Unlocking Decision Autonomy: A Seminar Presentation to Drive Business Growth

The Millionaire Company has been experiencing challenges in decision-making, with senior officials being resistant to giving autonomy to staff members. The company is facing high pressure for performance, expansion rate, and inexperience of employees. There are gaps in information flow, and individual decision-making prevails rather than team effort. This has led to an autocratic culture towards decision-making in a democratic environment. The company's risk exposure score falls under the 'Danger Zone' (35-45 score), indicating that it is exposed to risks from performance pressure, rate of expansion, and lack of support and resistance. To overcome these issues, recommendations include revising the compensation system, forming teams for client dealings, providing training for freshers, and promoting esprit de corps.

Case study-Property Millionaires Company
Executive Summery
Business and its environment is full of risk and uncertainty. The success of business also
depends on this risk taking ability. Normally it happens that entrepreneurs tend to forget the
risk factors in situation of organization doing well in business and profit is flowing. All is looking
good not at all an indicator of risk is out, despite profit and business growth, a company can be
at risk. The risk factor although varies from one to other. This must be addressed time by time
for smooth running of organization.
Robert Simons worked on this corporate governance aspect and developed a tool for risk
assessment called as “Risk Exposure Calculator”. This is a measurement technique to evaluate
the pressure points in every organization that leads to risk. Depending on management style
and situation the point varies. [Simon, R., 1999]
This measurement technique we are going to use for this real estate investment advisor
Property Millionaires in Australia. In this account, we will put company’s present situation into
the measurement bars of this calculator to get the score and to know how far the company is
safe or in danger zone position. We are also going to recommend the probable actions as well.
Introduction
The property Millionaire, a company started with started few years ago by George Kirzner came
with a motive to aware people that anyone can be a real estate winner if he/she has right set of
mind, education and support. The concept was well accepted by the customers as it achieved
fantastic growth rate which was higher to the intake of staff to company. Is it that the indicator
of company moving towards risk? Let us put it in measurement tool.

Risk Exposure of The properties Millionaires
An image of Risk Exposure Calculator
Robert Simon divided these risk exposure elements into 3 major categories as exposure due to
growth, due to culture and information management. When success comes, it makes people to
commit mistakes. Under the success cover, management forgets to follow the basic quality
checking process. This happens either lack of management attention or doing nothing due to
additional cost involvement. When it overtakes the control of management, it starts affecting
business and organization suffers troubles both inside and outside organization as a result.
Pressure due to growth
An organization which has started with an innovative or unique concept, it drags the attention
of customer, employment seeker, capital market, government and many other stakeholders.
Such organization with a high ambition of profit and sales, management expects its workforce
to deliver the best, those who does gets reward and those who lags gets nothing. Expectation
of growth leads to pressure of employee performance- The first pressure point. [DUMKE, D.,
2011.]

It is true that when a business is in prosperity phase, it expands its operation, distribution
channel and product line sometimes to support the growth. When such expansion is taking
place, it puts pressure on the employees and workforce investment.
In this case, an organization needs workforce to deal with growth. Most of the cases,
organization goes with inexperience employees. These on-board employees are given key
position to manage but as they have no or low experience, they put organization under risk.
[Adkins, W. D., 2010.]
Let us find how Risk exposure due to growth exists in The Properties Millennium.
Pressure Point due to growth-
As the company got success in recent past with its seminar sale on property business it led
company to expand the business from a short scale operation to a medium scale enterprise.
The Properties Millionaires growth rate business exceeded the growth rate in employee in-take
which put pressure on employee to deliver performance to meet additional demand. The
pressure also came from the top level to perform at any cost.
Pressure on investment in workforce
Despite George found it a sign of trouble but the regional managers were absolutely
flamboyant under the growth of business. Company had to add additional employees to meet
the excessive demand thus it went for lowering the standard of workforce. To save cost, they
started taking people with no or low experience.
Pressure of inexperience
When the need of staffs increased than the expectation level of management, they had to
compromise with their staffing policy and allowed fresher to approach the clients. With no
experience and lack of knowledge about organization and the work method, they ended up
with client dissatisfaction.
Scoring for Pressure due to Growth
Pressure of
business
performance
5
Rate of Expansion in
comparison to
Employee availability
4
Pressure of
inexperience
4

