Problems Relating to Grahams Company and His Teams - Essay Example

? COMMUNICATING WITH AND LEADING PEOPLE – Graham’s company case study Table of contents Question What are the current issues and problems relating to Graham’s company and his teams? Write your analysis of the case study. 3 Question 2 Do you agree with the strategies used by Impact Consulting? Justify your answer and make recommendations as what other strategies the company could use to promote team spirit to help motivate & provide support to the teams. 4 Question 3 Advice as to how team members’ knowledge, skills & experience can be utilized to enable teams to fulfill their function and support the company’s growth. 5 Question 4 Evaluate how the existing processes & channels of communication might have affected team-working and the organisation’s performance and make recommendations for improvement. 6 Question 5 Justify how the implementation of your recommendations will benefit the organization & ensure greater integration of communication systems. 7 References 9 Question 1 What are the current issues and problems relating to Graham’s company and his teams? Write your analysis of the case study. Graham’s company currently faces a series of problems which seem to be related to the following fact: the lack of effective communication between employees at all organizational levels. More specifically, in Graham’s company conflicts have become a daily phenomenon in the workplace. At managerial level, the lack of awareness of employees’ needs have led to the development of ineffective strategies. Indeed, managers ignore the challenges that employees face and promote strategies that are quite difficult to be implemented. Graham has repeatedly tried to intervene and promote appropriate solutions but the elimination of conflicts in the workplace seems to be impossible. The expansion of conflicts across the company can be explained if taking into consideration the company’s development through the years. The company has faced a quite rapid growth. In its first form, the company had just four managers who were the company’s founding members. Through the years, the expansion of business activities led necessarily to the hiring of staff, including managers. The changes on the company’s culture have been inevitable. However, no plan was implemented for managing change and for securing effective communication in the workplace. The lack of such plan has resulted to the company’s current communication problems. The lack of respect and trust in the workplace has caused the further expansion of the company’s communication problem. The elimination of communication problems in Graham Company is primarily related to the willingness of managers and staff to collaborate so that team-working is promoted across the organization. Question 2 Do you agree with the strategies used by Impact Consulting? Justify your answer and make recommendations as what other strategies the company could use to promote team spirit to help motivate & provide support to the teams. In general, Impact Consulting has focused on the improvement of the leading skills of the firm’s managers. Indeed, at a first level a questionnaire has been used for identifying the managers’ thought on critical issues; in this way, the strengths and weaknesses of managers, as leaders, can be revealed. The response of the managers to the particular initiative has been positive setting the basis for the development of an effective communication plan between managers and employees at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy. In addition, a series of sessions has been arranged for helping managers to improve their strategic planning and collaboration skills. Particular emphasis has been given on the CEO’s training. Coaching sessions have been arranged for increasing the CEO’s skills in managing culture changes. This means that the consultants in Impact Consulting have understood the vital role of culture in the firm’s performance. However, the effective management of culture in each organization is not related only to the organizational leader. Instead, it is critical that employees are motivated to support changes on organizational culture. Under the guidelines of Impact Consulting managers and staff in Graham Company have joined focus groups; this plan aimed to support the increase of collaboration and trust, even in the long term. No other initiative for achieving the above target has been taken even if communication problems in the particular company have been severe. As noted in the literature, the increase of collaboration in each organization is not depended only on the managers’ efforts or capabilities (Tom and Barrons 2012). Rather, a plan for promoting collaboration can be successful only if it is sufficiently supported by all employees. Also, the relevant plan needs to incorporate various schemes, not just focus groups, as suggested by the consultants in Impact Consulting. In this context, the promotion of team spirit in Graham Company should incorporate additional schemes, such as, for example, the following: a) training sessions should be arranged for helping employees to learn organizational culture, as it has been changed since the company’s foundation, b) teams should be designed after discussing with employees so that the potentials of each employee to perform well within a particular team to be evaluated, c) the progress of teams, in regard to the tasks assigned to them, should be checked regularly, preferably on a weekly basis. In this way, failures and weaknesses would be identified early, d) rewards should be introduced based on the performance of teams; employees would be motivated to support the high performance of their team as this fact would also increase their chances to be rewarded. Question 3 Advice as to how team members’ knowledge, skills & experience can be utilized to enable teams to fulfill their function and support the company’s growth. Team working, as already explained earlier, can be successful only if all members of the team are willing to help towards the completion of the tasks assigned to the team. This means that the members of each team have to agree with the team’s mission, as part of the organization (Brott 2009). Also, the choice of the members of each team should be based on their skills, as aligned with the tasks assigned to the particular team (Brott 2009). At this point, the role of the leader is critical. A successful leader is able to identify the employees who are most