Question No 1:

A “performance-driven culture” refers to a set of processes and embedded behaviors, determined by performance and talent management, which drives high levels of employee performance, goal alignment, high levels of productivity and commitment.

Creating a performance-driven culture involves changes in technology to support planning and forecasting. Instilling a performance-driven culture serves as a way to manage the effect of change of organizational models, monitor progress and drive preferred behaviors all across the organization. Performance management refers to “the strategic process of setting, aligning, and evaluating organizational performance against its business priorities and goals”. It is one thing to set goals and another to monitor how organization’s daily operational activities lead to achieve these goals. The motivational effect of goal setting and budgeting making loses its value when employees and management lack in the insights and foresights, on how to meet their goals and objectives.

A good performance management program should go ahead of the basic capacity of dashboards and financial reporting, despite this; it should define the value the organization delivers to shareholders, customers, and other key stakeholders.

Our Keys for Nurturing a Performance Driven Culture

Nurturing a Performance Driven Culture means, we have to focus on the following factors which are; open and consistent communication, appreciation of work, and the development of future goals.

1. Setting up the key objectives:

Our design has the following key objectives:

Define our performance driven culture Assessing our organization’s culture by focusing on its key business processes Aligning company’s culture to its performance management and leadership Developing goals for the effective performance strategy  Measuring and reporting on regular basis Focus decision-making and behavior are our goals consistent with overall business

strategy. These includes; goals relating to environmental, safety, diversity and other social performance measures.

Make sure the company can attract and retain employees with the skills critical to its long-term success.

Improve quality of the business processes while reducing their costs Make sure that the results would be sustainable over time

2. Communication and Employee Involvement:

As with any relationship, communication is the key to implement an effective performance culture.  This applies across all the boards even in a professional work environment.  There is no way for employees to perform optimally if they do not know clearly what is expected from them So, in our company we are engaging employees from top to bottom in decision making and strategy formulation, by encouraging feedback from them through feedback cards, group discussions or monthly meetings. In this way, it would become essential for employees to be able to communicate their own feedback about their work. Setting up consistent regular, weekly, monthly or annually check-in meetings either in a group or individual setting could be effective to improve the overall employee morale or even bring forth great new ideas and developing a positive constructive working environment. This means a happy company is also depicts happy employees

Feedback sessions between first line employees and the managerial staff help employees feel heard and important in the culture of high performance organization. These meetings can also help to discover new ideas for the business or development of the ways through which the organization could be more effectively run.

These feedback sessions also allow the employer to give feedback, on the performance of the employees, Opening up the space for the swapping of feedback goes to strengthen the employee-employer relationship and make for a truly nurturing work environment.

3. Reinforcement and Appraisals:

When things are hard-hitting, it's easy to figure out the problem areas in a situation or with the performance of an employee through feedback sessions you may be able to understand a less obvious reason for a negative situation or a rough streak in focus or determination at work.

Reinforce a pay-for-performance culture through a balance of fixed and incentive pay opportunities. Employee compensation consists of base salary, annual cash incentives and long-term equity incentives, plus retirement, medical and other benefits.

No one wants to work at a place that does not appreciate their effort and they definitely don't want to show up every day and give a hundred percent to a company that only point outs their weaknesses.  Giving positive feedback and focusing on appreciation is likely more important than getting more negative attributes.

3. Employee Development and Growth:

The sharing of feedback is completely worthless if the appropriate action cannot be taken to work on the weak areas.  Employee development means that the employer not only understands the goals of their employees but also helps them nurture those goals into execution.

By creating a performance-driven culture, our organization could be able to lower its costs and raise quality of products and services and high level of employee’s commitment, backed by positive and performance driven work environment.

Question 2:

The above mentioned scenario clearly depicts that the group has strong research and

development base, with strong focus on innovation and continuous improvement. Also, the

company has strong man power resources to conduct its businesses activities and processes. But

quality is not the assurance of quality. Strong human resources are not an assurance for running

business effectively. In order to be effective, the company should make sure that it has right

person on the right job with right work specialization. There might be miscommunication among

different departments of the organization and the way they are integration their activities with

each other. Also, there are definitely, loop holes in businesses supply chain management which

may lead to lack in the timely availability of its products. There may be lack in the way; the

company is conducting its day to day activities e.g backwardness or resistance to new

technologies. Employee’s motivation and involvement in the company is also very important

factor that can contribute to this problem.

