7-S Alignment

For the past few summers, I have been doing an internship as a wireless consultant at various wireless retail stores in New York. The business was owned by my cousin. After a few years of experience, last year I got the opportunity to take over one of his store and manage it. The store was doing horrible in terms of profit and he was losing tons of money every month. It was one of his smallest stores in Upper West-Side of Manhattan.

The store had two other employees as part time and he had recently fired the manager. Although back then I didn’t have the knowledge of the 7-S alignment but I was able to analyze the current situation of the store using some of the S’s. The first thing that came to my mind was what their strategy to run the business was. All my cousin cared was about profit, so the main strategy set for the store was to make money and as for the staffs was to complete their working hours. There was no incentive system set for the staffs to motivate them to generate more revenue. The structure of the store was not organized at all. Although they had a manager in the store working full time, everybody in the store was their own boss. No one was responsible to report to anyone regarding any matters. I clearly saw a culture issue in the store, as no one was there on time and they left the store whenever they wanted. I also found out the staff didn’t have the right skills to handle the customers. They did not complete the required trainings set by the wireless company and where not up-to-date on price plans and commission structure. They lacked detail knowledge about features of the newer models of phone. They were incompetent according to the standards set by the corporate office.

After taking over the store, I realized there was a lot to change. The first thing I did was I called a team meeting and made sure the owner was present there. In the meeting, I talked about all the incompetencies I saw in the store. First, I started with the strategy for the store. Keeping the owners best interest in mind, I set strategy such that everybody makes money in the process and the customers are best served. I asked the staffs to serve each and every customer politely and make sure that they leave the store happy. I was able to convince the owner to change the compensation system and structure it in such a way that everybody got a piece of profit. I knew that this will motivate the staffs to sell more and serve all customers resulting in higher revenue for the store. After we all agreed on the compensation, we then discussed the structure. The two staffs were made responsible to report to me and I was responsible to report to the owner. This was set as the channel of communication as well. We also set a minimum profit level for each sale and the staffs were responsible to take approval from me to make any sales under the threshold.

In the next few days, I made sure that all the required trainings were completed by the staffs and educated the staffs on the new model of phones and price plan. I also trained them on the commission structure so that they would be able to calculating profit on each sale. We as a team agreed to maintain a good working environment in the store and set a good culture. I made sure that everybody was punctual and responsible towards their job duty. The changes took couple of weeks to take place but at the end I had a competent staff who were motivated, had the right skill set and shared the same value.

I saw the misalignment in the store and unknowingly I was able to follow the 7-s alignment model to turn the store into profit. In my four months as a manager, I was able to change a lot in store and at the end the owner was making money and the staffs were making money. The employees say a huge increase in their pay check, which motivated them to work even harder and maintain the structure, system, culture and value of the store. They completed all the trainings in time and were all on top of their game. They served all customers properly and increased the reputation of the store. As a result we saw a huge increase in referrals and customer base.