Creating an environment conducive for high performance in SMART through improved project management initiatives

Focusing on employee empowerment and organizational commitment, through leadership, results in attaining company goals and strategies. Given that companies are run by teams and its employees, it is important to keep in mind that investing and developing them must be in one of the company's best interests. Employees create products and services, but empowered and committed employees create quality products and services, in effect gaining competitive advantage. My action research about creating an environment conducive for high performance within Smart's IT-OSS Service Fulfillment/Provisioning team has proven to be effective to both the team and my company. After the completion of this action research, the objective of reducing escalations and complaints from different groups in the company was realized. Aside from achieving this objective, I also saw our team synergy improve which resulted to an improvement of overall team quality performance. The impact made was to implement changes within the team that focus on increasing staff participation in the delivery of projects. These changes were guided by both Ismail et al's (2011) Transformational Leadership-Empowerment-Organizational commitment (TEO) framework and Halm's (2011) Life Giving Workforce Design (LGWD) model. My action research has helped the company release and offer more quality products and services, thus resulting to an increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty. Moreover, I realized that working in an environment where everyone is empowered and committed is better and makes everyone's time in the office easier. As a result, everyone has seen their work done efficiently and effectively. I learned that change is inevitable in the workplace and essential, if it is warranted. Also, I should not let resistance to change get in the way and it should be properly managed to realize the full potential of the intended change.