Misalignment

I have decided to do my 7S analysis on my ward. First I will identify each S in the organization and identify a misalignment that is resulting in pain.

7S Analysis
The ward's strategy is to serve and provide for the spiritual needs for the ward members by utilizing the skills and resources of the ward members. The structure is the same as that of most wards. There is a bishopric along with quorums, auxiliaries and councils. Each of these "groups" has its own council members. Everyone fits into one or many of the groups. As far as incentive systems or compensation goes, the ward depends on the staff's faith that blessings will be received for service. Shared values are common in general, as all belong to the same church with values including unity, service, charity, etc. The staff of the ward is anyone who moves into a certain specific apartment complex, Bountiful Court, and the skills are limited due to the fact that all members of the organization are simply college students with no expertise. As far as style goes, the ward is a pleasant place with people smile and are generally happy.

Misalignment
The most blatant misalignment within the ward organization is between strategy and skills. The ward's strategy depends on the skills of the ward members to serve others. The problem is that the ward members do not necessarily have any specific skills in serving. This is partially due to the fact that the organization does not select the staff that it "employs." The staff is simply determined by whoever decides to move to Bountiful Court. Not only does this make it impossible for the organization to bring in specific skills, it also makes it impossible for the organization to bring in individuals with resources (especially since the members of the ward are poor college students), which is also part of its strategy.
A second misalignment involves different values among ward members and the purpose. Some people do not consider service as important as others. In this way, the work of the ward does not get done as well or as often as it should.
Another misalignment, I dare say, involves the leadership (another part of the staff). In order for the ward to function and fulfill its purpose according to its strategy, responsibilities must be fulfilled. The leadership, however, has decided not to fill these positions of responsibilities (callings). Unless these callings are filled, the ward will never be able to administer and serve its members fully.

Pain
The ward is terribly ineffective and serving others. Since the people in teaching positions do not have teaching skills, lessons are less than enjoyable and involve playing name games for a half hour of Sunday school lessons. Since ward members value different things differently, home teachers and visiting teachers also don't necessarily have the skills necessary to help people change and therefore, there are many inactive members and members are not doing as well as they could. Also, many ward members feel unvalued due to them not receiving callings and things in the ward do not get accomplished due to no one delegating or being responsible for specific tasks.

The Kindle Fire

On Tuesday we discussed the game console industry and its relationship with third-party game makers. This brought the conversation to a discussion about how there are only a couple of reasons to sell a product at a loss and the "razor blade" model. Not entirely sure what the razor blade model was, I decided to do some searching after class. During my search, I came across an article about the Kindle Fire and how Amazon is using the razor blade model for the Kindle Fire sales.

The Amazon Fire actually costs $209.63 to make and Amazon is selling it for $199 (a $10.63 loss). Visiting the Amazon website today makes it very clear that the company is focusing on a low cost strategy. This is possibly in response to the fact that Apple is already a dominant presence in the high end portion of the tablet market.

Image Source: http://www.amazon.com/

Now obviously if this was Amazon's only source of revenue, the company would be in trouble. Luckily, there are other sources. These sources include eBooks, MP3s, Prime accounts (allow you to stream video to the Kindle), and just about everything else you can imagine. Just as Gillette was able to sell razors at a loss and more than make up the by selling its replaceable blades, Amazon is hoping to sell the Fire at a lose and make up the difference (and hopefully some more) through the sale of its other products. There has been speculation about what product lines Amazon is hoping to make the most off of. Personally, I would say that most of the revenue would come in from eBooks . I say this simply because the eBooks are the most direct complement to the Kindle product line, but without any data to analyze it is difficult to say.

One other thought I had as I read about the Kindle Fire, is the control that Amazon is able to exert over the eBook market. One of the difficulties of the video game console industry has been its lack of control over the third-party video game makers. After some looking around, I discovered that Amazon requires that books sold through the Amazon portal must be sold for at least $1.99 and successfully pass through a review process by the Kindle Operations team.


Image Source: http://scripting.com/stories/2010/07/30/onMyWayToPublishingAKindle.html

In this way, Amazon has made itself the ultimate decision maker in what makes it to the Amazon portal and what doesn't. This will help maintain a standard of quality as long as the operations team maintains high standards.

