Executive Summary
Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park has been started by Davis and his family to offer outdoor sports and entertainment to the community. With the growth of the company, its activities have also increased that have resulted in the challenges. The major cause of the issues and problems in the successful business is the lack of strategic management. The management nor defines its mission neither plan the organizational structure, culture and leadership that has resulted in the poor management of Paintball Park. Selecting the collaborative management model, it is recommended to Davis and his family that the mission and objectives are required to be defined and communicate and develop the innovative culture within the company, making each employee allows to take decision within its role, position and responsibilities in the company. The actions and strategies will be controlled using balance scoreboard.
Background
Company Background
Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park is a business initiated by Mike Davis, his Aunty Daisy and his younger brother Ethan. The Park has developed based on five battlefields. Though, from the beginning, the business has been found as successful, emerging and growing rapidly. The business has found as the excellent idea to attract the loyal customers, as all three members of the company have strong professional background, mainly Ethan has its own customers at his part time job that have become the repetitive customer of Paintball Park. The tournaments went successfully and the local media covered its events.
Background of the Report
This is a consultation report that is going to develop to help the client and his family to control and manage the business properly and efficiently. Though, the business went successfully, however, over the period of time, the owners have started losing their control over the business. The business is facing huge problems and pains that might impact on the business for its survival. As the company grew quickly, the activities at the field have increased rapidly that have resulted in the challenges of scheduling. With the increasing activities, the staff has to face the overwork and pulled to work from one area to another in the park. In line with these challenges, the employees have started complaining that overload and extra work outside the paint ball field is required training and development to understand the job. The customers also complained for poor service as some major events have lost, displeasure in the field, no special discounts and poor workforce services.
The management has a fear of losing business, considering that with these challenges, the company may lost its customers that can move to the competitors, closest at 30 to 45 miles distance. Davis needs to successfully run the business, as initially it was. For this purpose, the report is going to analyze the situation, strength and weaknesses of the company and making recommendations for how to improve the business process.
Places of business
The business has started on the inherited property of Daisy. The property was not being used for any purpose earlier. The property is based on five acres that has used to develop the business of outdoor entertainment for the teenagers, workers at local business and young adults.
Educational and training background
Mike Davis has never completed with any degree in management or any other subject, however, he has done some courses of management in the college of his local community. He got enough knowledge from his coursework to step into the entry level management. His coursework, knowledge and learning made him confident and enable to work in the outdoor sporting goods store.
Career experience
Mike Davis has worked for more than seven years in one of the biggest store of sporting goods. On the other side, his Aunty Daisy was developed her career in the schooling system. She worked as a PE teacher as well as coach for sports in the school. She just got retired from the schools before thinking and initiating the business of Outdoor Adventure. The third owner of the business, Ethan had worked as an athletic trainer on part time basis. Here, it can be seen that all of the members of the business have career background associated to sports field, where, Davis have managerial skills and knowledge and Daisy and Ethan have teaching and training skills, mainly for sports and athletes.
Civic interests and activities
The client and his family have great interest in civic or public interest in terms of entertainment and fun for the families in their community. They have noticed that the families, mainly their target audience was provided with limited parks, especially for sports and entertainment. Therefore, they have choice to initiate the business of outdoor fun and entertainment.
How and why your client became interested in this business
Mike Davis was happy with his job but never satisfied of his career. In this dissatisfaction, he wished to start his own business and working as a boss for himself. He thought that own business gives more earnings for a civilized life.
Despite of Davis, Daisy has a dream to start her own business of outdoor adventures as she has a career background of sports coaching. Additionally, she was available with the property that could easily be used to start a business of outdoor adventure. Based on the interest of Davis and Daisy and the available property, they became interested to start the business of Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park.
Combining the savings of three members, they have decided to plot a five battle field park to offer different choices to the customers. The philosophy of developing outdoor adventure park was to provide the place to teenagers, young adults and business working teams to enjoy their hours. Based on their developed design of the battlefield, they have decided some packages for the customers such as rental package starting from $25 per person. The packages and prices can be varied based on the needs of the customers. Despite of this, they have also offered seasonal passes for $150 and birthday party passes for $300. They have decided minimum age of 10 for participation in the events of paintball.
