need answer to mgt questions

PART 15

READING 1

A REUNION

Several former classmates met in Chicago one Sunday, the day after their class reunion. After discussing the difficulties they had been having with the many changes in their lives since high school, one of the classmates, Michael, volunteered a story that had helped him deal with the changes in his life. The name of the story was “Who Moved My Cheese?”

THE STORY

The story revolved around four characters who spent their lives in a maze.

Indeed, one day sniff and Scurry arrived at Cheese Station C and found that the cheese was gone.

The little people, Hem and Haw, were different.

When they arrived on the fateful day and discovered the cheese had run out in Cheese Station C, Hem and Haw reacted differently than Sniff and Scurry.

Hem and Haw returned the next day still hoping to find the cheese.

A similar scenario played out day after day in Cheese Station C.

In the meantime, Sniff and Scurry had found new cheese.

Still, day after day, Hem and Haw returned to Cheese Station C in hopes of finding their cheese.

Unfortunately, a long interlude without food from Cheese Station C had left Haw somewhat weak.

Haw wandered for days and found very little new cheese.

Haw was often scared in the maze for he did not know if he would survive.

Soon Haw began painting a picture in his mind of himself enjoying all his favorite cheeses.

As Haw left this station, he made another important self-discovery.

Finally, it happened. What Haw had started his journey looking for was now in front of his eyes.

Haw was a bit envious of his mouse friends. They had kept their lives simple.

Haw realized three important things:

(1) The biggest thing blocking change is yourself;

(2) Things don’t improve until you change yourself;

(3) There is always new cheese out there, whether you believe it or not.

Although Haw knew that he had learned a great deal, he also realized that it would be easy to fall into a comfort zone with the new store of cheese.

Hem had finally learned to “Move with the Cheese and Enjoy It!”

BACK AT THE REUNION

After the story, the former classmates recounted situations in which they had to face changes in their work and their personal lives and they discussed which maze character they had acted most like. Most resolved to act more like Haw when dealing with changes they would face in the future. All agreed the story was very useful and that they would use the wisdom contained within to guide them.

READING 2

Using the fish market as a metaphor for other organizations, several key premises about

employees are identified, and these lead logically to a short series of recommendations for

personal effectiveness. The premises (underlying assumptions) include the following:

1. Life is short, and our moments of life are precious. Therefore, it would be tragic for employees to just “pass through” on their way to retirement. Managers and employees both need to make each moment count.

2. Most people prefer to work in a job environment that is filled with fun. When they find this fun or create it, they are much more likely to be energized and release their potential.

3. People also like a work environment where they fell they can make a difference in the

organization’s outcomes. They need some capacity to assess their contribution toward

those outcomes.

4. Alomost any job-no matter how simple or automated- has the potential to be performed with energy and enthusiasm.

5. Employees may not always have the opportunity to choose whether to work or the work to be done itself. However, they will always have some degree of choice about the way in which they do their work. At the extreme, each employee can choose to be ordinary or world famous. One path is dull; the other exciting.

6. employees can legitimately act like a bunch of adult kids having a good time as long as they

do so in a respectful manner (not offending coworkers or customers). When they do act as

kids (along with choosing to love the work they do), they can find happiness, meaning, and

fulfillment every day.

Based on these premises, four recommendations are offered to employees for their

personal effectiveness:

1. Every morning, before you go to work, choose your attitude for the day (and make it a

positive one).

2. Make an effort to introduce an element of play into your work environment; it will benefit

you and all those around you.

3. Make a commitment to make someone else’s day special for them. Do something that

will create a memory, engage them in a meaningful interaction, or welcome them to your

organization.

4. While you are at work, seek to be present with them. Focus your energy on them; listen

attentively and caringly; pay attention to the needs of your customers and coworkers.

