Enhancing productivity in organization silos without demolishing the silos

Organization silos can negatively affect its performance when communication between departments fails. under such circumstances, organizations should quickly identify the reason for the failed communication rather than curtail a department's activities. A negative silo forms when a unit in an organization refuses to collaborate with other units. [1]

Leaders in an organization can tell silos have formed and are having a negative impact on productivity if knowledge flow and resources sharing in departments slows down or stops, driving an urgent need to either bridge the gaps in the silos or breakdown these silos. When information flow is interfered with, productivity and efficiency is well likely to be negative. [3] 

Two major ways through which silos form: [4]

• When leaders are in competition and seek to prove to be better than the other leaders. In the process, they make it their ambition to keep information as discreet as possible so as to get ahead. This impedes an organization's ability to leverage on synergy driving a lot of effort duplication and further derailing the organization from achieving its objectives
• When leaders have lots of responsibilities on them, they might fall for the trap of setting more rules and regulations for their teams, to maintain control. With time, the teams might be all drawn into such rules that they loose sight of departments outside their boundary walls.  

Silos can be made productive if:

• Leaders commit themselves to collaborative leadership styles by working with other leaders in an organization to achieve the ultimate goal. To get to this level, a leader will need to: [4]
• Build meaningful relationships across silos
• Handle all conflict in a constructive manner
• And share power and control
• Give cross functional responsibilities to members of a silo to boost a culture of offering support to different teams [2]
• Replace the many sign offs required for special requests among teams with clear guidelines for such requests [2]
• Cross functional review meetings should also be encouraged on a regular basis to enhance collaborations among teams [2]

Silos have a positive side to them as they enhance accountability. They should therefore not be dismantled but steered towards the overall organisation goals by putting into consideration the above factors.

References

1. Bento, F., Tagliabue, M. and Lorenzo, F., (2020). Organizational Silos: A Scoping Review Informed by a Behavioral Perspective on Systems and Networks. Societies, 10(3), p.56.
2. Majchrzak, A. and Wang, Q., (1996). Breaking the functional mind-set in process organizations. Harvard Business Review, September-October.
3. Serrat, O., (2017). Bridging organizational silos. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 711-716). Springer, Singapore.
4. Talsma, T.H., (2016). Eliminating silos in regionally distributed organizations to encourage knowledge sharing.

Apple success, Lessons for every business

After listening in on the C.E.O. of Apple INC., Tim Cook, and the C.F.O. Luca Maestri conference call held on July 30th 2020, I picked some critical factors that have contributed towards their successful results as a company in their Q3 Fiscal year.

• Investment in their people at work
• Investment in the community
• Engagement levels with their customers
• Opening up to more investors

The company is committed and has renewed this commitment towards creating a diverse and inclusive team. There is a lot of team care and the company is highly invested in providing its team with an environment that greatly supports innovation

The company is heavily invested in it's community with two major investments:

• Racial Equity and Justice initiative where they are investing 100m USD with a special focus on the people of colour. The company is keen on breaking the barriers of social injustices that exist in the community by stepping in and raising the bar in their ecosystem.
• Affordable housing investment fund that is 400m USD which aims to address housing affordability and availability crisis

The company is heavily invested in their customer engagement with 227 Virtual labs, and new daily audio briefings among other elevated engagement investments

After announcing their financial results, the company also announced a stock split of 4 stocks for every stock (4 for 1 stock split) that the board had approved, with the focus of making their shares accessible to more stakeholders. 

Reference

https://www.apple.com/investor/earnings-call/

Apple records 11% revenue growth Q3 2020 compared to the Q3 2019 (Fiscal yr)

What makes Apple standout in the midst of a global pandemic?

How does the organization face the global pandemic and successfully thrive when the economy everywhere is slowing down?

Lessons from Apple INC.

