Basically summing up the issue at hand is that of an organisation namely THE INVINCIBLE

ASSURANCE company which has been a one man army since the very time it came into being.
Invincible assurance company was the brainchild of Philip Mulholland and it quite literally
became his life following the death of his wife. Each and every function of the company was
looked after by Mr. Mulholland from the smallest of client meetings to decisions related to the
biggest of policy changes everything was supervised by him only. Although his expertise
ensured that the company was in good stead throughout and continued to achieve new heights,
his apparent desire to be involved in every aspect of the functioning of the company resulted in
an organization with no concrete structure. Following the demise of Mr. Mulholland; Mr.
Wintress has taken charge of a company in dire need of new leadership and direction. The new
administration is in a dilemma, there is no blueprint to follow and a total overhaul looks
necessary. Broadly speaking the situation Mr. Wintress finds himself in is basically ​how does
Mr. B drive a vehicle that is customized for and by Mr. A without Mr. A showing Mr. B
how to do it? Now the new leadership has to come up with a new style of management not
because the former style did not bring success to the company but because it does not possess the
necessary qualities to be successful with the former style of management. Mr. Wintress should
start this rebuild by essentially formulating a management style that can best suit the structure of
the company given that there is no way the company can follow the previous structure of being a
one man organization.

PROBLEMS AT HAND

After going through the Case Study, the major problems which we were able to identify within
the company in its present state were :
1. ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE : ​Perhaps the greatest drawback of
Mr.Mulholland’s way of operating was the fact that it resulted in a company with a
complete lack of any organisational structure. Mulholland’s extreme desire to be involved
in every operation taking place throughout the company lead to a situation wherein to
complete under utilisation of resources at hand such as the expertise of the department
heads of various departments who were neither consulted or reported to as employees
rather chose to get directly in touch with Mr.Mulholland who rather gleefully
acknowledged any such approach and exactly on the same lines was the scenario of the
underwriting committee which was formed to look after claims in excess of $1000 and
other doubtful applications, however just like the entire company any such applications
or claims were passed on straight to Mr.Mulholland.​ This not only lead to a very weak
organisational setup but also a very undercooked and untested workforce​.

2. PAY STRUCTURE AND VAGUELY AWARDED TITLES : ​The lack of any

concrete structure in areas relating to payment of salaries as well as extremely vague way
 of awarding of titles related to ​Positions of Responsibility​ is another area of concern
which Mr.Wintress should look to address. Mulholland decided everything from
remuneration to appointments and also resorted to awarding titles to the employees of the
company not on the basis of skill and experience but as rewards for completion of the
special assignments which Mulholland assigned to them.​ Not only the lack of a pay
structure takes away the incentives from the employees to work hard and earn
promotions which would result in a better pay. ​Whereas the vague awarding of titles
resulted in a situation where there were numerous people claiming to be present on a
particular position of responsibility ​which ultimately resulted in a situation which
invariably resulted in a situation of confusion as there was not a single entity to
report too​.

3. INABILITY OF WINTRESS : ​Wintress was the unanimous choice among the board of
directors for the position of President. He was the only one in the company who came
from outside and had any actual experience of working under the leadership of
Mulholland as the head of investment department because finance was the one field in
which Mulholland didn't indulge owing to his own lack of expertise within the subject.
Given the previous model worked on the brilliance of Mulholland; Wintress’s lack of any
knowledge regarding any thing about assurance policies and it’s intricacies is bound to
result in a leadership vacuum as well as a definite drop in output of the work both in
the short term as well as the long term.

4. LACK OF ANY POLICY REGARDING RETIREMENT : ​Perhaps one of the major

reasons of Mr. Wintress’s problems going forward; the lack of any policy regarding
retirement coupled with Mr.Mulholland’s tendency to award greater salaries to older
employee’s resulted in a situation wherein the workforce stuck around for longer than
required which has lead to a situation ​where along with restructuring of the company
Wintress has to also ensure that the older workforce is replaced accordingly​.

