You are the top managers of a rapidly growing company that h

You are the top managers of a rapidly growing company that has been having great success in developing websites for large Fortune 500 companies. Currently, you employ over 150 highly skilled and qualified programmers, and to date you have operated with a loose, organic operating structure that has given them considerable autonomy. Although this has worked, you are now experiencing problems. Performance is dropping because your company is fragmenting into different self-contained teams that are not cooperating and not learning from one another. You have decided that somehow you need to become more bureaucratic or mechanistic, but you recognize and wish to keep all the advantages of your organic operating approach. You are meeting to discuss how to make this transition.

Question:

1. What kind of crisis are you experiencing according to Greiner’s model?

2. What kind of changes will you make to your operating structure to solve this crisis, and what will be the problems associated with implementing these changes?

3. Think as if you are part of the management of this company.What would you do and why?

Solution

1.

As per the Greiner’s model, the company is in phase 3 where the growth is taking place through delegation. In this scenario, the company is facing control crisis as per Greiner’s model.

To resolve this crisis, centralized head office based control system can be used to bring different groups together on one platform to achieve high productivity and efficiency.

2.

I will create a project based structure that will use the capabilities of each employee of the organization on the basis of the nature of the project. Core Committee for each project will also be created that will consist of interdisciplinary people from different expertise. Core committee will report to the head office.It will improve the coordination and reporting.

Organization will face following problems with the implementation of changes.

3

If I am the part of management, I will pay attention to the capabilities of each and every employee with performance. Afterwards, a head office will be created that will route all the projects coming to the organization. The head office will also create a core committee and employees to the project will be assigned.

Above initiatives will be taken to bring people out of their comfort zone. Employees responsible for the project will be assigned by the head office. The presence of the core committee will help in smooth flow of work and cooperation among project members. It will help organization to not only achieve control, but also to achieve high efficiency and growth.