Question

Solve the following:

1. The engineering director asks her managers if they have any nominations for promotions from within their respective departments. The maximum number of promotions allowed for the entire division is 2. The nominations must be selective and only for people whose performance whose performance has been outstanding. One manager thought his whole team had been outstanding, so he recommended all 10 promotions. He reasoned, “It is better for the morale of the team that they know that I support all of them fully. If the director now promotes 1 of the 10 or none at all, then they will not feel so bad knowing that at least I have thought them all worthy of being promoted.” What should the director do?

2. The customer service manager is a busy person. He rushes from one problem to another without actually taking time to complete any job and solve any problem properly. What control problem does the customer service manager have? What can he do to enhance his job effectiveness?

3. Mary Stevenson, the shop manager, works well with all of the staff members. She regards Mike Denver, who has the longest tenure and most extensive experience in the group, as the second in command for the day-to-day operation. The shop is modernizing its operation with the use of computers. Mary Stevenson and her boss, Craig Martin, decide to bring in a young computer specialist, Janet Carter, from outside. To make sure that the shop modernization process moves forward, Mary Stevenson spends a lot of time with Janet Carter. Mike Denver sees less and less of Mary Stevenson, although Mary still depends on Mike for the day-to-day operation. Mike resents being shut out from the work done by Mary and Janet. Mike does not complain, but after six months, he tenders his resignation and goes to work for a competitor. Mary Stevenson is shattered. She deeply regrets this major loss to the shop. What went wrong? What was not controlled? What would you do differently?

Answer 1

(1) The director in this case should not think to promote all the 10 employees or any one of the employees just in order to increase the moral of them, as said by their manager. It is evident that the employees will feel motivated with increase in moral automatically when they will find about they being nominated.

Here, it is important for the director to follow the norms and policy of the company and promote only outstanding performer employee, by measuring the past performance. If any of the employee falls under this criteria of showing outstanding performance shall be promoted by the director.

(2) The customer service manager have the problem of improper diagnosing the problem and not being patient with the work. Due to this problem, the customer service manager tries to finish every task simultaneously, without paying full attention on any one of the task. This results into poor job effectiveness and none of the problem being fully resolved. in order to improve this, the manager should follow the steps to diagnose the any problem and give full time to each task and then move on to the next. This will lead to completion of every task properly, with increased long term effectiveness.

(3) In this situation, what went wrong was Mary not following participative management. Mary not consulting Mike about hiring Janet as a computer specialist went wrong. This made Mike feel out of the picture and not important in the decisions made for the shop. This made Mike realise that after giving so many years at service, his suggestions are not welcomes and not even bothered to ask. Moreover, Mary not being in contact with Mike for so long also disturbed the mental peace of Mike as he was left all alone to manage day to day operations without any feedback, support and discussions.

The overall working and management was out of control, the management of people/ employees was ignored totally. Had I been in Mary's place I would have taken suggestions from my employees, especially Mike about hiring new computer specialist and asked if he could manage the computer setup on his own and after taking suggestions and feedbacks made a decision accordingly. I would have made my employees well informed before taking any decision and also been in constant touch with them even while the new setup was under progress.