Question

You are appointed as the new Operations Manager at a production facility. There is a strong emphasis on cost reduction and wastage control from the senior management. Rex, the production supervisor who is your direct report, manages three production foremen, who in turn supervise the repetitive work of 170 employees. Rex, rules with an iron fist and keeps tightening the work rules to boost production and reduce wastage. He has increased direct supervision as he sometimes finds workers taking break during work time. Two of the senior production foremen come to discuss certain worker issues with you. You know that they have both risen through the ranks and are closely connected to the workers’ needs. They mention that Rex’s approach is causing demotivation and frustration among the workers. They are struggling with job insecurity, stress and are overall overworked. The foremen know that the workers’ tasks are monotonous and boring. So, if they exceeded their production quotas they were allowed to have longer breaks as an informal reward. The new quality control expert, who was recently brought in to the team, reported that production efficiency as well as quality were both deteriorating. Question Based on your understanding of effective strategic leadership, develop a plan on how you would resolve this situation. Support your suggestions by elaborating on the leadership theories used in developing the plan.

Answer 1

Many people believe that in order to achieve quality, one needs to invest a lot of time, money, and effort. Although initially this theory holds some truth, in the long run, leadership within the organization plays a more important role in achieving and maintaining quality. Quality does not evolve overnight. People need to dedicate themselves and their companies to having quality practices and policies in order to gain a reputation of delivering quality. The three main keys to attaining sustainable quality within the organization include: (1) motivating employees through empowerment to dedicate themselves to their work; (2) investing time and money in training and developing employees into leaders; and (3) reinforcing core values in employees to maintain quality practices. Quality can be achieved if management and workers believe in achieving successful leadership within the organization.Quality has been a highlight in numerous publications due to its enticing effect on organizational management. However, in some circumstances the appeal of implementing a quality process sometimes clouds the decision making of management. The sound of a new quality process may intrigue management to force implementation within an organization without properly planning out a way to ease everyone into the transition. Instead of leaping into an unfamiliar process, small steps to ease everyone into a new way of operating with quality would be a better and more rational management decision.

Committing to Quality through Empowerment - The first step management is recommended to take when committing themselves to quality lies in empowering their employees. When employees feel empowered, they take more pride in their work, which positively affects the level of quality at which they perform their work. Empowering employees does not eliminate the role of management. On the contrary, management’s role becomes a more important one in that they transform a mindset of monitoring statistics of workforce productivity to one of encouraging and implementing new ideas on how to be more productive as suggested by the workforce. Successful implementation of workforce empowerment requires some flattening of the organization. Organizational flattening means reducing levels of supervision in order to improve efficiency between management and workers. Supervisory duties condense in order to improve communication between levels within the organization. Management may relinquish some responsibility to workers in order to gain buy-in from the remainder of the workforce.

American Philosophy - Americans adopted the Taylor system of “scientific management” in the early twentieth century. This system separated planning from execution, causing an increase in production; but conversely, it also caused a decline in craftsmanship and quality since the human side was ignored. Work tasks for individuals became clearly defined and specialized, which ended up causing negative effects within the organization. One consequence of Taylor’s scientific approach was that workers lost touch with the essence of their jobs.

Investing in Quality - Educating employees on how to work efficiently to produce a quality product or service does not come without a cost. Significant gains do not come without taking some losses. When management invests in training, employees work more knowledgeably and efficiently since they understand their job and can find ways to improve. Management also needs to receive training, especially when it comes to quality. As long as everyone expands their knowledge, new discoveries for improvement will help enhance quality. This investing in training is the means of investing in quality.

Core Values for Quality - After managers commit to empowering and educating their workforce, the next decision lies in choosing core values necessary for the organization to achieve and sustain quality. Organizations need to establish what they value most within the quality process after committing themselves. Some people may argue that determining organizational core values comes before process implementation. Either way, core values should be established after everyone, not only management, believes in the quality processes. With employee input on how to sustain the organizational quality process, employees will doubly believe management has committed to quality.