Mike Davis has an experience of more than seven years in the field outdoor sporting goods; he has worked on the famous stores. Mike did not have any degree as he did not complete his higher education, but he attended some courses related to management from a local community college. Because of his knowledge and his efforts, he became able to secure the entry-level management position. Mike was an enthusiastic person despite enjoying his job he was used to seek for new opportunities. Mike has a dream that he could open his personal store where he can enjoy the prestige of being his ownboss so that he may earn some respectable living.
Daisy, who is an aunt of Mike, has recently retired from her school job where she was performing her duties as a sports coach and PR teacher. Daisy for the accomplishment of her dreams was also interested in opening an outdoor adventure business. The best part was that some years back she had inherited a property that has not been used yet. When Daisy came to know that the Mike is in alignwith her thought, she approached Mike for starting the business. Mike and Daisy decided to be a partner in that business and the younger brother of Mike;Ethanwas brought into the business as well, for part time working as a trainer of athletes. These three after combining their savings decided to use the five acres of AuntDaisy’s inherited land.
Their plan was straightforward, as they wanted to open a business where young people, teenagers, and local businesses’ work teams could take pleasure of outdoor entertainment and fun for hours. They decided to open a “theme outdoor paintball park”,they recognized the lack of entertainment and sports for the target audience as an opportunity. They named their part as “outdoor adventure Paintball Park”. They decided to offer their customers the opportunity to choose between the five battlefields and every choice had a dissimilar level of play.
Through the selection of each field, people can have immense experience of enjoyment for hours. The five fields include old castle field, civil war field, the village field, the woods field, and the hill field. The Old Castle fieldis made off a tower and multiple levels. Civil war field includes trenches and simulated headquarters. The village field includes a large field that has been made up of wooden segment running down one side, has a bunker in the middle of the two-storybuilding, with a stream going down to the new side. The woods fieldis designed in a way that offers people a factual opportunity of woodsy battle, with the placement of numerous buildings that were manmade and designed for additional coverage. The hillis made up to wooden sections with several bunkers on a vertical incline. The aim of this strategic placement of the small store in the center of the location is the elimination of the requirements for visitors to depart from the playing area.
The cost structure is not same for every customer as it varies with rental packages that start from $ 25 per visitor. Customers have the opportunity to buy a la carte according to their requirements. Moreover, the park also offers the seasonal passes at the cost of $ 150 and the cost of $ 300, birthday party package is accessible. The minimum age that is required to participate in the events of paintball is ten years.
The five battlefields are not enough, in addition to these; the park offers six other airball fields. These fields are arranged for the tournament play of three, five, and seven men. The field of airball includes several layouts that changed constantly for keeping up with the current fashion in the tournament play. Multiple fields have devoted fill stations for eliminating the desire for aplayer for leaving the field for reloading.
The facilities of the park do not end here it contains a shooting gallery. The aim behind the designing of this shooting gallery was to serve people with the opportunity to sharpen their skills of shooting. For the attainment of this, objective and providing customers with high quality experience, the gallery holds numerous moving and constant targets and paint guns that are of high velocity.
All of the three collaborators Ethan, Aunt Daisy, and Mike perform their duties as decided. Mike manages the organization; he spends a large amount of his time in the office with the closed door. Aunt Daisy is liable to look after the shooting gallery, and Ethan supervises the events of paintball and trains new workers. The business faced immense growthas it started with the workforce of three, but in a very short time periodhas reached at 20 employees.
The business idea looks good. The passion of the family for working with theyoungster and for sports was just not visible, but sooner started paying off to Daisy, Mike, and Ethan. The business became the success as it has generated loyal customers who are used to procure expensive supplies and equipment from Ethan. These people enjoy the extra information section and taking extra training classes as well. The tournament at the greater extent has become popular and events have been covered by local newspapers. The business has built a good reputation and recognized as a place that offers the safest environment for families.
Despite all these positive features, it has been determined that the business is having trouble. It has become difficult for the business to schedule things. The major reason behind the increasing difficulties in scheduling is the activities that are increasing on the field. The park is also facing understaffed issues as most of the time; staff is pulled from one place to another place with the aim of providing coverage to other areas. In result of these issues, the staff is overburdened and not able to understand the job requirements and providing good services to customers (Wicker, 1984). Employees are constantly complaining that they are not sure about their duties that are creating issues for them. Even they are asking for additional procedures and training so they can better perform their job duties (Kamin, Wildermuth& Collins, 2003).In addition, the business missed the opportunity of a major event, and this loss occurred in theresult of the issue of double booking. The aim of the business was to grow through serving people with pleasure, but the picture has changed. Multiple customers were not happy with the services to provide to them and to show their unhappiness with the business. In result of these issues, the profitability of the business was going down as people were spending a smaller amountof time on the field (Enz, 2010).The problems were not limited to these issues only; it also has been determined that the discount offers that were given to the local businesses regarding the employee events, were not appreciated by them. Even local businesses were not responding to them. The volume of mistakes at the workplace was increasing, but it was a fortune that these increased workplace issues was not affecting the organization to the serious extent, and the business did not have to face any serious accident (Bogle &Fairweather, 2012). Due to all these issues employees and customers both have started questioning the leadership of the business and most often they ask that how long the business can be run in such manners or who is liable to run the show.
