RUNNING HEAD: SAVE THE ELEPHANTS

Save The Elephants

Juan Garcia

South Texas College

Save the Elephants

A business plan is a document that describes how a business or a project-usually a novel

idea will achieve its objectives in all aspects from marketing, operations, and finances. They are

used by entrepreneurs to establish roadmaps on how to make their business objectives and how

to attract investments. They are also used by businesses or non-governmental organizations to

keep track of their progress going forward. Businesses or non-governmental organizations do

this by periodically reviewing their business plan to identify if their goals or objectives have

been met changed or evolved. Business plans are predominantly a prerequisite by financing

entities such as donors, banks, or venture capital firms before the deployment of funds. Business

plans, therefore, assist organizations in focusing on significant areas of concern and their

successful contribution to new business success. The overall goal of a business plan is to

communicate the product or service offering to external and internal stakeholders of a business

or non-governmental organization and leverage it to attract financing (Haag, 2013). There are

two types of business plans, the lean business plan, and the traditional business plan. The regular

business plan is the most common in that it is standard with more details in each section, while

the lean business plan is less common and uses a standard structure. The business plan comprises

the executive summary, products, and services offered, market analysis, financial planning, and

budget, according to Investopedia [ CITATION Ken1913 \l 1033 ].

Executive Summary

The proposed business plan is on save the elephants, a non-governmental organization. It

has operations in Africa to which they help in research and monitoring of the African population

in Africa (Save the Elephants, 2020). This is through GPS radio-tracking to provide fresh insight

into the lives of the elephants by studying the behavior of elephants and the ecology. This is to
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aid the United Nations in monitoring elephant mortality rates through illegal killings by poachers

for sale of ivory or bush meat. The non-governmental organization also protects the elephants

with help from the communities and area managers to reduce their mortality from traffickers and

illegal poachers. This is through cutting edge systems that are put in place to perform monitoring

and protection of elephants (Save the Elephants, 2020).The organization also provides

information that helps with human-elephant co-existence on the backdrop of the fact that the

human population will double by 2050, thereby putting pressure on the relationship between

humans and wildlife. Therefore, saving the elephants provides crucial data that helps planners

protect wildlife habitats when developing plans for infrastructure to avoid human-wildlife

conflict. Save the elephants also assists with spreading awareness globally about elephants and

human-wildlife conflict.

POLC

Planning, organizing, leading, and controlling (POLC), the purpose of using POLC is to

explain how they would be utilized to save the elephants and what would be the positive and

negative aspects.

Planning. Planning is the management function that involves setting organizational

objectives and determining how to act to achieve such goals. For such, it is a requirement by

managers to recognize conditions influencing the organization and comes up with future

forecasts (Lumen, 2020). The positive aspect of planning would be to enable Save the Elephants

to adequately plan for its activities to ensure its end goal of protecting the elephants while

ensuring proper budgets are in place to finance operations. The negative aspects of planning

would arise due to the finances of hiring planning staff and the budgets therein should a

consultant be hired.
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Organizing. This is the process of formulating an organizational structure which has the

benefit of creating having human resources allocated to some set objectives. However, this has

the negative aspect of costs involved in salaries and the like (Lumen, 2020).

Leading. These are the influencers that are used to inspire action. The benefits are that

they help organizations have unity of purpose in achieving set objectives. The negative aspect

would be that leadership may also be used to deter the organization from achieving set goals.

Controlling. This helps the organization maintain its standards of operation (Lumen,

2020). This is beneficial because the organization gets to meet its objectives in a timely manner

and in their preferred standard. The negative aspect would be that maintaining standards would

mean that getting results would take longer than usual.

Management by Objectives. Management by objectives is a management model that

aims to improve organizational performance by coming up with clearly defined goals that are a

result of a consensus between the administration and the employees (Harvard Business Review,

2003). The benefits of management by objectives entail the fact that all stakeholders are

appropriately motivated by the employees to the administration in terms of the goals involved.