The market strategy

• How you view your products and services: Apple views its product and services as essential to clients especially in this pandemic. The company views its products and services as essential and therefore seeks to ensure their customers are not short of their products and services.  Apple INC. has established itself as an essential brand offering essential services

• How you deliver on your marketing strategy: 
• With a strong brand, consider outsourcing the retail front to experts with a network in line with your strategy without diluting your brand
• Get experts to deliver on high quality products that will complement your brand
• Markets are governed by rules and regulations and a company can easily infringe on these market regulations. Put in place a team of experts to ensure compliance and quickly manage any litigation that could dent your brand image. Don't ignore this no matter the size of your organization
• Protect your customers privacy. 
• Ensure you remain attractive to investors. Your market strategy will pool necessary resources for future investment and growth

References

Apple INC. (2020), "Apple Reports Third Quarter Results" Available at: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/#:~:text=Cupertino%2C%20California%20%E2%80%94%20July%2030%2C,of%20%242.58%2C%20up%2018%20percent.

Successful Outsourcing in Organizations

When an organization considers outsourcing as an option, it's important that the outcome be:

• Higher efficiency
• Advanced access to strategic resources
• lower cost of doing business. 

An organization open to outsourcing broadens its network of high competency to its advantage and becomes an agile business able to compete in the ever changing business environment. Paek et, al., (2019)

In evaluating an outsourcing vendor, 3 essential success factors of the vendor are considered during the outsourcing strategy: (Delen, 2016)

• Efficient levels of communication in the vendor's organization- If the vendor's communication lines are efficient within it's organization, managing any challenges related to the outsourcing strategy are far easier
• Demand management- As an organization's demands fluctuates, a vendor should have the capacity to handle them and deliver its services effectively 
• A vendor's ability to adhere to the transition plans for smooth business operations performance during the period of transition 

An organization's decision on the specific activities to outsource should be very strategic. The benefits of outsourcing, especially financial benefits can be quickly eroded if the decision is not critically evaluated against a company's needs. Sanchís-Pedregosa et, al., (2018)

References
Delen, G.P., Peters, R.J., Verhoef, C. and Van Vlijmen, S.F.M., (2016). Lessons from Dutch IT-outsourcing success and failure. Science of Computer Programming, 130, pp.37-68. 

Paek, B., Kim, J., Park, J. and Lee, H., (2019). Outsourcing Strategies of Established Firms and Sustainable Competitiveness: Medical Device Firms. Sustainability, 11(17), p.4550.

Sanchís-Pedregosa, C., Gonzalez-Zamora, M.D.M. and Palacín-Sánchez, M.J., (2018). Outsource Services to Improve Financial Performance: Is There a Limit?. Global Business Review, 19(1), pp.21-31.

Culture and Agility

Organization culture

A system in place, in an organization, that has a huge influence on how an organization forms and implements strategies to achieve a certain outcome is known as organization culture. In depth, this system affects how employees interact amongst themselves and with their environment resulting in a certain strategy outcome. Balaji et al., (2020)

The 4 cultures and their impact on organization Agility

Agile organizations are those that can sense the changes taking place in their environments early and form the right response to these changes. This creates opportunities for new business giving them a competitive edge. Culture plays a huge role in how agile an organization is. Felipe et al.,(2017)

Below is a summary of cultures in organizations and their characteristics

Internal focus	Flexibility and discretion		external focus
	Clan culture: Focused on the well being of employees and creates a positive working atmosphere. Human capital focused. Family oriented.	Adhocracy Culture: Focus is on success with heavy investment in innovation. There is adaptability, flexibility and creativity in readiness for uncertain times
	Hierarchy culture:Extreme bureaucracy with strict control, top down management approach. Need for control and order to keep internal controls and efficiency in check	Market Culture: Focused on a goal, status, profitability etc. and aims at winning sales, contracts etc. with minimal delays
	Stability and control

Competitive Value framework (Cameron and Quinn, 1999)

An organization that can adopt to the different types of cultures is more likely to be effective and agile compared to competition. The business environment is increasingly turbulent, and organizations are faced with the huge challenge to succeed and remain going concerns. Embracing the right cultural mix and driving the same through its leadership is a step in the right direction.

References

Balaji, M.S., Jiang, Y., Singh, G. and Jha, S., (2020). Letting go or getting back: How organization culture shapes frontline employee response to customer incivility. Journal of Business Research, 111, pp.1-11.

