Managers & Organisations - Reflective Portfolio - Assignment Example

?Managers & Organisations - Reflective Portfolio Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction 3 ment of Objectives for the Portfolio 4 Summarising Learning Reflection 4 4 Reflection on Practices 5 Scenario 1 5 Cognitive Learning Theory in Management of Client 7 Kolb’s Learning Cycle 8 Scenario 2 10 Schema Learning Theory in Inventory Management 12 Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle 14 Scenario 3 16 Social Learning Theory in Supervising Staff 18 Belbin’s Team Roles 19 Conclusion 21 References 22 Bibliography 26 Introduction In any business organisation, there are certain critical aspects which need to be managed and to be considered carefully. One such aspect is management of clients of the organisation. Management of clients can decide the outcome of the business and therefore it is crucial to ensure that organisation is performing well in this aspect. While maintaining positive association with clients several issues arise such as providing appropriate attention to clients’ issues, resolving the conflicts about any unexpected occurrences, fulfilling the requests among others. Every issue needs to be addressed in order to guarantee appropriate connection and make the clients to stay with organisation for long run (Politics is Business, 2011). The other aspect of profitable business is appropriate management of inventory. Failure to manage inventory is one of the common reasons for decline in revenue. Improper inventory management can cause lesser income margin, decreased cash flow and reduced customer satisfaction. Without proper inventory management and record of stock it can become challenging for a company to satisfy the customers’ demands (Sharma, 2010). Apart from this, the staffs in the organisation play a vital role in increasing the profitability of organisation. Therefore they need to be supervised properly so that they sense being supported and respected in the organisation. Statement of Objectives for the Portfolio The paper comprise of development of portfolio regarding the workplace scenarios of managing clients, handling inventory and supervising the staffs in organisation. In order to create effective scenario, three learning theories had been used in the paper aligned with the above practices, which are cognitive learning theory, schema learning theory and social learning theory. The objectives of this paper is to generate a clear understanding on critical issues an individual can face while performing those tasks. In addition, the paper also provides an insight about how to deal with the problems regarding management of clients, inventory and staffs. Summarising Learning Reflection During the work tenure in my profession, I had confronted with several issues which helped me to gain valuable experience. I had showed good performance on maintaining coordination with staffs along with other stakeholders in the company. My knowledge and expertise had helped me to deal with the clients and to manage other operations such as supervision, monitoring and analysis of documents among others. I always endeavour to provide rapid response to any kind of problems within the organisation so that it does not turn out to be much worse. I possess two major characteristics which influence my decision making which are activist and quick learning ability. The major gaps I had identified during reflection were ineffective planning and communication. Due to this gap, I often faced difficulties in managing the clients and the staffs. Above all, I am a reflector in learning and can put theory and idea into practice and I always pursued for learning new things in my professional life. Reflection on Practices Scenario 1 The first workplace scenario of my work experience is related to management of client. In any business organisation, it is significant to manage the clients effectively. Client management is concerned with appealing to new clients as well as retaining the existing clients of the company. It is critical for every manager to maintain good associations with clients so that they conduct business with the company regularly and for the long run. In present days competitive business environment, losing a valuable client can cost heavily on profitability. Therefore, it requires effective utilisation of skills, experience and knowledge to provide good services to the valuable clients and to make them satisfied (Scribd, 2011). The major objective of managing the clients is to recognise their requirements and to develop positive relations which result in increased business transactions. As businesses are heavily dependent on clients, therefore maintaining positive relationships can benefit the company and customers. Therefore, I have always tried to increase the business with existing clients to hold them for repeat businesses by providing better service (Jenkins & LeBlanc, n.d.). The first and most important thing, I have done for managing the clients was maintaining a close contract with them through proper communication and interaction instruments. It is very essential to make the clients understand the duties and accountabilities along with providing proper deliverables and limitations. A strong contract with clients is of great provision for maintaining effective working relationships. I have always attempted to apprehend the clients by knowing their interests and desires in every meeting. During my experience, I have realised that one of the major aspect for management of client is solving their critical problems. In order to