READING 3

THE IMPORTANCE OF FUN AT WORK

A young manager, Bob Workman, is continually bombarded with problems at work that leave

him and his colleagues emotionally drained at the end of each day. In sharp contrast, they find

much enjoyment in activities that they engage in away from work (e.g., while participating

in voluntary and nonprofit organizational settings, as well as truly recreational activities).

Predictably, the manager embarks on a journey of discovery, in which he searches for an

answer to his dilemma.

In his search for answers to his questions, Bob stumbles upon several key pieces of information.

First, he discovers that most workers want a job that is fun (the strong interest is

there). Second, he discovers a powerful fact—that “fun, play, and laughter” may actually exist

at the pinnacle of the typical employee’s need hierarchy as the most sought-after environmental

factor at work. This provides a startling revelation for him: It appears that a primary goal of any

manager should be to provide opportunities for employees to have fun at work.

He explores what some other organizations have successfully done to implement fun at

work and develops a set of initial conclusions. Fun workplaces are:

1. Easy to create

2. Desired by most employees

3. Easily identified by the presence of laughter, joy, happiness, surprise, and spontaneity, and yet

4. they can mean different things to different people.

FUN FACTORS AND A DEFINITION

Now ready to jump in with both feet, he discovers a comprehensive research study that documents

a surprisingly broad set of factors that contribute to having fun in any context (e.g., recognition of

personal milestones, fun social events, public celebrations of achievements, stress-release activities,

friendly competitions, opportunities for community involvement, use of humor, opportunities

for personal development, the use of games at work, and providing occasional entertainment

at work). He experiments with several of these and concludes that they are

1. Generally easy to implement,

2. Inexpensive (often cost little or nothing), and

3. Are usually well received by his employees and colleagues.

As a consequence, he arrives at a working definition of a fun work environment as one in

which a variety of formal and informal activities regularly occur that are designed to uplift people’s

spirits, and positively and publicly remind people of their value to their managers, their organization,

and to each other through the use of humor, playful games, joyful celebrations, opportunities

for self development, or recognition of achievements and milestones.

IMPORTANT OUTCOMES

When his proposal to formalize the fun process at work gets initially rebuffed by his boss, he

carefully studies the possible impediments to a fun workplace. He discovers that a fun workplace

could change the culture substantially, may lack the support of higher executives, could

produce negative perceptions from outsiders, may raise some realistic fears among managers

(e.g., lower productivity, dangerous behaviors, extra costs), and might cause managers to experience

a certain degree of personal embarrassment. However, he concludes that these are not

serious barriers that cannot be overcome.

Rank Outcome

1. Greater employee enthusiasm

2. Higher ability to attract new employees

3. Increased employee satisfaction

4. Better communications among employees

5. Improved employee creativity

6. Richer employee friendships at work

7. Higher group cohesiveness

8. Increased levels of customer satisfaction

9. Elevated level of employee commitment to the organization

10. Stronger corporate culture (shared values and norms)

In addition, he is confident that fun at work will also reduce anxiety and stress and diminish

the common complaints of boredom that he hears so often.

MAJOR FUN INSIGHTS

Finally, he prepares a set of key insights that he has gained from each step in his “journey into

fun.” These include the following:

INSIGHT #1: You can get a lot of people to do a lot of things if there is fun involved.

INSIGHT #2: Most people want to have fun while also doing meaningful and productive work.

INSIGHT #3: A wide range of activities exist that can provide fun at work.

INSIGHT #4: Fun at work is not traditionally viewed as an integral part of a manager’s

responsibilities, and consequently it will not be accepted easily by superiors without very

convincing argument and solid evidence.

INSIGHT #5: Strong evidence is emerging that fun workplaces can and do produce a wide

array of activities that lead to positive physiological and psychological outcomes for the

individual and equally valuable benefits for work organizations.

INSIGHT #6: It is appropriate to outline—in advance—the criteria that a program for fun

at work must meet, and then review them frequently.

INSIGHT #7: Using the principles of a high-involvement workplace, consultation

with employees and solicitation of their ideas can provide a strong base of support and

innumerable ideas for fun at work.