Any other information that contributes to a portrait of your client as a person
The roles and responsibilities, they have decided differently. As Mike has managerial background, therefore, he works mostly in his office for managing the business aspects, However, Ethan was a trainer, and therefore, he works as a trainer for the workers, supervisors and employees. Daisy is responsible to oversight the shooting gallery. Quickly, the business has developed with 20 employees.
Defining the Park’s Objectives
A description of short-term and long-term objectives
The short term goals of Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park are as follows:
Feedback from the customers
Day to day activities at paintball field
Long term goals are as follows:
Prioritization of primary and secondary objectives for the Park
The primary objective of the business is to offer outdoor adventure and sports services to the young people. Other than developing the paintball business, another primary objective of the business is to make sales that are the obvious objective of any profit generating business.
Though, primary objectives are important, however, they cannot be achieved in the absence of secondary objectives. Therefore, to achieve primary objectives of Paintball Park, the secondary objectives include marketing, human resource management, management, controlling and innovation. These objectives are very important to meet the primary objectives.
Consultant’s Observations
This is the most important section of the report that will help the readers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the business of Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park that will help to understand the existing critical problems and the reasons of these challenges.
Strengths that relate to the POLC
The strengths of the business in terms of POLC framework are as follows:
Davis, Daisy and Ethan have planned efficiently for how to initiate the business using the available resources. It is very important to align the opportunities with the resources available to the company.
The initial human resource planning was good. They have divided the roles and responsibilities based on the knowledge, skills, experience and career of each member.
Weaknesses that relate to the POLC
The major weaknesses are as follows:
Unclear and undefined mission and vision statement of the company
No planning for organizing and developing the resources, mainly the staff
No focus on the job structure, design, recruitment, training and other HR procedures.
No motivation, reward and incentive planning
No planning and controlling of the performance standards that have resulted in the conflicts and misunderstanding among Davis and Daisy about the challenges and problems
Ignoring negative actions considering them as random incidents
No on time actions to improve the business process and efficient organizational outcomes.
Ideal management model
Before idealizing the best suitable model for Paintball Park, it is important to understand the four models.
In democratic management, the decisions are made by the top management, however, the middle and lower management have informed about the consequences. In contrast, in autocratic management, the decision flows simply from top to down without considering middle and lower management participation as important (Community Tool Box, 2015).
Collaborative management gives equal opportunities to all within the organization to participate in decision making and allows each member to perform its roles and responsibilities with making decisions on hands. The collective management makes every member to take decision as each member owns the company (Community Tool Box, 2015).
Collaborative management model is suitable for Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park. For the successful companies achieving the competitive advantage, it is very important for the company to be innovative that is not possible without the collaboration of the staff and member of the organization. The organizational structure impacts strongly on the culture (John, n.d.) and decision making process and dividing the responsibilities at different levels is more easier and effective way to make decisions for the customers, understanding their needs (Suttle, n.d.).
Roles and responsibilities of the owners and employees
In collaborative management, the owners are needed to play a role of leaders within the company. Therefore, Davis, Daisy and Ethan being the owners of Paintball Park will play a role of leaders that will motivate the employees and other staff to be committed to achieve the goals, objectives and mission of the company.
Maslow theory of motivation has examined five levels of motivation in which self actualization are the needs for motivation that comes when the employees get high roles and responsibilities (Analytictech, n.d.). Therefore, for this purpose, the owners for their motivation will arrange training programs with the changing roles in the company and through collaborative management, will develop them formulating the culture of innovation and creativity.
The organizations today, because of their imposed boundaries are unable to reach to the maximum potential of it human resource (Morgan, 2013). Therefore, in developing boundary-less company in collaborative environment, the employees will be responsible to participate in the decision making process, coming up with new ideas. Also, the employees will be responsible to assess the problems and solve them at instant that will help Paintball to reduce the issue of delays in responding to the challenges.
Communication and flow of decision making in relation to the selected management model
The structure and management style play an important role in the communication and decision making process of the organization (Suttle, n.d.). In collaborative management, the communication will not flow from top to down but it will be flexible that allows each member of the Paintball Park to communicate with others any time. Additionally, the decision making will pace up as the members at each level will be allowed to take the decisions.
