Creating High Performance Organizations

Francis Sseremba,

GM591 – Leadership and Organizational Behaviour
Final Course Project
Dr. Anita Spector

6/13/2012

Introduction
Best Buy Company Inc is an American company which specializes in electronics consumer retailing. Best Buy, as it is formally known, has accounted for 19% of the USA market. It has stores operating in different locations across the USA and a few other places in the world such as Mexico, Canada, and China.
Best Buy was named "Company of the Year" by Forbes magazine in 2004, "Specialty Retailer of the Decade" by Discount Store News in 2001, ranked in the Top 10 of "America's Most Generous Corporations" by Forbes magazine in 2005 (based on 2004 giving), and made Fortune magazine's List of Most Admired Companies in 2006. In 2009, Best Buy became the largest electronics retail store (online and bricks and mortar) in the eastern United States, after smaller rival Circuit City went out of business.
Our role in the company, as internal auditors, is to carry out a management audit report that will help turn Best Buy into a high performance organization and ensure the company will produce good revenue returns to keep ahead of the USA and global economic down turns.
Problem Statement
Best Buy has been challenged by competing online companies such as Amazon, Ebay, Fatwallet etc who are offering good deals to customers. They are also being challenged by those companies giving better customer care services. So with the strain of those challenges, and the struggle to keep competitive in the global economy, Best Buy has begun closing stores. Best Buy needs to turn their failing organization around.
And so we have researched for solutions to answers the question “How can Best Buy motivate its employees to improve their performance so that Best Buy will become a High Performance Organization?”
Literature Review
In the April 2012 edition of Managing People At Work, we found that in trying to motivate a new executive or employee by telling them of the great things they will achieve, we could actually cause an employee to shrink in their potential and underachieve. They would essentially be counterproductive.
The Teller Vision article, Issue 1416, in April 2012, explores methods and strategies to improve and maintain good employees. An example would be to coach executives on how to be more influential and persuasive. Another example would be to encourage communication from employees from the ground up. That is, reaching out and getting ideas, recommendations, and finding out the experiences of employees that are directly in touch with customers.
An article written by Kautt, Glenn G. in the Financial Planning, Vol. 42 Issue 1, further lends to the ideas expressed in the previous mentioned Teller Vision article. It speaks to the idea that a collaborative effort must happen to ensure successful business.
In the Training Journal’s April 2012 issue, they discuss the factors associated with the need for change in an organization that is looking to stem the tides of a bad economy. It searches why change is needed; how to motivate workers; How L&D (Learning and Development) can help in achieving success; and how to use the SWOT matrix to detail issues and factors that affect the company’s goals and business position. SWOT is known as Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
Another Managing People At Work article from January 2012, Issue 358, speaks on motivating individuals as well as the group. Giving them a feeling of achieving a goal together they can feel pride in.
Author Madhavan, N., in an interview by Business Today Vol. 20, Issue 19, about his book Fully Charged, agrees with the January 2012 article in Managing People At Work. Madhavan states that energy of the group is more important and more effective than the individual in motivating and achieving success as a business. In Business Performance Management Periodical