INSIGHT #8: The only way to conclusively determine (and demonstrate) the actual effects

attributable to fun at work is to measure them on a pretest and posttest basis.

INSIGHT #9: Fun-at-work programs can be designed and implemented quickly, easily,

and inexpensively by a truly committed “fun minute manager” and his or her team.

IMPLEMENTATION PRINCIPLES

1. Address other employee needs first.

2. Make sure that “fun at work” will be a good fit with the organization’s culture and with

employee expectations.

3. Build a fun workplace on an underlying philosophical foundation, not just a set of mechanical

practices.

4. Make a long-term commitment to fun as an ongoing process, not a short-term program.

5. Become more playful yourself.

6. Involve others in creating fun experiences.

7. Satisfy employee needs for recognition in new and unique ways.

8. Use a wide variety of fun-related activities.

9. Capitalize on the surprise factor.

10. Assess and monitor your success at creating a fun work culture.

PART 16

READING 1

INTRODUCTION

Today’s organizations face a myriad of challenges and pressures that allow the world outside to catch

a glimpse of their operations and decisions as they confront and deal with these factors. Though most

organizations in every sector of the economy are undoubtedly led by some of the best and brightest

the labor pool has to offer, there are countless examples of actions undertaken by these organizations

that leave an outsider to pose the question: “what were they thinking?”

COMMON THEMES

Although there are many reasons why organizations make poor decisions that seem obvious to a

great many people, three common threads seem to unify and categorize them well:

1. Disregarding the feedback effects of decisions

2. Believing in and using overly simplistic models of people and organizational behavior

3. Overcomplicating reasonably straightforward issues

PEOPLE-CENTERED STRATEGIES

Much emphasis in recent years has been placed on self-led teams, the value of investing in

your workforce, and removing bureaucratic barriers to promote creativity.

Another mistake that is commonly made is the unforgiving nature that many organizations

have adopted over time concerning making and admitting to mistakes.

Reluctance to admit mistakes also runs parallel to another error often found deeply seated

in organizations that are not as successful as they could be, which is the fact that people want to

work and stay at organizations that treat them well.

CREATING EFFECTIVE WORKPLACES

Creating effective workplaces through the reduction of benefits and imposition of human

resource controls is another area in which organizations can easily fall into one of the three common theme errors. Cutting benefits and pay when times get tough is a common approach seen in today’s headlines. However, this can be a very detrimental and ultimately ineffective way to cut costs.

LEADERSHIP AND INFLUENCE

Truly effective leaders know that the following four steps will keep a large and complex organization going in the direction they want it to:

1. Define the criteria for success.

2. Project clarity and confidence.

3. Move fast to establish terms of discussion.

4. Endlessly repeat the simple message.

Clear communication and vision projection are not the only leadership behaviors that are

prone to the three common errors of decision making.

The use of psychological commitment is a good example of this principle. This is the idea that people are interested and invested in other people’s success when they have made a contribution to it and are familiar with and enjoy the company of an individual.

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

Two serious issues that plague many organizations today as they try to measure their success

are overrewarding forecasting and budgeting (vs. actual performance) and the overreliance on

shareholder return as a valid measurement for success.

In the first, it is increasingly common for organizations to celebrate and benchmark their

“successes” based on their own internal profit projections and budgets.

Second, studies have shown that stock price is neither reliable nor valid in terms of assessing

the long-term success of a company or the quality of its management.

ORGANIZATIONS AND PUBLIC POLICY

In relation to making large mistakes in the limelight of public opinion and in the midst of the hot

issues of the day, there are three areas in which organizations often find themselves struggling to

make effective decisions.

Labor unions are the first issue on which organizations can often make mistakes.

The second issue is executive pay. The “above-average effect” suggests that everyone views themselves as above average and demands at least the average executive pay.

The last issue involves the many misdeeds that can be committed in organizations and how

they deal with the aftermath of unethical business decisions.

