Southern Company Case Study

Southern Company Case Study

Introduction

Southern Company which is located in Atlanta is considered to be one of the biggest generators of electricity in the country. Southern Company helps in serving both competitive and regulated markets in a country across greater than 120000 square miles, incorporating parts of Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. In the year 2008, the Southern Company selected cost and project management solutions from PowerPlan in order to introduce précised and efficient business operations for electricity generation. These solutions appeared to be an important constituent of an entire technology and process transformation which is being rolled out system wide (Southern Company, 2012).

The Company is facing many key challenges which are being focused by the Southern company in order to improve or enhance its performance or productivity. Southern Company is willing to enhance its project and cost management, budgeting and forecasting capabilities so as to support effective and efficient decision making and also to drive operational efficiencies. Present systems of the Southern Company were not able to provide timely, detailed or sufficient information and appeared to be inefficient (Southern Company, 2012). Moreover, the existing systems of the Southern Company were also expensive to maintain as well as these systems were labor intensive. In order to optimize the operations of the business, the Southern Company required some units of business for tracking and reporting actual and accurate asset-related costs in order to enhance the business operations of the company (Southern Company, 2012).

Role of strategic leadership in performance management strategy

Effective strategic leadership plays an efficient role in the provision of effective performance management strategy. As the strategic performance management of the business appears to be the main part for attaining sustainable and efficient success in the business operations. Global organizations can merely attain the large-scale and worldwide productivity supports by engaging with their people. Thus, management of individual's performance and implementation of effective performance management strategy will help in supporting leadership team and strategic leadership (Aguirre et al., 2010). Strategic leadership appears to be an incorporated set of programs, cultural norms and processes within the organization. The strategic leadership in the organization is implemented and designed in order to develop, retain, attract and deploy talent and leadership skills in order to attain strategic goals as well as to meet the needs of future business. Thus, strategic leadership helps and supports performance management strategy (Aguirre et al., 2010). For talent management and strategic leadership, the important components include program strategy, selection, recruitment, assignment/placement, promotion, assimilation/on-boarding, retention initiatives, professional development and training, recognition/rewards programs, leadership development, mentoring/coaching and performance management. Hence, strategic leadership must be appropriately maintained in the organization in order to support and enhance performance management strategy in the organization (Aguirre et al., 2010).

Evaluation of effectiveness of talent management strategy

Dowell and Silzed in the year 2010 analyzed the requirements of talent management strategy after determining or ascertaining the talents needs that play strategically an important and significant role in the organization. Considering the adequate internal talent appears to ...