Company: FlexStep by

human relations management

noahweigand — 2025-01-22 20:43:28 UTC

We chose for human relations management because if we make sure to have a positive work environment for our employees, it will have a positive effect on our costumers.

What kind of environment will your shoe company have?

noahweigand — 2025-01-29 20:06:00 UTC

The atmosphere at our shoe firm will be creative and innovative, with a constant focus on new trends. It will be a dynamic, fast-paced environment that fosters creativity, collaboration, teamwork, and a love for fashion.

How will this affect your decision-making (uncertainty?) ?

noahweigand — 2025-01-29 20:20:19 UTC

Decision-Making under Pressure for our Employees/Team
We need to have a lot of trust and a good communication
Greater Employee Engagement: they are more likely to be engaged and motivated

For us als manager:

Flexibility over Long-Term Commitments
Data-Driven Decisions: monitor market trends, feedback from the customer
Test Purchases: Assess customer response first, then increase orders if successful to save costs

What components of the general environment will you need to investigate and keep current? Why?

noahweigand — 2025-01-29 20:24:14 UTC

−Economy

−Technological trends

−Sociocultural trends

- Political/legal trends that indirectly affect all organizations

What strategy for monitoring customers will you use?

noahweigand — 2025-01-29 20:24:26 UTC

We will be using the proactive strategy, this means identifying and addressing customer needs, trends, and issues before they occur. We think this will be the best strategy for us, as we want to be successful as a business all the time and fixing problems before they occur, instead of after they occur and running behind the facts.

Mission Statement:

georgwissler — 2025-02-04 05:32:53 UTC

Our mission is to produce stylish, high-quality shoes that follow the newest trends in fashion. Our goal is to provide young people with comfortable, fashionable footwear that makes them feel confident. We ensure that our clients receive the newest and greatest designs by consistently staying ahead of trends.

Values & Culture

georgwissler — 2025-02-04 05:36:26 UTC

We support innovation, creativity, and a dynamic culture that follows to current trends. To introduce fashionable and new shoes to the market, our team works with passion and together. Our key concerns are client satisfaction, quality, and a strong bond with our customer.

How will you address ethics and compliance in your company?

georgwissler — 2025-02-05 20:04:32 UTC

We will use sustainable resources and collaborate with ethical suppliers to guarantee fair and ethical production. In addition to promoting openness, equity, and respect in the workplace, our organization will abide by all industry regulations. Honesty and accountability are important to us in order to gain the trust of our clients and staff.

What components will you put in place to prevent and address ethical issues?

georgwissler — 2025-02-05 20:04:52 UTC

Clear ethical standards will be established, and our staff will receive frequent training on ethical business operations. Compliance with labor and sustainability requirements will be guaranteed by routine audits and supplier inspections. Employees and clients can voice problems through an open communication system, guaranteeing accountability and openness.

Smart Goals:

djordylefevere — 2025-02-10 20:42:02 UTC

proximal goal:

We want to have all our employees trained in the next 3 months so that we have even more expertise in our shoe business and customers feel professionally advised.

distal goal:

We want to set the new trends in the shoe business and want to have a big influence on the shoe marke. That shows off with our followers on social media. We want to grow a community with more than 100 k followers on instagram and TikTok.

SWOT

georgwissler — 2025-02-17 20:27:15 UTC

Strategy: Growth Strategy

Strengths:

trend-focused fast-fashion for young customers
new fashion trends
creative and innovative team

Weaknesses:

high competition
dependent on fast changing trends
being always up-to-date

Opportunities:

collaborations with influencers and fashion brands
social media is booming
expanding awareness with viral post on social media platforms

Threats:

fast changing customer preferences
supply chain can impact and delay our production and delivery
trends are moving fast, if we don't follow up quick enough, we lose customers

Logo

georgwissler — 2025-02-17 20:38:33 UTC

FlexStep

10% decline in sales, what we are doing?

georgwissler — 2025-02-24 20:33:53 UTC

We are following a 3 step method: Analyze, new strategy, investment

Analyze: we are scheduling a meeting with the whole team and every department presents, what went good and where were difficulties in the fast 3 months. We want to identify why our sales declined by 10%.
setting up a new strategy: after we identified what went wrong, we are building up a new strategy which avoid the mistakes we did and improves our team.
Investment: to get back on track of our sales, we are investing in advertising and in the production with a higher quality. We want to gain our costumers back.

