Alignment and the 7 S's

I recently did an internship with an accounting firm. My experience was great, and I accepted a full-time offer. The company is doing well and employees are overall very satisfied. I mention this because I do not intend to speak ill of the company with this post. This assignment requires me to identify a misalignment in the company, and I did identify one on my internship. The company preaches work-life balance, but there is no time and no way that this can be accomplished during busy season. The company makes up for it by providing additional benefits during the slower times of the year, but there is a misalignment between the work-life balance due to the nature and requirements of the business.

This is extremely difficult for married employees because a large portion of the employees are young and single. They are able to work a lot of hours and don't have a wife/kids at home. Because of the different types of employees, some employees are not understanding of married employees that would like to get home to their families. They like to take longer lunches, come in late, and head home late at night. As mentioned earlier, this can be very difficult at times for other employees and causes some professionals to leave.

The Value Curve

After talking about the Value Curve in class and how Cirque de Soleil was able to create a new market and add more value to potential customers, I tried to think of other companies that had been able to do the same thing. The first thought that came to my mind was the movie rental industry. Blockbuster used to be a powerhouse in the movie rental industry. They provided their customers the opportunity to watch a movie without purchasing it and had stores in convenient locations.

Blockbuster enjoyed this dominance until Netflix found a way to create a new market and still much of Blockbuster's business. Netflix took the convenience and luxury of Blockbuster and increased it. Customers no longer had to leave their homes to rent a movie. They could request it online and it would come in the mail. Netflix added even more value to customers when it created the streaming option.

We are now seeing another shift and the creation of a market where videos are no longer shipped; rather, they are simply streamed. The inability of Netflix to provide customers with a wide variety of videos to stream has allowed other companies such as Hulu or Amazon to sneak into the market. It is only a matter of time before another company finds a way to create a new market or find ways to add value to a customer's experience.