do that, I always gave appropriate attention to recognise the big vision of clients’ business goals and ambitions (Jenkins & LeBlanc, n.d.). As a result of my action, it has helped in ensuring long-term profitability and sustainability in the organisation. My activities had increased the satisfaction of customers to a certain extent as I was essentially attempting to provide services according to their requirements. In order to achieve good client relationships, I had underlined and solved several operational faults such as lack of proper records of clients’ and poor service. It helped to increase my efficiency and knowledge to effectively manage relationships and deal with client problems and difficulties and they also seem to be satisfied with my performance. The improvement in business transactions and reliability of clients toward organisation were substantial symptoms of the clients’ satisfaction (Kumar, 1999). The human relation skills had influenced my decision making process regarding clients. From the knowledge of past reflection, I was successfully able to understand the characteristics of clients and how they can be appealed and handled effectively. Besides, it also helped me to better understand their requirements as well as problems (Bloisi & et. al., 2007). Information is significant for management as it is the basis on which decisions are taken. Appropriate information at right time can help to make correct decisions. With respect to client management, the significant information I gathered was related to several requests of the clients, current position of client service and any unfamiliar events in organization. Those data are vital for making any decision which can impact on the client relationship. In client management, I could have done better if I prioritised on the steps towards accomplishing the objectives. As I had to deal with numerous clients and their multiple requests in similar time, there was need for an estimation of work activities to perform which could help to get things done suitably within time. I had several choices for managing the clients such as periodic feedbacks from clients about the services, developing better communication strategy and implementing client relationship management program among others. My actions on respective fields were quite effective and satisfactory where it had provided productive impacts on organisational performance. Cognitive Learning Theory in Management of Client In client management, cognitive learning theory helped to clarify the behaviour of people by recognising their thoughts procedures. Similar to cognitive theory, the management of client was related with individuals that includes observing information, understanding it and identifying and implementing the information into new perceptions or intuitions. The past experiences, opinions, ways of integrating intelligence, varied ambitions, prospects and social impacts had influenced the learning situation. Cognitive learning theory comprises several well-known perceptions such as ‘information processing’, ‘human development’, ‘social constructivism’, and ‘social cognition theory’. The information processing of cognitive learning theory was related with management of client (Bastable, 2011). The first stage towards appropriate client management was paying consideration to the inducements about them. After that I had recognised the preferred desires or grievances of clients. In the third stage, once the desires of clients are recognised, the information about clients’ requirements were transformed and assimilated. In order to maintain information about clients the information had been stored in client database. The final stage in client management was taking action on the basis of information gathered about clients’ requirements or problems. The information process of client management was as follows: Source: (Bastable, 2008). Kolb’s Learning Cycle Kolb had developed theory of experimental learning which is also termed as learning cycle. It includes four diverse phases of learning from past experiences (Davies & Lowe, 2010). My learning experience on client management follows the Kolb’s learning cycle. Concrete Experience: The first phase of effective client management was concrete experience. I had gathered the concrete experience in the field of client management from my course learning as well as practices. Reflective Observation: The reflective observation arrives from the analyses and the judgements of events and debates regarding the knowledge and training. In my case, the reflective observation experiences in client management field were gained through watching my superiors about how they treat and deal with the problems and requests of various clients. Abstract Conceptualisation: For any learning process, it is needed to develop a plan beforehand to do differently next time when a similar issue appears again. In this phase, the theories need to be applied by examining earlier actions. For this reason, I had gone through several articles to have a clear understanding about the concept of client management and their related problems. Understanding different theories and methods for managing clients was a part of abstract conceptualisation. Active Experimentation: Active experimentation is the capability to accomplish things by proper action. This phase includes high degree of risk as there is chance of failure in accomplishing the task. In managing client, there is always a possibility of losing the client if they are not handled properly or their problems are not given appropriate attention. In active