The company can cope with these challenges by elimination the communication gap between

different departments, clearly defining and formulating short term and long term goals and

objectives and communicate them throughout all the levels of the organization. Employees

commitment is also a very crucial factor, so there is a need to enforce effective appraisal system

to motivate and encourage the employees. Span of Control and Work specialization is also very

important to be effective, so company’s HR department should also work effectively in hiring

and training the employees. Allocation of responsibilities should be clear and well defined and

chain of command should be centralized, in order to be more effective and efficient. There

should also flexibility in adapting latest technological advancement for better productivity and

efficiency. Distribution system should also be more efficient and well paced, so the delivery

system could be more effective, enabling company to overcome this problem.

Question 3:

In order to create sustainable competitive advantage the company should take the following

considerations.

The company’s core competencies in the form of innovative products and strong distribution

network, should be properly managed and the technologies should be protected through different

patents, trademarks and copyrights. Secrecy management can also be crucial factor in creating

the competitive advantage, by enhancing employee motivation and commitment.

The company can create and add value for its products and services through properly position

itself in the market by strong advertising campaigns. The company can enhance and strengthen

its market by continues improvement and through its value added services. The company should

introduce Feedback sessions between first line employees and the managerial staffs, help

employees feel heard and important in the culture of high performance organization. These

meetings can also help to discover new ideas for the business or development of the ways

through which the organization could be more effectively run.

In order to differentiate and position itself, the company needs to run strong advertising

campaigns by highlighting its points of differences and position itself as superior quality services

providing company. Brand equity can also be triggered through strong customer support and

service department and promotional offerings to pull the customer directly. Brand loyalty is also

very important in capturing and maintaining strong market share in the industry. The company

can engage its customers through different kinds of loyalty/ membership program.

Question 4:

The above mentioned scenario of the organization clearly depicting that there is conflict of

opinion and interest exists between the university’s officials and it should be addressed by

keeping in a view of both point of views. In order to be effective and to assure the quality of the

service, the organization must ensure the proper balance between the increment in the population

backed by proper and continuous updation of its curriculum. Curriculum must be market oriented

in order to cope with the challenges in the education industry. The institution’s policies should be

aligned according to the latest trends in the specific industry.

If the organization goes with the intentions to increase its population, it may could increase its

revenues but there are the chances that by doing this, it may loss the quality of its services. This

may also hurt the reputation of the institution. On the other hand, if the institution goes with the

updation of its curriculum, it may increase its cost and can adversely affect the organization’s

funds. So, in order to better develop its standards, the institution need to maintain balance

between these two indicators or factors. Otherwise, it will be a mismatch with the organization’s

goals and objectives and its policies.

Question 5:

The relationship between organizational culture and organizational structure is an important

matter that is generaly overlooked by most of the organizations. The two can be difficult to

clearly differentiate from each other. Organizational structure actually works within an

organizational culture, but it is not totally divided. The two are very much corelated.

The structure is reffered to the infrastructure, and the various techniques and practices that help

an organizational culture, to run with the efficiency and consistency.It should be the hallmark of

any well established organizational structure, whether it is in a company, sports team, or any

other system, that is large enough to develop its own culture.

This makes the structure an integral part of any organizational culture, but also limitize a very

specific segment of the culture as its own responsibility. Organizational structure deals mainly

with the system of its culture. How management would work, which certain responsibilities

supervisors will have, how an objection is passed through the different ranks, all of these are

issues within the organizational culture that are in a straight line related to how an organizational

structure works.

Most Definitely, culture can make an huge differences in a highly competitive environment.

While typical organizations lead with the brains of their leadership, effective firms empower all

of their employees to use their minds. They do not usually lead by fear and intimidation, despite

this, suuccessful organizations do not assume that people are only motivated by money. They

dictate their employees what to do. Instead of that, they effectiveely communicate a clear vision,

define a mission, equip employees with tools to execute plans, direct them. These successful

organizations, then turned into powerful entities that move at the speed of thought, while

destroying their competitors.