MEMORANDUM
TO: Patagonia, Inc.
FROM: Thompson Rivers Consulting LLP
CC: Mr. David Olsen
DATE: 19 October 2012 SUBJECT: ANALYSIS OF THE WORKBOOK PROCESS
As a leading pioneer in outdoor retailing and a company at the forefront of the movement for environmental sustainability, we write this letter in response to your request to evaluate your current Workbook Process and appraise the advantages as well as the drawbacks to the system. We are not in favour of the current Workbook Process for reasons that we will list for you. We feel that a company with such a reputation as Patagonia, Inc., needs to adopt a less sophisticated but progressive system.
MAIN FINDINGS
With the research we carried out it was very clear
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* Large proportion of employees refused to engage in the Process because they found it tedious. * The plan was not accepted by all levels of management. * The Workbook Process focuses mainly on planning in advance for the longer term rather than on a day by day basis. * The Workbook Process had difficulty in judging environment, quality and distribution objectives, which are crucial success factors for Patagonia, Inc. * The Workbook Process is very complex and time consuming. The level of planning and the enormous amount of meetings needed to discuss company plans leaves very little time for constructive work to be done. * The Process could be limiting in the sense that it does not promote innovations; if anything it encourages people to just stick to a set plan and nothing else. * The profit sharing plan that was introduced was not based on merit; it was just allocated in equal percentages of the base salary.
On the contrary, the workbook process also has some benefits. Although, the concerns outweigh the benefits, it is for your benefit and to give you a better perspective of the Process.
BENEFITS OF THE WORKBOOK PROCESS * The Workbook Process has been significantly embraced amongst the employees at Patagonia, Inc. * A significant amount of the employees feel that the Process is worthwhile and that it has given everyone an opportunity to bond; and also optimized better solutions for the company. *
Many types of risk are created – risk to the project, to the organization, to the employees involved and to the individuals supporting the change.
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- The methodology for selecting and evaluating did not meet government’s goal of demonstrating equal opportunity, was unfairly designed, broke government purchasing rules, did not follow
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Positive points can be shared with other team members and best practice can be used in the workplace.
There are many different working formats for each company. In our company I have seen many working formats like
Monthly meetings discussing the Workbook Process are currently too frequent, inhibiting the company from progressing in other areas. Our group suggests that these meetings involve all managers and lower-level employees from all departments and should be held annually, while meetings involving strictly managers should be held quarterly. Although the intervals between meetings need to be expanded, this does not mean that the information flow should decrease under the reduced meetings. Thereby, Patagonia should keep an open-door policy for departmental managers and allow the employees to give timely feedback whenever they discover potential problems or have suggestions for improvement.
3. This strategy is done through the implementation of Workbook Process. This open-book management is a tight action control, since there is strict procedure that needs to be followed. There are eleven steps in total and each one of them needs to be followed by managers in order to make the Workbook Process effective.
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A key issue facing management was balancing the company’s desire for environmentalism with its existence as a for-profit business. The idea of running a for-profit business implies operating at the lowest cost, growing as rapidly as financially feasible, and maximizing returns to financial stockholders ( I think it should be stockholder since it is financial return). A commitment to the environment can raise costs and hurt margins because environmentally-friendly policies are not the most financially savvy. This issue is important because Patagonia’s entire brand and
To identify the key elements of the resistanceto change described in this situation, one may make use of the six Change Approaches of Kotter and Schlesinger.[1]The model prevents, minimizes or descreases resistance to change in organizations. According to Kotter and Schlesinger (1979), there are four reasons that why people resist change, three of which are applicable to this case:
Controlling Process in Management Controlling is directly related to planning. The controlling process ensures that plans are being implemented properly. In the functions of management cycle - planning, organizing, directing, and controlling - planning moves forward into all the other functions, and controlling reaches back. Controlling is the final link in the functional chain of management activities and brings the functions of management cycle full circle. Control is the process through which standards for performance of people and processes are set, communicated, and applied.
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