COM 220 FINAL PROJECT DRAFT 1

Rough Draft of the Research Paper

Mike K. Murphy

AxiaCollege of University of Phoenix

What makes a business successful? Having a specific business philosophy and site culture boosts morale and defines a company. This involves implementations of a specific philosophy and enhancements to existing practices. Building company infrastructure through management and employee education requires strategic progressive training using defined goals, objectives, and quality assurance programs to engage and empower associates through awareness and involvement. Site culture can be stressful and difficult to put into practice because of the length of time and reiteration it can take to establish in an existing facility. Site culture begins at the interview process and flows into the new hire orientation. Existing employees may have a difficult time or challenge others about adapting to a changing business philosophy and culture.

A specific business philosophy and culture involves implementations of philosophy and enhancements to existing practices. Employee morale, once management has bought in, is the foundation to obtaining a successful and long standing site culture. Site culture at any business is driven by the recognition and culture of its diverse employee base. The culture of a business is defined by its ability to adapt to the changing employee wants, needs, and desires. Employee engagement is critical to the buy in process of philosophy implementation and enhancement of discovering the best practices. The benefits of sharing the company’s statistics at a facility, regional, and at a national level display trust. This will also educate individuals on what drives the company to be profitable, what opportunities exist for improvement and display what a company is doing well. Involving employees in the day-to-daydecisions allows employeesto recognize that their participation can influence and even guide the direction of the company. Including employees in decision making processesis beneficial to all affiliated with the company to have the Management team and associates made aware of certain and most of the business operations.

The frontline management team members are members who directly interact with and supervise the employees. This group needs to recognize and be taught that a successful site vision and philosophy begins with how they portray themselves and the vision to the employees. Management team members can be difficult to get to buy into a new site vision and philosophy. This is typically because the management team is usually already putting in a full work week and feels overwhelmed by a project of this magnitude. Management just as the employee base are established in theirthought processes and business practices. A site vision and philosophy requires individuals with this outlook to adapt to the site vision culture themselves. If this exists this needs to be discussed and diffused in order to move forward in an efficient and effective manner.

Core values are the stepping stoneto developing a site specific vision and philosophy statement. A core value statement can be made up of but definitely not limited to the values in the table below. This is the first step towards the creation of site vision and philosophy.

Create a core value system
  • Trust and accountability
  • Honest communication
  • Social and environmental responsibility
  • Safe and healthy work environment

Developing and implementing site culture and philosophy can be stressful and difficult to put into practice because of the length of time and reiteration it can take to establish in an existing facility. But looking at it optimistically can be the easier and less stressful approach. At some companies management teams have been home grown. Team members may lack the intuition, or lack exposure to continuing education and experience outside of the company. Management team members must be able to recognize their personal limits and educate themselves in respect to their business. In Maxwell’s book the 21 irrefutable laws of leadership follow them and theywill follow you; the chapter the law of the lid describes that one must know ones own limitations as a leader. As a person grows in theircapacity as a leader they need to raise the bar for their personal limitations as a leader (2007). Not only is it essential to acquire this self recognition in order to gain more knowledge; it is essential to provide the management team with the skills and tools to implement a new or changing site vision and philosophy. This can be done through seminars, reading self help books, and books about the best practices of a leader among many other ways of educating oneself. A well developed site culture and philosophy makes sense.

A site vision and belief statement is the second step needs to be developed that represent what the company believes in. The vision and belief statement has to echo and be derived from the core values. These questions need to be answered with cognitive thought, effort and input from the associates at all levels.

Create a vision and belief system to support the culture of the site
  • What is the vision of the facility?
  • What is the facilities vision to the associates?
  • What is the vision of commitments to the customer?
  • What is the vision to the facilities suppliers?
  • What is the vision of commitments to the shareholders?

Site culture starts at the interview process and flows into the new hire orientation. An opportunity exists before an employee is hired by the interviewer to establish the site culture and philosophy. The interviewer at this time can draw out the candidate’s personality. At the conclusion of the interview, because the site culture has been projected and promoted, the interviewer can and needs to ask if the candidate feels they can and want to be a part of this type of team. The established site culture and philosophy picks up from the interview and spills over to the new hire orientation, then throughout the workdays to follow. If a circumstance arrives that the employee has gone outside the site culture and philosophy, the site culture and philosophy should always be referred to, to redirect the situation back within that philosophy. Because the site culture and philosophy has been endorsed in the interview process and the new hire orientation, this removes the chance that someone can plea they were not informed of the culture, or thathe or sheisbeing singled out. This table portrays specific questions and statements that allow a management team to remain consistent in its approach to identifying the character of the interviewee.