READING 2

INTRODUCTION

Managing is complicated. It involves an unrelenting pace, brief bursts of widely divergent activities,

fragmented schedules, a bias toward action, a favoring of informal verbal communication,

close collaboration with peers, and covert rather than overt control of many situations. Phone

calls, email, and meetings don’t distract from the job of managing, they in large part are the job

of managing. Writers have described managing as “calculated chaos” and “controlled disorder.”

MANAGING ON THREE PLANES

There is, though, some underlying order in the chaos. Both inside and outside their own unit,

managers manage on three planes: the information plane, the people plane, and the action plane.

Effective managers become adept at knowing when and how to play these various roles, taking

into account their own personal strengths and the situation in which they are managing.

FACTORS INFLUENCING MANAGEMENT

Even knowing the various roles they play, many factors influence how managers manage. Extensive

research over the years has identified at least 12 factors that can be placed in five categories.

They are:

1. External context

2. Organizational context

3. Job context

4. Temporal context

5. Personal conrext

In a study that followed 29 very diverse managers through a typical day, many of these

factors did not influence management activities at all, and an average of only three appeared

influential per day. By far the most prominent factor was the form of the organization (managing

in a national park was different than managing in a health-care system, which was different than

managing in an arts organization, etc.).

PERSONAL STYLE

In addition to the first several factors, managers also bring their own personal style to the task of

managing. The range of styles available includes insightful, engaging, and cerebral.

The various blends of styles can be categorized into nine managerial postures that a manager

may assume for a particular situation.

The postures, with brief descriptions are:

1. Maintaining the Workflow

2. Connecting Externally

3. Blending All Around

4. Remote Controlling

5. Fortifying the Culture

6. Intervening Strategically

7. Managing in the Middle

8. Managing Out of the Middle

9. Advising from the Side

MANAGEMENT CONUNDRUMS

With so many factors influencing managers and with so much adapting to do based on the given

circumstances, it’s not surprising that managers face a host of conundrums they must deal with on a regular basis.

1. Thinking Conundrums

2. Information Conundrums

3. People Conundrums

4. Action Conundrums

MANAGERIAL MIND-SETS

Given the nearly unlimited variables and multiple conundrums that managers face on a daily,

if not hourly basis, how can they be effective? A useful framework includes five managerial

mindsets, all of which must be interwoven to result in effectiveness. The mind-sets—reflective,

analytic, worldly, collaborative, and proactive—are framed within the context of a manager being

personally energetic and socially integrative.

In the midst of that energy, effective managers must also be reflective.

The analytic mind-set includes gathering both formal and explicit knowledge along with

informal and tacit knowledge.

The worldly mind-set involves being experienced in life, sophisticated, and practical.

The collaborative mind-set forces managers to manage their relationships with people in

their unit and others outside their unit.

The proactive mind-set requires the effective manager to not be overly reflective, and to

seize the initiative rather than simply responding to what happens.

Bookending the personal energy of an effective manager is the ability to be socially

integrative. This means being able to see the whole from the miscellaneous parts. It requires

integrating on the run, while working with multiple people inside and outside the unit.

READING 3

CAUSES OF BAD DECISIONS

Evidence-based management—decisions based upon the best research, data, and experimentation

available—should lead companies to make better decisions than if companies use the prevailing

approach based upon incomplete and often nonfactual hopes and fears. So why don’t

companies use evidence-based management? Three reasons stand out.

Business norms derived for decision making include many practices that hinder the use of solid

evidence as the basis for decisions. First among these norms is the use of casual benchmarking, which

happens when companies copy the visible practices of other successful companies but fail to adopt the

underlying philosophy that drives these practices or fail to acknowledge that these successful companies

may have different business strategies, competitive environments, and/or business models.

A second cause for not using evidence-based management is because managers rely on

(and repeat) past behaviors that seemed to be successful, even if these behaviors are not appropriate

for the current situation.