Mulholland’s way of working has left the company with a plethora of problems following his
demise. The Wintress management surely has a difficult task to look upon which is something
that Wintress himself acknowledges. Given the current structure of the company along with the
time constraints facing Wintress we were able to narrow down the major problems which needs
to be addressed by Wintress going forward which would ensure that the company is in the best
possible scenario going forward while also ensuring that the successor to wintress inhibits a
company which is cured of majority of its deficiencies.
 PROPOSED SOLUTIONS

First and foremost what is of utmost importance is the fact that both Wintress and the Board Of
Directors are on the same page going forward in the context of the policy changes as well as the
expected changes within the growth of the company which should be cleared about in the very
beginning through a meeting between the 2 parties coupled with regular meetings after every
fiscal year which would be aimed at reviewing the policies and coming up with new plans going
forward and the goals which the company is expected to achieve.

RESTRUCTURING AS IMPLEMENTATION OF CHANGE

While Wintress restructures the organisation with this approach,initially it is likely that
significant improvement might not be visible but rather a decrease in performance is
predicted, however this by no means indicates failure.​Mr.Wintress can utilise the J-curve to
put forward what according to him will be the ​initial short term effects​ of the policy changes
which he intends to bring about in the company along with the long term prospects of the
company.

STAGE - 1 :
Before we start with introduction of changes the employees of the company are at the highest
level, which was achieved so far and is presented as stage 1 (plateau). Often their level of
managing tasks is at a high level. The information about introducing major changes can lead to
negative individual reactions, but on average this does not affect productivity until the
introduction of changes begins (stage 2).
STAGE - 2 :
Employees begin to do things in a completely different way in which they are not used to,which
causes them to do more errors. Their productivity declines significantly.
STAGE - 3 :
The number of errors decreases, workers start to learn and more and more tasks are carried out
correctly. In this phase,transition from the old way of working to the new better way is taking
place.
STAGE - 4 :
(​The rise​) The performance highly improves. The curve is growing almost as fast as it was
falling in the stage 2. New procedures are introduced, elimination of inefficiencies is starting to
take place, the coordination is always better and employees are gaining experience. Due to the
success, motivation is increasing. Up to this point, the productivity was below the initial level at
the stage 1,
and from here it moves to
STAGE - 5 :
(​Top) ​Workers are adept and skilled and coherent with the new method, performance is
increasing, errors are eliminated and costs are reduced.

To minimise the reduction of performance and chaos caused at Stage 3, Instead of Restructuring
the whole organisation, we start reorganising each department starting with Investment because
of the fact that with investment being a specialty of Mr.Wintress he could spearhead the new
structure in the best way possible.

1. APPOINTMENT OF VICE PRESIDENT

One of the major problems that were present in Philips' leadership was that there was no sense of
hierarchy present in the organization. Ranks and titles were assigned not because of skill and
experience but because of a random completion of a work which was assigned by
Mr.Mulholland.
There were multiple vice presidents who reported to someone who himself did not possess the
rank of Vice President again elucidating the lack of bureaucracy.
Hence Wintress' foremost job should be to instill a sense of hierarchy and bring the house some
much needed order and ​therefore should first bring someone from outside the company,
preferably Mullholand's 'young men' and appointing him as the VP of the organization
with the aim of filling Wintress' shoes in 5 years​. This selection criteria ensures that the new
VP is well versed with Philips' style of administration , understands and respects the tradition
and culture within the company but also acknowledges that some radical changes are needed.
Some of the functions of VP which includes but not limited to are-
​FUNCTION OF VP
1. The VP would be closely involved with Wintress himself in first and foremost setting out
goals and objectives which the company would be expected to achieve within a given
fiscal year.
2. It would be the responsibility of the VP to come up with an organised pay structure which
would be vehemently followed throughout the company hierarchy.
3. The VP would be the one responsible for the filling up of vacancies in the underwriting
committee in the very beginning which would be filled by some of Phillip’s own young
men only. Not only these new recruits would be well versed in his ideology but would
also have the much needed experience of working under an organised structure.
4. He would be the one along with Wintress who would finally decide upon the decisions
regarding hiring and firing of employees based on reports which they would receive
through the HR department which according to us needs to be set up as well.
 2. SETTING UP OF HR DEPARTMENT
The second order of business should be the setting up of HR department and increasing its
efficiency. It would act as a feedback mechanism between the different levels of management
starting from the president till the very basic employee’s of the company.
1. It would work closely along with the department heads and together the two would be
responsible for ensuring that the goals and objectives decided by the VP and Wintress are
first of all communicated with the workforce as well as are done to the maximum
possible capacity.
2. They would be required to prepare a report of every employee which would again be
done through coordination with the department head and function as an essential point of
reference for the higher administration when deciding upon promotions and firing of the
current employees.
3. It would be entrusted with carrying out various team building activities which would
ensure a certain level of coherency between the different departments something which
was missing in the previous regime.
4. They would also be required to function closely with the department heads and analyse
under/overstaffing in each department.
5. It would also be responsible for designing jobs around competencies and recruiting for
the same.
6. Maximize spans of control with the ideal target of one manager for every eight
employees
 3. INTRODUCTION OF VOLUNTARY RETIREMENT SCHEME
(VRS)

