Final Reflection on System Design and Management

The semester is ending, and it has been a tremendous learning experience. I have learned much about designing organizations, strategies, structures, and processes at the enterprise level (Galbraith, 2014). The act of building an organization within which individuals may collaborate to achieve common goals is known as organizational design. It entails building the proper structure, positions, responsibilities, and corporate communication channels to enable an organization to achieve its objectives efficiently (Galbraith, 2014). It is founded on the Star Model, a comprehensive framework for integrating strategy, structure, processes, rewards, and people (Galbraith, 2014). When companies first start, they are small and more manageable. However, changing from a more straightforward strategy would be best when they grow.

An organization revolves around a single purpose. Consider product development. When a company grows alarmingly, you must adapt its structure, operations, strategies, and how you run your organization. Is what staff are doing in line with business goals? Are program initiatives being tracked? Is it better to implement this year or next, with so many projects in the works? Companies today must implement new strategies and methods for managing employees and having access to a wide range of information. I have managed and built several distribution centers for luxury retail operations. Success criteria were driven by measuring new processes, speed to market, and having insights into data for real-time decision-making.

One thing about the marketplace today is that it is all about the economics. Most companies want their bottom lines to increase, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. While working on program initiatives at Neiman’s, I learned that earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) are another metric of profitability in addition to net income. The strategy with EBITDA is what I learned about diversification strategy in this course, where an organization can have multiple profit centers (Galbraith, 2014). The firm leadership assesses the EBITDA factor for projects in the portfolio prioritization, and they decide what belongs in the yearly corporate strategic and organizational plan.

I also learned how organizations can change rapidly; the more they grow, the more sense of direction is about the economics. For example, one of the assignments was to review the movie “Milk System” on Netflix. It was about entrepreneurs of a father and son who were 18th generation to take the helm of the family business with six farms. They initially had 140 and then expanded to about 300 cows in 2002. However, they grew to about 1,000 cows and have had to make some decisions to impact their economic state. The goal is to produce quality milk but as inexpensive as they can. A few things disturbed me as I was raised on a farm with my grandparents in the summers. Cows must graze for their food in the fields for excellent, quality milk to be produced. It is the most natural way for them to make quality milk with no additives. In the film “Milk System,” it was customary for 1,000 cows to be couped up in a barn, eating feeds with antibiotics and inseminating female cows to produce calves. Economics and profits were the goal, but the cost of the cows felt like imprisonment, wandering around in manure and not able to go beyond the building unless they were being sold or having a calf. I believe the organization, at some point, needs to think about morals and ethics.

Another key element I learned about is the importance of using analysis techniques to frame and resolve problems using evidence-based remediation interventions. I learned about systems thinking analysis, an approach to evaluating 21st-century issues with systems. System thinking is sometimes known as organizational principles or self-organization theory, and implementing it requires systemic or holistic thinking (Boardman & Sauser, 2008). We need to analyze the parts from micro, macro, and meso levels. I also learned from the Netflix movie, “Mindwalk,” how you think through or reflect on how systems are interconnected or interrelated to help you understand how they work. It also allows an individual lens to examine the entire system and see how each part is connected as I reflect on my final project analyzing Artificial Intelligence and Learning Analytics (John Boardman & Sauser, 2008). When you start investigating, you discover more direct or indirect parts could be impacted. I also noted that different perspectives or lenses can bring different results. It is also good to have a conceptual model and a comparison to a real-world model to uncover gaps or discrepancies. The evaluation of the UNT AI and learning analytics was my first evaluation of a college course, so it was a great experience and understanding that getting qualitative data is vital to the analysis to help clarify the program.

References:

Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations: Strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels. John Wiley & Sons.

John Boardman, & Sauser, B. (2008). Systems thinking: Coping with 21st century problems. CRC Press.