Course:

Effective Management

Presentation:

Managerial Problem: Lingwing

Lecturer:

Resani Kikava

Students:

Lasha Katsanashvili

Magda Elisashvili

Nino Mtchedlishvili

Zviad Kakauridze

Mariam Devadze

Tengo Tetrashvili

Doia Chakhtauri

Mariam Shereshashvili

Giorgi Tyebuchava

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 1. Executive Summary and Company Description
Lingwing is the software which offers possibility to Study 6 languages. You can
either start from Zero knowledge or continue developing your skills from advances levels.
The app gives Georgians possibility to study all these languages literally from Georgian.
Lingwing has gained not a single startup grants so far, including BOG and GITA financing
which gave them opportunity to advance their product.

By Being 3 years on the market they have attracted over 160 000 users. We found
out while talking to CFO of Lingwing they do not even spent much efforts on marketing.
The best way for them to market their product was the mass media. Mass media added
point of difference to their brand – trustworthiness. Other than that, they do use SEO
technics. They do have quite well-managed Social media platforms but according to CFO
they do not spend money on social media ads. Other than this, direct marketing helped
them to increase brand awareness. Visiting different schools and having their
representatives in the Regions helped them to attract eyes as well.

Lingwing employees 6 full time and 10 freelancers at the moment. They plan to
increase awareness on online learning. Now they work on YouTube channel
development for this reason.

2. Introduction of the company, with the main emphasis on structure,

culture and management style;
Mission

Lingwing’s mission is to transform understanding on online learning. Nowadays,

as David Veluashvili, the co-founder of Lingwing, mentioned nowadays online learning is
disregarded. Most people find traditional approach to studying more relevant, which is
not even close to reality. He thinks that all the people who mastered foreign language did
It online. Therefore, online learning is a key point at language learning. He wants to let
wide audience understand this and change attitude towards learning.

Goals

As for the, CFO mentioned, their Goal is quite simple they want to become
billionaires, as simple as It is. This might be a motivational factor for 6 full time
employees. They believe in future growth and advancement.

Situation Analysis

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SWOT analysis

Strengths - The only online learning platform in the Georgian market that uses
different and modern teaching approaches. For this reason, the learning process is
interesting and easy as consumers note. One of the most important for Georgian users is
that all six languages in the app are available in Georgian, which you won't find in any
other interactive app. Besides, the service price is suitable for prospective customers’
financial opportunities. Also, the payment system is flexible and affordable. It should be
noted that monthly payments were added last year and this has allowed more customers
to access the service and save time and money as well.

Weaknesses - The company does not have a clearly defined strategy and therefore
the organizational structure is not relevant. No in-depth market research was conducted
at the initial stage of establishment, and the target audience of the company is not clearly
identified. In addition, organizational culture is incompatible with company goals. Also,
the company generally uses freelancers for some services and this fact causes some
instability and lack of communication. Weak web-design and content.

Opportunities - The company is able to broaden its market and become global. It is
also possible to add other training programs, even from a professional perspective. A
company can concentrate on several consumer segments and offer specific products and
customize the design and structure of the website accordingly. The number of online
learners is increasing every day and such a situation creates more opportunities for the
company to be concentrated on diverse market segments.

Threats - The appearance of more developed and multi-functional learning

applications on the market. Public Attitude Towards Online Learning. Some believe that
it is not possible that online learning approaches effectively replace the traditional
teaching methods. In case of entering into the global markets, it will be difficult to do
marketing activities appropriately because culture and social characteristics are different.

Industry Analysis

E-learning industry comprises companies that operate by functioning in the online

education sector where they provide solutions online by conducting various courses,
training programs, tutorials, classes and facilities for new learning. The e-learning market
is one of the most rapidly growing sectors in the global education industry.

The Global E-Learning market has grown rapidly in the last five years with the
staggering CAGR growth of 18.15%. Major driving factors for the E-Learning market has
been increasing expenditure on education, increasing digitization, ease of accessibility
and rapidly emerging markets of emerging countries.

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 It should be noted that online e-learning is becoming very popular on Georgian
market. Also, the universities offer students online learning platforms and try to launch
modern teaching methods.

Organization structure
Lingwing’s current organizational structure can be described as a functional
organizational structure. The number of full-time and part-time employees differ in size:
11-50 employees. The workforce diversity is worth mentioning because the company
employs nationals of Georgia, UK and Bangladesh. The management team of 11 has more
than 10 years of experience in the E-Learning industry. As the firm grows, people with
special expertise will be added to the staff.

Figure 1. The Lingwing’s organization

3.

Description and causes of the problem/problems;

There are several types of managerial problems that we found out in Lingwing. First, I
would like to stress out the fact that when we interviewed CEO of the company that he
has misunderstanding some even terms in term of management.

1. Unrealistic goal concerning the style of management

2. The company does not have a clearly defined strategy and therefore the
organizational structure is not relevant.

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 3. The company generally uses freelancers for some services and this fact causes
some instability and lack of communication.
4. No leadership styles. apparently, no understanding of leadership at all
5. Problem in decision-making process caused by not realizing the meaning of
manager
6. organizational culture is incompatible with company goals.
7. No incentives except for bonuses

When we asked the company CFO about the goal, he said they want to become
billionaires, which actually is unrealistic as we looked management style into depth.