experimentation of client management, the experiences from other three phases had impacted radically for making any significant decisions. The following picture will describe the learning cycle for client management: Source: (Davies & Lowe, 2010). Scenario 2 The next workplace scenario is management of inventory and records. Inventory management provides information for well-organised and effective utilisation of organisational resources. Inventory management is crucial for analysing the strategic objectives of organisation, forecasting the sales, developing operation plan and making strategies. Through managing inventory, I was trying to achieve total control on the flow of materials in the existing stock. My major objective for managing inventory was to maintain an optimum balance of stock so that the organisation does not face risk of overflow or deficiency when needed (Sharma, 2010). The foremost aspect, I did for inventory management was to keep records for time of material supply as well as delivery time. The reason is that it is significant to understand how long it takes for getting material which was ordered. It can help to take decisions on ordering time so that organisational operations can run efficiently. The other significant aspect I did for management of inventory was assessing the buffer stock to reduce the chance for disruption in business operations for absence of crucial component (Sharma, 2010). As a consequence of my performance on managing inventory, it had provided the company competitive edge in the business. Due to effective control and management of stock and accurate visibility, organisation was able to maintain a competitive pricing and fulfilled the demand of customers accurately. In addition to this, proper controlling of inventory had allowed minimising the operational and holding expenses. My actions had helped to make customers more satisfied which generated a feeling of reliability and trust. The other departments such as marketing and operations were pleased with my performance on inventory management. Besides, the satisfaction of customers had been reflected by their repeat business transactions with the company (Sharma, 2010). Management of inventory is concerned with several critical decisions. Effective and timely decisions are essential to balance the organisation’s strategic plan with market demand. The major decisions I had to make in my job were assessing inventory cost, accommodating the changes in market demand, and computing the economic order quantity (EOQ) among others. These vital decisions were significant to strengthen the financial condition of the company. My technical experiences in this field and sense of responsibility towards the organisation impacted every decision I had taken on managing inventory. My quick learning aspect had also helped me to understand any situation quickly and accordingly take correct measures for it (Sharma & et. al., n.d.). In order to take proper decisions on inventory, I should have had information on cost of holding and borrowing inventory, especially in the period of tax yield. The other information, I should have had was market demand of products, economic condition, storeroom expenses, cost of transportation and sales target of company. It can help to mitigate the risk of purchasing inventory and also can lead to accomplishment of optimum advantage. My performance on inventory management could have been better, if I could organise the inventory according to sales forecasting. I had not done any feasibility analysis for demand fluctuations which at times generate a situation of urgency. The other aspect I should consider was performance of suppliers. It had often observed that suppliers failed to provide materials which had negatively impacted on business performance by delay in operations. I had a choice to implement material requirement planning software which can mathematically evaluate the inventory requirement and can fulfil the company objectives. Implementing inventory optimisation method was the other option I had for better management of inventory (Indian Institute of Materials Management, n.d.). Schema Learning Theory in Inventory Management The inventory management learning was much similar with schema theory of Schmidt. Schema theory suggests that an individual can organise everything which are under their schema or plan. People develop plans for everything such as language, procedures, and tasks among others. One of the most vital characteristics of schema theory is that plans are personalised and differ according to person. For instance, a chef has much more specified schema about cooking compared to other persons who hardly cook. These variances in schema significantly impact on the learning. The richer an individual’s schema is in any particular area, the easier it becomes for him/her to learn regarding that topic area. Without existing schema, it becomes much difficult to learn knowledge and skills on that subject (Tracey & Morrow, 2006). My schema about inventory was quite strong which helped me to understand easily on that topic and deal with critical situations. In my organisation, I dealt with several objects such as invoices, reports and financial statements, and my field of expertise had helped me to increase my schema about inventory and its related topics. I had gained the knowledge of inventory management in three procedures. At the initial stage, I did not judge any additional information expect inventory records to manage the stock. In the second phase, when I realised that the management of inventory requires appropriate estimation of demand and supply, it generated the requirements of additional information such as sales and demand forecasting and performance of suppliers to manage inventory. Therefore, I started maintaining inventory by considering those aspects so that they do not hamper on the business performance. Schema theory assists in learning on several aspects of career and profession where people need to adjust with the changes. The following diagram will describe the schema theory in the procedure of learning inventory management: Source: (Tracey & Morrow, 2006). Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle The management of inventory in my working experience follows the experiential learning cycle of Kolb’s. The learning cycle with respect to inventory begins with lower earnings in organisation. In present days, organisations require real time inventory management and records of stock so that management can take appropriate strategies and adjust with the variations in the market. In the initial phase, I had learnt about the inventory activity in organisation by observing the past trends and data on sales. The most critical issue, I had faced while managing inventory was managing safety stock and calculating the EOQ. It relies on the demand of a particular product, cost of acquiring it as well as expenses to store it in inventory. Measuring the level of EOQ was important as it helps to minimise the expenses related with inventory. On the other hand, maintaining safety stock was the other significant element of my job as it helps to make customers satisfied by matching inventory with the demands. These aspects helped to protect organisation from stock out situation initiated by imprecise planning of suppliers’ devotion. Therefore, the next phase was to adopt strategies so that the issues of inventory can be minimised. I had started to forecast the sales precisely in the utmost detail, and collected the economic and market information regarding the customers, the clients, the staffs, the suppliers and the other industrial aspects. I focused carefully about any industrial inclines to assess the phenomena regarding sales. In that way, I had successfully realised the prejudices in the inventory management system and attempted to repair the issues in management process. The following diagram will describe the Kolb’s experiential learning cycle for tackling the issues of inventory management: Source: (Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center, n.d.). Scenario 3 The third workplace scenario is supervising staff and other personnel. A supportive and encouraging association between the manager and the staff is critical for establishment of healthy working environment which improves the well-being of clients. The major objective of supervision was to maximise the potentiality of success of staffs. For any task, appropriate coaching and training can help to ensure correct performance with minimum risk. In order to supervise the employees, I used to provide support and assistance to staffs on any matters in the workplace. Besides, I also mentored the staffs for developing new skills among existing as well as new workers (French & et. al., 2011). In order to draw out the best from each worker, I had provided training and supervision to everyone under my span of control, because each worker possesses some unique skills and has their own positive and negative aspects. By providing appropriate supervision to everyone, staffs can observe that they have been taken care of, and as a result they will be more reverent towards the organisation and perform better. Providing supervision and support helped me to understand the workers better and it had assisted me to allocate tasks according to their abilities rather than randomly. It makes me feel better to show continuing interests about staffs and also motivate them to provide good performance (French & et. al., 2011). The impact of my supervision activities had reduced conflict and improved problem solving skills of employees which had been observed through performance evaluation. The satisfaction of employees through feedback process allowed me to understand that they were quite satisfied with their responsibilities and the job. The retention of existing employees was a clear symptom of effective supervision and creation of healthier working environment (Oyate Research and Training, n.d.). My impatient and innovative character had significantly influenced any decisions regarding supervision. At times, it brought positive results but sometimes it generated pressure for employees and resulted in implementing alternative strategies. Besides, the ability to be flexible with employees helped me to deal with their problems during work. In order to supervise staffs and provide appropriate support, I should have had proper information about the strengths and the weaknesses of employees. It can provide an insight about what an employee is capable to do. Besides, I should have had the information regarding staffs’ behaviour and likings so that I can deliver appropriate supervision as; the prerequisite of direction is different from one staff to other. Some staffs desire close supervision whereas others do not prefer being supervised deeply, because it can generate the sense of unreliability among them. I had learnt that unnecessary supervision can raise pressure and reduce overall confidence of staffs (Hardina, 2007). I would have provided better supervision, if I tactfully condemned the lack of performance of certain employees. At times, I do not give people enough time to think