Organizational Strategy & Crises

This week in our Crises Communication class we are discussing intended strategies and realized strategies. Once a company decides what the intended strategy is, they then research the realized strategy. Ever since 1837 Tiffany & Co. has been a premier jeweler for America and has only expanded. After implementing the intended strategy a company always has other issues they need to deal with, which we call the realized strategy which is usually a result of the organization or the environment.

Organizational strategies can be divided into two separate categories either Corporate or a Business Competitive level strategy. While analyzing Tiffany & Co. I did this with the Business or Competitive strategy because it focuses on whom the biggest competition is and most importantly who are there customers as well as how are we going to treat these customers with the utmost respect. In this strategic approach a business is directed to use a generic approach. In the generic approach a company is supposed to emphasize the distinctive set of resources that they will be able to offer their customer base.

After putting the entire strategy together a company must always control what is going on within their organization. In this process the company must really look at all internal factors. They must then evaluate the performance of the organization so that it can be compared after the strategy is implemented. These factors will in turn help them to measure the success of their company both quantitatively and qualitatively. They then should take control where necessary.

The book then encourages that it is necessary to accurately access the performance of the company early so that they can identify any warning signs of a potential crises. For instance, we could say that Tiffany & Co. was having a lot of returns because the clasp on a certain piece of jewelry was continuing to break. They could then go back in the production line of that specific piece and see where the problem may have originated.

If a company continues to access the entire organization it could really help them in avoiding a crises. By coming up with a strategy and then accessing the realized strategy a company can be a step ahead of others by being aware of what is going on in the entire business. If Tiffany & Co. continues to be alert of their main competitors and employees they will continue to have a very smooth running business.

Crisis Management Team and Plan

In chapter 5 it focuses on the importance of having a Crisis Management Team (CMT). It stresses that you must put a team together before a crisis takes place so that they are able to make some plans for potential crises. The team should be composed of at least eight people in different areas of the organization. For Tiffany & Co. it would be composed of the CEO, Michael Kowalski, a member of the Human Resource team, Victoria Berger (President of Global HR), the finance director Patrick McGuiness, as well as the head of security. Without a doubt they will need more than one Public Relations consultant, a legal counsel, and some organizations may have professional crisis consultants. The CMT at Tiffany & Co. would probably be much larger than many organizations because I feel that as a result of them being a worldwide retailer they should have many different people on the team so that all threats are planned for accurately.

The goals of the team are to identify any threats the organization may be facing, for instance for Tiffany & Co. a threat could be any current competitors or threat of new competitors. They then must develop a crisis management plan based on whichever threats they feel are relevant at this time or could become major issues in the coming months. They then must train the team and the organization itself in the case that a crisis does take place and how they will manage it if it does happen. After a crisis occurs the team is still not done working they must evaluate the crisis and see what they can learn from it as well as what they may need to change for the next time when dealing with a crisis.

I have already listed a few potential crises that may occur for Tiffany & Co., those would be some examples of threats they could use as potential problems. They could then order these in importance and begin to make some plans on how to handle these issues if they become major crises. A major point in the crisis management plan is to train the team and employees how to handle a crisis if it were to occur. It is recommended that the CMT runs a few mock disasters in order to train its employees. For instance Tiffany & Co. has stores all over the world and although it would be a huge process but at least one member from the team should somehow visit each store so they can accurately prepare everyone for a crisis.

This week in our Crisis Communication class we are talking about strategic planning and how to assess the vulnerability of the crisis. No matter what the organization or company is they need to always be prepared in the case that a crisis may occur. They need to understand where the crisis could originate from and they need to plan ahead to make sure that when it becomes public they know how they will handle it or better yet how they will prevent it from ever happening. If the company has a crisis management team then they can be aware of what is going on both internally and externally so they can do all they can to avoid the crisis.

There is a strategic way to approach the prevention of a crisis that can be summarized in five steps. You need to begin with analyzing the external threats and the internal vulnerabilities. The team should then formulate a strategy after deciding what the most important things are in the internal and external environment. Then they must execute the strategy and finally control it.

Tiffany & Co. sells luxury goods and does mining all over the world. With America becoming such an environmentally friendly place I feel that Tiffany & Co. should be prepared for any issues that may arise from what they are doing because they could be very vulnerable to an issue of this nature. Although Tiffany & Co. is known to be socially responsible I feel that at any point this could be a problem because slowly but surely the earth’s resources are diminishing. Many people may look at the mining for luxury goods as a negative thing.

A crisis management team should be prepared to be able to back up Tiffany & Co. and the work they need to do to produce their products. There have been some disputes about mining for Jewelry companies and the CEO of Tiffany’s was quick to back up how responsible Tiffany & Co. is when it comes to mining!

This week in my Crisis Management class we are learning about crisis that occur because of the external environment. These crisis include Political issues, Economic Forces, Social Forces, and Technological Forces. When researching Tiffany & Co. I feel that Economic Forces could lead to the biggest crisis for them. Some things that fall into the Economic Forces category is interest rates, inflation, and exchange rates. Exchange rates may end up to be a crisis for Tiffany & Co. because they are an international company and have customers all over the world. The exchange rates fluctuate often and they need to make sure they are always accurate with pricing. Another crisis they can run into is the economic issues that customers may have. If the economy is not doing well they will not spend money on luxury goods such as jewelry. Tiffany & Co. needs to be conscience of these issues so that when they do become a problem they are ready to deal with it before it becomes a major crisis.