Finally, managers may choose to implement a practice because it conforms to their personal

beliefs.

Collecting data, doing research, and examining assumptions when making decisions are the

basics of evidence-based management.

HOW TO APPLY EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT

Practicing evidence-based management can lead to better outcomes for people and companies,

but problems may arise. Consider the premise of evidence-based management—that good

decisions are based on data.

EXAMPLES OF HALF-TRUTHS IN MANAGING PEOPLE

AND ORGANIZATIONS

To illustrate the dangers of not using evidence-based management, here are some common business

beliefs and a review of the data and research supporting and not supporting them.

Half-Truth #1: Separation of Work and Home Life Is Necessary

Employees’ work lives are different from the rest of their lives. Employers often develop policies

and practices to convey the idea that once employees are on the clock, no aspects of their personal lives should ever enter into their thoughts or actions.

Companies require that employees dress in a particular manner to narrow, or eliminate, the individuality expressed by employees.

By not allowing people to use work time to accomplish personal tasks, the amount of role conflict experienced by employees should diminish.

But there may be benefits to allowing integration between work and home life.

Half-Truth #2: Only Companies That Hire the Best People

Will Be the Best Companies

Another common half-truth is that the best companies are that way because they hire only the

best people. This argument is compelling because there is research showing that smart and skilled people perform at much higher levels than people of lesser ability. However, other assumptions about only hiring the best people make this half-truth dangerous.

This obsession on hiring great talent is somewhat misleading, as organizations cannot easily

Identify talent. Also, people’s performance will vary naturally over time due to external constraints on their ability to focus and their levels of experience.

So what approach to talent should organizations embrace to be successful? First, acknowledge

that talent can be learned and demonstrated by anyone, not just the few people who walk

in the door with it. Next, focus on developing ggod systems in which people can demonstrate their abilities.

Half-Truth #3: Financial Incentives Are a Must for Executives

Offering financial incentives to employees is so popular in the United States that the practice and

the rationale behind it frequently go unquestioned.

Research shows that most people are not motivated by money when choosing a career,

but rather they choose careers based upon which jobs will make them feel fulfilled.

This is not to say that incentives should never be used, but they should be used judiciously.

Half-Truth #4: Strategy Is Destiny

The prevailing belief in the business world is that doing the right thing, even if it is not done well,

is better than doing the wrong thing well. This idea suggests that companies must have an overall

plan to reach their objectives. It is based on the assumptions that each company is equipped to

do some things better than other companies and that focusing on these things will result in better

outcomes because of the limited time and resources available to the organization.

Again, however, the research is not always supportive of this strategic view of the world.

Additionally, there are reasons not to engage in significant strategic planning.

Nevertheless, some planning is probably better than none.

Half-Truth #5: Change Is Inevitable

Experts will tell you that if your company doesn’t change it will die. But is all change good? Some change is surely valuable to organizations, but many changes are not for the best.

A review of many research studies and cases suggests that organizations can adapt quickly

and easily to new realities. A few elements need to be present to make the change successful.

First, people must be dissatisfied with how things are currently happening. Second, they need

clear direction on where the change is headed. Third, leadership must consistently convey high

levels of confidence that this change will fix the problems the organization faces. Finally, the

message conveyed and enacted should be that the change will be messy and that anxiety is a

normal part of change. When organizations embrace these elements, a worthwhile change can be achieved quickly and successfully.

Half-Truth #6: Leaders Are Everything

Leaders, however, do not control everything about company outcomes. In fact, some research suggests that industry and company effects are much more influential than leaders when measuring company outcomes.

So why do we believe leaders are so important? When an organization does very well or

poorly, we attribute these good or bad outcomes to the leader of the organization, because it is

he or she who is the most obvious symbol of the company and we cannot see all of the individual

efforts that went into making these outcomes possible.

Despite our belief that leaders are in control, we worry that they should not be in control.

