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Respond to at least two of your peers with any questions you have about their analysis of communication failures they have witnessed in organizational change efforts and compare their answers to your own understanding of communication problems in organizational change efforts.

Peer One:

Hello everyone!

· What was communication failure?

Returning to my experience in the updating of the pet care department when I worked for PetSmart, there was a clear failure of communication between the corporate office and the managers at store level. The team implementing the change from the home office failed to communicate the drivers for the change clearly. Store managers were given a very general explanation for the change instead of being provided with supporting data.

· What communication needs were not met?

In this case, the need for communication to promote understanding of the necessity for the change was not met. The other store level managers and I lacked the information needed to properly introduce the changes to the staff. We had very few answers when our associates questioned the change effort.

· What was the result of these failures in communication?

The communication failure created difficulties for management to create urgency and buy-in within the store and gain support for the change. As a result, it became difficult to implement the new processes in the pet care department and several long-time employees continued the old routines and procedures for much longer than the managers would have liked. Additionally, new employees sometimes became confused when they were being trained with the new procedures yet seeing current staff follow the outdated processes.

· What needed to be done to correct this problem?

This problem could have been corrected if the change managers at the home office shared more detailed information about why the change was being made and what the benefits would be. If that had been done, my fellow managers and I in the store would have been able to communicate better with the staff, answering their questions and building more support for the change. While the updated procedures were eventually fully adopted, the change process would have been much smoother and likely faster had there been more communication.

Peer Two:

An ineffective work experience that I recently had to navigate through was the result of poor communication. Communication "is the transfer of information and understanding from one person to another with the goal of having the receiver understand the message as it was intended and (often) to act upon that information " (McGraw-Hill, 2016). Unfortunately, many things can go wrong in the communication process that can result in serious consequences. 

· What was communication failure?

In working for a school of the arts, I encounter a lot of interpersonal issues between students and even between parents. Sometimes,  these situations escalate and require an intervention of some sort; and, unfortunately, these situations can be exasperated by a poor response from the school. About six months ago, we had a student who had engaged in inappropriate behavior and tried to get another student to engage with them in that behavior. This student felt uncomfortable and went and told her parent and then her grandparent who happens to be the artistic director. The artistic director and the child's parent decided to not tell the parents of the offending child what had happened. 

· What communication needs were not met?

The breakdown in the communication concerning this situation began when the artistic director and the parent decided to not tell the parents of the offending child. Although they had received the information about the behavior, they failed to act on it by alerting the student's parents so that they could take appropriate steps to help their child (McGraw-Hill, 2016). Furthermore, they communicated to other staff that the children were to be kept apart, but there was no reason given forcing the staff to comply to something that they did not understand. 

· What was the result of these failures in communication?

This resulted in things spreading through the school and the offending student being ostracized and cut off from her peers and feeling too afraid to go to staff or her parents for help. Although the student apologized again and again, the other student continued to turn her peers against her and gossiped about her. On top of this, the artistic director told staff that the offending student was to be kept away from her grandchild but did not specify why. Several months later, information reached the offending student's parents, and there was immediate backlash. Several meetings had to be held where these parents expressed their outrage from being kept from information concerning their child, their child being bullied and gossiped about, and their child be rejected and cut off from her friends with no staff intervening to try and resolve the situation. Although things were eventually worked out as best as they could be, this student continues to struggle to have friends at the school and has begun stating that she does not want to be there anymore. 

· What needed to be done to correct this problem?

It is obvious to me that there were many personal barriers rooted in emotions and values that resulted in the decisions that were made concerning the situation (McGraw-Hill, 2016). It appears that there was more concern over having to properly deal with the situation than there was for the relational experiences students would have. With no one to guide these children, things escalated to such a distressing level amongst them that the fallout of that is still felt today. According to an article in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, "relational communication strategies are aimed toward guiding more personal relationships with clients and enhancing customers’ noneconomic (social) satisfaction. (Jordan, et al., 2020). It is my hope that our school establishes relational communication strategies that put the needs of its students and their families first so as to avoid anything like this from happening in the future. 

McGraw-Hill. (2016). Human Behavior in Organizations. McGraw-Hill Education. 

Jordan, W. Moffett., Folse, Judith., Palmatier, Robert. (2020). A Theory of Multiformat Communication: Mechanisms, Dynamics, and Strategies. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.