However, the negative aspect is because objectives are a discussion between the management

and the employees; this process would take much longer to implement to save the elephants.

lean six-sigma: Lean six-sigma is a managerial approach used to improve organizational

performance by eliminating defects and wastage. This is through the six-sigma mantra to which

wastage of physical resources is minimized while ensuring standards are maintained in output

[ CITATION Ken18 \l 1033 ]. The benefits of using the lean six sigma method are that wastage is

minimized, and the negative aspect would be that employee training may be necessary, making
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the process lengthy and expensive to implement at a non-governmental organization like save the

elephants.

Plan of Action: Create a project using your proposed organizational management structure

and design changes.

Organizational Management Structure

The proposed organizational management structure for Save the Elephants is the

functional structure that is the most common and breaks the business or non-governmental

organization into departments such as operations, research, finance, and public relations. This

type of structure is best suited for small to medium-sized organizations such as Save the

Elephants [ CITATION Ken206 \l 1033 ]. This organizational management structure is centralized

because it has centralized leadership since staff in all the departments would be reporting to the

chief executive officer [ CITATION Ken206 \l 1033 ]. The proposed management structure would

encompass departments in logistics, finance, public relations, and human resources and

administration, reporting to the Chief executive officer as in the diagram below. The action

would plan to have incremental revenues of over 2 million per year to enable the organization to

fund its operation.

Chief Executive Officer’s Office

Human resources
Finance and Public relations
Logistics
administration
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The demerits of such an organizational structure would be that decision making is slower;

hence the time taken to realize results is much longer than if the company utilized a leaner, more

flexible management structure. The Key performance indicator for showing how this efficient

this organizational structure would be will be the revenue raised.

The three-year growth in grants and donations is recorded in the graph below, to which it

is to be compared with contributions under the lean flartarchy structure common with startups

(Kenton, 2020). It flattens the chain of command while giving employees room to make

decisions; hence speed of decision making is faster.

3-Year Graph: Revenue

Save the Elephants revenue under functional organisational

3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
2021 2022 2023
Time in years

Revenue in mn's $
Linear ()
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Given the above, the highest incremental revenue was from 2022 to 2023, which was 1

million dollars, which is below the additional target of 2 million dollars per year. The shortfall

was occasioned by bureaucracy in decision-making, especially between public relations

managers or marketing and the finance department.

Proposed Changes to Flatarchy Structure

Under the flatarchy structure the chain of command is flattened as decisions between the

finance team and the public relations team do not have to be passed through the chief executive

officer to make speedier decision-making processes (Kenton, 2020).Speed in decision making

means fundraising strategies are implemented much faster, and the result is more donor funding

is made available in lesser time as compared to the functional organizational structure. The

results of the changes in structure to the flatarchy structure are as shown below.

Save the Elephants revenue under flatarchy

7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
2021 2022 2023
Time in years
SAVE THE ELEPHANTS 8

Given the faster execution of decisions under the flatarchy organizational structure, save

the elephants can achieve its 2 million dollars incremental revenue per year from 2021 to

2023.This will help in meeting its target, given the fact that coordination between finance and

public relations is more efficient compared to the functional organization structure.

References

Haag, A. B. (2013). Writing a Successful Business Plan: An Overview. Writing a Successful

Business Plan: An Overview. Retrieved from

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/216507991306100104

Levison, H. (2003). Management by Whose Objectives. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved

from https://hbr.org/2003/01/management-by-whose-objectives

Kenton, W. (2018). Lean Six Sigma. Lean Six Sigma. Retrieved from

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lean-six-sigma.asp

Kenton, W. (2019). Business Plan. Business Plan. Retrieved from

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/business-plan.asp

Kenton, W. (2020). Organizational Structure. Organizational Structure. Retrieved from

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/o/organizational-structure.asp

Lumen. (2020). Planning, Organizing, Leading, and Controlling. Planning, Organizing, Leading,

and Controlling. Retrieved from

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/principlesmanagement/chapter/1-4-planning-

organizing-leading-and-controlling/

Save the elephants. (2020). What We Do. What We Do. Retrieved from

https://www.savetheelephants.org/what-we-do/