capable of supporting the needs of each organizational team (Hughes and Beatty 2011). This means that the skills and experience of team members’ can be used for fulfilling the teams’ function only if these skills and experience are related to this function (Hughes and Beatty 2011). At the next level, it is necessary for team members to be treated fairly and equally (Hughes and Beatty 2011). For example, team members should be rewarded equally for their contribution in the team’s tasks, if referring to work of similar volume and of similar skills. Moreover, team members could be given the chance to improve their position within the team on the basis of certain criteria, such as unique skills, extensive support to the team’s projects and so on (Hughes and Beatty 2011). These criteria would be set by the leader who should be aware of the performance and the progress of all teams within his organization (Hughes and Beatty 2011). Of course, in order for the skills of each team’s members to be appropriately used for promoting the team’s mission another term should be met: the progress of the team should be closely monitored, by its leader, ensuring that the tasks assigned to each member of the team are aligned with his skills and experience. Also, in this way potential failures in understanding the guidelines given by the team leader could be identified early and support could be provided accordingly. Question 4 Evaluate how the existing processes & channels of communication might have affected team-working and the organisation’s performance and make recommendations for improvement. The existing channels of communication in Graham Company can be characterized as inappropriate for promoting team-working. Managers are unable to discuss on the organizational needs and objectives, a fact that lead to the inability of developing effective strategic plans. Each manager seems to be reluctant in regard to his own suggestions and plans, a fact that prohibits communication and cooperation at managerial level. In other words, team-working at this level cannot be developed. Team-working is also absent at lower levels of the organizational hierarchy. This problem can be explained as follows: when employees try to ask managers for guidelines or support in regard to the tasks assigned to them the result is discouraging: there is no response by managers’ side. In addition, managers have the responsibility to design, organize and monitor teams across the organization. In Graham Company, where managers are quite unable to communicate, teams cannot be developed. According to the above, the promotion of team working in Graham Company would require the review and the update of the firm’s communication channels. Primarily, initiatives should be taken for improving communication at managerial level (Goodall et al. 2009); meetings and training sessions seem to be the most appropriate initiatives for achieving this target (Goodall et al. 2009). Then, plans should be implemented for improving communication between managers and staff: apart from the focus groups, which have been already suggested by Impact Consulting, events and activities not directly related to work could be arranged so that conflicts are eliminated; short journeys or sport activities would be examples of such initiatives. Question 5 Justify how the implementation of your recommendations will benefit the organization & ensure greater integration of communication systems. The consultants in Impact Consulting have followed a common plan for improving communication across the organization: they have suggested the use of training sessions for managers and the use of focus groups for both managers and staff. This methodology has the advantage of limited risk, at the level that the resources required are minimized. However, the use of alternative measures for improving communication in the organization could also benefit the company’s performance, both in the short and the long term. According to Dawson (2010) the performance of each organization is depended on the level at which employees are aware of organizational culture. Also, Guffey and Loewy (2010) support that organizational culture is likely to change continuously. This means that keeping organizational performance at high levels requires the introduction of plans for keeping employees aware of the changes on the organizational culture. Such issue seems to exist in Graham’s Company. In fact, the review of the case study has made clear that communication and cooperation problems in the specific company are primarily related to the unexpected changes on organizational culture; the willingness of the organization’s founders for supporting the rapid growth of the organization has been high. Still, no plan was introduced for ensuring that the organization’s strategies would be aligned with the new organizational needs and challenges. Instead of preparing staff for the expansion and then attempting the expansion, the founders of Graham Company chose to pursue expansion with no provision for the employees’ needs and potentials to follow the company’s growth. The recommendations made above, both in regard to training and in regard to the leisure of employees, would help to achieve the following target: trust could be highly promoted between employees. In this way, communication problems could be faced easier and the quality of collaboration between employees could be significantly improved. Also, the recommendations made do not focus on leading problems in Graham Company, as the suggestions of Impact consulting do. Rather, these recommendations focus primarily on trust and communication, as behavioural issues related not only to the staff but also to the firm’s managers. References Brott, R. (2009). Advancing a Successful Business: Managing Your Organization Well! Portland: ABC Book Publishing. Dawson, C. (2010). Leading Culture Change: What Every CEO Needs to Know. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Goodall, S., Goodall, H. and Schiefelbein, J. (2009). Business and Professional Communication in the Global Workplace. Belmont: Cengage Learning. Guffey, M. and Loewy, D. (2010). Business Communication: Process and Product: Process and Product. Belmont: Cengage Learning. Hughes, R. and Beatty, K. (2011). Becoming a Strategic Leader: Your Role in Your Organization's Enduring Success. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Tom, D. and Barrons, R. (2012). The 7 Secrets of Leadership Success. Reading: Random House. Read More