Total Score- 5+4+4= 13
Cultural Pressure
Culture of an organization also plays a major role in business success and failure. It is the work
culture that determines how a business will go in long run. To study the risk exposure of
culture, here are the three pressure points can be taken-
Reward to employee for risk taking
This risk arises when an organization urges to gamble with the resources it has in a view to
increase gain. So most of the time, the entrepreneurs starts investing in risky deals, forge
alliance with business etc. which makes the company to deal with pressure. Employees are the
backbone for any organization and the growth of business stays with their performance.
In case of this company, they are loaded with aggressive sales and that too without any help
from top level. The compensation is not fixed and they have to struggle for commission. In the
meantime, those who got deals caught the eyes of regional manager and treated special but
those who didn’t achieve the target have to sacrifice their pay.
Senior management support and involvement
When the management officials are rigid with their views and opinions regarding the success of
business and they are reluctant to change anything and resist to hear any bad news. They just
need people to say “yes” for every action. The philosophy that runs in such organization is
“Boss knows the best”. It also makes employees to shut their mouth to inform risk.
In the Properties Millionaire,
 No participative decision making process which brought the risk of work burden for
employees.

 None of senior level official has ever looked up underperforming employees about their
problem. No motivation to employees ever existed in culture of this company.
 The senior officials tend to leave consultant alone in the complex process without even
looking whether they can do it or not. [Want to surround people with Yes to boss]
 Autonomy is given to staff for preparing seminar presentation but no team work present.
Internal competition
Competition outside organization is good but if it starts internally i.e. within the people then it
brings the risk exposure of lack of coordination. Such competition within the people violates the
general interest goal and organization faces loss.
In case of Properties Millionaire, the ruthless culture for performance oriented compensation
made each employee to take on other employees to stay ahead in race. Even regional
managers didn’t work with each other and focused on developing own area which resulted
client dissatisfaction in the end. [Added Value Solutions , 2001.]
Total Score- 3+5+4= 12
Risk exposure due to Information management
The flow of information in an organization brings result either positive or negative depending
on the how fast and how efficiently it moves in the hierarchy. When the Information System is
not adequate to the present level of business, it brings havocs to the business. Here are the
three pressure points under this heading-
Fast changing and complicated information flow
To ensure success, information must flow faster, safer and adequately to the concerned
person/ department so that decisions and actions can be taken at the right time.
Reward to
employee-Risk
taking
3
Absence of support
and resisting to hear
bad news
5
Internal
competition
4

In case of Properties Millionaire, there is no clear span of control and reporting system that
could decide when to report, whom to report and how to report. All information are directly
transferred to regional managers who only forwarded good information to CEO George. In case
of difficulties, no upward communication is taking place and no conflict resolution is there to
deal with deals. This even reflected with customers where they have started complaining about
non-response attitude of employees.
Gap of information needed and availability
Where there is gap between need and availability, problem starts rising. It goes with
information as well. For ex- When a staff needs information about new schemes but he doesn’t
get any from the seniors, he will fail to deal with customers. This is what exactly happening with
this organization. [Cosquer, F.J.,et.al2010]
The managers have limited access to the performance data and they are spending times in
solving the unanticipated matters. The only information they are getting is about the sales
figure of seminar but performance report of employees are either never reported or reported
late. As a result, many new seminars were cancelled and many clients were unattended.
Decision making from people other than management
In many situation, the staffs have to take decisions of his/her own to save the deal with client.
This is essential as the ground people knows the actual situation of the business. In this case,
the freedom was given to the ground staffs to prepare seminar presentations, use own
intellectual to deal with clients and use own strategy to make deal which all are positive but
these all are also driven by senior officials.
They are instructed to report only when they have created any substantial value. They have to
follow the work culture of organization to deal with clients. There were no such team effort to
approach a decision rather individual decision making prevails.
The top level officials are resistant to give any authority to the staffs to think about any new
approach. Even internal competition made the situation worse. Overall, it is reflecting the
autocratic culture towards decision making in a democratic environment.

