2008年10月4日 星期六

Growing Pains?

Recently we read an article about growing pains and the author states the ten most common organizational ones, which are quite interesting. Since our group needed to teach this module, we found it was published in 1990 and the examples might have been out of date; thus, we tried to look for updated ones in order to make the teaching session more interesting. However, we spent a lot of time searching and it's a pity that little information could be found related to this topic. Most can be looked up on internet is about human's growing pains. Though it has nothing to do with organizational growing pains, it occurs to me that the pains come into existence when facing a transition from one stage to the next no matter it happens to people or companies.

I have worked for a big telecom firm for several years and this article reminds me a lot of the situations as I was working there. For example, people are not aware of what other people are doing, there are too few good managers, most people feel that meetings are a waste of time, and so on. I observed that the most serious problem there is the unclear defined roles and responsibilities. Also, most employees spend a lot of time in meetings which usually are neither well organized nor planned; therefore, they waste a lot of time and do nothing productive to the firm. It makes me wonder that those problems exist not only in a growing organization because my former company is a very stable one. The management team is the one who should be responsible for those pains.

Another interesting point is the ninth organizational growing pain: Some people feel insecure about their place in the firm. I heard my ex-colleague said it is obvious that there is little business in the company for the 3th and 4th quarters of 2008; most employees feel insecure and are trying hard to grab other co-workers' jobs. As we date back the economical history in Taiwan, there has been a great deal of large cutbacks in personnel from several years ago, the telecom industry was no exception. People feel insecure when the company doesn't run well or has no business. This pain does not only exist in the growing organizations, but also in those which are unstable or of little business opportunity.

Reference:
Flemholtz, E. G. (1990). Growing Pains: How to make the transition from an entrepreneurship to a professionally managed firm. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc.

2008年10月2日 星期四

Success of Threadless

When I heard Threadless in Professor Haff's seminar, I found the firm a good example of innovation. Although it is a web based retail company, it is far from those online apparel shopping ones. Its success has aroused my interest a great deal.

The t-shirts designs are uploaded and scored by the public on their website. Those who are interested in designing a t-shirt can have the chance to show their works and see how popular they are. It is a good way to let people have a space to not only display their creativity and talent in design but also make money and gain achievements from it.



From Threadless's view, they have saved the personnel and operational expenses on designers. In addition, it makes good use of crowd sourcing, gathers the intelligence from the masses, and sets up a good example of the business model. Its creative marketing and up-to-date designs are attractive to us as well. Most people are sick of wearing a t-shirt and meeting a person who's wearing the same one very often. Threadless provides the unique designs and limited amount of t-shirts to their customers and makes them special as well.

Threadless has been a brand which symbolizes fun, unique, and creativity. Its website is direct, simple and effective. Customers can view the latest designs on the homepage. The website design is easy and user friendly. This is also one of the primary factors to its success.













Reference:
http://www.threadless.com/
http://mmdays.wordpress.com/2007/10/14/threadless/