The Major Problem

The major problem in HGC is that no standards or goals are predetermined

which could enable the management to have a clear vision of where the
company is going. This vague vision of aims and objectives leads them to
choosing projects based on their self-interest rather than according to the
company’s goals. Moreover, the project deadlines are not being met, the
financial resources are not being allocated properly and the projects are not
handled on a priority basis. These problems can result in a loss of HGC’s market
share in the company. 

Symptoms of the Problem

Some symptoms of the problem are as follows;

 Communication gap and lack of team work. This symptom causes the
inability to meet deadlines.
 Conflicts among the management regarding allocation of budget.
 Lack of guidelines on selection and priority of projects. This causes
confusion among the managers and everyone thinks their project is more
important than others. An example is that of an international business game
for high school students which was highly unrelated to the company’s
strategy.
 Peters has not established long term goals for the company therefore
there is a lack of leadership and corporate structure. She has also been
unable to establish rules for implementing strategies.
 Vague idea of the target market
 Lack of knowledge about how to accomplish the long term strategy
 Potential of losing company’s employees as evident by the efforts of
another gaming company to hire a product development employee that
worked in HGC.
 Major Cause of the Problem
 Statistics show that Hector Gaming Company has been growing at a rate
of 80% for the past two years but this growth rate is expected to fall
down if the prevailing conditions continue. One of the major causes of the
problem at hand is the conflicts caused by factors such as organization
politics and resource allocation. Lack of leadership has led to lack of
direction for employees due to which everyone performs tasks at their
own will. Also, it is evident that Sally wasn’t involved in the internal
matters of the company as she was shocked when she found out about
the underlying problems. Moreover, the organization does not use any
 proper tools or metrics to determine the relative importance of projects
and their urgency due to which they are unable to undergo the projects
that are in alignment with the company’s competitive strategy. 
 Action Plan
 In order to cater the problem of prioritizing projects and meeting the
deadlines, the Time Management Matrix for prioritizing tasks can be used.
This matrix was proposed by Stephen Covey and is a simple approach to
prioritize projects on the basis of their urgency and relative importance.
By using this matrix, Sally can approve the most relevant projects
accordingly and thus have an output in alignment with the company’s
core strategy. Moreover, a resource allocation matrix can also be used to
allocate and reallocate resources to the initiatives on the basis of their
criticality and productivity. This would resolve the budget allocation
problem and would enable the management to use their resources
effectively.
 The case study shows that there is a lack of corporate structure in the
company. Thus a proper structure must be introduced with Sally having
the major role in approving and directing all the projects in the company.
Also, Sally needs to actively participate in the projects that are close to
the deadline in order to facilitate satisfactory performance and to make
the team realize that leadership support is with them. Moreover, it is
evident that there is absence of a proper HR department due to which
there is a problem of managing people and handling financial and human
resources. Thus Sally should develop an HR department or hire an HR
director which could allocate resources for all the projects. 
 Moving on, the employees exhibit lack of team work. Building up on their
team working skills is crucial for the successful running of the company.
For this purpose, the company should put their efforts towards providing
some employee engagement platforms in which they could enhance
personal relationships and understand each other in a better way which
would facilitate them to enhance productivity while working on the
assigned projects. 
 Lastly, there is a need to communicate the organizational goals and
objectives clearly to everyone in the company in order to ensure that
everyone has the same target in mind. For this purpose, a matrix called
Hoshin Kanri matrix can be used which gives a visual representation of
the long term and short term goals and the action plan needed to achieve
these goals.