Management Problems and Solutions for Launching New Products

This article discusses the people management problems faced by Jan in launching new products and provides steps to get the launch back on track. It covers topics such as workers' understanding of the company's vision, creating a pleasant working environment, challenging poor performance, and more.

Running head: MANAGEMENT 1
Business Management and strategic management.
Student’s name:
Name of the institution:
Date:

MANAGEMENT 2
Table of content.
Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................5
People management problems that possibly underprop the difficulties Jan is facing...................................5
Workers' understanding of the most significant contribution to the company's vision.............................5
Giving workers a reason for caring about their contribution....................................................................6
Creating a pleasant working environment for employees........................................................................6
Workers need not feel that they are set up to fail.....................................................................................6
Challenging poor performance and immoral conduct..............................................................................7
The feeling of being ignored or less appreciated by employees...............................................................7
Giving a clear understanding of the stake and what is to be done............................................................7
Steps Jan should take in the short and medium term to get the launch of new products back on track........8
Defining his target customers..................................................................................................................8
Plan on ways to reach the target consumers.............................................................................................8
Clearly, understand the issue you want to solve......................................................................................8
Clearly, understand the purchasing process.............................................................................................9
Protect your online uniqueness................................................................................................................9
Validate your produce.............................................................................................................................9
Identify the competition you have and differentiate from them.............................................................10
Ensure your idea has not been implemented before...............................................................................10
Create a product demo or a free trial......................................................................................................10
Develop a cumulative strategic plan......................................................................................................10
Get everyone to work as a team.............................................................................................................11
Develop brand voice strategies..............................................................................................................11
Test the product continuously................................................................................................................11
Discover the unknown...........................................................................................................................11
Clearly, understand yourself..................................................................................................................12
Plan your next version immediately......................................................................................................12
Leadership styles Jan should adopt............................................................................................................12
Democratic leadership method..............................................................................................................13

MANAGEMENT 3
Coaching leadership method..................................................................................................................13
Strategic leadership method...................................................................................................................13
Transformational leadership style..........................................................................................................14
Charismatic leadership method..............................................................................................................14
Laissez-faire leadership method............................................................................................................14
The support that might be needed at a deep level to help improve the situation........................................15
Develop marketing strategies for new products.....................................................................................15
Improve the management......................................................................................................................15
Get the essential production tools..........................................................................................................15
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................16
References.............................................................................................................................................17

MANAGEMENT 4
Introduction.
For an organization to be successful in launching a new product, there has to be teamwork where
the management and employees work together towards accomplishing the organizations’ goals.
The leader has to use the best leadership style for employees to feel motivated and appreciated
for better performance. Before launching any product, the management should be careful to
follow the launching steps for the product to be successful and penetrated the market. The
SweDigi manufacturing company is experiencing some problems where they have low
productivity, probably due to poor management.
People management problems that possibly underprop the difficulties Jan is facing.
Being a new manager, Jan, might have made several common mistakes that potentially underpin
the difficulties he is facing. Some of these issues include workers understanding of the most
significant contribution they can make to the company's vision, giving workers a reason for
caring about their participation. Creating a pleasant working environment for employees,
workers need not feel that they are set up to fail, challenging poor performance, and bad
behavior. Other issues include employees feeling ignored or less appreciated, a clear
understanding of the stake and what is to be done among many other management issues. Some
of the problems are discussed below.
Workers' understanding of the most significant contribution to the company's vision.
All workers have to understand the company's vision clearly and agree with it, so are they can
work towards achieving the company's goals. Evaluations of performance should be done based
on the organization's goals. The manager is responsible for breaking down the vision to a lower
and possible level. By doing so, the employees will understand how their work contributes to the

MANAGEMENT 5
company's goals, and they work step by step toward fulfilling the bigger picture of the company,
its consumers, and other audience. The workers at Jan’s company may not have a clear
understanding of the kind of contribution they should make to make the company successful
(Webb, 2017).
Giving workers a reason for caring about their contribution.
As a manager, you have to make your employees feel appreciated by showing them that you care
about their contributions and that they matter. Remuneration does not necessarily give workers a
reason to care about their contributions. The manager must, therefore, find out the kind of reward
the worker needs and understand what motivates his employees to be more productive. The
manager should as well participate in doing the work to inspire the subordinates and possess
excellent communication skills to maintain a good relationship with the workers. Jan may not
have been successful in encouraging his employees or making them feel appreciated; hence, they
might not be motivated to work (Petronio, 2015).
Creating a pleasant working environment for employees.
A pleasant working environment nurtures the character you desire from your employees.
Different groups of workers have, unlike needs. For instance, a group that is mainly C's will
appreciate challenges more rather than individual recognition. On the other hand, an S team will
understand the structure that may support and balances work-life more. The manager is therefore
responsible for identifying what his group appreciates most and create the best working
environment for them to be more productive. Jan should understand his employees better and
create the best working environment for them if he wants the company to succeed (Taylor,
Doherty & McGraw, 2015).

