Coaching of a Manager in a Professional Service Industry
Introduction
A General Manager of a Public Accountants company wanted to seek ways to improve his business performance with the help of a Personal Coach. The company is providing professional accounting services in a town in Sarawak. The core-businesses are : a) Financial / Accounting Audit, b) Company Secretary service, c) Tax computation, d) General consultancy on financial matter, shareholders rights, directors duty & tasks, etc. There is a large diversity of clients : timber industry, sawmill. timber contractors, timber licence; Engineering industries, suppliers, service contractors; Housing Developers, Retailing business, proprietors, enterprise. ...
SWOT on Business Environment as perceived by the General Manager
Strength
- S1 The town is still economically booming
- S2 Most clients are satisfied by service rendered
- S3 Most clients have good understanding of service requirements
- S4 Diversity of clients help in market sectors spread, hence business not dependent on a particular sector
- S5 Clients generally not so sophisticated and demanding.
Weakness
- W1 Uncertain economic situation presently
- W2 Some clients have fixed and stubborn opinion on our professional requirements, partly ignorant
- W3 Difficulties in collections of payments from some clients
- W4 Clients not so familiar with Regulation and Legislation requirements of their input
- W5 Certain clients with very un-reasonable demand
- W6 Certain clients slow in the obliged information input, and difficulties to contact them
SWOT on Organisation as perceived by the General Manager
Fact: 5 key staff : 3 qualified staff with 3-5 years experience, 2 new staff with basic qualification.
- S1 Company history :11-years of good solid establishment, with good foundation and reputation.
- S2 Core-knowledge and competency in this professional service are good
- S3 Procedure established
- S4 Hardworking staff
- S5 Use of computer and other office equipment
- S6 Proper office
- S7 Good filing system
- S8 Good communication / co-operation with head office in another town.
- S9 Headquarters supportive and give assistance on technical matter
- S10 95% independent, i.e. with little interference from head office
- S11 Good and satisfactory service to clients
- S12 Sometime GM does some financial auditing for clients
- S13 Teamwork among staff reasonably satisfactory
- S14 No fierce competitors
- S15 Staff productivity 80%
Strength
Weakness
- W1 No system audit carried out
- W2 Mis-placement of important documents, recently happened once
- W3 Lack of facilities like proper resting place for clients / visitors
- W4 2 new staff with no proper / structured training programme
- W5 Sometimes mis-communication with head office
- W6 Customers' complaints with no tracking / fulfilment system
SWOT self-analysis by the General Manager
Strength
- S1 Specialised knowledge, and good core-competence
- S2 Encourage openness type of management
- S3 Communicate well with clients and staff
- S4 Humble and Keen to learn for improvement
Weakness
- W1 Lack of marketing skills to bring in more business
- W2 Time Management - lack of design, control and discipline
- W3 No use of IT to carry out management
- W4 Lack of housekeeping discipline
- W5 Lack of self-confidence to approach potential clients of higher social status
The coach carried out some simple System audit to check some of the above stated perception.
a) Documented procedure
This consists primarily Forms of different types. No evidence of control stated : listing of forms do not tally with actual, some forms are obsolete, some spaces in form not duly filled with required data, etc.... Several implications as stated in some of the above weaknesses, are realised : uncontrolled form procedure can give rise to confusion or chance of mistake made by staff, especially new staff. Effectiveness of staff training, if carried out can be hampered by procedure not controlled, i.e. management system without clarity, transparency and value-added. Hence reasonable good management system must be in place, above is just an example or tip of the iceberg.
b) Evidence of Satisfactory Customer service
A randomly chosen file of a client does not show any management tool used to give and overall picture of service performance. For example, no summary of status, performance of various stages of service requirement in term of some quality attributes like cycle time (duration, delay if any etc.) or defects like error, in-accuracy, or check list against stated requirement. The manager also realises to rely on complaint or penalty from regulatory body is too late a quality indicator. Some pro-active measurement system must be put in place. Several other implications : as some basic management tools are not in place, it could not lead to next steps of analysis, monitoring, control, and improvement. And the overall, global picture of the total business performance cannot be made measurable, except by gut feeling or rough guess, or wait for real serious problem. But gut feeling or rough guess, requires the manager to be kept in close touch with day to day business activities, thereby making him busy, more hardworking and more in fire-fighting mode, without the benefit of seeing the whole forest, except busy chopping trees. Prolong business operation without effective management system can turn some of the Strength on customers relationship into liability, weakness or threats.c) Corrective and Preventive System, CPA
An important management system, CPA, is not yet in place. An example is the above stated weakness on miss-documents. A localised corrective action was done, to put back the document in its place with check that there was no more missing pages in that particular file. But there is no root-cause analysis by staff for prevention of similar occurrence.Summary
A one-half hour coaching demonstrates the importance of effective Management system for a business operation. Management System has cause and effect relationship with many things e.g. a) helping the boss to be free from busyness, to be more pro-active, creative, hence contribute to his self-confidence, b) less confusion and mistakes by staff, and with good coaching from boss, the staff can take good initiatives, pro-active and creative to improve the operating system. From the above, the boss decides to give some serious thinking and action, before calling undersigned for second coaching session.
End.
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By Andrew Wong, 7th Feb. 1998
COPYRIGHT @ 1998
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