Communication - Assignment - Communication Plan
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CommunicationIssues.edited4.edited2.docxRunning head: COMMUNICATION ISSUES 1
COMMUNICATION ISSUES 2
Communication Issues
Student's Name
Institution Affiliation
Date
Communication Issues
Introduction
Communication is a critical phenomenon resulting from an individual's interactions with other people within an organization to motivate human resources, gain the anticipated outcomes, and work with excellent individuals in an improving competitive market. Organizations have internal and external communications that assist individuals in performing their duties. This communication plays an essential responsibility in bettering the quality working areas through great performance among the staffs. However, in the workplace, communication issues always arise due to poor communication. Workplace poor communication is a severe problem and can be very costly to an institution (Lupu, 2017). The impacts can be devastating to the parties since it can lead to loss of products, employee turnover, and business customers. The primary aim of this study is to identify two case studies of communication issues within an organization. The paper will also determine the impacts of the projects' communication issues under the case study and the measures taken to resolve the problems.
Case 1
The first case study involves the Hyten Corporation. This company is a leading manufacturer of automotive components that begun its work as though manufacturing of components for the military. The company has an automotive component division with an informal project management system (Harold, 2021). The systems involve every department handling its functional areas. The departments are aware of their responsibility and what contribution they make for every project. At one time, the company held a meeting between the sales director and engineering directors—the meeting aimed at discussing the creation of the new component for a critical customer application. The projects had a tight schedule, and the project's success depended on the timely completion of the specific tasks among the departments involved (Harold, 2021). A conversation between the individuals showed no proper coordination between departments since some departments only got involved when things were going in the right direction. Other departments provided information to the customers that the organization could not possibly meet due to a lack of proper communication (Harold, 2021. Another department, like engineering, explained that they had an informal approach to doing things that did not work all the time.
Case 2
The other case study involves the Ill-fated project by the national corporation. The company is a large international corporation that deals with specialty machines, components, and tools created to automate aircraft manufactures. The Institution is also organized into various divisions like the tool production machine and component facilities, where every division operates and profits (Harold, 2021). In the ill-fated projects, Jeff, the company's chief engineer in one of the divisions, went to one of their plants. In the plant, the manager wanted to purchase a “computer numerical controlled machine center," Thus, he passed his request to Jeff for approval (Harold, 2021). When Jeff observed the request, more questions arose, which led to the request for direct communication. Another meeting was also requested between the company and the national airplane company among appropriate people to explain the project projections. They reviewed the sales projections and were convinced that they are accurate and reliable. However, several problems were identified that involved project management and proper communication channels.
Communication issue 1
In Hyten Corporation, the sales director Bill Knapp and the engineering director john rich conducted a meeting to discuss the new product's development for the special customers' application. In the meeting, Bill identified that the business “development department” was put in place to offer coordination between the stakeholders, but they were never helpful. The department is also accused of only being engaged in activities when things are only going well. In most cases, they just provide promises to the customers that the company cannot meet (Harold, 2021). Moreover, the engineering department is also complaining that the business should adopt formal project management since the informal process does not always work. Although the company has enjoyed continuous growth over the years due to proper and careful planning among the right individuals and time, the informal process of project management is not fully effective. The process rotated around each department dealing with its functional area of the specific project (Harold, 2021). The process also involves the manager assuming the informal project coordination responsibilities they call a periodic meeting for the departments involved. The meetings aim at informing every person about the work status project challenges and any issues within their area.
However, at one point, the company hired Wilbur, who came to the process of developing the company development and provided them the role for formal project management. Another company was also hired to provide more information on project management among the various stakeholders (Watt, 2014). During the discussion, Wilber also asks for clarification on the potential issues of the timely execution of activities. The problem identified was there was poor communication among the departments. The marketing departments and the manufacturing department did not understand the time needed to inspect the external and customer deviations (Harold, 2021). There is also no formal contact or open communication lines between the various departments, which makes it hard to handle projects.