MANAGEMENT 6
Workers need not feel that they are set up to fail.
Employees feel demotivated if they feel as if they are set up to fail; nobody wants to work hard
for failure. Therefore as a manager, you have the responsibility of finding out what your workers
view as a failure, provide the necessary resources for them. Avoid getting into their way while
working as well as changing rules more often to avoid confusion during work. Your employees
should also be aware of how you will handle failure in case it occurs. You should be lenient
enough when handling failure cases to avoid too much pressure but be strict enough to prevent
its occurrence. Since the company has already failed for the first time, the employees might have
a feeling of failure despite the new strategies which may discourage them from working harder
(Hayes, 2018).
Challenging poor performance and immoral conduct.
If poor performance and bad behavior from some workers are not challenged, the other workers
feel demotivated who are working hard towards achieving the organization's goals. They no
longer fear facing punishments because even the ones who have had misconducts are not
punished. As a manager in charge, you should ensure that employees clearly understand the
consequences of conduct and poor performance as well as the rewards of excellent performance
and ethical behavior. Jan, as a manager, have the responsibility to model both sides.
The feeling of being ignored or less appreciated by employees.
Workers work best when they feel that their manager appreciates them and pays attention to their
needs. It is, therefore, the responsibility of the manager to understand the kind of care that
motivates each employee or groups of workers, understand their needs at a personal level as well
as the causes of their behaviors and preferences. By doing so, your employees will feel
recognized and will be more motivated to work harder toward the success of the project. Jan

MANAGEMENT 7
should, therefore, purpose to appreciate all the employees to get better results (Child, & Lu,
2018).
Giving a clear understanding of the stake and what is to be done.
Everybody in the company should very well understand the company's goals, and its brand
promise, the marketplace, competitive advantage, and the environment in which it is operating.
A new manager, you should be in a position to tell about the background of the company, its core
values, and where it will be in the future. The manager should also help the workers understand
the reason for existence and future goals of the company. This role may be difficult to new
managers who do not have a better understanding of the company and thus causing people
management problems, just as in the case of Jan (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart & Wright, 2017).
Steps Jan should take in the short and medium term to get the launch of new products back on
track.
To launch and make the new products a success, here are some of the short and medium term
steps that Jan should take.
Defining his target customers.
Jan should have a clear understanding of his target consumers. This is important because one
group of consumer differ with the other in terms of preferences, channels used for
communication and information. He should clearly define his consumers to get the right
direction of marketing and develop strategies for meeting the customer's expectations (Taran,
Boer & Lindgren, 2015).

MANAGEMENT 8
Plan on ways to reach the target consumers.
Having clearly understood your customers, plan on how to reach them effectively. Know how to
get to them, when the best time to reach them is and which the fittest place to reach them is.
Make a marketing plan that accommodates all those factors so that it will be easier to contact
them and turn them into loyal customers.
Clearly, understand the issue you want to solve.
Understand deeply the challenge being faced or that which you intend to solve, who it is
affecting. This is important to help you remain focused on the reason for doing what you are
doing. Discuss and test it with your employees. This will help you know what you want to
accomplish in meeting the unsatisfied need (Srai, Badman, Krumme, Futran, & Johnston, 2015).
Clearly, understand the purchasing process.
The customer's purchasing process makes the basis for sales and marketing activities. To launch
a new product successfully, you must clearly understand the consumer's pain points, their source
of information, what influences their purchasing behavior, and some of the events that may
trigger them to buy. Different customers have different expectations depending on the reason for
purchasing the product, and that determines the kind of relationship they will develop (Larsen,
2017).
Protect your online uniqueness.
Nowadays, many cyber squatters try to mislead customers who have not secured their field
name, trademark, and their accounts of social media, among other issues. It is essential to ensure
all of them before launching any product anywhere. Your field name, together with other
necessary marketing vehicles, could be alleged on high prices and hiring lawyers is equally
expensive.