properly and jump into decisions or assumptions without considering the action. I had several choices for better supervision, for instance, analysing employees’ mistakes with care, involving them in the decision making procedure and providing them with simple directions so that the tasks become easier. It would help to retain the confidence of employees in case they perform hard tasks or conduct any mistakes. Supervision of employees is a difficult task and it gives pleasure to know that my supervision helped them to accomplish their jobs (Hardina, 2007). Social Learning Theory in Supervising Staff The knowledge about staff supervision is related with social learning theory. The social learning theory says that several social components can help in enhancement of new learning. In supervision, the social learning theory is essential as it explains learning new things through reflection. In my case, I have learnt about supervising people through perceiving their performances and behaviours as well as consequences of them. Through ‘live model’ of social learning theory, I had demonstrated the anticipated performance of staffs i.e. what need to be done and by ‘verbal instruction model’ I had defined the desired activities of tasks in detail, and instructed employees how to perform (The University of Texas, 2005). Similar to social learning theory, my learning process about staff supervision occurred in four phases. The first phase was concerned with paying serious concentration on the behaviour of staffs. After that, I had memorised those behaviours for future learning. I had categorised the responses compliant with behaviour of employees in case any deficiencies had been identified. It helped to increase the performance of staffs. Finally, I had provided the staffs with attractive incentive for showing good performance and behaviour in organisation. These actions helped to motivate the staffs towards higher performance. The following diagram will describe the learning process in staff supervision: Source: (The University of Texas, 2005). Belbin’s Team Roles Belbin had developed a theory by observing team performance and showed ways to solve the differences in team performance. His theories provide a dynamics to overcome the performance problem in team members. In supervising staff, I had applied the concept of Belbin team roles. As staffs that are under my supervision have diverse characteristics, therefore they should be supported in different ways (Hass, 2003). In order to analyse my team, firstly, I had carefully observed the individual staffs and their activities inside the team. Then I had compared the characteristics of staffs by using Belbin’s team role model and recorded the role which can define a particular staff. Through using the Belbin’s team model, I had observed that most of the staff members in my group fall under action focused roles. The major role which was absent from the staff members were people focused role and idea focused role. The following graph will describe the different role of staffs under Belbin’s role model: Source: (Hass, 2003). Therefore, in order to increase coordination, I had enhanced the communication process within team members. In order to enhance better communication and restore people focused role in my team, I frequently arranged periodical meetings and conferences to understand and recognise the problems of staffs in performing projects and duties. Besides, I used to provide challenging projects to the staffs having lack of idea focused roles and thus tried to motivate them so that they can apply their own thoughts by examining various options. In this way, I had restored the thought oriented role in my staffs. These strategies had allowed me to cover the requisite team roles among the staffs and develop a stable working environment which is favourable for increasing productivity (University of Cambridge, 2000). Conclusion An organisation can face several unexpected issues concerning clients, inventory and staffs which can impact on the overall profitability. The major problems identified in the above scenarios are management of client grievances, taking appropriate decisions about inventory and reduction of problems among staffs. As an administrative and executive assistant, it was my duty to deal with the above issues properly so that they do not harm the operations of organisation. In order to ensure efficiency in organisation at times it is required to implement training and changes in client and inventory handling process. For instance, I had realised during my working experience that assessing the market trend as well as industry occurrences are significant for appropriate management of material flow. Enactment of any solution or strategy requires proper justification that whether the strategy is able to resolve the issue or not. Therefore, I followed the Kolb’s experiential learning cycle and Belbin’s team role to understand the problems properly and to take appropriate measures accordingly. For any company, it is significant to recognise problems in right time as any delay in identification of critical issues can harm the business and the performance of the organisation. References Bastable, S. B., 2008. Nurse as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning for Nursing Practice. Jones & Bartlett Learning. Bastable, S. B., 2011. Health Professional as Educator: Principles of Teaching and Learning. Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Bloisi, W. & et. al., 2007. Management and Organisational Behaviour. 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