Develop interview questions and statements
  • Experience is 10%; 90% is behavioral
  • What is yourexperience?
  • What is yourexperience related to the job youare applying for?
  • Why are youthe right person for the facilities environment?
  • What are yourbeliefs in regard to the environment you desire to work in?
  • What do youexpect to contribute to the team?
  • What do youexpect the team to contribute to you?
  • How do youmanage change?
  • When do youexpect praise?
  • When do yougive praise?
  • Do youwant youropinions to count?
  • What opportunities do youwant, need and desire?

Existing employees may have a difficult time or challenge others about adapting to a changing culture and business philosophy. Itis impossible to get one hundred percent buy in from employees. A portion of the employees are just there to work and do not feel they need to participate in things like constant quality improvement (CQI) programs. This can drastically affect the morale of other employees by an employee creating an unfriendly or rebellious working environment. Defiant or resistant employees can negatively affect other employees. Defiant employees can influence others to support their point of view that things are okay the way they are. Defiant employees can affect the accuracy of customer orders.

Having a plan of action is about 25% of the effort towards the success of building long-termsite culture and philosophy. Training and getting buy-in to the site culture and philosophy is worth twice as much as the effort of implementing it. Although the benefits are not hard to see in the management team and employees, they are hard to measure monetarily. Productivity, accuracy, order completeness, safety and labor are typical ways to measure the success of a business. But the greatest benefit and measuring tool is the positive interaction between employeesand the frontline management. The morale of both the management team and the employeesis better and the communication is open resulting in a high-levelof trust being gained. Trust is the foundation of independence and leadership. The company becomes like a family. Work becomes a place that people like to spend time at, they like the work, who they work with and what they are contributing to the greater cause. In this type of environment employees realize they have a voice that counts. And theyare encouraged to speak out about methods of improvement. The benefits of a successful site culture and philosophy are exponential. The rewards are numerous. All businesses should strive to develop a business philosophy and site culture that works for them.

References

Maxwell, J.C (2007). The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and They Will Follow You: The Law of the Lid (10th ed.). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson

Additional quotes to put into final project essay.

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  1. A leader needs to look introspectively and find out what excites them then illuminate this excitement upon employees so they can share in this excitement. This will bond the leader and employees together so they can work towards the same goals and interests of the company. (Bates, S., 2009, pp. 21-22).
  1. There is a wealth of knowledge throughout this book; chapter 2 focuses on eight principles for motivating others. Three of these are: purpose and passion; communicate a clear and powerful message; and learn what motivates others.

Bates, S. (2009). Motivate Like A CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act. McGraw Hill

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  1. Puerta states “Here they bonded with each other both interpersonally and as a group through a reinforcing cycle of introspection, sharing, and witnessing.” (Puerta, M., 2008).
  1. As the title of this document suggests, in summary this a study of 100 management team members that were taken ‘offsite’ out of their normal business, and had to engage with openness, trust, and unity versus their alleged management style of political and strategic ‘jousting.

Puerta, M. (2008). Management and Leadership: Dissertations and Theses: A grounded theory of togethering: The transformation of the patterns of engagement of a top management group from political and strategic jousting to trust, openness, and unity. Retrieved June 2, 2009, from CaseWestern ReserveUniversity: Axia University Library:

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Maxwell, J.C (2007). The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and They Will Follow You: The Law of the Lid (10th ed.). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson

Maxwell writes about 21 what he calls ‘laws’ of leadership. Follow these and you will succeed; do not follow these rules and you will likely not succeed. One rule in particular that he writes about is The Law of the Lid. This law speaks to knowing ones own limitations and as a person grows in their leadership, to raise the lid of their personal capabilities. This is an important ‘law’ to embrace as if someone does not know they have limitations, they will not as easily, or at all recognize what they do not know.

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Manning, M. (2009). Management and Leadership: Dissertations and Theses: First line leadership and the impact to employee satisfaction in a Supplier Management organization. Retrieved June 2, 2009, from PepperdineUniversity via AxiaUniversity Library.

The author talks about front line management; which is the management personnel that is the direct line of communication to the employee’s. This is effective for my final topic because this is actually where I believe that a company can fail or succeed in regard to employee morale.