Established methods of control Smith & Falmouth – S&F is in the business of tele-shopping and mail order network. The company has started an e-tailing division that is important for the company’s growth plan. There is already a web development team, a logistics team and a marketing manager. The project manager handles the whole project. He controls the six member web development team that maintains the online sales channel made up of the website and the online payment gateway. PM works with logistics manager and his three-member logistics team that manages order handling, customer support and delivery operations. The team also reports order fulfillment status to Marketing Manager who coordinates product lines, marketing budgets and promotional activities. I as the COO have to increase the reach of the online sales channel and make S&F as a profitable strategic unit within 9 months. Figure 1.1 Current Organizational Structure (Affecting Change Simulation.exe) The project manager maintains control over the web development team who values teamwork and builds personal rapport with each colleague. He dislikes interventions that restrict his power over the carefully nurtured teams. Brain uses sheer effort and involvement with the team with whom he interacts comfortably. He is interested in technology and tracks solutions implemented by the web development team. Smith the marketing manager manages his relations with key players but does not interact much with the teams. He uses a direct gung ho approach that sometimes intimidates close-knit groups such as the web development team. Current culture of department and organization The current culture of S&F is riddled with groups and sub groups and each group has its own rules and informal ways of dealing with people and putting them in place. When the new COO takes over, the reactions of other groups and leaders is very lukewarm and it is obvious that they are not going to cooperate whole heartedly, unless the leader of the groups shows some change in behavior. Their leaders dominate the groups. Earlier the PM, LM and MM were directly in touch with the CEO. With the introduction of the new COO, all these three leaders would have to report to the COO and not directly to the CEO. This means a certain amount of ‘demotion’ in their perceived roles. The groups of web development team and the Logistics team are not very open and amenable to accepting new members into their close-knit groups and group members would fiercely resist all attempts by the COO to integrate with the teams. The COO has realized after the second week that there are different groups and cliques in the organization that go beyond the formal organizational structure. The COO cannot operate by himself and manage all the tasks independently. He needs to have the support of the teams and individual members. To achieve this, he has to win over the decision makers in the informal groups. The influential members are the PM, LM and the MM. Out of these, the PM is the most influential since he controls six web developers. So the key ally to be made in this exercise is the project manager. Recommendation for restructuring the department The relationships recommended for restructuring the department are as given in the following figure. Figure 3.1. Restructured relationship sociogram (Affecting Change Simulation.exe) It is proposed that a two way communication