Communications Challenges and Strategies, management homework help

Purpose of
Assignment

The purpose of this assignment is to provide students with an
opportunity to apply communications theories, research, and conversation with
class colleagues to actual business situations, through the development of
applicable strategies.

Assignment
Steps

Read Case 2: Global Shared Services, McDonald’s
Corporation located in Mastering Leadership (See Case 2 below).

Analyze in 1,050 to 1,225 words the communications
and group behavioral issues that might arise in an organization, hiring
employees for their first job. Your analysis should be based on the discussion
from your Week 3 learning team assignment.

Include a strategy to address these challenges.

Include a minimum of 2 Peer-Reviewed sources as
reference.

Format your assignment consistent with APA
guidelines.

Case 2: Global Shared Services, McDonald’s
Corporation (Page 138 – 141)

As
the world’s leading foodservice retailer serving nearly 70 million customers
daily in more than 100 countries, McDonald’s recognizes the importance of
having good people in place in order to deliver an exceptional customer
experience. McDonald’s has a rich history of developing leaders. Founder Ray
Kroc, once said, “As long as you’re green, you’re growing.” McDonald’s supports
this philosophy and commitment to their people by providing opportunity,
nurturing talent, developing leaders, and rewarding achievement. This is
evident in McDonald’s tradition of promoting from within: nearly half of
corporate managers and 60% of owner-operators started as crew members.

For
many people, McDonald’s represents a first job—a place to develop basic skills
that can help them achieve success in future life pursuits. For others,
McDonald’s represents a pathway to a long-term career that provides rewarding
opportunities to grow, contribute, and advance over many years. McDonald’s
values state their belief that a team of well-trained individuals with diverse
backgrounds and experiences, working together in an environment that fosters
respect and drives high engagement, is essential to their continued success.

Shared
Services Business Challenge. McDonald’s Shared Services team began their
partnership with us in 2008. At that time, Shared Ser- vices was part of
McDonald’s IT group, which was decentralized in structure, but needed to
function as a cohesive team to drive com- mon global solutions. The CIO
recognized the importance of developing teamwork and alignment across IT
leaders and engaged us to lead this effort. After the IT Leadership Team had
gone through The Leader- ship Circle process, the CIO asked each of the
officers, including Kelvin McLaurin, then VP of Shared Services, to engage
their teams in the program.

Soon
after The Leadership Circle was introduced, the Shared Services organization
evolved into Global Shared Services (GSS) and became the first global function
at McDonald’s. McLaurin recalls: “We needed to build a diverse, global team
with leaders who could expand beyond their current capabilities.” He wanted to
establish leadership effectiveness as a priority early with the team he was
building and leverage the Leadership System to make this a reality.

In
2012, McLaurin transitioned to a role leading McDonald’s Finance Transformation. Debbie
Ballard, who had been a member of the GSS Leadership Team since 2005, took over
leadership of the GSS organization. Having experienced the value of The
Leadership Circle, she was already a supporter of the Profile and its benefits.
Ballard explains: “The Leadership Circle process helps me professionally and
personally. It enables me to step back and see why I am behaving the way I am
behaving, and it helps me grow as a leader and to model the things that I am
asking my leadership team to do.” GSS continued their focus on leader- ship
development and further engrained The Leadership Circle program into its
culture.

Strategic Solution: The Leadership Circle. When
The Leadership Circle was introduced in 2008, the GSS leadership team was
skeptical. Introducing an exercise that required not only getting feedback
about individual strengths and opportunities, but then sharing publicly with
their fellow team members would not be easy. However, the team committed to the
process, knowing the first session would be hard, but trusting that outcomes
would make it worthwhile.

Despite
the initial hesitation, the GSS has become the group that applies The
Leadership Circle most holistically and consistently. While other groups at McDonald’s
leverage the Profile, GSS is unique in that they continue to use public
feedback with each team member talking about their strengths and weaknesses in
front of the group. McLaurin explains: “The Leadership Circle has become the
common language across the GSS Leadership Team to onboard and develop our
leaders.”

As new
members join the leadership team, either from GSS or a sup- port partner, they
are expected to participate in The Leadership Circle. GSS also engages their
high-potential managers in the process. In 2014, GSS added The Leadership
Circle Pulse Survey to hone in on opportunity areas and ensure more frequent
feedback to drive development in those areas.

McLaurin,
who now leads Finance Transformation, brought The Leadership Circle practice to
his new leadership team as well in September 2014. In addition, the Finance
Transformation team also incorporated individual LCP assessment with team
development opportunities.

Outcomes.
The Leadership Circle helped GSS to become a true, shared leadership team and
build a culture of openness, support, trust, and high performance. Ballard
explains: “It is part of our DNA, part of who we are. We have now done multiple
offsite meetings with our leadership team focusing on individual and collective
effectiveness. As a result, we have forged a cohesive, high-performing
leadership culture and system.”

Team
members are empowered to mentor each other, talk openly about their
opportunities, and gain support using a common language. Each leader’s candor,
paired with their support for one another, enables GSS to drive business
results at an accelerated pace. Instead of ignoring issues that could hinder
progress, the team talks through them.

Since the
team respects The Leadership Circle process and one another, gaining awareness
of strengths creates a culture of trust and support. Bal- lard notes: “Leaders
were afraid at first of publicly showing people their development
opportunities, but then they see that this supportive environment is designed
to help you become a better leader, not discourage or embarrass you.”

The
culture that The Leadership Circle has helped to create in GSS contributes to
their success: “We achieved our five-year strategic plan in only three years,
and then set in place the GSS 2020 Strategy to continue our momentum toward our
vision to be a world-class shared services organization.” Both McLaurin and
Ballard continue to be strong advocates for The Leadership Circle process,
driving application in their organizations and sharing their experiences with
others in the McDonald’s System.