Managing High Performance Work Teams

Relationship to Management

In order to facilitate optimal efficiency in an organization, there are a lot of factors to consider first like the financial stability, economic and market stability, and internal stability. As for the scope of this paper, all of the discussion will give emphasis on the role of internal stability on the success of an organization. Internal stability may originate on how well the key persons of an organization work with respect to one another, like for instance, the organizational structure or the type of managerial strategy that is being implemented by the management.

Actually, there are two approaches in managing an organization namely: first, letting the employees to use their creativity in handling various situations concerning the company without the supervision from the top officials; and the existence of a manager to supervise and delegate task to the employees. From the said two management approaches, it is the former which is more efficient and effective especially if the employees has enough skills and responsible enough to handle various tasks concerning the entire organization. In this regard, the idea of High Performance Work Teams arises.

High Performance Work Team is basically comprises of two or more individuals working together in order to attain specific goals or objectives (Barkman, 1993). Oftentimes, this type of groups works independently without the need of supervision coming from any of the top officials for they have enough skills and talents to almost handle the tasks of a manager. Moreover, this kind of group has the ability to perform at the highest level even for an extended period of time.

Most of the organization nowadays uses High Performance Work Team in order to manage an organizational conflict which concerns various department of an organization or just to maintain and develop good working relationship among members. Just like what has been discussed a while ago, High Performance Work Team can almost take the place of a manager since the group can even handle the facilitation of meetings and develop goals and plans. This is how flexible High Performance Work Team is.

On the other hand, effective leadership also plays a vital role for the attainment of harmonious working environment and relationship among the members of the organization (Bolen, 2001). Leaders are the one responsible for delegating the task and solicit ideas from its members and collaborating those ideas into a more efficient and effective ideas. It is also the leaders who take the initiative to influence its members to perform their responsibilities and the one responsible for motivating all the members of the organization.

Furthermore, one of the qualities that a leader must posses would be the ability to determine long term opportunities in order to provide the organization sustainable development (Clark, 2007). In other words, a leader must visualize the future of the organization and do not just focus on what is currently at hand in the short run. Short run goals are being handled by a manager but when it comes to visualizing the long term welfare of the organization it is the job of a leader.

In this regard, it is clear that a leader and a great manager, may it be an individual or a group of people like High Performance Work Team, plays a vital role on the stability and success of the organization at present and in the near future. This is the reason why they are very important key person in the management team of an organization for they are the one who drives the entire organization towards the attainment of their set goals and objectives.

Pioneer Sector/s

Actually both private and government sector already implements High Performance Work Team; but it is the private sector that pioneered High Performance Work Place General Electric, Kraft Foods and Exelon. In the U.S. alone, High Performance Work Team gain acceptance in the corporate world during the 1980s when Boeing, Digital Equipment Corporation [presently known as HP] among others, adopted the said managerial strategy.

With the said implementation of High Performance Work Team to the said identified organization, there exist major changes happened especially in organizational culture and merging of the goals of the organization with the social needs of the individuals. In just a few years after High Performance Work Team was presented to the corporate world, it already reached quantum leap in business result in the entire key success dimension together with the customer, employee, shareholder and operational value added dimensions.

On the other hand, there is no exact date when effective leadership was really started entering into the idealism of the corporate world. But one thing is for sure, it is not only in the private sector where effective leadership is being implemented, even in the government sector it is also being widely used.

Successful Company through HPWT

One of the possible organizations that successfully mastered High Performance Work Team will be the Kraft Foods. At present, Kraft Foods leads the industry of branded foods and beverages locally and internationally. With its strategy of exploring the international market during the years wherein the domestic market was already becoming saturated, Kraft Foods was able to boost its profitability and market influence.

Moreover, in order to successfully penetrate their target market, Kraft Foods entered merging, buy other food companies in the industry, and make partnership with other food companies from other countries. This market entrance strategy works well so far for the company based on their market position and influence.

Because of the diversity caused by the identified market entry strategy of Kraft Foods can hinder the attainment of optimal efficiency and effectiveness of the entire personnel of the company, the Kraft Foods executives resulted to implementing High Performance Work Team which was comprised by representatives from different departments of a given branch of Kraft Foods to resolve diversity conflict and simplify the organizational structure in such a way wherein all of the employees of the company can work in harmony with one another.

Diversity related issues and complexity of the organizational structure of Kraft Foods caused inefficiency in executing various operational procedures and strategies of the company as well as the depreciation of the performance of every employee due to their diversity (findarticles.com, 2005) and (Hopkins, 2005). The reason why the members of the High Performance Work Team of Kraft Foods came from the different departments of the company was to be able to have equal representation of voices of various groups of individual working in the company so that at the end of the day, whatever the solution will the High Performance Work Team arrive every welfare and interest was put into consideration.

True enough, by the start of 2005, the efficiency and effectiveness of Kraft Foods improved which can be seen on the profitability level of the company and the fact rate of its expansion in the market which made the company among the top multinational companies around the globe. With the simplification of the organizational structure and solving the diversity related problems of the company through the use of High Performance Work Team, business transaction has been executed faster and the harmonious working relationship among the members of the company provide enough motivation for every employee to perform their task to their full potential.

On the other hand, the CEO of Kraft Foods, Irene Rosenfeld, was able to provide the company sustainable growth by the time the domestic market started to become saturated to their product line and visualizes the entry of the company to the international market. In this regard, the effective leadership comes into the picture of Kraft Foods’ success for the past years.

Not only this, Rosenfeld was able to spot the diversity related issue problem and immediately find a solution to the said organizational conflict which is one of the tasks of a leader for an effective leadership of its members. With the existence of Rosenfeld to Kraft Foods, there is no doubt that the company successfully implemented not only High Performance Work Team but also the Effective Leadership.

References

Bolen, M. (2001). Effective Leadership. Retrieved March 18, 2008, from http://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/agdex1334

Clark, D. (2007). Concepts of Leadership. Retrieved March 18, 2008, from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadcon.html

findarticles.com (2005). Kraft Foods Announces Additional Simplification Initiatives. Retrieved March 18, 2008, from http://findarticles.com/?noadc=1