Organizational Dilemma at ABC Ltd - Case Study Example

Organizational Dilemma at ABC Ltd Executive Summary A language roadblock in the flow of information exists at ABC Limited. This is a product of a wrong choice of medium of passing messages. George, The Vice President for instance, decides to pass a congratulation message to John using a memo. More so, the memo is long and too wordy. In the end, John does not understand anything and considers the memo a sign of harassment and lack of care from George. This demoralizes John and affects his emotional stability. Table of Contents Executive Summary 2 Table of Contents 3 The Problem at ABC Limited 4 Data Analysis 5 Important Decision Criteria 7 Alternative Analysis 9 Recommendations 9 Plan of Action and Implementation 10 References 11 The Problem at ABC Limited When the new manager in charge of customer service group arrived at ABC Ltd, he found a communication breakdown where the management did not consider floor employees in the shop working in one team with them. The top management did not feel at the same level as floor employees. Therefore, they communicated through proxies, selected employees who got extra duty running errands. The top management did not give much value to floor employees forgetting that they were the most valuable asset ABC limited had in the entire chain of business production. The company management did not invite the junior staff in daily meetings and in the process did not involve in the running of the company. Furthermore, the management did co-opt the junior employees in the company decisions making because they did not interact with them directly. The best exampling this case was George, the Vice President of company. Failure to interact directly with employees forced senior managers to device new methods of communicating with junior staffs. This included use of memos. In the process, a system of misunderstanding developed where juniors did not understand either directions or instructions because in most cases, the memos were too long for any of them to understand (Locke, 1976). Ultimately, this demoralized floor employees John being one of the most affected staffs. There was an emotional waterfall at ABC Limited. Senior managers in the company did not like communicating with floor employees because they simply did not care about them. This was evident when Tony responded to the new manager’s first gesture of getting involved in matters of employee. He asserted that what the management simply cared was production and not people involved in the production. Data Analysis First, employees ignored what the new customer service group manager was adressing because it was a norm in the shop for manager to talk to the junior staff. John for instance, was not happy with the way George had handled him resulting in miscommunication. This in turn affected his services delivery as well as quality of his input. Lack of proper communication between the George and John could result in a series of negative issues that would influence relationships within the company and affect the overall performance of the company negatively. A language roadblock in the flow of information exists at ABC Limited. This is a product of a wrong choice of medium of passing messages. George, The Vice President for instance, decides to pass a congratulation message to John using a memo. More so, the memo is long and too wordy. In the end, John does not understand anything and considers the memo a sign of harassment and lack of care from George. This demoralizes John and affects his emotional stability. The next day John fails to perform his duties appropriately. For John to understand what the Vice President, his message ought to have been clear, concise, brief, and grammatically correct as well (Bates, 2004). Assuming that George did not have good writing skills, and then it would be essential for him to withdraw from using such means of communication. The relationship between the top management in the company and floor employees demonstrates that there is instructional havoc at ABC limited. The medium chosen by senior managers to give instructions are not right. There is complete delink between junior employees and senior management. This creates some form of fear on the part of employees. The management at ABC Limited does not take the initiative to address conflicts and misunderstandings including failure to get instructions appropriately. Junior employees point to the fact top managers does not care about them. Alternatively, the juniors do not have anything new to offer senior managers. Corrective measures as well as improvements arise from addressing misunderstandings. This is not normal at ABC Limited. Other managers even hold that the customer service group manager is still new when he goes for lunch with junior employees shunning the lunchroom. They posit that soon or later he will join the system. This is the epitome of the management delinking from the most important asset in the company, human capital. Communication levels at ABC limited were wanting and resulted from different types of barriers. Junior staffs did not trust the management completely to an extent that even when John receives information from George asking him to attend a seminar; he feels that the management considers him as having inadequate knowledge and skills. The communication barrier in John’s case is decoding. Lack faith and trust by floor employees and John precisely, makes him understand that nothing positive can come from the management to employees. The other barrier to effective communication at ABC Limited is encoding. While writing a memo to John, George the Vice President did not put into perspective facts that there is lack of proper relationship between the senior managers in the company and the employees. The memo was too long and wordy. In the end not what he intended to put across was what the receiver decoded. The other hindrance to effective communication is transmission, which directly relates to a choice of a medium of communication in company. Managers feel they cannot directly interact with floor employees and opt for proxies and memos. Employees on the other never respond to anything because they do not understand most of the instructions in the first place. Top managers do not understand the most appropriate way to pass messages to junior staffs. This means that they are not sensitive to their employees. In this case, lack of sensitivity stands out as the foremost barrier to effective communication at ABC Limited. All other barriers come next after the managers fail to understand that employees are also human and need attention. Employees complain that instructions in the memos are complex for any of them to comprehend. Top managers never consider adopting the best means of communicating with floor employees. Complexity in messages means that employees misinterpret the content delivered to them and such choose not to respond because they cannot respond to what