MANAGEMENT 9
Validate your produce.
Purpose to make sales and earn your first income employing validation of building the product
even before building it. If customers seem not to be pleased and are not purchasing it, there are
high chances that they will also not buy it when it comes to existence. The simplest way to do
this is to create a page where you run ads and see if there any customers interested in purchasing
it if there are, you can go ahead and build your product (Comuzzi & Patel, 2016).
Identify the competition you have and differentiate from them.
Identify all your competitors and other upcoming potential competitors, their method of
production, marketing plans, and other issues that makes them have a better competitive
advantage over you. After identifying all these issues, make ways that make your product unique
from theirs, which your customers will identify with. Purpose to meet the unsatisfied needs of
the customers, give quality to your customers and develop a good relationship with them, and
this gives you a higher competitive edge.
Ensure your idea has not been implemented before.
Many people seek to copy what has been done by others and proven to be successful failing to
understand that it might not be as successful as it was to the original person. It is therefore
essential to research your market keenly and identify other products that may be similar to yours.
Even when your idea is good but has been done before, it could be not given high returns (Karhu,
Ritala & Viola, 2016).
Create a product demo or a free trial.
A product demo is crucial for your product because it gives you feedback and correct possible
mistakes before the product is launched officially. Potential customers are also well introduced to

MANAGEMENT
10
the product, and you can know if your product meets their expectations, and thus you can
determine if it will be successful or it will fail (Tan & Zhan, 2017).
Develop a cumulative strategic plan.
All new products involve a thorough and deliberate strategic-planning before it is introduced to
the market. This consists in evaluating its target market, competition, the predicted return on
investment, SWOT analysis, measuring its success and developing an appropriate
communication plan (Luo, Liu, Yang, Maksimov & Hou, 2015).
Get everyone to work as a team.
To ensure that your product is a success, you have to ensure that all departments and workers
work together to ensure that their customers get the best and quality products. As a manager, you
should ensure that everybody clearly understands the goals and objectives of the organization
and that they all work together towards achieving long-term success (Lopez-Vega &
Vanhaverbeke, 2016).
Develop brand voice strategies.
After coming up with a perfect brand, you have to come up with strategies to develop a loud
brand voice. Before entering the market, you should have a clear understanding of what you
intend to do, your target customers, and the way you intend to get them. Consistency is essential
for the success of a brand. Therefore, teamwork is required when broadcasting your brand
(Candi, van den Ende & Gemser, 2016).
Test the product continuously.
To launch a new product and it being successful is not simple, it should be tested continuously
till it breaks and test it more after that. Getting the feedback will help in delivering what the

MANAGEMENT
11
customers expect and achieve your intended goals. You also need to assemble all your marketing
tools, such as landing pages, social media, among others.
Discover the unknown.
Launching a new product means you are good at something, but that doesn't mean that you know
it all. Before starting your product, understand the challenges you might face. You should be
careful as even where there is a rapid success. You may also fail drastically if you are solving
issues that you do not clearly understand. You need to outsource skills you need immediately
you take off and in the process when you discover something new that can help your product be
more successful (Wowak, Craighead, Ketchen & Hult, 2016).
Clearly, understand yourself.
Understand yourself such that you can get tell your story to anybody such as the media, potential
customers, brands you can partner with among others. You must be in a position to explain who
you are, what you are doing, and the reason for doing it, what motivated you to do it. Help your
employees understand the story as well so as they can also narrate the same across digital
channels (Csaszar & Levinthal, 2016).
Plan your next version immediately.
Taking too much time trying to perfect the products may lead to failure, after launching it, start
planning on the next version. Put into consideration the customers' feedback, accept mistakes,
and correct them. By doing so, you gain customer's loyalty as well as improving your
innovativeness through listening and responding to customers' feedback (Barringer, 2015).