o
Total Score- 4+4+3=11
Composite Risk Exposure Score
Categories Score
Performance pressure 5
Rate of expansion (business and employee) 4
Pressure of inexperience 4
Growth Exposure Score (A) 13
Reward to employee risk taking 3
Lack of support and resistance 5
Internal Competition 4
Culture Exposure Score (B) 12
Information flow and change management 4
Gap of information 4
Decision Autonomy 3
Information Management Exposure Score
(C)
11
A+B+C (Total Risk exposure Score) 36
Interpretation of Score
Information flow
and change
management
4
Gap of
information
4
Decision
Autonomy
3

According to the score bar set by Robert Simon, this score falls under the category of Danger
Zone (35-45 score). It means the properties Millionaire is now exposed to all these three
category of risks. The management and the CEO George have to take some serious actions to
overcome the issues immediately otherwise, the business will have to suffer huge loss in future
and even the situation of liquidation may come out.
Recommendations
Here are the points that George and his team need to take –
Pressure of performance-
 Don’t let the employee alone when they are facing trouble. The regional managers should
step forward to listen the queries. [Manuj, I.et.al2008]
 Motivate the underperformers and give adequate training to improve their level of
efficiency.
 Revise the compensation system.
 Make a team of employees to deal with clients to improve esprit de corps.
Expansion rate-
 Don’t compromise staffing guidelines rather give training to fresher to work as per need.
 Don’t go for further expansion, better focus on present clients to retain them. It will save
additional cost and loss.
Pressure of inexperience-
 Don’t let the inexperienced person to any key jobs, if assigned he or she should be guided
by a senior official.
Reward to employee risk taking-
 It is good to give reward for achievers but letting down the others is not a wise thing. The
organization should carry a job evaluation program to fix target for each staff to release
work pressure so that they can get the goal comfortably.

Executive resistance to bad news and change-
 Being a superior, you should represent leadership skill to your sub ordinates which is
missing here. They should lead the team by example. They need to hear the employees’
problem and also to sit with them to solve the issues. [Smallman, C., 1996]
 They need to involve employees in decision making process or goal setting to display equity.
Internal competition-
 The staff should be motivated to work as team not as individual achiever.
 They must not be encouraged to take business from other employees to get incentives
rather help them to get their business settled.
Transaction complexity and velocity-
 Install a strong MIS system with a central database system so that the flow of information
will be faster and will reach the concerned person in time.
 The performance report must be submitted on weekly basis apart from sales report and rest
to HR in a prescribed proforma. [Meulbroek, L., 2002]
 A prescribed guidelines must be sent to each and every staff regarding the work
procedures.
Information Gap-
 All the required information must be stored in the central database with CRM and PR
system implementation so that there won’t be gap in need and availability.
Decision Gap-
 It is good to see freedom in making presentation and approach to customer that should be
continued.
 The company also start involving ground staffs while setting any policy and scheme as they
know market closely.
 Sometimes “NO” leads to new ideas, thinking and behaviour for the benefit of business.

References
Added Value Solutions , 2001. downloads.ts-rc.co.u. [Online]
Available at: http://downloads.ts-rc.co.uk/ard/getdocument.asp?
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[Accessed 03 February 2018].
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DUMKE, D., 2011. How Risky is your company?. Supply Chain Risk Management , pp. 85-94.
Simon, R., 1999. How risky is your Company?. Harvard Business Review, pp. 2-12.
Cosquer, F.J., Marquet, B., MacIntosh, R.W., Leclerc, Y. and D'souza, S.D., Alcatel-Lucent SA,
2010. Communication network security risk exposure management systems and methods. U.S. Patent
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Manuj, I. and Mentzer, J.T., 2008. Global supply chain risk management. Journal of business
logistics, 29(1), pp.133-155.
Smallman, C., 1996. Risk and organizational behaviour: a research model. Disaster Prevention and
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Meulbroek, L., 2002. The promise and challenge of integrated risk management. Risk Management and
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