The Hyten corporation issues were a negative issue in nature. This is because the departments conducted issues through an informal communication channel where they cannot easily access each other. This also creates problems between customers, departments, and stakeholders (Harold, 2021). Notably, the problems make some departments make promises which the company cannot meet. The lack of open lines of communication between the stakeholders creates the problem of project completion. This is a negative situation for the company as it can lead to business failure,
Communication issue 2
Another problem that arises is seen in Kelly’s office when Kelly summons Jeff. Kelly complains that National had refused to quite on a very special part which they were sent to print about the price and delivery of an order (Harold, 2021). Kelly also complains about t national sales department saying that they turned him down since they were not tooled for the business. In Kelly’s communication, Jeff understands the solution but cannot respond to the situation since its sales representative was not around and could not talk on their behalf. Jeff returns the information about Kelly’s complaints to the national vice president of sales engineering and manufacturing to ensure that the sales vice president contacted Kelly’s office.
Moreover, the problem also arises, as seen from bob jones, who storms in Jeff’s offices claiming that he had committed to accepting an order on behalf of the company without the sales representative (Harold, 2021). Bob complains that all communication involving customers is mostly directed to the sales departments. However, Jeff explains the situation, but bob doesn't seem to care since he affirms that all communication should follow the right procedures.
Jeff identifies the communication problem and goes on to their boss Wolinski. He explains that if proper channels were to be followed, several delays and problems would be encountered when handling the project (Watt, 2014). Moreover, the stages will make the customers have more questions and changes that will need constant updates. The current company system will not effectively work uncles the departments were under the same prior system. Wilinski fails to agree with Jeff as he believes that they have been successful in their other projects, and thus they should continue using their existing channel of communication.
However, while using the existing communication channels, Jeff spends a great time asking for clarification for the customers' drawing, which goes through Waldos before the manufacturing processes could be settled (Watt, 2014). The process made the customers anxious to receive the quotations to select a supplier, which further delayed the process. The communication delays caused more time to be lost despite the efforts to try and spend up the process by laying out alternative routes.
The procedure design began to change the project, making the sales make delivery promises test design that nobody could describe. The sales department continued to change and reschedule time without proper communication and proper consultation, making the National Company lose the projects to its competitors (Holand, 2021). Upon hearing that the company has lost the order, Jeff feels that they wasted a lot of time due to poor communication among the departments. Poor communication made the company lose 6 million dollars in profit.
Impacts of the poor communication in the studies
Communication is crucial and a fact of life, mostly within organizations where technology, remote work, and teamwork are highly common (Lupu, 2017). For any organization to thrive, exceed goals, and meet deadlines, solid communication channels and relationships should be established. Whenever stress occurs due to unmet expectations, low morale, or dissatisfied customers, communication is the root cause of the problems. For the case studies, we see the impact of poor communication among the stakeholders (Harold, 2021). Additionally, a lack of proper channels of communication comes with various negative effects on projects' success. Thus its impacts to look at the effect the communication problem had on the companies.
Foremost, the poor communication created misunderstanding among the departments. The misunderstanding was due to a lack of a proper communication channel, which started more serious issues in its projects and departments (Lupu, 2017). Moreover, individuals also failed to perform their jobs well due to the misunderstanding created by poor communication channels. For instance, in the Hyten Corporation, the lack of a good communication line between departments created misunderstandings that led to overlaps when working on projects and made the team not stay on schedule and get better cooperation (Harold, 2021). Moreover, the misunderstanding created by poor communication made the manufacturing departments appear as the bad guys for not meeting the scheduled start date. In the National Corporation, the misunderstanding created more problems between the teams. It made Bob Jones complain to Jeff about him committing to order without the sales representatives. It also made Kelly furious as he feels that Nationals Corporation had refused to conduct business with them.
