Discussion and Respond. 3 - Dissertation Example

Question and Answers two reasons why sharing information can help increase productivity Informed decision making, collaborated businesses (Innovation) 2. Name 2 techniques a Manager can employ to approach a situation or person with tact. Diplomacy, Problem solving 3. Name the 5 Stages of the Organizational Life Cycle. Birth, Youth, Midlife, Maturity and Death 4. Describe the concept of “Seek First to Understand” (Covey, 1989, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People).  How can a Manager can effectively use this technique?

Effective communication is required for interdependence in business. In order to understand a business or any of its operation, a manager needs to study a situation by talking to the insiders. This talking in actual means listening and extracting the domain information till complete comprehension is achieved. Only when the problem is understood can an effective and valuable solution be reached at. So the concept is basically to listen first before speaking. Managers can adopt the technique during the performance reviews of the workers.

By listening to the workers problems, a better understanding of workers problems and goals can be achieved. This can be aligned with the goals of company, and practical strategies aiming at increased productivity can be reached at. 5. Give an example of how a Manager cans Model Behavior? A manager can perform a certain behavior in order to show the employees how they are expected to behave too which guides them through the imitation process of the modeled behavior. For instance, instead of telling the employees what to do, a manager can take out time to sit with them and show the proper way of doing things.

By pairing them up with the experienced employees, manager motivates the inexperienced staff to ask questions and learn from the experienced resources. By communicating professionally and courteously, a manager motivates a culture where the subordinates behave in a similar manner with their lower staff. 6. Describe the difference between a Transformational and a Transactional Leader? A transactional leader is one that rewards in exchange of fulfilling certain requirements or conditions. E.g. in business a reward is announced by the leader in exchange of productivity.

A transformational leader is one that aims towards a common goal, while inspiring its followers to go beyond their personal interests in order to achieve a superior outcome. 7. Describe the difference between Herzberg’s Hygiene and Motivational Needs? Motivational needs are those factors that are required for creating satisfaction in job while Hygiene needs are those maintenance factors that do not provide satisfaction themselves but are essential for avoiding dissatisfaction. 8. What is the Hawthorne Effect and what does it suggest?

Hawthorne effect refers to the fact that the productivity of workers increases when made to participate in an experimental study. This suggests that workers have a tendency of working harder and performing better when they are the focus of researchers’ attention even without any shift in environmental variables. 9. Describe Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. A psychological theory stating that once humans satisfy their basic needs, they turn to satisfy the successively higher needs in the hierarchy.

The pyramid of needs consist of five levels of which the lower four constitute the deficiency needs linked to the physiological needs while the fifth level depicts the growth needs linked to psychological needs. Deficiency needs need to be satisfied while the growth needs shape the human behavior. Higher needs are met only after the lower needs are satisfied. 10. Name 3 techniques on how to deal with manipulative people. Focus on changing your own behavior rather than that of manipulator. Assess how worthy is the relationship to you.

Employ assertive techniques to preserve personal values. 11. Describe the concept of Empathy Avoidance (Goleman, Daniel, 2000, “Working with Emotional Intelligence”). Give good and bad examples of how a Manager can show genuine interest in their Team Members / Patients yet still maintain professional parameters and a healthy work relationship. Empathy avoidance is when a person chooses not to feel or understand the other person’s situation. In order to be an effective leader or manager, empathy is important, as it permits thinking about employee’s feelings during important decision making.

Bad example: If a physician is not empathetic, he may not be in tune with the patient’s medical situation. He may be detached and impersonal. This may lead to the physician overlooking patient’s body language, or not listening to personal detail that might be important. This could lead to incorrect diagnosis. On the other hand, over empathic physicians could lead to over involvement of the physician which would hinder their treatment strategies. With managers, lack of empathy would result in rebellious emotions in the team, low productivity, etc.

while over empathy could result in decisions that please the workers but compromise business objectives. Good example: By being moderate in empathy, a physician or manager would remain objective and unbiased while considering the state of employees and patients and the decision taken in the end would be to cure the patient or meet business objectives while having cooperation of the team members. 12. Talk about the concept of Situational Leadership (Ken Blanchard, 1985, “Leadership and the One Minute Manager) and how it applies to the type of communications a Manager needs to have forgiven situations.

Situational leadership encompasses the idea that there is no unique most effective leadership style. Most effective leadership is situational, where the leadership style is formed according to the maturity level (understanding, willingness, skill) of the individual or group that is to be lead or influenced. Four leading styles determine the communication style of a manager. The leading styles of managers could be telling (one-way communication) where the roles are set for individuals of groups, selling (two-way communication) for influencing the individuals to accept the process, participating (shared decision making) where relationship behavior is set and delegating (monitoring) where task are performed without direct involvement of manager. 13. What is a Paradigm and among a Worker group, how does it affect the Manager?