MANAGEMENT
12
Leadership styles Jan should adopt.
Jan is expected to show his leadership abilities at one point or another at the organization. Being
the new CEO he is powerful and rather influential because the people have to obey what he
orders, he should be capable of leading the whole team towards the right direction, acting as a
role model. There are some leadership styles that Jan can adopt to improve the situation in the
organization at this hard moment. Some of the leadership methods that he could use are
discussed below.
Democratic leadership method.
This is the kind of leadership where the manager involves workers in decision making that
includes the activities of the organization. This kind of leadership has an active two-way
communication. It’s also referred to as participative leadership. It is the best type of leadership
where the leader is required to be competent, considerate, creative, and intelligent. Jan should
adopt this kind of leadership where he will involve his employees in making decisions, this way
they will feel appreciated and they will support each other’s which will make the company more
successful
(Brisson-Banks, 2009).
Coaching leadership method.
Coaching leadership is a style that is neither direct nor indirect method of administration where
managers teach and supervise their employees. It's a modern method of leadership which is being
adopted by many organizations. By taking this kind of leadership, Jan will motivate his
employees to work harder as well as boost their competences and performance (Kotter, 1995).

MANAGEMENT
13
Strategic leadership method.
Strategic leadership involves influencing other people to voluntary make decisions which
enhance prospects for the long-term success of the organization. That is the leader persuades the
workers by expressing the organization's strategic vision. By adopting this type of leadership
method, Jan will create to develop a group whose members are well trained and equipped to
react to risks and threats. He would also generate more leaders by implementing strategic
leadership method (Frankel, 2019).
Transformational leadership style.
Transformational leadership method is one of the best leadership styles, which involves creating
an influential working culture by communicating effectively to the team members. Nevertheless,
it requires a specific level of tactical vision and intelligence inspiration to initiate personal
change as well as other people in the organization. Leaders who use this kind of leadership set
challenging targets for the group to accomplish extraordinary results. Jan will focus on aiming at
higher goals and work together with his employees to achieve them in time if he adopts the
transformational leadership method (Carnall and Coin, 2007).
Charismatic leadership method.
Leaders using charismatic leadership method attracts people automatically with their charisma;
they are generally passionate, confident, and self-motivated. This kind of leadership does not
embrace working as a team. If Jan adopts this kind of leadership method, he can build a strong
market base and attract more consumers and employees to follow him because of his healthy
self-image (Schein, 2002).

MANAGEMENT
14
Laissez-faire leadership method.
Laissez-faire is a French word that means let-it-be when translated to English. In this type of
leadership, leaders assign responsibilities and duties to employees and give them the freedom to
work with little or no supervision. If Jan adopts this kind of leadership, he will provide a chance
of employees being more innovative, the employees are self-motivated, experienced, and require
little or no supervision and hence become more creative. Workers give the best of their abilities
when they are encouraged to grind independently rather than being ordered on what to do
(Nawaz & Khan 2016).
The support that might be needed at a deep level to help improve the situation.
The SweDigi manufacturing company is experiencing a problem in management and product
failure. Here are some of the things they can do to save the situation.
Develop marketing strategies for new products.
The organization surveys the customers to identify the customers who need their products and
their preferences. After identifying potential customers, they can then develop a marketing plan
that suits their target customers. This is to make known to the customers the existence of their
product and the advantage of their products over those of their competitors. They can as well
develop new markets to increase their number of sales annually (Chernev, 2015).
Improve the management
Jan is the CEO of the organization, should consider changing the management style and use the
participative kind of control rather than the dictatorship. This way, the employees will feel
appreciated and part of the organization and hence will reduce the employee turnover as well as
increase productivity. Employees give their best when they are involved in the decision making

MANAGEMENT
15
of matters that affect their work. They become more innovative and creative if they are left to
work on their own, unlike where there is too much supervision when they only work to please
the leader and hence poor performance (Bridges, 2009).
Get the essential production tools.
To produce quality products, you have to purchase all the required equipment to facilitate
production. With the necessary tools, there is increase production rate and at a lower price. There
is no too much waste experienced during production, and the organization also has an advantage
of economies of scale that automatically increase profit margins. The organization is also able to
cope with competition effectively (Rüßmann el at.2015).
Conclusion.
In conclusion, Jan the new CEO of SweDigi company is experiencing difficulties because of
some people management issues he is having such as creating a pleasant working environment,
workers feeling unappreciated, giving workers a reason to contribute, challenging poor
performance, employees feeling like they are set up to fail among other problems. To launch the
new failed product successfully, Jan has to follow some steps as explained above. Jan should
also consider having adopted some leadership styles that are more participative to ensure that
they work together with workers as a team. Some of these leadership methods include strategic,
charismatic, democratic, coaching, transformational, and laissez-faire leadership methods. The
organization should as well consider developing a good marketing plan, purchasing the
necessary production tools, and improving the management to save the situation the company is
in (Yahaya & Ebrahim, 2016).

