Cydcor Analysis

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        Cydcor as a company is very tough to find accurate and nonbiased sources for as far as research goes. Its either the main source or it’s a random review from a guy who tried it out and didn’t like the structure of the organization, however I was able to find a few articles on this large international sales giant. This being said I worked for a company that used Cydcor as a type of client broker for the client that they would do sales for. The specific company I worked for was called, “WE Business strategies.” The basic design is that a business has a client that they choose through Cydcor, and they sell products for them for a, “commission” of the sale. I use quotes because it is not a commission in the actual sense of the word, but they are paid based on the sales that they do. The payment structure is purely performance based and all sales are capable of being canceled before the install date. This being said, in my personal opinion, it is a fair business, but one that is for a certain breed of person.

Motivation

        McClelland’s need theory ^[1] is the theory that I relate to this business the best, because of the importance in; Achievement, Affiliation and Power. These are the three aspects of this needs theory that defines it, they are also the same ones that are focused on when talking to anyone who is a prospect in the business. I will be quoting from the two volumes of notes that I took from this position, and the first one is from the 2nd Volume, and it says that three laws that are important when training a team are, “appealing to the masses, the law of buy-in and the law of respect.”^[2][3] These touch on the affiliation aspect of this theory, by purposely trying to gain the trust of the person that one interviews and helping them to become interested in the business and culture of said business. There is also a team night that happens every Thursday that is set up for this same purpose, to try and get people involved in the culture. Trying to appeal to everyone and having them buy-in to the culture through the activities outside of work, and through respect lead into the power of being a promoting leader in the business, because the PL (promoting leader) is put in charge of creating comradery within their team. The type of structure this organization has is known as a Hierarchy-community phenotype model^[4] (Organization design, which was hard to find, since I could not find it in the book). This model is known for its unique structure that matches well it the structure of Cydcor. The way to grow and, “move up the ranks” of Cydcor is to abide by the commonly expressed law of success, the Pareto principle (Rewards, culture and organizational design) otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. If I were to give you the layout of the business when you came in, you may hear something along these lines. Be in to 20% of people who make the most sales and you are able to interview other applicants. When they come in you can add them to your crew and help them get promoted to leadership by teaching them basic sales principles. After they have been promoted, they can do the same thing. Once you have 4 people you have promoted on your team and 10 people total along with the whole crew making a minimum of $4,000 in sales for 2 consecutive weeks, then you can become promoted to assistant management. From there you will make your push to manager ship, by saving $10,000 from increased sales profits from your promotion and by maintaining a minimum of those 10 people on your crew, you can start to look for a location to open up. After that I would say that we should focus on getting you promoted from entry level to leadership before we focus on all of the stuff after that^[5]. This is the vision that is given to every new start that enters the business, that if they can work hard then in a year they could be in a position in which they are earning $500,000 a year and own their own business. These are also the same people that they are attracting into the business, people who have an entrepreneurial mentality and a drive to create a living for themselves. However they are also attracting young newly grads due to their lack of entry level requirements. This means that they are getting many people who are trying to create a career for themselves, but are also naive of how most positions work.

Leadership and Group Dynamics

        The interesting part about analyzing the leadership style of Cydcor is that it has a huge Us v. Them Bias. This is caused from their attempt at a transformational leadership model that looks like a traits approach from the outside. This is because the people who make up the in group are the same ones who believe that other people who are working a 9-5 are not living to their true potential and are like sheep. This is not a direct statement, but it is the overall idea behind the reason someone would work for many hours with unguaranteed pay. It is just like the 7th of the 8 great work habits that are taught throughout the experience of working at Cydcor. “Understand your opportunity.”^[6] This is great advice for any area of work, however in this case it was being used to set us apart from others who didn’t take the same opportunity we have been given. A newcomer into this environment may be, as I was, shocked because of the difference between this group and the ordinary work place. If they are not put off by this difference then they will most likely start to assimilate into this way of thinking. This grows the Us vs Them mentality that we discussed previously and continues the cycle.

Decision Making

        During the day to day most decisions in this company are already made and will be done to set up success for the rest of the day. However there are some decisions that do require a decision making model, the typical model that is used is the trashcan model. This is a model that is defined by chaos and that decisions are made randomly, which works on occasion. It is curious though because the method that is talked about most often is the rational model of identifying the problem, thinking of solutions and then executing the solutions. This would be the ideal model for a budding company, but it is often overshadowed by the culture that we will talk about in the next section. When decisions are made it is typically made by the head manager and rightfully so since he owns the LLC that we worked at. However that does cause decisions to be closed off to the employees in the company. This is obviously a biased view, but the view of the manager and assistant managers are easy to see because they reflect the 4’s, 5’s and 8’s. Typically though it is the view of the employees that is shafted if it does not fit the concrete mindset that the company instills in anyone who stays with the company. So yes, this is a bias view of the company and it does not fully grasp the ideals of the company, but together with the positive sides of the company it does provide a more holistic view of the company.