Embedded Files
To increase the chances of success for your new business, you need to prepare
yourself for your new role as owner and manager. Through your study of
management, you are now aware of all of the functions that top managers
and executives perform. You know that you will have to devote much of your
time to management activities in order to complete all the major
management functions. In addition, you must be prepared to identify and
solve problems before they negatively affect the business.
Data Collection/Analysis
Develop a chart or use paragraphs with five headings: Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Leading, and Controlling. Under each heading, list the activities you will need to complete to manage your juice bar effectively. 2. Under the list of activities developed above, estimate (a) how much time you will need to devote to each activity and (b) when you will need to complete each activity during a typical month. 3. For each problem identified in the data collection section above, select the solution you believe is likely to be most effective. Then develop a contingency plan listing the procedures to follow to accomplish each solution and prevent the problem from occurring.
Identify two problems you expect to face in operating your business.
Complete the steps in problem solving to develop an appropriate solution. As you
analyze possible solutions, identify several sources of useful information,
including business research.
Activities:
Planning
Finding location; budget; get permit/license; advertise; sign/logo
Organizing
Finalize building arrangement/rental; uniforms for staff; work schedule;
order resources (inventory, equipment, cleaning supplies, decor…)
Staffing
Manager; financial people; employees; interviews payroll;
Leading
Training; team building
Planning
Time of production; taste testing
Planning
For the first two days, we will be trying to find a location to open our juice business. We could drive around and keep a lookout for buildings for rent. Once we find a location, we will need to get a permit to open our business. We will need to advertise, which might take a couple of hours a day for the first week or so after officially finding a building. This might include making a logo and sign and promoting our business around the community through networking or posters.
Organizing
Once we have rented the appropriate space and obtained the necessary permits, we can decorate our space and order supplies. Equipment to make the juice will be required as well as appliances, such as a fridge. This could take a few days, depending on delivery and availability. We should order these appliances first so that the food and inventory can have a place to go. We will need uniforms for employees and decorations for the restaurant section, like couches and tables. Ordering the supplies and resources may take a few hours for the week leading up to opening. When we have hired the staff, we can allow them to self-schedule. If there are slots that are still open, we may need to find someone to fill in.
Staffing
After we find a location and secure our equipment, uniforms and decor, we could begin the hiring process. We could spend two or so hours a day for our interviews. We would hire around 10 full time employees. We would hire part-time employees as needed. Our training would begin as soon as we have hired all our workers and we could spend around half a shift doing dry runs in training and preparation. The food safety videos will also take up to 5 hours a day for 3-4 or so days.
Leading
Team building activities would be beneficial after all the hard work our employees have put into testing and training videos. Maybe a day to the paintball field or go carts etc. Just to build team morale and give them a bit of a break after the long videos they completed for training.
Controlling
After training we would be doing several dry runs. We could make fake orders and have our employees actually make them. We could have friends and family visit and put in their order to give our employees more realistic situations. We would set time goals for orders such as 5 minutes for in house orders and 4 minutes for drive through orders. We would check the orders for accuracy and give more attention to areas we seem to be struggling in.
3. Our first problem is not having enough employees. Our most effective solution to this problem is to offer more benefits including better hours, a positive work environment, and supportive understanding of employees. Our contingency plan includes the anticipation of problems including the potential loss of money due to spending more on employees to help them have more job satisfaction. Another potential problem would be that employees think they can call off whenever they want due to our understanding policy. The plan of action for the first potential problem (loss of money) would be that we cut costs elsewhere. It is important that we remember the importance of having and keeping dependable employees. Even if we spend more on employees, and it looks like a loss now; eventually, it would reveal itself to be a worthwhile investment. If it does not then we would need to decrease the budget on employee spending. Our course of action for the second problem (call-offs) would be setting the limit on unexcused call offs. For example, we could say that you only get three call-offs for every two months, but if you take someone else’s shift, one call-off is cleared. The punishment for calling-off too much would be getting a warning, getting a second warning, and then getting fired. Also, self scheduling would help as it would enable workers to only schedule themselves on days they can work which would hopefully help to prevent frequent call-offs.
Our second problem was not making a profit. Our most effective solution to this problem was to decrease the budget and only spend on the important things. There are a couple potential problems to this solution. One would be that we run out of things quicker because we are buying less excess inventory. A course of action we can take to prevent this from occurring would be to carefully study how many products we need on a typical basis, and buy the amount of things we need with a little bit extra in case of emergency. Another problem would be that we seem cheap, or we are not properly equipped to deal with issues that arise. A course of action for this potential problem would be that we spend smarter instead of just spending less. We can save money by carefully considering what is needed without leaving other areas suffering.
Page updated
Report abuse