Global Expansion

noahweigand — 2025-03-03 19:56:08 UTC

We want to expand globally to grow our market, increase brand awareness, and boost sales. By working with famous people from around the world, especially in countries like Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, the UK, and the US, we can promote our shoes and attract more customers, helping us earn more money. We have spotted market gaps in these countries because the competition is usually slower to react than us. This gives us a big advantage, allowing us to move faster on trends and customer needs. We also plan to open local branches in these countries to strengthen our presence. Working with famous personalities will also help us attract talented employees, grow our team, and improve our business.

Adaptive and Teamwork Activity

georgwissler — 2025-03-19 17:20:31 UTC

Our customer service team is 3 people short, due to a recent virus.

How do we organize a situation like this:

We can place other employees in that position, because we have a monthly rotation, so everyone in our team is able to work in every position.

How can we prevent situations like this:

We want to continue with our job-rotation-strategy, so everyone can be replaced. Additionally, we want to support home office and separate the team in more offices. The benefit of that is, that a sick person will not infect the whole team. Another thing that we want to improve is our air quality in the offices. Especially in winter, it is important to have a air circulation, so that viruses are being stopped

Human Resource Activity

nowei1703 — 2025-03-26 23:05:14 UTC

Given the 40% turnover in the design team and the fact that we have had a new team leader for 90 days, we need to take important steps to reach our goal faster. First, we should find out the reasons for the high turnover and understand how important these employees were to the team. What positions need to be filled, and what skills are missing? Next, we should set clear team goals and discuss and communicate them with the team. It's also important that we look for new employees who are a good fit for our company, Flex Step. Our team leader needs ongoing training to learn how to lead the team well and make sure employees feel comfortable and motivated. The team leader must also closely watch which employees are making valuable contributions and are essential for the team. Employees who don’t fit in or cause problems should be identified and removed quickly. With these actions, we will get closer to our goal of having a more stable and productive team.

Textbook Chapter 1

Cite: A Guide for new Managers: Six Steps to become a Successful Manager by Ed Muzio

Motivation and Leadership

georgwissler — 2025-04-07 19:44:51 UTC

Motivation: Goal-Setting Theory

Leadership: Transformational Leadership Style

We chose the Goal-Setting Theory (Chapter 13, slide 31) because it boosts motivation and performance. With setting Smart-Goals we can track the progress stay accountable.

The Transformational Leadership Style (Chapter 14, slide 28) is a good fit for us, because we support our employees and create a strong team mentality where everyone belong to. We also want our employees to grow personally and improver their performance.

Bonus Padlet

djordylefevere — 2025-04-14 16:29:46 UTC

If we suspect a hacking, the first priority will be to get it fixed and get the control over our systems back completely. After that we will take extra security precautions to prevent this incident from happening again in the future.

Now that we are able to operate safely again, the most important thing is to control and fix as much damage as possible. This includes communication to our customers what incident happened and that we fixed it and have everything under control, ensuring our customers that they will still receive their orders, and if needed we could consider giving out discounts to customers who got affected negatively.

Overall, our first priority would be to get the control over our company and operations back, and after that to make sure our customers are informed and taken care of.

Control

djordylefevere — 2025-04-16 19:51:39 UTC

The first indicator that we will monitor to ensure success is innovation&learning, because we want our company to keep up with the newest trends and innovations so we can develop our products based on that, this way we have a good chance to be popular within majority of our customer base.

The second indicator we will monitor is internal operations. We think this is important because we want to ensure that our company keeps running smoothly and efficiently. This improves employee morale, quality and productivity of our company, which all benefit our organization majorly.

We will also try to monitor and manage the finances and customers indicators well, because we believe it’s important to have a balanced scorecard to be the best we can as a company. But innovation and learning, and internal operations have our priorities.