led to chaos and a disconnect between what was expected to be realized and what actually ended up happening (Kaplan, 2006). One way to supposedly mitigate the dilemmas with the aforementioned business models was to use more of a matrix-based hierarchy rather than relying on the conventional and tradition chain of command.

However, this led to new problems as there would often be conflicts between two people or managers at the same power level in said matrix structure. As such, there was no single way to proceed without failing to meet the demands of at least one of the people involved. Further, the assets that must be leveraged and created to take advantage of market opportunities have shifted from the literal to more abstract and cebebral endeavors.

In other words, there is less of a focus on the financial and physical assets of a firm and more focus on working with the knowledge workers, research and development and information technology resources to help realize the opportunities that exist and meeting the needs of customers in a 21st century business landscape (Kaplan, 2006). After talking about this a bit more, Kaplan gets to the point he is coming to in his article.

He asks the question out loud as to whether structural changes and shakeups are the best way to realize value and for a business to be run better and smoother. Kaplan asserts that while there are times and places where full restructuring is necessary, it is not going to be the proper solution a lot of the time.

Even with all of the work relating to strategy maps and balanced scorecards, Kaplan asserts that a business can do just fine from an operational standpoint even if the structure within which the business operations is not completely perfect.

Even with his assertion that how the job is done within a system is more important than the system itself, the system should indeed still be assessed and measured so as to make sure that it does not indeed need to be overhauled so as to allow the firm to at least get in the general vicinity of a truly optimal structure.

The two main mechanisms and tools that have been used to achieve this goal, regardless of how it is eventually done, is through quality management constructs like Total Quality Management (TQM) and financially-driven systems that focus on rewards for performance and the like (Kaplan, 2006). However, the author of this report has read the totality of what Kaplan has to say and what he has to say next is quite intriguing and would seem to be quite intellectually sound.

First, the use of scorecards and such is not a bad idea but insisting that the same scorecard be used in all situations and locations is the wrong move. If two locations happen to be very similar in terms of the geographic areas they operate in, the products they offer and so forth, then using the same approach is indeed a good idea.

However, if they differ in major ways and there is a good reason for those differences existing, the strategies and procedures used for each area should indeed be tuned and crafted based on the realities that exist in those different areas. Even so, it is not necessary to have an all-or-nothing approach to corporate strategy and attunement. Indeed, firms like Ingersoll-Rand have a duality when it.