Harrison Keyes Benchmarking

Harrison Keyes Benchmarking

University of Phoenix

Week Two: Harrison-Keyes Generic Benchmarking

Introduction

Leadership in project management and assessing challenges of developing high-performance project teams are two major components of understanding how an organization work together to achieve goals. Harrison-Keyes is dealing with poor planning and implementation issues amongst management. Team A will compare and contrast the components through benchmarking analysis by using the Harrison-Keyes scenario opposed to other companies that faced similar issues. The companies used in the benchmarking review are: K-Mart, Chrysler, Toyota, General Electric, Exxon, Coca-Cola, Cardinal Health, and Starbucks Corporation.

Concept/Comparison

Leadership in Project Management

Harrison-Keyes lacks of visionary leadership capable to establish a viable strategic and tactical management system which effectively contributes to coordinate the project management (planning, development, selection and implementation). By having in place a effective project management, the leadership of Harrison-Keyes may plan, develop, select and implement efficient projects as Toyota Industry Corporation’s leadership did in order leverage its expertise and to turn around the company toward performance, profitability, efficiency and higher competitive corporate value. To have an effective success in project management that can contribute to an efficient leveraging the existent resources and competencies in order to gain performance, profitability, leaner operation and competitive advantage, the management team of the Harrison-Keyes can take a lesson from Sun Microsystems, Inc., which developed a transformational change process of the leadership style. The transformational change can be made by developing a leadership approach, which will complete the benefits of the transactional leadership style with the benefits of the charismatic leadership style. Transactional leaders have as objectives efficient interpersonal transactions between manager and employee and to maintain effective interaction between themselves and subalterns. The transactional leaders have the capability to motivate the employees by using contingent rewards and to take corrective action if the employees fail to attain the performance goals. The charismatic leaders rely on ideological values, inspirational and visionary messages, symbolic leader behavior, intellectual support and stimulation of subalterns by the leaders, confidence in themselves and subalterns, nonverbal communication, high expectation from subalterns to attain high performance. The charismatic leaders have the capacity to produce competitive results and organizational change because they can change the employees to attain organizational goals instead of personal goals. (Kinicki & Kreitner). ”The best leaders are not just charismatic, they are both transactional and charismatic. Leaders should attempt these two types of leadership while avoiding a laissez-faire or wait-and-see style,” (Kinicki & Kreitner, 2004, chap. 17, p. 42-50).

In addition Harrison-Keyes may take another lesson from Sun Microsystems’ leader Scott McNealy (CEO) who understood the necessity of the social network building and management by wandering around in order to be and effective and efficient leader. In consequence, Scott developed a supportive social relationship with his senior executive management especially with the Mike Lehman (CFO) and Ed Zander (COO) who effectively coordinated and controlled the details of the project management by having common goals and objectives.

Challenges of Developing High Performance Teams

Once a project team is formed the hardest issue to deal with is accessing the challenges of developing a high performance management team. The expectations of project managers will include recruiting members, conducting meetings, establishing a team identify, creating a shared vision, managing a reward system, orchestrating decision making, resolving conflict, and rejuvenating a team when energy wanes (Gray & Larson, 2005). Several issues may arise in high performance teams. Sometimes these teams may feel invincible at times and this is often referred to as illusion of vulnerability which can come unsuspected to project teams. During groupthink other issues might include discussing a few solutions while ignoring potentially important alternatives which would be characterized as whitewash of critical thinking. Project managers must also be concerned with diffusing potential stereotypes from outsiders. Project managers must also have an environment that creates an open forum to new ideas. If this method is not followed others may apply direct pressure on the dissenter which would inhibit new ideas on the team. Many times project teams are not included with traditional day to day operations and concern grows that members may be going native. Going native appears when interests, such as customers, become more important then the companies (Gray & Larson, 2005). The whitewash of critical thinking is probability the most impact challenge with Harrison-Keyes. This challenge was due mostly to the hiring of the CEO by the board. The CEO, Meg McGill, and the board were focused on one specific solution without looking at other alternatives. Circuit City CEO, Philip Schoonover, has been described of having this type of thought process and has now made him known as one of the worst CEOs in the business (Gogoi, 2008). Starbucks also was faced with this situation with their CEO and decided to oust him and bring in a previous CEO in Howard Schultz. Schultz had stayed on as board director and has looked at extensive opportunities and alternatives to move forward (Vella, 2008). One of the best examples would be Cardinal Health’s board hiring of Kelly Clark. Cardinal Health was looking for a CEO that had a background in decision making, implementation of new projects, and had a background in the pharmaceutical business. In an interview Clark commented that the board of Cardinal Health looked for a CEO who would focus on strategic direction, building the right team and culture, and focus on the right decision making process (Cardinal, 2007). Cardinal Health appears to be on the right track due to eliminating the challenges of a high performance project team.

Leading by Example

“A project manager’s behavior symbolizes how other people should work on a project. Through her behavior a project manager can influence how others act and