Cameron, K.S., Quinn, R.E. (1999) Diagnosing and Changing Organizational Culture: Based on the Competing Values Framework, 1st ed.; Addison-Wesley: Reading, MA, USA.

Felipe, C.M., Roldán, J.L. and Leal-Rodríguez, A.L., (2017). Impact of organizational culture values on organizational agility. Sustainability, 9(12), p.2354.

Value in business

What is value

From an organization's perspective, value is deemed as loyalty from customers evidenced through their quick response to efforts of cross-selling and regularly reffering the organization to potential customers. Ulaga (2001)

From a customer's perspective, value is the quality and responsiveness they enjoy from an organization's product and services, their social interactions and the reduced level of anxiety through trust built over time with the organization. Ulaga (2001)

How to create value

One way to create value according to research by Amit and Zott(2012) is to  avail platforms on which your customer can interact with each other. 

These platforms create a networking effect for customers if made relevant.  They attract many customers enabling a wider customer base interaction. 

Such platforms provide consumers with opportunities to transact at lower costs and reduce their cost of searching for solutions given the interaction they enjoy with other customers.

In return, loyalty grows, trust is built, cross selling occurs and value continues to grow.

 References

Amit, R. and Zott, C., (2012). Creating value through business model innovation. 2012.

Ulaga, W., (2001). Customer value in business markets: an agenda for inquiry. Industrial Marketing Management, 30(4), pp.315-319.

Performance led budgeting

An organization should budget to:

• Align and invest it's resources in positive performance areas of the organization
• Acutely determine the needs of its target market and seek to meet them
• And, to formulate a tool for evaluation and communication of performance 

Clarke, et., al, (2018)

Most if not all organizations have budgets intensely prepared following a financial year end, but few align to the above strategic budgeting objective by Clarke, et., al, (2018).

Aligning budgets to performance

The traditional way of budgeting focuses on line item budgeting such as staff costs for cost budgeting. The reformed budgeting model focuses on allocating business resources to areas affecting organization performance positively. Shah (2018). Programs budgeting is one approach of efficient budgeting model that allows organizations to base their budget on forecast performance program.

Budgets are a critical tool that organizations use to tie their expected results to their performance. Duncan et, al., (2018). This is critical in ensuring the quality of service or product delivery is guaranteed during the process so that the output meets the expectation of the market.

Determining target market needs in budgeting

Client needs are influenced by the client numbers in an organization and by the client deficiencies an organization needs to address. Goeminne and George (2019). In setting budgets, these needs and should be reflected in the budget for an organization to grow its performance.

Customers are driven by value they derive from an organization's product or service. Organizations need to understand these needs for them to align to the market when making their budgets. Timoshenko and Hauser(2019)

Budgets as communication and measuring tool

Organizations use budgets to break down company objectives and communicate expectations on their employees. They then make plans necessarily to achieve these objectives. (Shim et, al., 2011)

The progress of the laid out plans is measured against set budgets and corrective measures necessary for successful performance factored in on a timely and relevant basis. Measuring progress at the end of the year would be to show the the general performance that had been measured consistently throughout the year. (Shim et, al., 2011)

Reference

Clark, C., Menifield, C.E. and Stewart, L.M., (2018). Policy Diffusion and Performance-based Budgeting. International Journal of Public Administration, 41(7), pp.528-534.

Duncan, G.M., Mugabe, K., Zimmerman, K.A., Sibaja, V. and Luis, M., (2018). Adapting a Culture for Performance Management at the Nevada Department of Transportation (No. P365-16-803). Nevada. Dept. of Transportation.

Goeminne, S. and George, B., (2019). New development: Determinants of financial performance in public organizations. Public Money & Management, 39(1), pp.70-73.

Shah, A., (2018). Unit-5 A Primer On Performance Budgeting. IGNOU.

Shim, J.K., Siegel, J.G. and Shim, A.I., (2011). Budgeting basics and beyond (Vol. 574). John Wiley & Sons.

Timoshenko, A. and Hauser, J.R., (2019). Identifying customer needs from user-generated content. Marketing Science, 38(1), pp.1-20.