Consultant’s Recommendations
Recommendations for improvement to management covering all aspects of POLC
The ideal strategic management model above is very helpful in developing the business successfully, meeting the short term and long term objectives. For this purpose, the management of Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park will now develop its management as follows:
First of all, the management will step into planning phase, where, other than the basic business and price planning, the vision, mission, objectives and aims of the business will be identified.
Once the management will identify the mission and vision, it will then plan the culture, structure and process of the organization. It will also include staffing to identify the roles and responsibilities with the organizations both existing and future needs.
After the development of the well designed organization, the management is required to plan the system for the motivation of the employees and staff. For this purpose, the management will organize the training and development program within the company.
The continuous evaluation, measurement and control are very important in the company to manage the risks, challenges and problems. It involves managing the performances of staff and controlling human resource. In the self directed work place, the companies are needed to develop the metrics for the control and accountability within the workplace (McKinsey, 2005).
Balanced Scorecard
Balance Scoreboard is one of the most effective tools and systems used in the business organization for the measurements. The study has found that the measurement in the organization is very important as it impacts on the attitudes, behaviors and performances of the employees as well as the management.
It has far been believed by the professionals and business experts that information management is very important for the successful running of the business and the organization. The balance scoreboard offers the complex information to the managers at a quick look (Kaplan & Norton, 1995). Mike Davis has felt that they are losing sales; it means that they are not informed about the aspects of problems in initial phases. The major problems faced by the company include the scheduling because of the increasing activities, de-motivation among the employees and workers because of the lack of training, overload among the staff, missing of the major events because of the doubling of the booking, mistakes at workplace, complains from the customers, dissatisfaction of the customers etc.
Keeping these challenges in focus, the management will bring balance scoreboard tool in the managerial activities to deal with the information within and outside the organization to cope up with these challenges. It will help the management to develop the well planned performance target so that the management, employees and workers would clearly understand their roles and responsibilities to perform within the organization that is not possible without balance scoreboard and measuring single units individually. Davis and his family will get the answers for the following issues with the help of balance scorecard (Norton & Kaplan, 1993):
Customer perspective about the business and management
Internal requirements
Thinking, innovation, creativity and creating value
Information for and about the finance holders
Keeping these four perspectives, the management of Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park will become efficient to understand the long term needs of the business and how to develop strategies for meeting the long term objectives.
Summary
Summary of conclusions
Outdoor Adventure Paintball Park has been successfully established by Davis, Daisy and Ethan based on their career and professional experiences and the resources they were available with. With the development and growth of the business, the activities have also been increased that have resulted in number of challenges because of the poor strategic management of the business. Although, the management has emerged with good idea and plan for the initial business strategy, however, they have not developed any strategic plan for the long term vision and mission of the company. Because of lacking the proper planning of the organizational structure and process, the company has faced lost and pressures from the employees and customers at the same time.
Summary of recommendations
It is recommended that the management will define and communicate the mission and vision statement within the organization, so that each member and worker will understand the scope, objectives and aims of the business. Furthermore, the company will develop the collaborative management structure so that each employee will be responsible for the success of the company and to take decisions. For this purpose, Davis and his family will organize the training and development programs for the employees for their additional roles and responsibilities. At the end, the management will implement the balance scoreboard as metrics to measure and control the performances to lead the actual performance to meet with eh expected performance.
References
Analytictech. (n.d.). Theories of Motivation. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://www.analytictech.com/mb021/motivation.htm
Community Tool Box. (2015). Section 1. Developing a Management Plan. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/leadership/effective-manager/management-plan/main
John, C. (n.d.). The Difference Between Organizational Culture and Organizational Structure. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/difference-between-organizational-culture-organizational-structure-25206.html
Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (1995). Putting the balanced scorecard to work. Performance measurement, management, and appraisal sourcebook, 66, 17511.
McKinsey. (2005). The 21st-Century Organization. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://ww2.cfo.com/human-capital-careers/2005/08/the-21st-century-organization/
Morgan, J. (2013). How To Build A Boundaryless Organization. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2013/12/04/build-boundaryless-organization/#5758b47834b5
Norton, D., & Kaplan, R. (1993). Putting the balanced scorecard to work. Harvard Business Review, 71(5), 134-140.
Suttle, R. (n.d.). Roles of Organizational Structure. Retrieved February 27, 2016, from http://smallbusiness.chron.com/roles-organizational-structure-3795.html
