Assignment 3

OSDC (CP-401)

Submitted by
Ankit Aggarwal
18MIB008
 (HP Case study)
Q1. What are the issues/problems areas at HP?
Ans1: The issues/ problems at HP are:

 In 1990s, critics started believed that HP had lost the magic formula
 HP was facing huge bureaucracy resistant to change.
 HP was periodically missing earnings projections
 HP started losing its market share to its competitors i.e. DELL & IBM.
 Its stock price lagged behind high-tech rivals like Dell and Sun Microsystems.
 Carly Fiorina came out of a different industry and had never run a corporation. Her expertise was
not in operations, rather was in sales and marketing.
 Carly Fiorina began taking decisions prior gaining any understanding of the company, its current
structure and processes.
 Carly was not taking any help from her decision board members.
 Salespeople, who had been salaried, now earned commissions based on individual sales which
starting differentiating employees on the basis of work done by them for the company.
 Employee dissatisfaction grew more with time as she was taking harsh decisions to take a
voluntary pay cut of their salary.
 The company merger decision failed in a big way as company’s profit did not increase since the
merger.
 HP did not establish the required culture and structure to cope with similar challenges of the
modern companies. HP’s culture is poisoned. HP’s employees were preoccupied with internal
conflicts and power rivalries. Cross-functional collaboration was not accepted. Overall, the
culture was damaged by a significant lack of trust between employees and directors.
 By time Carly’s career as CEO was towards the end the stock price of HP had lost half of its
value and Dell began to eat away at HP's highly profitable printer business.
Q2. With reference to the HP case, imagine that you were a consultant
brought in by Carly Fiorina and she asks for your recommendations
regarding the issues at HP.
Suggest some important interventions/actions for change management process
at HP based on the eight step Kotter's model of change (practical suggestions
only).

Kotter's model of change

Step 1: Create Urgency

Top management and employees should be encouraged for the need of latest technology to
compete their competitors like (Dell and Sun Microsystems). there was urgent requirement of
structural change in board and production strategy.

Step 2: Form a Powerful Coalition

Identifying effective change leaders like Lew Platt, Richard Hagborn to continuously act as advisors
and their presence in board will also encourage the employees to work effectively who were resistant to
changes.
Presence of founders in the top decision board will also keep the emotional commitment among
employees.
Designing the managerial team in such a way that, there is mix of technical, sales, operations
department with their independent charges.
 Step 3: Create a Vision for Change
Focus on accomplishing the numbers within time frame.
Regularly tracking the Quarterly result and setting annual sales targets.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision

Delivering fresh vision to keep it fresh on everyone's minds, so they'll remember it and respond
to it.
Motivating the work force by encouraging the fact that company is lead by a woman as CEO.
Encourage the top management to back the vision so that old employees feel connected to the
vision.

Step 5: Remove Obstacles

Identify, or hire, change leaders whose main roles are to deliver the change after going through
the performance report of each employee.
Looking after organizational structure, performance and compensation systems to ensure they're
in line with the vision.
Identifying people who are resisting the change, and help them by providing necessary training.

Step 6: Create Short-Term Wins

Carly should not choose early expensive targets, because justifying the investment so early
becomes difficult.
Proper analysis of the potential pros and cons of the targets needs to be done by Carly, because
being unsuccessful with an early goal, can hurt your entire change initiative.
 Step 7: Build on the Change
Regular performance analysis should be done by Carly to identify what went right, and what
needs improving.
Implementing kaizen theory for continuous improvement.

Step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture

To ensure that legacy of key leaders is not lost or forgotten, plans need to be created to replace
them.
Success stories of the company will be advertised well among customers and internally among
employees about the change process, and repeat other stories that you hear.

Imagine you are a part of the strategic planning team of any company of your choice.
Question 3. Predict how corona virus crisis will change the “big picture” of
your company and visualize the different ways your business domain could
develop during and after the COVID-19 crisis.
Ans. I have considered BigBasket as my reference. Corona virus outbreak can change the
picture of Bigbasket in big way: Its competitor like Grofers also got impacted by this outbreak.
Due to heavy demand from consumers following the ongoing nationwide lockdown due to the
Covid-19 virus outbreak, there are not enough delivery slots. Both companies have seen demand
for groceries rise by three to five times from a normal business day. And they are operating at
60-70% capacity due to manpower shortage and supply constraints. These two factors are
leading to delivery slots getting filled quickly. Because of restrictions BigBasket had to cancel
lakhs of non essential orders as supply chains came to a standstill. BigBasket used to service
around 200,000 orders a day, was able to make just 23,000 deliveries on the worst day, even as
new orders were flooding in.
We are also facing issues such as harassment of our delivery man by police personal. We are also
providing full safety kit to delivery persons and also proper training also needs to be provided to
maintain social distancing. With local authorities shutting down warehouses and stopping trucks
from crossing state borders, our operations are getting disrupted. Limited staff for warehouses
and logistics is also a big problem. Due to lack of production at factories we are getting products
in low quantity and at very high price which sometime becomes difficult for customers to buy.
Many top business been ordered to shut down. we were not expecting it, so we were not
prepared. We hadn’t planned.

After this pendamic gets over we have to streamline our workforce and have to terminate
temporary hired personal and have to vacate temporary warehouses.

Question 4. Identify the “must do” actions that will help you succeed in the
crisis and post crisis scenario.
Ans. If we want our organization to prepare for current situation, Scenario planning is one of the
best method to explore alternative futures that could realistically emerge around people, with the
potential to turn their business upside down. Today it is important for company board members
to think ahead We are expecting to quickly add capacity. As we don’t want any more
cancellations of orders, but also asking our customers to don’t expect to get delivery the next
day. We are giving people the option to cancel their orders, and are also delaying taking fresh
orders to ensure the pending orders get delivered. We are also working with cab aggregators,
restaurant associations and other retailers to get help with our manpower requirements. As we
trying to deliver orders by cabs. We have also begun giving on-ground staff their share of
essential goods at the end of the day apart from regular pay, providing an added incentive to
venture out for work. We willl hire 10,000 people for our warehouses and last-mile delivery.
This hiring will happen across all major cities that we are present in.
We know that, these measures will work, albeit slowly. Neither of the companies is expected to
begin operating at full capacity soon. Any kind of expansion to their capacities will only come
after the lockdown is over. Still, there’s a significant opportunity for us to tap the massive influx
of first-time users who try to use our services. Just as payments apps did after the country banned
high value currency notes in 2016, the real test of retaining users will come after the lockdown is
over. There’s no shortage of food in the country, warehouses are idle and so many people have
lost their jobs or can’t go to work. These are all positives for us and we will expand our
businesses very quickly after the lockdown ends .
Effective measures to be taken to ensure safety for employees by providing mask, hand sanitizer
and regular temperature monitoring. We are also planning to provide them with staying facilities
away from their families and medical insurance to cover Covid infection.