5. Troubleshooting
Sometimes companies realize that they are not achieving their goals or objectives effectively, that is, they are not getting the results they need. Each manager shouldn’t avoid problems, but should deal with it. He or she should look at the problem as an opportunity – to learn something or to achieve something.
Troubleshooting is a form of problem solving most often applied to repair of failed products or processes. It is a logical, systematic search for the source of a problem so that it can be solved, and so the product or process can be made operational again. Troubleshooting is needed to develop and maintain complex systems where the symptoms of a problem can have many possible causes. The main rule of the troubleshooting is to think ahead to prevent problems.
Troubleshooting itself is a very wide notion, and the concrete description of one depends on the different situations and goals the troubleshooting aimed on. Most of all they say about troubleshooting in the work of the Company, management and teamwork, but it can be very successful in the personal planning and development as well. At the present moment many approaches, schemes and methods of troubleshooting have been created, but it is possible to appoint on the common features of one. And there are three the most universal approaches to the troubleshooting in general.
The first is effective planning. It is a very important point, although many Companies and persons separately don’t pay enough attention on it. Business is competitive in terms of time and money. Problems can cost money and waste time. At the beginning of the project often people don’t plan effectively. Planning helps to make sure that everybody understands his role. In a project everybody should make sure that they ask right questions and anticipate problems. It’s important that a project team communicates well. Manager should try to have a democratic spirit in a project. In order to avoid problems he or she should be realistic about the number of people working on the project, the cost and the size of the project.
The second approach is Smart-control. It means that after planning it should be ready a list of purposes which will going to get, and each one has to be carefully smart-analyzed to be successfully achievable. Smart-control is a very affective with reference to separated aims, without any connection with the planned ones as well.
Finally it is very important to make a SWOT-analysis of your goals and activities. A SWOT-analysis can be useful, that is, an analysis of the company strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) and also of the opportunities (O) and threats (T) that face the company. We can look at some example of SWOT-analysis. So that is Nike’s analysis. The strengths of this firm are: Nike is a globally recognized, it’s a competitive organisation, it has a strong sense of marketing campaign by sponsoring top athletes and so on. Let’s see the weaknesses: reduction of target market, reliant on retailers. The opportunities are: internet commerce, new markets, product diversification. The main threats are: competition, fashion trends, copying of intellectual property, and bad press associated with Nike.
In this case they have to re-plan their strategy. It can be useful to get an outsider, e.g. a management consultant, to analyze the company’s performance and recommended changes to make it more efficient.