Discussion Responses Week 5

Initial Post (J. Obando)

1. Margort Smithfield, thinking about producing a new line of furniture is a big step within your company. Now more than ever is when you need to promote an innovative environment. With the help of your management team, they need to ensure that they reiterate the roles of their current employees, expectations, upcoming plans, etc. Innovation can be intimidating but employees become more productive and your warehouse can become very competitive in the furniture market.

2. Margort Smithfield, we have to keep in mind that this going to be a big change for your employees. Here are 3 "noises" that could affect someone at work. The first one is perceptual organization, what this means is that a person in your case your employees respond in a manner depending on their environment. Meaning there needs to be clear instructions and a plan in place where the employees know what they are doing because due to the change that you are trying to make; if they are not informed they will continue to produce products and build things the way that they are use to. This is also called perceptual constancy-meaning "if an object is perceived always to be or act a certain way, the person will tend to intfer that it actually is always that way" ( Lumen Learning, Individual perceptions and behavior, n.d.). The next one is cognitive bias, where in certain situations can be irrational. One can lack judgment if the persons mind if not capable of processing a lot of information at once. This can lead to miscommunications and a high percentage of errors in the production department. The last one is perceptual distortions, and one of the distortions that all under the perceptual is belief bias. These individuals make decisions just by the information that they obtain and the knowledge they may have on the topic. It is important that your employees have clear cut instructions and the facts they need to know.

3. Here are a few obstacles that I believe will make it harder for employees to accept the upcoming changes. The first one is operational changes, although change is good it could take a tool on your employees especially if they are not informed about these changes sooner than later. Employees are comfortable and if they are happy where the company is at they may fear big changes in employees, managers, and the executive team. This could lead to stress in and out of work and employees may end up leaving. Thid brings me to culture employees maybe really happy with the culture that the organization has built and enforce throughout the years. With such a change this could lead to a lot more stress and the culture can go from being a pleasant place to work to a place workers do not even want to show up for. Laslty workflow, this might be the biggest challenge. This imparticular for your employees that are the manufactures. These employees have been use to making the same furniture for years the have a system in place and are able to produce great work. With having a new furniture line they may worry about committing frequent errors, slowing down production until they get back into rhythm again. There is a lot to think about and important decisions and planning to do.

4. It is important that you and your executive team know what is best for your employees. I belive that implementing the incremental change would be best for your company. While still planning and gathering all the logistics for the new implementation for your company , you can start introducing the new ideas to your company like Wikipedia's concept of building an encyclopedia ( Lumen Learning, Managing Change for Organizations, 2021). This also gives the company an opportunity to slowly start training and offering new skill sets to your employees that will be valuable when the new changes are put in place. This will give your employees a feeling of readiness and appreciated that the company took the time to prepare them for this new change.

5. The best decision-making oversight would have to be 'overconfidence bias'. The company has grown so much throughout the years your employees have seen the decisions being made and how it has helped the organization positively. The board is by your side and believing in the decisions being made despite the lack of evidence or data on the outcome they know it is possible.