Paradigm is a generally accepted point of view or pattern. If the employees have a preset negative opinion about a particular product or policy, the overall productivity may suffer. The manager will be tested for his/her communicative skills and authoritative nature for convincing the employees for being open to a paradigm shift. 14. Talk about various Management Approaches and schools of thought including Scientific, Behavior list, Human Relations, Structuralism, Quantitative, and Systems Approaches.

Scientific management approach analyses and formulates workflows with the objective of improving economic efficiency through majorly the labor productivity. Behavior management approach assists in establishing an interaction that promotes a desired behavior. Human relations approach to management considers humans as emotional entities rather than economic rational beings, and considers organizations as cooperative social systems rather than mechanical systems. It deals with effective relationship between employees and managements and behavior of employees in a company.

Structuralism is a broader approach to human relations approach that covers some additional social aspects of human relations. Quantitative approach involves employment of quantitative techniques for better decision making. It is also called operations research. Systems approach accommodates the classical approaches relating to organization needs and human needs. It encourages the managers to consider an organization both as a whole as well as a part of a larger environment. The idea promoted is that activities of any part of organization affect all the other parts. 15. Give examples of 2 healthcare metrics used for quality improvement.

Healthcare metrics are usually in the form of time, count, proportion, costs and evaluation. Time could be the length of stay (days), time in waiting rooms (hours), time to process a claim or time spent assembling patient’s charts. Count (total or average) could be the number of readmits, number left without being seen, the number of patients with incomplete lab slips, number of patients contacted, number of errors occurring in a procedure, comparative count data. Improvement can be measured over data by comparison of difference from the average of population or some target or standard value, wherefrom comparison of statistical differences in variation dispersion (distribution) about means can be evaluated. 16. What is Benchmarking and why is it a valuable tool in Healthcare?

Benchmarking is a business tool extensively used by the industry to monitor an organization’s performance within its peer group and facilitate the process of introducing the best practice into the benchmarking business. In healthcare benchmarking provides similar benefits. It identifies the best practice within a specific peer group against which it evaluates the healthcare organization and helps identify gaps or the areas of concern. 17. What is Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) and what is its advantage for use in healthcare?

FMEA is a systematic, proactive methodology wherein the potential failure modes in a product are identified, their effects on operation of product are determined and actions to mitigate the failures are identified. The advantage of FMEA in healthcare is not only does it provide a structured way of identifying problems but it also increases patient satisfaction, safety and the wellbeing of the people involved. 18. Who is JCAHO and what is their role in many healthcare organizations? Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations is a US based non-profit organization that accredits over 19000 health care bodies and programs in the US.

It is committed to enhance the safety of patients and quality of patient care. It provides standards and guidelines for clinical practice that are aimed at promoting appropriate antimicrobial use. 19. What is the difference between Authority and Power? Power is to have the ability, position or right to force a person into doing something that you want which may be against his/her will. While authority is having the personal influence of making a person do something willingly that you want to be done. 20. Name 3 Communication Techniques a Manager can use to be more effective.

Active listening (attention, following, responding) Purposeful, synchronized verbal and nonverbal communication Learn about the employees and use a language that is familiar to them 21. Talk about the difference between Strategic and other types of planning. Strategic planning involves determining the current standing of an organization, where it wants to be in a set time, and how to get there. It provides a direction for an organization's mission, objectives, and the involved strategies. Strategic planning stretches over long terms with organizational level of scope.

Other type of planning includes tactical and operational planning that pave way for the strategic plans. These planning are different in their time frame, scope, and objective knowledge than the strategic planning. Operational planning is generally short-range planning encompassing the existing operations of the various parts of an organization. These plans cover shorter periods of time and deal with specific area information. Tactical plans are usually developed for finance, plant facilities, marketing and production area of an organization. 22. What is a Contingency Plan?

Contingency plan is an alternative or secondary course of action that can be adopted in case the primary plan fails. In simpler words it is the backup plan, worst case scenario or disaster recovery plan. 23. Describe the Scientific Method. Scientific method refers to an investigation technique that follows some specific principles of reasoning while gathering empirical and measurable evidence that either corrects previous knowledge or integrates to it. 24. Talk about factors associated with Clinicians as Managers.

