WMBA 6882 Week 9 District Manager Change Brief Example

Memorandum

To: District Manager, West Region (Hays, Salina, Hutchinson, Great Bend, Garden City and Dodge City)

From: Director of Store Operations

Date: September 12, 2028

Re: Your stores' conversion to computer-generated ordering: your week, your relief and the target that may slip

The Change in One Paragraph

All six of your stores convert from the weekly hand-written hardgoods order to computer-generated ordering this fall. Hays, Salina and Hutchinson are in wave one, with training and parallel running from October 20 to November 16. Great Bend, Garden City and Dodge City are in wave two, from November 17 to December 15. Your forty-eight department leads will spend about six hours each in training and will run both methods side by side for four weeks. By December 22, every store in your region should have its old handhelds retired.

What Changes in Your Week

Today your typical week has eight store visits, a Thursday audit at one store, two calls with store managers and the regional call on Mondays. From October 16 to December 22, it changes as follows.

Store visits drop from eight to five a week. Of the five, at least three must be at stores in parallel running, where your job is to watch leads use the review screen, not to audit the store. The pilot showed that leads trusted the new orders sooner when a manager they knew sat with them through the first review.

The Thursday audit moves to every other Thursday and covers only safety and cash, not planogram compliance. Planogram compliance audits are paused for the quarter.

You gain one standing call: fifteen minutes on Tuesday mornings with the inventory analytics manager to review each converting store's in-stock rate and lead edits.

What Comes Off Your Plate

Three things are removed or reduced until December 31:

First, planogram compliance audits are paused, as above, which frees about four hours a week.

Second, the fourth-quarter loyalty sign-up target for your stores is suspended. Store managers will still offer sign-ups at the register, but you will not be asked to report or chase the figure, which takes about two hours a week in follow-up calls.

Third, from October 16, an inventory analyst from the central team is assigned to your region two days a week. She will run the item master checks for your six stores, answer leads' questions about why the system ordered what it did and prepare the weekly in-stock report you would otherwise compile.

The pilot district manager tracked her hours during the summer conversion and found the change added about nine hours a week in visits and calls. The relief above removes about six, and the analyst takes over most of the reporting. That still leaves you roughly an hour or two a week more than now through December, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

The Target We Agree Will Slip

Every change costs something a manager is measured on. In your region, it will be labor cost as a share of sales. Parallel running means leads spend time on both methods for four weeks, and training adds about 290 hours across your six stores. We expect your region's labor-to-sales ratio to run about 0.4 percentage points above target in October and November.

The vice president of merchandising and the regional vice president have agreed in writing that this overrun will not count against your fourth-quarter bonus or your stores' managers' bonuses. A copy of that agreement is attached. If the overrun exceeds 0.6 points, we will review it together rather than treating it as a performance issue.

What We Need From You

We need three things. Confirm by September 29 which three of your stores' department leads should be the first to train, since early trainees become the people others ask. Attend the wave one launch call on October 20. And tell us within a day if a store falls behind on the checks required before its old handhelds can be retired; we would rather move a date than retire devices in a store that is not ready.

Why the Brief Is Written for You Alone

This brief is addressed to you rather than to district managers in general because the plan only works if its assumptions about your week are true. Floyd and Wooldridge (1997) found that middle managers' involvement in strategy, including how they implement and adapt it, was associated with organizational performance. Balogun and Johnson (2004), studying a decentralization, found that middle managers made sense of change largely through lateral and informal conversations with peers when senior managers were absent. The Tuesday call and the pilot district manager's phone number are meant to make those conversations part of the plan. Huy (2002) found that middle managers who both championed a change and attended to the emotions of the people affected helped their units adapt. Your visits during parallel running are where that second part happens, which is why they are protected while the audits are paused.

References

Balogun, J., & Johnson, G. (2004). Organizational restructuring and middle manager sensemaking. Academy of Management Journal, 47(4), 523-549. https://doi.org/10.2307/20159600

Floyd, S. W., & Wooldridge, B. (1997). Middle management's strategic influence and organizational performance. Journal of Management Studies, 34(3), 465-485. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6486.00059

Huy, Q. N. (2002). Emotional balancing of organizational continuity and radical change: The contribution of middle managers. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(1), 31-69. https://doi.org/10.2307/3094890