Question

SCENARIO

A new owner has just taken over a small walk-in-and-buy-by-the-slice pizza shop in a college town. They do not currently deliver.

There are presently 8 employees, three of whom are full-time and five of whom are part-time.

The shop is open 7 days a week from 11am to midnight.

The new owner believes there is a market niche available for late night pizza and would like to stay open each night until 4am. She wants to make the change as soon as possible.

EXERCISE

• Choose at least 3 ‘driving forces’ that substantiate in favor of the proposed change. For each, develop ideas on how it could be further increased or mobilized in support of the change.

• Choose at least 3 ‘resisting forces’ that substantiate against the proposed change. For each, develop ideas on how it could be reduced or turned into a driving force in support of the change to create positive impacts.

Answer 1

Three driving forces that favor the change are

Customer demand: the demand from the customers is a strong driver for any change. If there is enough customer demand then any business decision that supports it makes sense. In this regard, the new owner can promote the possibility of late night orders and may also conduct a short research to see if the customers will be interested.

Competition: if there are other competitors who are selling late night pizza in the nearby locality then it may be an indicator of possible market. It also puts the company at disadvantage if they do not match up to the service. Hence it is a strong driver for the change.

Resource availability: considering that there are already part time employees, and 8 employees for a small store, it is possible that they will be able to manage the resource required. Scheduling may be a challenge but with enough resource and demand this can make business sense.

Three resisting forces that are against the change are

Operational effort: making the change and opening a late night operation will result in additional operation effort. Addition of new shift, schedule, and effort will be required. This can disrupt the normal operation of the business and thus proposes a strong risk. However, in order to reduce this impact, a careful planning and change management practices can be used.

Overhead cost: since the store will be operating for extra hours, there will be additional cost. Cost for power, labor, etc. will add to the overhead cost and also maybe to the fixed cost component. This can be a challenge and unfortunately this cannot be turned into a driving force.

Safety concerns: there is always certain risk associated with late night operations. One of the main one is safety of the employees, customers, and others. Depending on the area where the store is located, there may be safety concerns. The only way to mitigate this is to take possible safety measures.