FOODCORP REFLECTION PAPER 1. INTRODUCTION
In FoodCorp simulation, held on 22 nd of November, my position was VP Marketing Services and I worked under the head of SVP Service Group. Service group consisted of 4 people including one senior vice president and three vice presidents. As VP of Marketing Services, I was responsible for marketing communications in general. I also mention about organizational structure of FoodCorp to establish a basis for my latter discussions. FoodCorp has a matrix structure and also has a number of committees like executive committee, acquisition committee, new business committee and distribution committee.
In this paper, I will give brief information about our simulation process and then provide my reflections about some specific moments. 2. SIMULATION PROCESS
President’s Decision about Groups: At the beginning of the simulation, our president enabled us to introduce ourselves and give information about our roles. Then each group continued with small meetings with their own groups. After group meetings, we would continue with committee meetings according to the original agenda. However, we were divided into two groups: Those who have operational roles and those who have not and our president decided each group to held meetings according to that division. In the operational group there were 9 people while non-operational group was consisting of 3 people.
Service Group Meeting: I think that we held a successful and effective meeting in our Service Group. Our SVP mainly focused on important details and she asked critical questions about each team member’s role. As VP of Marketing Services, I tried to provide information and inform as to the important points in my position. In addition, I prioritized the important points in my role and cared to continue to advocate for them when our SVP was not able to. I think that the most important opinions I provided were: Keeping R&D expenditures in the current levels and not entering into the cookie market. I made and advocate those decisions based on the analysis I made according to the data I had.
Non-Operational Group Meeting: As non-operational group members (SVP Service Group, VP administration and VP Marketing Services) firstly we reviewed our previous discussions and then we discussed about the matrix organizational structure of FoodCorp. When we were discussing structure of the organization, our president also attended our discussions. 3. REFLECTIONS
Reflections about President’s Attribution and Operational, Non-Operational Groups: This simulation was very important for me to understand again the fact that how a leader is important for the effectiveness of a company. I think that our president’s leadership style best fits to Bolman&Deal’s structural leadership framework. He tried to diagnose organization’s needs, to develop new model of the relationship among structure, strategy, and environment and focused on implementation and all of those are attributes of a structural leader.
However, I think that in developing new model of the relationship among structure and strategy, he did not make a good decision and it was the key decision which affected the progress of the whole simulation.
Regarding the number of team members, there was a disproportion between operational and non-operational teams and I think that this caused some problems. As we have discussed in the class, increasing the amount of discussion and increasing the size of the team really caused conflicts. With 9 members, operational team has lived some conflicts. It also enabled me to think about the “ideal team size”. I think that size of the operational team caused ineffectiveness and this affected whole FoodCorp organization and we challenged with time pressure. I think that other side effect of this decision was group thinking.
As I have mentioned above, in non-operational group meeting we discussed about the structure of the organization. However, I think that such an important decision which would affect all company should be made by all key managers not by a small group. But we challenged with a time pressure so could not discuss this decision with key managers at all and we just presented our results about new structure of the company.
Reflections about Service Group Meeting and My Performance: Our team size (4 team members) and attribution of our SVP enabled us to have qualified discussions in service group meeting. There was a broad range of information for each department and at the beginning it was really made me worried how would we prioritize all of those issues. At that point, I really appreciated our SVP’s approach because she asked critical questions to each team member and summarized all substantial issues effectively.
In the simulation I also had a chance to observe that how characteristics of team members affect the team discussions. While some team members insisted on every information they had, others may tend to overlook about the details. At this point managers have a critical role to direct the discussions in an effective manner and I think that our SVP was able to build a balance between team members and all information they had.
Regarding my own performance, as I have mentioned above I advocated 2 decisions and 2 of them also accepted as final FoordCorp decisions. According to the feedbacks I received after the simulation, both our SVP and other team members appreciated my performance especially my approach to prioritize important points. This simulation also enabled me to understand how our Proscan results are right. Because according to Proscan results, the strongest behavioral trait of me is pace and this characteristic was emphasized in almost all of the feedbacks I received.
In addition, I think that I could be more effective when we were discussing about restructuring the company. Because as VP of Marketing and Services, I thought that I could not have enough communication with Frozen and Dry Foods VPs Sales/Marketing. In discussions about restructuring the company, it would be better if we could establish direct communication channels between all marketing departments. However, I could not advocate my opinion effectively and as a result we could not make a progress about this issue.
Reflections about Post Discussions with Other FoodCorp Teams: In this part, I found a chance to discuss with other VPs of Marketing and Services and I really appreciated this opportunity. Even though all teams had same information, results were different because each team followed different strategies and decision making processes. For example one of other VP of Marketing and Services mentioned that their president enabled her to discuss critical marketing issues with Frozen and Dry Foods VPs Sales/Marketing. I think that this is a great opportunity to make reasonable decisions about marketing issues of the company. In addition when I mentioned that it would be better if we could build direct communication channels between Frozen and Dry Foods VPs Sales/Marketing and VP of Marketing Services and other Frozen and Dry Foods VPs Sales/Marketing agreed with my idea and I realized that it would be better if I could advocate my idea in company restructuring discussions.