Question

Your company has a marketing director named Walter who is under a lot of pressure to come up with a new strategic plan for the company to enter a new market. Walter knows that he needs a lot of time to complete the plan, but has difficulty establishing periods of uninterrupted time at work because of meetings with clients and other staff members, as well as questions from employees. He is considering several options, including (a) working at home during the day to avoid interruptions; (b) delegating parts of the plan to his subordinates; or (c) working on the plan on weekends. The director has come to you for advice.

a. What factors (pros and cons) should he consider in making this decision? Is there another option he should consider? If so, what is it?

b. Finally, what option would you recommend, and why?

Answer 1

Working at home during day

Pros:

a) As he would be free from his meetings with clients and office colleagues, he would be able to devote his time fully and freely to the plan resulting in timely completion of the task.

b) This would result in enhanced quality because he would be able to give quality time to the task.

Cons:

a) As he would be away from his team, there shall be no inputs of his team and all the plan shall be basis the thinking of Walter.

b) This would also result in discontentment among the clients and office colleagues with whom the meetings have been scheduled.

c) The subordinates would feel cut off from him because they are not involved and their leader is solely making this on his own.

d) As he is working from home, the office employees would still give him a call for certain queries they need solution for.

Delegating parts of the plan to subordinates

Pros:

a) This would result in efficient planning and execution to achieve the task, as each sub-part has been divided to respective team members according to their expertise.

b) Each team member would be able to better give in time and think upon that resulting in the quality output of the task.

c) The team would also feel engaged that they are involved in making the strategic plan that otherwise would have the involvement of top management or marketing director only.

Cons:

a) This may result in lowering of the quality if all the sub-parts are not gelled together well. As every member does it differently and can give different thoughts, this would have problem in compiling all the sub-parts. The sub-parts may have inconsistency among them.

b) It is somewhat difficult to manage the tasks from different team members when the deadline is already tight. At the time of urgency, more follow ups would be needed from the team and the probability of all team members adhering timeline shall be low.

Working on the plan on weekends

Pros:

a) As during the weekends, as he would have more free time, he would be able to give quality efforts to the plan resulting in good output.

b) As compared to work from home option during working day, this would be better in ensuring that he can do already scheduled meetings with his clients and colleagues.

c) During weekends, the colleagues would not be calling him for resolving their queries resulting in more free time for Walter.

Cons:

a) As he is working on weekend, he would not be able to devote time to his family. During the weekends, generally an office employee is able to give the best time to his family.

b) His team mates would feel disengaged as they are not involved in making the plan.

c) Weekends are the time to take rest and get refreshed for the upcoming hectic week. If he works heavily during the weekend, he won't be refreshed enough for the upcoming 5 working days of weekend and this would result in low productivity levels.

We would recommend going with Option 2 because this would help in efficiency and effectiveness of the task. Also as the multiple team members are working, there shall be amalgamation of different ideas. As the respective owners are specialized for their sub-parts, they would be able to give output to their assigned sub-parts. To make this option successful, Walter has to brief his team before delegating and tell them the objective clearly of the activity. The thoughts must be brought on the same page so that output also comes on the similar lines. Also the subordinates should be given a chance to express themselves in their respective parts to bring up new ideas.