Mike has realized that there is an immense plunge in revenues;Mikeis also started realizing that they are losing the control of their business. However, through analysis, Mike realized that the two of the closest competitors of the business that are just 30 to 45 mile away are not offering the same or nearly same amenities. Mike have recognized the threat that if they do not take any initiative to resolve the existing issues of the organization, then they will have to lose their customer base as the chances of the customers move to the competition will become higher. It is realized that the passion of Mike towards the sport-oriented business is fading as well. Mike still want that the business continues to succeed, he is worried about the success of the business, but it is also true that he is not finding the work as fun. Mike interest in sport-oriented business has lost or, at least, is not up to that extent as it was in the start of the business.
On the other hand, if the aunt Daisy is considered then she is not taking any interest in talking about the books and even do not think that there is anything about which she should be worried. She is not worried about the issues the business is facing. She is taking the sale plunge as an opportunity as she considers that it is an indication that the offerings should be increased (Pride & Ferrell, 2008). In fact, Aunt Daisy for resolving the issue of decreased sales has come up with the ideas of developing a paintball competition team. According to AuntDaisy, this will be the huge opportunity for the organization to continue with growth and she wants to influence others that it is the best time to pursue this decision.
Implementation of P-O-L-C framework
The analysis of the case revealed that Mike has completely failed in developing shared mission. He failed in the organization of resources in the most appropriate way. Mike just not only underestimated the importance of staffing, but also failed in designing proper job description and giving the staff an appropriate training. He ignored pessimistic information until he did not see decline in sales. Through the implementation of P-O-L-C framework, mike can overcome these issues.
Planning is based on the mission of the organization. Therefore, Mike is recommended to set a clear mission for the organization that is shared among employees. He should do strategic planning according which he must set some particular objectives. For example, Mike can set the goals that he will increase the membership base up to 500 people, and increase sales growth in a year. Therefore, the objective will be to increase membership in all target categories by 35 percent and enhance awareness among people by 35 percent. Failure in scheduling is indicating the operational issues in managing increased activities. Therefore, Mike for the improvement of operational activities should design some particular procedure and through operational planning, he should reduce the activities that create waste and for enhancing procedural efficiencies should implement modern technologies (such as work scheduling software) and bring the right mix of people in the organization (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2010).
Organizing:
Once Mike is done with planning for the attainment of the objectives, Mike should develop a clear structure of reporting. For better organization and attainment of objectives, he must ensure that all employees are aware of their job duties. For the effective utilization of human resource, he should design a clear job description so employees will be able to offer specialized experience to customers this strategy will help in resolving the issue of unhappy and dissatisfied customers (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2010). Mike should encourage the culture of teamwork and coordination that will help in boosting the service quality and gain competitive advantage against competition.
Leading:
It is observed that motivation is an important factor that encourages employees in improving customer service. Mike should enhance coordination and should ensure that people are committed to the organization so the organization can achieve original goals. Management will have to change its style of managing people; Mikes should make sure face-to-face communication with employees. Open communication strategy will enable Mike to overcome the issue sales decline and poor service quality, as people will share their innovative ideas through which service can be improved. The organization should train its employees to meet the needs of diversity of people (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2010).
Controlling:
Controlling is the best way of determining that the organizational goals have been achieved. At some extent, Mike is feeling that he is losing the control of operations. Therefore, for having strong control on operations and organization, he must develop some standards for measuring performance. Establishing standards involve making decision regarding financial goals, employee, and customer satisfaction related goals. For example, Mike can set an increase in numbers of customers on monthly basis. He can set financial goals of increasing sales, and so on (Carpenter, Bauer & Erdogan, 2010).
Balance Score Card
References
Bogle, D., &Fairweather, M. (2012).22nd European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering.Great Britain: Elsevier
Carpenter, M., Bauer, T., & Erdogan, B. (2010). Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling. Available from http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/6?e=fwk-127512-ch01_s03 [Accessed 19 March 2016]
Enz, C. A. (2010).The Cornell School of Hotel Administration Handbook of Applied Hospitality UK: SAGE
Kamin, M., Wildermuth, C. M., & Collins, R. (2003).Diversity Programs that Work.USA: American Society for Training and Development
Lamb, C. W.,Hair, J. F., &McDaniel,C. (2011). Essentials of Marketing.USA: Cengage Learning
Pride, W. M., & Ferrell, O. C. (2008).Marketing.Canada: Cengage Learning.
Wicker, A. W. (1984).An Introduction to Ecological Psychology.USA: CUP Archive