First and foremost, Wintress should set up the cap for the maximum age of service which ideally
should be 65 years of age or 30 years of service whichever comes first.
Along with this, introduction of Voluntary Retirement schemes will enable the Wintress
administration to resize the existing manforce employed within the company and solve the
problem of overstaffing. Further it will act as a tool to weed out the dead weight in order to
maintain a high standard of efficiency and productivity.
VRS also ensures that Philips’ ideology of looking after his employees are well looked after and
compensated for their service, however at the same time this policy change reflects that Wintress
means business and is prepared to take essential steps that are required to restructure the
organisation.

The eligibility criteria under the VRS would be but not limited to are -

● It applies to an employee of the company who has completed ten years of service or
completed 40 years of age.
● It applies to all employees including workers and executives of the company except the
Directors of the company.

Any employee who elects for VRS will get forty five days emoluments for each completed year
of service or monthly emoluments at the time of retirement multiplied by the remaining months
of service before the normal date of service,whichever is less.

4. INTRODUCING A CONCRETE PAY STRUCTURE

One of the major problems of the previous regime was the lethargic pay structure wherein
everything was decided by Mr. Phillip because of which the older employees were most of the
times paid extremely generous amounts which were most of the times even in excess of the
remuneration which was paid to the department heads. This coupled with the lack of any
retirement age resulted in a workforce which was extremely old since people obviously stuck
around their jobs longer than required without even being questioned since most of the work
was carried out by Mulholand himself. The introduction of a pay structure along with the setting
up of a determined HR department would not only ensure that the employees give their all in
their jobs but also prove to be an incentive spurring them on to work more in order to gain the
subsequent promotion and hence the better pay.

Coming up with the pay structure would be the work of the VP in close contact with the
president which would be​ decided through rough surveys of the other leading assurance
companies throughout their region regarding the remuneration which these organisations
pay to their employees.

The process of setting up pay structure would involve the division of jobs among different tiers.

● TIER 1 :( Formulate plans ) ​These would include positions such as that of the
President,VP,CEO,CFO etc.
● TIER 2 : ( Interpret plans ) ​These would include jobs such as that of HR department ,
Department heads as well those in the underwriting committee.
● TIER 3 : ( Implement plans ) ​These would include the jobs of assigned team leaders ,
shift managers etc.
 5. REVIVING THE UNDERWRITING COMMITTEE

Another area where the leadership of Mr. Mulholland failed miserably was the ​constant
omission of the underwriting committee​. Here the ​problem ​was that for the policies in excess
of $100,000 was directly cleared by Mr.Mulholland directly without consulting with the
Underwriting Committee whose main aim was to evaluate and analyse the risks posed by
insuring such people and assets. This made the company exposed to the risks

First and foremost as already mentioned the VP would be responsible for filling up the existing
vacancies through Phillip’s young men who are present already among different leading
assurance companies throughout.

1. Including Risk Managers, Financial Planners, Acceturies, Relationship Managers in the

underwriting committee.
2. Consulting Reinsurance Companies to mitigate the risks posed by the already existing
policies undertaken by Philips himself.
3. Applications of expensive bonds and doubtful applications would be required to be
submitted to the underwriting committee only and not to be sent to the upper
management directly as in the previous management.
4. Any doubts if still persist would be required to be communicated with the VP and not the
president directly. However the decision on the said doubt would be taken by the VP and
president together.
5. There would be regular meets between the VP and the underwriting committee aimed at
clearing the doubts regarding the decision making when related to doubtful applications
which would be in coherence with the current management’s desire of ensuring a self
sufficient and competitive workforce.
TEAM NAME : BARELY MANAGING

Team members :

● Dharmanshu dubey
Contact number - 7982264708
Email id - ​dharmanshu.1998@gmail.com

● Pradyut agawal
Contact number - 9810361152
Email id - pradyut.agrawal18@gmail.com