Building effective business operations team in a start-up company an action research

• Main Author: Deato, Darwin F.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/5155
• Institution: De La Salle University

Sinag Company* is a start-up business that is engaged in the development of solar power projects. The company is initially composed of business operations team and technical team until it brached out to several teams as a result of the rapid growth of the business. Being one of the oldest existing teams, the business operations team is being burdened with almost all kinds of deliverables and the list of pending items is getting longer. Longer list of pending items will require team members to work overtime, thus causing stress and job burnout. Moreover, the huge workload may lead to project delay if one important regulatory requirement is not prioritized. This action research aims to address the workload issue of the business operations team. Dessler (2012) said that the first-line supervisors main aim is to make sure that each worker knows what to do and the traditional way to do this is through job description (p.152). He also explained the importance of having an organizational chart that shows the structure of the organization and the chain of command. Thus, the business operations team engaged in an action research that aims to formalize the team structure and job description through team development process. Collaboration with the business operations team was done throughout the action research cycle which involves constructing, planning action, taking action and evaluating action. After the second cycle of the action research, the team evaluated if the new structure and job description resolved the issue. Most of the tasks that are not directly related to business operations were successfully transferred to other teams without causing conflicts. By transferring easy yet time consuming tasks to other teams, the business operations team was able to focus on process improvement and development of new capabilities that create more value for the company.