Besides coping with the basic struggle with the innate quality of patients welfare being the top priority instead of welfare of organization, other issues that surface with Clinicians acting as Managers include, lack of technical management knowledge e.g. finance and statistics, difficulties in coping with time conflicts between clinical and administrative tasks, resource conflicts complicating the issue of loyalty to patients and staff, difficulty in shifting from case-to-case to global organizational view, difficulty to cope with political aspect of management. 25. What are General Ledger Codes?

General Ledge Codes represent information e.g. may represent packages of shoes of particular size and color. They are used for allocation costs on shipments, payment invoices or order releases. These codes are based on general ledger key components (the packaged item) and general ledger keys (rank or group of the packages item). 26. Talk about the difference between the Operations and Capital Budgets. Operating budget is the money that is to be paid on periodic basis e.g. money required for paying the hired employee on monthly basis.

Capital budget is the money that is paid once to buy an item and does not require repurchase for a long time e.g. money required for buying a car or house. 27. Talk about the Sandwich Principle. Sandwich principle relates to a technique that ensures maximum learning at the receivers behalf. The information to be passed across is sandwiched between two activities that engage the receiver’s attention. For instance, short discussion pauses between lectures help in students retaining the information, or positive acknowledgment on a speech identifying strength before and after the suggestions for improvement. 28. Talk about the interplay of Capital Investors and Management Companies in the US healthcare delivery system.

New drugs require FDA approval. Chronic diseases like cancer and diabetes require long term investments as the results may even take decades to get approved. Long term capital investors are needed in the healthcare delivery system. The existing technological advancements are not effectively utilized in the US healthcare delivery system due to inadequacy of existing business models. Management companies must revise their business plans and intimate them to the Capital investors in order to be able to convince them of a long term investment which is the essential requirement of US healthcare delivery system. 29. Give an example of the Contrasting Communication Technique (Patterson, et al, 2002, “Crucial Conversations”).

A communication style prevalent in an organization that comprises of emails, phone calls, text messages and in person meeting as there are some team members who are comfortable with text messages, while some with phone calls, or in person meetings etc. 30. Talk about improper and proper use of Compliments. Power of Compliments in business can only be realized through proper use of them. Proper compliments are those that are aimed at boosting the professional performance of an employee or co-worker.

They are specific to some task performed by the individual and are communicated at the right time. Improper compliments are the ones that are late and maybe of personal nature communicated without the individual’s permission. 31. Give 3 examples of how a Manager can show Objectivity/Fairness. Business decisions carried out are not affected by personal conflicts. Making decisions on rational, logical, objective business analysis instead of inappropriate factors e.g. race, ethnicity, sex or religion.

Dealing fairly with the customers while protecting legitimate business interests. 32. Name some advantages and disadvantages of a Hierarchal Organization and give an example of its appropriate and inappropriate use. Advantages: well defined responsibilities and hierarchies, clear promotion paths, effective use of specialist managers, loyal employees of each department. Disadvantages: department level decisions rather than organization level, slow responsiveness to changing customer needs due to organizational bureaucracy, poor interdepartmental communication.

Appropriate use: If the employee body is substantial and the skills set is of different fields and managers are available for specified fields, then hierarchal organization is appropriate. Inappropriate use: When there is no substantial difference in tasks of employees and there is no specialist manager, then hierarchal organization should not be opted for. 33. What are Robert’s Rules of Order? They are a set of rules aiming to provide fair, orderly, constructive and democratic meetings and conventions that only facilitate the business of the assembly. 34. What is Engagement vs.

Satisfaction? Satisfaction refers to the treatment the organization gives to a person. It related to the things (HR and management processes) that satisfy or dissatisfy an employee. Engagement refers to the state of a person which is the result of the effect of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. In the HCM value chain, satisfaction is an objective/measure for activity while engagement is an objective/measure for output, for human capital. 35. Who is the Gallup Organization and what is CE11? The Gallup organization is group of professionals that provide a range of human resources, management consulting and statistical research services through web, at the Gallup university campus and through 40 offices worldwide.

It helps boost the organic growth of an organization through improving its customer engagement and increasing the employee productivity. CE11 are 11 proposed question metrics to assess the ‘customer engagement’ that determine loyalty and emotional attachment. 36. Name 3 of the 11 Gallup CE11 questions. The three questions to assess loyalty are: Overall, how satisfied are you with [brand]? How likely are you to continue to choose/repurchase [brand]? How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend/associate? 37. Why are Behavior-Based questions such a valuable tool in hiring?

Give an example of a behavior-based question. Behavior based questions help assess an individual’s way of working, thinking or behavior. The logic behind these questions is that, an individual will repeat his/her behavior in a particular situation from the past in the future too. For instance, an individual could be questioned to explain through an example as to how he/she handled the situation when his/her schedule was interrupted.