MANAGEMENT
16
References.
Barringer, B. R., (2015). Entrepreneurship: Successfully launching new ventures. Pearson
Education, India.
Bridges, W. (2009). Managing transitions: Making the most of change. Da Capo press.
Brisson-Banks, C.V. (2009). Managing change and Tranitions: A comparison of different
Models and Their commonalities. Library management, 31 (4/5),241-252.
Candi, M., van den Ende, J., & Gemser, G. (2016). Benefits of customer codevelopment of new
products: The moderating effects of utilitarian and hedonic radicalness. Journal of
Product Innovation Management, 33(4), 418-434.
Carnall, Coin A. (2007). Managing change in organizations. Pearson Education.
Chernev, A., (2015). The marketing plan handbook. Cerebellum Press.
Child, J., & Lu, Y. (2018). Management Issues in China: Volume 2: International Enterprises.
Routledge.
Comuzzi, M., & Patel, A. (2016). How organisations leverage big data: A maturity
model. Industrial management & Data systems, 116(8), 1468-1492.

MANAGEMENT
17
Csaszar, F. A., & Levinthal, D. A. (2016). Mental representation and the discovery of new
strategies. Strategic Management Journal, 37(10), 2031-2049.
Frankel, A., & PGCMS, R., (2019). What leadership styles should senior nurses
develop?. Mental health, 12, 50.
Hayes, J. (2018). The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave.
Karhu, P., Ritala, P., & Viola, L. (2016). How do ambidextrous teams create new products?
Cognitive ambidexterity, analogies, and new product creation. Knowledge and Process
Management, 23(1), 3-17.
Kotter, J.P. (1995). Leading change: why Transformation Efforts Fail. Harvard Business Review,
(73)2, 59-67.
Larsen, H. H., (2017). Key issues in training and development. In Policy and practice in
European human resource management (pp. 107-121). Routledge.
Lopez-Vega, H., Tell, F., & Vanhaverbeke, W. (2016). Where and how to search? Search paths
in open innovation. Research Policy, 45(1), 125-136.
Luo, Y., Liu, Y., Yang, Q., Maksimov, V., & Hou, J. (2015). Improving performance and
reducing cost in buyer–supplier relationships: The role of justice in curtailing
opportunism. Journal of Business Research, 68(3), 607-615.
Nawaz, Z. A. K. D. A., & Khan_ PhD, I. (2016). Leadership theories and styles: A literature
review. Leadership, 16, 1-7.

MANAGEMENT
18
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource
management: Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill
Education.
Petronio, S. (2015). Communication privacy management theory. The international
encyclopedia of interpersonal communication, 1-9.
Rüßmann, M., Lorenz, M., Gerbert, P., Waldner, M., Justus, J., Engel, P., & Harnisch, M.
(2015). Industry 4.0: The future of productivity and growth in manufacturing
industries. Boston Consulting Group, 9(1), 54-89.
Schein, E. (2002). The Anxiety of Learning. Harvard business Review, 80(3), 100-106.
Srai, J. S., Badman, C., Krumme, M., Futran, M., & Johnston, C. (2015). Future supply chains
enabled by continuous processing—Opportunities and challenges. May 20–21, 2014
Continuous Manufacturing Symposium. Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, 104(3),
840-849.
Tan, K. H., & Zhan, Y. (2017). Improving new product development using big data: a case study
of an electronics company. R&D Management, 47(4), 570-582.
Taran, Y., Boer, H., & Lindgren, P. (2015). A business model innovation typology. Decision
Sciences, 46(2), 301-331.
Taylor, T., Doherty, A., & McGraw, P. (2015). Managing people in sport organizations: A
strategic human resource management perspective. Routledge.
Webb, S. P., (2017). Knowledge management: Linchpin of change. Routledge.

MANAGEMENT
19
Wowak, K. D., Craighead, C. W., Ketchen Jr, D. J., & Hult, G. T. M. (2016). Toward a
“theoretical toolbox” for the supplier‐enabled fuzzy front end of the new product
development process. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 52(1), 66-81.
Yahaya, R., & Ebrahim, F., (2016). Leadership styles and organizational commitment: literature
review. Journal of Management Development, 35(2), 190-216.