There is, however, an alternative to purchasing books through the Amazon portal. All Kindle devices can be connected to computers via USB and users can put whatever documents they want onto the device as long as the documents are a certain format. Once common consumers begin discovering this, it is possible that Amazon will lose its hold on the eBook market.

Will selling the Kindle Fire at a lose prove to be a good move and will Amazon be able to maintain control over the eBook market? Only time will tell.

Other Sources:

http://www.zurb.com/article/803/why-amazon-will-sell-kindle-fire-at-a-los
http://www.geekwire.com/2011/amazons-entry-tablets-signals-start-generation

Breaking Is Hard To Do

Recenty, there has been a fad growing among large corporations. The participating corporations include Kraft, McGraw-Hill, ITT, Sara Lee, Tyco and the fad is the dividing up of these companies into smaller companies. As I've read about the many divisions, I've wondered why large successful companies would make such drastic decisions especially when it costs the companies hundreds of millions of dollars to do so. Here are some of the reasons I think dividing a large corporation could be advantageous.

Simplicity
Many of the corporations that have split recently are actually huge conglomerations of companies in many seemingly unrelated markets. These corporations have become so large and segmented that they have lost the agility and simple operations that existed when they were founded. Management of companies has difficulty leading small companies to success, let along large conglomerates. One potential advantage of splitting a corporation is to increase the simplicity of managing it. A smaller company is easier to understand and better able to maintain focus.

Hedgehog Concept
As I mentioned, these corporations are made up of seemingly unrelated parts. Tyco has recently announced its plans to divide into three separate companies: a residential security company, a flow control company, and a commercial fire company. To unite such diverse companies and function under one mission would be difficult and as we learned from the Hedgehog Concept in Good to Great, companies should focus on what they do best. By dividing such a company into smaller more focused pieces, each company will better be able to focus on what it does best, thus being more successful.

Acquisitions
With so many interacting pieces and complexities, large corporations and conglomerates are not appealing to those who would buy these companies. There are too many moving parts to understand everything; it presents a certain level of risk. This appears to be the case with Tyco. In order to appear more appealing to these purchasing companies, Tyco has divided itself into multiple companies, thereby not scaring away so easily those who would buy them.

Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/a669360a-e2a9-11e0-ba6e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1YWj3SncN

Mail Delivery Services

Patrick Donahoe, the Postmaster General of USPS, has recently announced that the USPS will be taking several drastic measures in order to cut costs, due to it's ever increasing deficit. This news has peaked my interest regarding mail delivery services such as USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL, specifically the delivery of documents (not packages).

According to Porter's Five Force model, industries include five forces: Barriers to Entry, Buyer Power, Supplier Power, Rivalries, and Substitutes. I'm going to briefly discuss a few of these forces with regards to the mail delivery service industry.

Barriers to Entry
Creating a successful mail delivery service requires having a very large network of offices and transportation. This requires a tremendous amount of capital for property and equipment. Another barrier to entry is how well known the current mail delivery service companies are. Everyone knows who they are and most people already have an allegiance to one in particular.
You're going to need some serious moolah to make it into this industry with its barriers to entry.

Rivalries
As I just mentioned, there are already quite a few large, well-established mail delivery services available to consumers. My family uses FedEx for most of its delivery needs. I don't really seeing us switching services, especially to a small, unknown company, unless something drastic happened.
Danger to new entrants.

Substitutes
To me, this is definitely the most interesting force in this industry. One of the reasons that USPS is struggling so much is because people have stopped mailing things. USPS' mail volume has decreased by 50% over the past decade. Now I can't be sure, but I would assume that one of the main reasons that mail volume has decreased so drastically is because of available substitutes. Fewer people feel the need to send physical copies of letters and other documents because of the increased acceptance of digital document formats and the Internet. Now with more and more people switching to digital information exchange, not even government subsidies and bailouts can save them unless drastic changes are made.
In other words, the substitutes are not in favor of this industry.

Source: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/09/16/ups-vs-usps-mail-delivery-just-got-more-interesting/