Personal Leadership Experience What is my job?

Apart from my position as an owner of a large amount of stock in ATM-E-Trade organization, CCS Express ATM, I am also responsible for the total of its operational management for ATMs. What the organization does is to maintain ATMs. That makes me responsible for developing, maintaining and supervising a professional employee centered culture, a safe and secure operation, a proper delivery of its service and general cost effective and productive operations. A summary of my responsibilities has been made of my responsibilities and this is noted down below:

Provide leadership that is totally professional, arrange continued improvement and exceed the goals and objectives which are challenging in themselves.

Recruit, interview, test, select and supervise all personnel involved in operations.

Control the costs and efficiency of operations.

Develop and maintain the needed spirit for adequate customer service among all staff involved in operations.

5) Respond to all enquiries from customers and complaints from them and also solve any logistical issues.

6) Co-ordinate with sales in the creation and implementation of viable operations issues for new customers.

7) Control the hours that individual employees have to serve and for this purpose create and monitor employee operational schedules.

8) Comply with all policies of the organization and attend to the regular process of audit.

9) Attend to all short- and long-range planning so that goals of the organization can be met. (Operations Supervisor - Colorado Springs, CO)

It would be easier for me to describe my experiences in these areas to give a total picture of my contribution over the years to the organization.

Business Vision

The industry of ATMs is now under constant pressure for getting and keeping the customers that they have as the marketplace has become very volatile and highly competitive. This is what puts me under great pressure all the time in terms of decision making. I have not only to make the right decisions, but also make them as soon as they are required. This requires me to have an up-to-date view for the operations and this also involves making sure that the information that I have is current so that I could use the information for managing and executing my decisions in the business. The other part is my choosing the best possible solution to the problem with a view to provide the best possible solution to our customers. Another area that is very important in our business is to get immediate benefit from prevention, detection and limiting exposure to fraud. For this purpose it was essential that we were constantly relating the actual patterns of use against the average use which is generally expected to continue. This is not a part of maintenance of the machines. Of course this aspect was more important to clients who were really paying for the fraud, but we were expected to give them warnings, if possible. It is always important to obtain early warning of possible fraudulent use. (Bates, 2003)

Management of people

One of the major problems in recruiting that I had was in terms of getting persons who were willing to work at the level at which we required people. The type of operations that we were dealing with does not require senior managers, but whenever I sent out an advertisement, the persons who applied were generally over-qualified. This was in spite of clear indication in the advertisement of the position the advertisement for the job, the qualifications required, the judgment ability required, etc. I also tried my best not to glamorize the position so that overqualified persons would be attracted to it. Yet, most of the individuals who applied were graduates when a graduate was not required. Even individuals with a lot of work experience outside applied for the positions. The problem that I felt was not with hiring a person, who is over-qualified, but I was always left wondering when the person would leave and I would be left in the search of another such person again. This is one of the reasons why we have taken on so many workers on contract basis as they are generally not of the type who would leave immediately. The biggest problem that I faced was in designing a questionnaire for asking to the candidates about their desire to stick on in the company.

Some have suggested that I make sure that the candidate agrees with the mission, philosophy and goals of the company as they felt the reasons for staying on in a company are in those aspects of the job. Others have suggested that I tell them that the job does not have much likelihood for advancement. All this have been tried by me, but there has not been much success. The position that this exists today is probably due to many previous employees having been thrown out due to downsizing, outsourcing etc. And these persons are willing to take up jobs that pay less and are less stressful. Some of them even change their professions to other professions that are less stressful. I can understand this analysis to some extent as the job that we are doing is also in replacement of existing staff in some financial institutions. The desire for change also comes from changes in the family situations of these individuals, and often they are not willing to give the extra time or energy that they would have to give if they wanted to stick on to their previous positions or employment industries. This also may be coming from a desire to change careers, and the candidates may be sure of their ability to change their skills to the new job. (Recruiting & Staffing)
Changing nature of business

The nature of our business has to be understood now to better understand the difficulties of work that I had to face. In the initial stage when my husband and I started the business we were just ATM servicemen based in this area. Then the only job that my husband had to do was to go to the location and fix up the ATM. Today, that situation has changed and both ISO and manufacturers of ATMs insisting on service technicians to get certification, and even when we send a technician, they insist that the man has got enough qualifications. They are also insisting that we have enough spare parts with us to be able to fix up the machines. These are required even when we are just servicing machines for others who have the main contract and we are being used only for them in our area. These conditions are difficult to meet as we have to provide services under a time/parts basis, as it is impossible to anticipate which parts are going to go wrong. The old manufacturers like Diebold and NCR used to have service contracts with their machines and most of the service technicians have learnt from them. The other smaller manufacturers like Tidel and Triton came up only after 1996 when the machines became very popular. Today the major ISOs have their own service technicians when the part of the country has a large number of machines, and they tie up with organizations like us when they have to provide service to machines in our area. (All, 2002) The problem is coming as the entire industry has to still develop and settle down.

Development of the industry

It is difficult to understand how fast technology is shaping the nature of industry, and the beginning of ATMs came only about 25 years ago. In 1978, the subject of ATMs was still a matter of discussion among bank officials, and one of the first ATMs had been supplied by Diebold to a bank in Indianapolis. This led to a review of the machine by most bank officers in the area and at that stage many were left unimpressed by the capabilities of these machines about the product specifications, features and benefits. It was though by many bank officers that customers would never use an ATM and thus it was felt that the machines will never replace the employees of banks. Many banks had decided not to use ATMs then. The situation has changed with 370,000 ATMs running all over United States and they process more than 12 billion transactions in a year. Yet the nature of persons has also changed and the tellers still exist at the banks in the same numbers. If the machines did not come, then the lines at banks for collecting cash would have been huge. (Installing Manager Upgrades)

The question then comes is how has the industry developed so fast that we were able to come in as service technicians. The ATMS cost a lot of money to run and there are issues with maintenance, cash inventory, cash delivery, cash balancing, insurance and communication costs. The total impact of these costs runs to almost as much as $800 a month to run an ATM. This makes it difficult for many operators to run their…