The company does not have a clearly defined strategy and therefore the organizational
structure is not relevant. As we have seen, according to CFO we can say that company has
functional organizational structure but, in reality, this structure does not work. Lingwing
does not have many full-time employees and they generally use freelancers for some
services and this fact causes some instability and lack of communication. In the modern
working life, freelancers are the best way to reduce cost and get a high quality of service
and good communication with them. In our example, having freelancers is not the
problem but not having good, at least enough communication and right approach to them
creates a great deal of it. Communication is the basis of management. Anyone is able to
solve any kind of problem with right way of communication, while we know that
management is all about existing or upcoming problems and finding solutions for them. If
manager realizes meaning of it and uses it in a right way, we can say that management is
working. Let’s see what is happening here. CFO told us that they have man freelancers, in
which way they reduced cost of them (particularly income tax) and in this way they were
able to increase their salary. But C-level management they have no idea how to have
good communication with them.

Top management don’t even have enough understanding of who the leader is and what is
he supposed to do. That is another big problem for them. Leadership is the ability to
influence people toward the attainment of goals. CFO thinks that a good leader is one
who wants to reach very high peaks and a good manager is the person, who does
brainstorming, talking, thinking and considering with his staff. But after several minutes
he said that he would believe in anyone’s idea if he likes it and leadership is all about
getting yourself across as he is the person who makes decision. Difference between what
leadership is and what he thinks is clear. In this situation I would like to quote Jack
Welch when he said: ‘Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When
you become a leader, success is all about growing others. If manager who wants to get
leader or thinks that he is the leader, do not consider, that he is the only person to be
minded. Besides, CFO is not clear when he is talking about leader and the style of
leadership. Listening to your staff member and do not consider their ideas at all, while
only getting yourself across arises one question. Why is he doing brainstorming, talking,

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thinking and considering with his staff at all? It is time-consuming and even insulting for
them as their work has no result. This style of decision-making only leads to one result:
the balance between being democratic while decision-making and totalitarian while
implementing is violated. Being totalitarian all the time while listening to other does not
makes sense. Decisions that is made and afterwards implemented in that way is more
likely not to be effective and even fair. As for organizational culture, it is not enough to
assemble complementary team, as leaders we need to create culture and systems that
promotes such differences and interdependence and directs team members towards a
common goal. In Lingwing, there is no realistic goal on which culture can relied on. In
such situation, organizational culture is incompatible with company goals.

In addition, top management has no idea what incentives are and meaning of motivation
while reaching goals. When we asked about motivation, he did not answer clearly but
once he mentioned that having freelancers enables them to increase salary and that is the
motivations that he offers as a leader.

4. Identification of frameworks, concepts and tools that can be used to

analyze problems
Compare to other industry situations: there aren’t a lot of companies, which provides
such kind of learning courses, but there are a lot of web sites, just youtubers, who are
making like this service just for free, you can enter into youtube and just search that you
want to learn some foreign language and you will see a lot of videos and materials here, so
it’s really important to analyze market situation, in order to follow news, step by step. e-
learning becomes bigger and bigger in Georgia also, so, we need to take into account this
fact.

Research and analyze company situation: in this idea, we need to answer this two kind of
questions: Where is our company and how our goals are related to your result, What’s our
new strategy and how it’s related to company’s results and goals. We need, that there
would be strong correlation between goals, strategy and company’s result, in order to
analyze how effective are our existence.

Forecasts: Company needs to have some forecasts and comparing average situation, what
were their revenues and expenses and during the years how they ware changed, did they
increase or decrease and what would be their forecast based, on past experience. We
need to know how steady our company is and what is our strengths and weaknesses.

Consulting companies help: When we have some kind of problems and we don’t know
where are they come from, we need to hire some consulting companies, which will help
us to describe, discover, analyze and solve our problems.

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Future plan analyzes: As we know, LINGWING’s one of the future purpose is to go
outside and enter into foreign markets, it sounds really ambitious but it’s achievable. But
in this situation they also need to analyze foreign market situation and industry
challenges.

Marketing plans and feedbacks(from their customers): They also need, to make marketing
plans, Lingwing’s marketing team should introduce it to internal employees and other
outsourcing teams, because each step of different departments must be matched.
Otherwise the company won’t be able to achieve goals effectively And also they never
discover main problems. As Lingwing’s team plans to expand their market and product
line, it is essential to compare their internal goals with their achievement finally. Also, in
order to analyze their core problems, they need to get some feedbacks from their current
customers.

Monitor and check-in regularly: Our recommendation for implementing the marketing
plan is also that the company should do a monthly check-in of the results, in order to
control the efforts made for achieving certain goals. This type of practice is also beneficial
and motivating for the whole team, to see the actual results from their working process.
This helps everyone understand, how things are going and what needs to be done to
reach your goals.

Be willing to adapt: It is important for the Lingwing’s team, to learn from their
experience and When a particular marketing effort isn’t producing the desired results,
look for ways to improve on the tactic before throwing it out the window. Sometimes,
small tweaks can make a big difference. For example, test different designs for web-site or
change content a bit.

Communicate results and celebrate success: Finally, It’s also important to reach its short-
term and long-term goals. And, even if things don’t work, be sure to share that
information too. It will give Lingwing’s team the opportunity to share feedback and
generate new ideas.

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