Overview
The companies and people within the scenario are fictional.
UniCo
Background
UniCo is an IT Services company which offers information management services and installation of large-scale computer systems. The company has grown rapidly and has been successful. However in recent years UniCo has lost market share due to increased competition from a growing number of similar providers. There is also an increasing client demand for mobile applications and more innovative solutions.
Current situation
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) has made a strategic decision to reposition UniCo in the market place. It will become a leading provider of innovative solutions, including mobile applications. The CEO knows that pursuing this new strategy will mean some loss of personal control in UniCo as he will no longer have the expertise to make decisions on all aspects of the technology, but believes the strategic shift is both necessary and urgent.
Two months ago, in line with the new strategy, UniCo acquired a company called Selco. Selco is a small, dynamic company that specializes in developing mobile applications. The plan is to keep the 10 Selco staff together as an intact team. They will still be managed by the founder of Selco, who will become the Applications Manager within UniCo.
The resulting UniCo structure is shown in the Organization Chart on the next page.
In order for UniCo to achieve its new business priorities and meet the changing customer demands, UniCo staff need to learn from their new Selco colleagues. They must develop both new capabilities and the new attitudes needed for UniCo to offer more innovative solutions to its customers. This may not happen easily, because some UniCo staff members are not enthusiastic about the change in focus of UniCo's business.
So far, very little integration has taken place. The former Selco staff still work from an office on the other side of town from the UniCo office. In order to make progress UniCo needs to realign business processes and systems, and to complete the integration of Selco.
The UniCo Sales Director has some experience of the mobile applications market and has recently won a large contract with a Utilities company to provide mobile solutions for their workforce. This is a great opportunity for UniCo to prove it can be successful in this new type of business.
Next steps
A programme has been established to manage this change. This consists of the following workstreams:
1. Operational delivery processes - The Operations Director will manage
* the integration of the Selco staff (now the Applications area) with UniCo's IT systems and work practices, and
* the relocation of the Selco staff to the UniCo office.
2. Business processes - The Customer Services Director will manage the introduction of new processes across the business to ensure end-to-end alignment of the new capability and services to be offered.
3. Rebranding UniCo - The Marketing Manager will lead the work to reposition UniCo in the market place.
4. Capability and skills development - The Human Resources (HR) Manager will lead the work to upskill people so they are prepared and able to take advantage of the new opportunities resulting from this change.
Additional Information:
The Marketing Manager is reviewing what needs to be done to implement the workstream for the market repositioning and rebranding of UniCo. Marketing staff have interviewed people at all levels in the organization to identify potential ideas and barriers. Key items have been identified as follows:
* UniCo has an excellent brand perception within the market and many existing staff feel that this existing brand will be damaged by the inclusion of Selco
* Internally, the Customer Services and IT Support managers and the Corporate Services Director, are not as committed to the rebranding as the Operations and Sales Directors
* A recent positive press article about the future direction of UniCo has been promoted on social media forums and has been well received and redistributed by staff
* At a company meeting the CEO admitted to being initially apprehensive about losing some personal control over the new direction for UniCo. However, the CEO enthusiastically explained how UniCo and Selco together will be much stronger in the market, especially following successful rebranding, and why the CEO is now able to support the change. Staff have appreciated this openness and it has been the subject of many informal discussions throughout the company.
The Sales Director has noted that there is some tension amongst the Sales Director's management team,
particularly between those Sales Managers who have been at UniCo a long time and two new Managers who joined recently. This is of concern as it means the team is not working as effectively as it could.
The Sales Director has held one-to-one discussions with each Sales Manager in order to:
* try to understand the underlying tensions and put measures in place to help them become a more effective team.
The extract below is from of the Sales Director's notes on the discussions, and includes the proposed plans to address the issues:
1. The most common complaint across the whole of the Sales management team was the time spent on internal processes, territorial conflicts between sales regions and which industries should be targeted. Commitment was lacking to the change management actions needed to increase the sales value to UniCo.
Plan: Arrange a Sales management event so that the Sales Managers can share their personal vision and priorities.
2. There are underlying tensions because new Sales Managers are doing some of the work that the longer-term Sales Managers would have been doing. Nobody has wanted to raise this at the Sales management team meetings as it was felt that they would not be taken seriously and it would affect how others viewed them.
2. There are underlying tensions because new Sales Managers are doing some of the work that the longer-term Sales Managers would have been doing. Nobody has wanted to raise this at the Sales management team meetings as it was felt that they would not be taken seriously and it would affect how others viewed them.
Plan: Agree individually with each Sales Manager a list of key tasks they are expected to fulfil and share these separately with the others in Sales management.
3. It has been a while since the last Sales management team meeting and some members have not completed the actions agreed to resolve outstanding issues, which has led to delays. There is a belief that these issues will not be resolved even if they are discussed again at the next Sales management team meeting.
Plan: Acknowledge the failure to complete previous actions and get all team members to debate and jointly agree a plan to implement future actions.
4. This is the first time the Sales staff have faced major disruption to the normal sales processes. The Sales Director learned that some sales teams are not adopting the changes needed to support the sale of the mobile applications now being developed and marketed. However, the Sales Managers have not yet discussed and resolved this failure of some to deliver on commitments between themselves.
Plan: Ask the Sales Manager team members to take it in turns to attend meetings of other functional departments to gain more understanding of the organizational processes.