they do not understand. Communication breakdown at ABC Limited is bound because in spite of the fact both the managers’ work in the same physical locations with employees and in adjacent floors, managers do not interact with juniors and choose to use memos to pass massages. How do they expect to get the feedback because employees cannot write to the? A direct and more interactive channel of communication would serve the company so much good. Important in this case would be improving the trust among employees in their senior managers. This would motivate them since managers will understand their staffs in a better way. Important Decision Criteria The new manager running affairs in the customer service group put in a lot of effort in overcoming barriers to effective communication at ABC Limited. According to him, effective is both complicated and simple. This is despite the fact that he was flowing against the cultural wave practiced by even the Vice President of ABC Limited. It was a norm in the shop for employees not to interact directly with floor employees. The common agenda for managers in the company were that employees could not offer them anything new for them to learn and this defined their medium of communication (Harter, & Hayes, 2002). This inhibited their abilities to listen to employees fully as much as they constituted the most important asset at ABC Limited. The new manager chose to find a common ground for communicating and in the process, understood opinions of employees. This improved effectiveness of communication in the company because he did it clearly and calmly. First, the new manager used all means to treat junior employees with a lot of respect. Contrary to what others were doing, he chose not put floor employees on the defensive. Tony was a perfect example. When the manager attempted talking to John, who reluctant to give information, Tony arrived and declared that the top management never cared about issues felt by juniors. Although his colleagues did not feel his pronunciations were appropriate, the manager did not press him further when he walked away. He instead, changed tune and started addressing Wesley. In the process, employees started listening to him and responded truthfully. That employees listened to him well is clear when other managers started sending him to pass messages to them on their behalf. He spoke to them without making accusations or overt statements. He developed clear communication channels with employees who in turn listened to him carefully. The understanding resulted in reconciliations between the management and juniors. Furthermore, the new manager found a common ground that facilitated effective communication. What other managers did not understand was that in spite of antagonism and resultant barriers to effective communication, a point existed where the team members would strike an agreement and start mending fences. This is the point that the new took and started building the bridge. He chose to engage employees in grapevines and through this, he collected the necessary information about their feelings and sort solutions to the issues. Alternative Analysis Companies face many barriers of communication and in the end messages relayed by senders don not reach recipients in intended ways. This causes communication breakdown. In dealing with the problem at ABC Limited, I would eliminate the differences in perception first. A big problem existed where managers felt that floor employees were too low to interact with them even at lunch break (Schmidt, 2010). It appeared as an abomination to mingle with them to a level that even congratulation messages and instructions went via memos. Employees on the other hand, junior staffs felt that the management looked down upon them. It is the responsibility of the management to ensure that such perceptions do not exist and this explains John’s take on information about the seminar. He did not believe that anything good would come from the management to floor employees. Secondly, I would the simplest language possible to communicate. Complaints emerged from employees of memos being too complex for any of them to comprehend (Fox, 2010). This means that one of the problems was decoding information. Evidence came from John’s failure to interpret both the message of congratulations from George and information about the seminar. It is not clear what John’s response would have been if the message was delivered by the new manager. In this case, I would make sure that in any communication aspect should be as simple as possible to avoid misinterpretation. Recommendations John does not feel and consider people in the management as colleagues. Although they work together, actions by senior managers, which constitute delinking from juniors gives them a different status at ABC Limited (Tritch, 2003). It becomes difficult for John accept invitation to attend a training seminar in good faith. Furthermore, the idea is new and John has never witnessed it at ABC. The last time John interacted with George was when he received a long memo he did not understand and it affected his emotional stability. The only thing was to feel that the company considers him as having inadequate skills no sender the idea of sending him to a seminar. Plan of Action and Implementation First, the new manager should take the mantle because both managers and employees feel he is the link between the two sets of employees at ABC Limited. It is definite that John does not have any little trust in George. After all, he has been there with him and has never seen sign of appreciation from him. The new manager ought to explain to employees the value of training, which entails a form of motivation. Mentioning motivation at ABC Limited is strange because even employees do not understand it in the first place. A lecture on the same is necessary. The other aspect would work on the emotional aspect of floor employees. Already, employees have low self-esteem and as such, they have presumptions about anybody from the management. This would be the most complex part in handling the ABC situation. Junior staffs do not trust the management completely. It becomes difficult to work together in one team people who do not trust each other. Trust is central to teamwork and since ABC Limited is one team, they need to develop trust. References Bates, S. (2004). Being engaged. HR Magazine, Vol. 49(2), pp. 44-51. Fox, A. (2010). Raising Engagement. HR Magazine, Vol. 55(5), pp. 34-40. Harter, J., & Hayes, T. (2002). Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: a Meta analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol. 87(2), pp. 268-279. Locke, E. A. (1976). The nature and causes of job dissatisfaction in Organizational Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Schmidt, F. (2010). Organizational Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill. Tritch, T. (2003). Engagement drives results at new century. Management Journal of Vol. 4(11), p. 4. Read More