Question

Read the case study titled You Want Us to Work With Marketing? and address the following questions:

1. What are some symptoms of typical cultural barriers that create obstacles to improvement?

2. How can a process focus help to break down silos in an organization?

3. What types of tools and techniques can be used to help to support a process focus and improve the process of change?

Answer 1

What are some symptoms of typical cultural barriers that create obstacles to improvement?

• Organizational silos are sustained, tolerated or accepted by management. Or probably they lack timely and important data they can trust to make sound decisions on. It is easy to see how identifying the improvement programs to prioritize is usually said to be the key barrier(Kenesei, Z., & Stier, Z. (2017).
• Schedules are delayed for months or years due to rework and incomplete form submissions. When change is rolled out they better add to that list all the workers that will be affected by this change, the people that need to adopt better working methods. With various initiatives that have high probability of a different lifecycle stage, it can be difficult to get this community focused and working harmoniously(Kenesei, Z., & Stier, Z. (2017).
• Capital approvals delayed for so many months as a result of incomplete or incorrect data.
  Different personalities could interfere with effective communication or process management. But if a firm wish is to regularly prove to the auditors that their processes, controls and compliance obligations are under control, they will need to deal with a considerable governance overhead(Kenesei, Z., & Stier, Z. (2017).
• Start-up dates for new tools or operations that are pushed months past initial estimates because no one employee understands the master plan. Similar to the best made plans, the new and upgraded processes will result in nothing if employees are ignorant of them, it would be idea to forget them or just fail to follow them. The risk of this is that workers get exhausted by changes, and can soon become skeptical or even hostile to change, if the changes are communicated inconsistently(Kenesei, Z., & Stier, Z. (2017).

How can a process focus help to break down silos in an organization?

Process orientation deals with the individual’s side of improvement. It eliminates the silos within an organization, enhances communication and minimizes rework that takes place when various departments carry out a process. It is associated with educating the process suppliers and clients both internal and external concerning the processes needs and where value is lost(Bento, F., Tagliabue, M., & Lorenzo, F. (2020).

Suppliers and clients then can discover how they add value, anticipate the firm’s needs and suggest changes that can be advantageous to all parties. Process orientation allows internal and external supplies, process owners and clients to think collaboratively on increasing performance of jointly owned activities(Bento, F., Tagliabue, M., & Lorenzo, F. (2020).

To handle this challenge, most organizations give out organization charts to all workers, with boxes drawn around sections of responsibility. These usually encourages the development of organizational silos(Bento, F., Tagliabue, M., & Lorenzo, F. (2020).The box every person defines their role but never includes touchpoints with the rest of the department, which are thought to be co-owned by department managers. In the real sense, there is usually no joint accountability, so managers never make touchpoints a key point of concern. This is mostly true for the suppliers, or contributors, to a process. Due to this, broken touchpoint processes become sections of contention between departments can go unresolved, even during a process improvement(Bento, F., Tagliabue, M., & Lorenzo, F. (2020).

To eliminate the silo mentality an ideal is through technology to the firm’s advantage, and use programs and tools that are there to assist the teams to work collaboratively(Bento, F., Tagliabue, M., & Lorenzo, F. (2020). For instance, a current issue might be that the sales and market have different perspectives about a customer. A good idea would be to implement a tool that will thoroughly integrate customer information, allowing the two teams to have a new source information as the glue that binds them together.

3. What types of tools and techniques can be used to help to support a process focus and improve the process of change?

Organizational changes are intentional and promoted for a reason, whether that is to remain more competitive within the market, enhance business process, minimize costs or some more. Organizational change is promoted through individual change(White, S. (2019). If people fail to embrace, adopt or become proficient at the expected change, the benefits will not be realized. Organizational changes are connected to the change being realized due to individual change; after all, individual employees are the ones that make up an organization. After impacts of change in a company can be evaluated through establishing construct associated with various dimension of a company’s competitiveness as well as other related matters(White, S. (2019).

Hence there is need for;

• A joint meeting between all process suppliers and the customer
• A visual of the whole process detailing the activities that take place and all the stakeholders associated with the execution of the work activities, communication and approvals.
• A proper description of the process activities associated with process suppliers
• A list of particular tools or activities that will be distinct for every supplier to the process. This will assist every supplier to understand what will be distinct for them without the need to understand the details for the rest of the suppliers.
• An approximation of the value being lost as a result of the current state.
• Value will be gained if everyone plays their part to implement new processes and tools.
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• Resources that will be lost when a supplier for the process leaves.