Control Mechanism

Control Mechanism

Delta Team

Robert Devine

1/11/2007

MGT/330

Summary:

One of the few constants in today's business environment is change. Successful organizations will adapt to a change in market conditions or corporate needs with minimal effort. This constant vigilance of their organizational culture and management style influences the level of success that will be achieved. How are they able to be so agile? The culture is ready for the unexpected. In fact, they expect the unexpected. Unknowns are part of their day-to-day planning and routines. Not knowing what is to come and what to expect seems to give a sense of excitement to any circumstance. This often makes the customer more eager to indulge themselves into what is being presented.

Importance of culture:

There are many reasons to create and maintain a healthy organization. To provide a productive work environment and to obtain maximum potential from the personnel are two very important reasons. Maintaining a consistent a management style and positive environment will promote Productivity. Maintaining this environment and culture will reduce errors in work, conflict between management and turn-over of employees. A productive work environment might include a casual work day, an open-door policy from the senior executives, or something as small as a comment box personnel can drop whatever praise or complaint or suggestion they might have for management to create a better workplace.

Management that has no set style or direction is unpredictable. This unpredictability can cause an increase in cost, and a decline in productivity. Managers that are inexperienced or lack training may attempt to establish guidelines or rules to prevent disrespect of one another and abuse of the production process. When these rules are intermittently, selectively or inconsistently enforced this can cause confusion and unrest amongst the employees.

When the employees find themselves not knowing what rules to follow when, they often spend a large amount of time correcting errors in their work because they based their decisions on previous rule enforcement. This inconsistent enforcement causes confusion, in what is expected of the employees. In addition to not knowing, some employees may be treated differently when a rule is broken then others, which may lead to distrust within the junior personnel. In the Navy, there have been several times when one sailor who has a better work ethic and is in better standing with some of the senior enlisted personnel gets away with something that another sailor, who has had trouble with superiors and seems to slip off whenever work needs to be accomplished, gets in trouble for.

Experienced managers will usually have a solid management style and provide direction for the employees. When management provides these consistencies the confusion is removed and the guidelines or rules are clearly stated. This maintains a positive workplace and a well run organization. This is our opinion that the style of management that is implemented is not as important as having one in place.

Example:

In the past I worked for a manager who often changed the level of quality he expected based on the timeline. The confusion that this created could have been obverted, had he provided the time constraints and priority to me at the beginning of the job. Often I had to assign a priority level to the job based on how much or little of the allotted time had been expended to this point. If a great deal of time had been expended at first, then the job sat idle for a while sometimes indicated that the priority was soon going to be very high. Other times this would indicate that it had an open-ended time of completion.

In this situation good leadership was hard to provide, there was no consistency and very little direction provided. When problems did occur the repercussions were seldom consistent.

External relations:

The customer often suffered due to the job being incomplete. When this happened the personal at the jobsite often were left to answer for the problems that were created by this problem. This problem reinforced the week culture. "A strong culture that encourages inappropriate behaviors can severely hinder an organization's ability to deal effectively with its external environment particularly if the environment is undergoing change, as is almost always the case today." (Bateman and Snell 2007)

In this situation knowing the timeline, deadline and penalties of missing the target before the job started would have made clear the expectations. Having a plane in place to deal with the customers would have resolved any question the employees may have had in dealing with these situations. This clarity would have allowed me to set a clear schedule for the completion of the task. Having had a contingency plan would have allowed for better external relations.

Change:

Getting an organization to change can depend on many things. "The history, style of leadership, structural stability, level of work-force empowerment and the ability to adapt to a changing environment all contribute to the culture of an organization. Shaping the culture to face changes in the marketplace and environment depends in part on the ability for the organization's leadership to implement a new guiding vision and mission."

(Smith,