Introduction (22)

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Introduction

Greyhound Lines Incorporation commonly referred to as Greyhound, is a renowned intercity bus with operations in over 3800 destinations in various parts of Northern America. Worth noting, Greyhound is fully operational and competes with many intercity buses accompanies, private automobiles, and low-cost airlines. Leadership is critical in steering an organization towards achieving its business goals and objectives. For maximum effectiveness, companies should make deliberate efforts to equip workers with proper resources and incentives. This text demonstrates the missing aspects of leadership, the consequences of those missing elements, and the best cause of action that can be employed by Greyhound to manage the crisis.

Missing Aspects

Successful organizations employ the use of vision, skills, incentives, resources, and an action plan. The four ingredients have to work hand in hand to ensure the success of the organization. Greyhound is failing in its mandate because it does not have the right tools to ensure it thrives as a company. To begin with, Greyhound does not have a clear vision about what it wants to achieve for its stakeholders including, clients, managers, drivers, team manager, and its executive team. For instance, the fact that the human resources team reported that the workers at the terminals did not have high-school qualifications begs the question of recruitment in the company. It points to the fact that there is a problem with the recruiting strategy meaning that they do not put important factors such as education as a basis for recruitments. This shows that they do not have a clear vision about what they wish to attain because if they did, they would have made a better and informed decision. Another loophole that points to lack of vision is that despite the warnings by managers that many low-income passengers were not in a position to used Trips, the executive made the rush decision to roll out the new system emphasizing that it would improve the quality of services. By disregarding the advice provided by experts they did not help the situation but rather increased it.

Greyhound also lacks resources as evidenced by the move to reduce operation costs by making massive cuts in the services, routes, and personnel. Although the move was critical and needed for migration from the use of hand-written receipt to computerization of everything including reservations, they should have first weighed other options such as increasing the number of fleets, employing more drivers, and expanding the routes. Further, they did not have a solid action plan in place evidenced by the back and forth and disagreements among managers. Additionally, the fact that executing the plans led to a nightmare shows that they did not do their due diligence before implementing the new systems. Had they been thorough in their work, they would have been better placed to point out the loopholes including the long customer cues, systems crashing, and dissatisfied clients. Moreover, Greyhound leadership failed to provide their employees particularly low-level employees such as drivers with incentives to motivate them in their work.

Consequences of the Missing Elements

A company that does not have a vision is built on confusion. Vision statements help describe the purpose of the company, what it aims to achieve, and what it strives for. The vision helps the company to focus on what is most rewarding to them which inspires them to come up with a viable strategy to help them attain their objectives. The fact that the company lacks a vision is evident in the poor decisions made by the company which exacerbates its problems. For example, since the company did not have a clear vision, they were not in a position to manage the crisis that followed. Additionally, lack of resources has the potential of paralyzing a company. This is because all company operations rely on resources. For instance, without buses, drivers, and finances, the company will be paralyzed. Greyhound should have looked for alternative means to ensure the business is running rather than making massive cuts in personnel and services. For instance, they could have looked for a financer or a partner to offer them a loan or invest in their business. Incentives are key in ensuring the staff members remain happy and motivated to carry out their duties. Lack of incentives places companies’ sustainability at risk and will only drive the stakeholders away. Greyhound should have employed incentives particularly for the drivers who have to deal with the tiresome work of handling clients. Further, they should have given their customers incentives to ensure they remain loyal. Lack of an action plan means that the company is often off to a false start. In such situations, the company lacks direction and is bound to poor business decisions that put the company at risk of collapse.

Recommendations

If I were a management consultant called upon to help fix the problem I would recommend thorough training and preparation to all employees on how to use the new system. This plays a critical role in ensuring that the staff members are well equipped and prepared to perform their duties under the new system. In this case, the terminal workers without high-school-level education will be better placed to function with the new system. I would also recommend that Greyhound should have a sit-down with the management to streamline communication issues as it would help them do reduce disagreements with other managers and senior executives who make the important decisions within the company.