Additionally, another impact that happened due to poor communication was missed opportunities. Lack of proper communication is a huge impact that leads to missing business opportunities (Hamburg & Grosch, 2018). This happens because the employees do not clearly talk about their interests during their meetings and are unwilling to take more responsibilities. For instance, National Corporation lost the order and a profit of 6 million dollars due to poor communication between the various stakeholders involved in the project, which led to project delay and the client's disappointment.
Moreover, poor communication also caused unnecessary conflict between the departments and people involved in executing projects within the two companies (Lupu, 2017). Unnecessary conflict mostly occurs when the person performs something that the other person is doing their job or is not getting too involved in their work. In National Corporation, Kelly is angry because the company failed to make their quotation and inquire about it from Jeff (Harold, 2021). However, Jeff cannot respond to the issue since their sales representative is not around. Additionally, Bob is angry at Jeff since he feels that he went ahead and took an order that was the sales department's responsibility. Their boss Wilinski is also angry at Jeff cause he feels that Jeff does not want to follow the channels of communication that have continued to work for them over the years (Harold, 2021). This poor communication among the departments head leads to unnecessary conflicts that can be avoided through proper communication among the individuals.
Lastly, poor communication led to miss trust and poor organizational culture. The problems hurt the company culture since it creates a bad reputation (Zerfass et al., 2018). For instance, Kelly is disappointed with the national corporation for how they failed to deliver on their project, which made them feel that although they might consider them for other projects in the coming years, the project would be just part of the activity.
Measures are taken to resolve the problem.
Poor communication has various impacts on the organization, as seen with both Hyten corporation and national corporation. However, although National Corporation recognized its problem in the end, it did not make any effort to resolve the problem. However, Hyten corporation conducted a meeting to resolve poor communication and poor communication lines (Harold, 2021). When the company hired a new business development department director, he came up with a possible solution to solve the problem of informal communication with the departments.
Foremost, the director conducted a meeting and talked with the management about the problems and their thrusts. Afterward, he engaged with the other stakeholders, who explained what they felt about the problems (Lupu, 2017). The people proposed creating a coordinating effort between the purchasing, marketing schedules, and manufacturing functions to allow the departments to perform their routine work (Watt, 2014). They also proposed the creation of open communication lines that would be excellent for all individuals. The process would involve creating a formal project management method that allowed all departments involved in activities and the planning.
The coordination aimed to improve communication between departments and become an effective change under its current system (Lupu, 2017). Evaluation information would also be requested from the functional managers' project managers to assess a project's process and explain to the other stakeholders (Harold, 2021). To avoid a situation where the functional and project managers don't see eye to eye or anything that would lead to poor communication, they proposed that they are in the same grade level. They should also not have authority over the other but were expected to agree on their direction and work quality (Watt, 2014). All the departments accepted implementing a formal project management process that ensured the report's provision, coordination, and good communication lines within the departments.
Conclusion
In conclusion, communication is a key thing within any organization. It’s mostly used in rung all organizations effectively. Effective communication is important for any business to prosper and cut on wasted time by offering employees and customers the appropriate tools to find satisfaction and succeed. When the communication becomes ineffective, it leads to wastage of time and lack of coordination among the stakeholders. Just like Hyten Corporation and National Corporation, Problems constantly arise when there is poor communication. Thus, companies have to find proper ways to resolve the issue to ensure its success and growth.
References
Hamburg, I., & Grosch, K. R. (2018, September). Aligning a Cybersecurity Strategy with Communication Management in Organizations. In Digital Communication Management (pp. 43-58). IntechOpen.
Harold, K. (2021). Project management: case studies. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Lupu, M. M. (2017). Managerial Communication Influence on the Organizations. EcoForum, 6(1), 0-0.
Watt, A. (2014). 7. Project Initiation. Project Management.
Zerfass, A., Verčič, D., Nothhaft, H., & Werder, K. P. (2018). Strategic communication: Defining the field and its contribution to research and practice. International Journal of Strategic Communication, 12(4), 487-505.