Complete control can lead to complete corruption. Also, by giving complete control to one person

in an organization, it lessens the ability of other employees to have control over their work

lives and lowers their commitment to work.

Good leaders recognize the substantial limits on their abilities to direct the efforts of others.

Leadership cannot be learned from a book or a class. Good leaders learn their craft by

experience.

HOW TO IMPLEMENT EVIDENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT

1. keep an attitude that things can always be improves and that continual learning about what you know and don’t know will lead to improvements.

2. stick to face and not what people want to believe.

3. learn your facts from mant sources.

4. see both the positives and the negatives of your organization and the practices you wish to implement.

5. check your ego at the door.

6. make evidence-based management a company-wide objective.

7. recognize that switching an organization’s philosophy of management to an evidence-based approach will take some selling-and some time.

8. use evidence-bases management to slow the spread of bad practices.

9. learn from failures, not only your own organization’s but also those of other companies.

READING 5

THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WORLD

The world is hot, flat, and crowded.

America will play a key role in the response to these issues, much as it has done for nearly

every key global issue in the past. America needs to become the greenest country in the world, not as a selfless act of charity, but as a core of national security and economic prosperity. The United States cannot do this alone, but if it leads the way, others will most assuredly follow.

As of now, America (along with the rest of the world) is entering the energy-climate era,

where energy and climate change issues will dominate. There are five key problems that define

this era: growing demand for ever-scarcer energy supplies and natural resources; a massive

transfer of wealth to oil-rich nations; disruptive climate change; energy poverty (large populations

without access to dependable electricity); and rapidly accelerating biodiversity loss.

PETRO POLITICS

U.S. dependence on foreign oil is causing negative consequences in four primary ways. First, we

are helping support an intolerant, antimodern, anti-Western, anti–women’s rights strain of

Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. Second, we are helping finance reversals of democratic trends in Russia, Latin America, and elsewhere. Generally, as the price of oil goes up, the pace of freedom goes down. Third, we are causing a global energy scramble, where repression, human rights, and religious freedom take a backseat to the need for oil. Finally, by purchasing foreign oil, the United States ends up funding both sides of the war on terror—our military on one hand and

terrorists funded by nation-states from whom we purchase the oil on the other.

Of particular concern is the relationship between the price of oil and the pace of freedom

within “petrolist” nations

One cause of this phenomenon is the “taxation effect.”

ENERGY POVERTY

A general rule among all energy-poor countries is that they don’t have functioning utilities

that are able to raise the financing needed to build and operate power plants and transmission

lines. This is the result of persistent misgovernance and/or civil war. The lack of reliable energy

results in negative impacts on nearly every other aspect of life (e.g., access to food and clean

water, quality education, manufacturing, and health care). There is little chance these countries

will rise out of financial poverty and health crises without eliminating their energy poverty.

CLEAN ENERGY

Simply providing reliable energy to everyone who currently doesn’t have it by burning more

fossil fuels is not tenable. The impacts on pollution and climate would be catastrophic. Instead,

the world (with the United States preferably leading) needs to move toward the creation and deployment of “abundant, clean, reliable, and cheap electrons.”

In this new system, everything must be interconnected—production, distribution, and use.

At the same time, we need to focus on efficiency to reduce the demand for energy production.

Clean and inexpensive energy solutions may be years down the road, but reducing energy

consumption starts lowering carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions immediately. Using available

energy more efficiently has the same effect.

MOVING FORWARD

The United States has yet to seriously embrace a “green” economy. Most efforts to date have

simply been tweaking on the margins. To keep from doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by mid-century, the following eight actions need to occur

A SMART ELECTRICITY GRID

One proactive approach would be development of a “smart” energy grid. Existing electric utilities across the country grew in a haphazard manner, with little or no integration between them, and little ability to alter real-time pricing to reflect supply and demand

All this would happen on an energy Internet and be controlled by programmable chips in every

vehicle and appliance

WHERE TO START

To get to this future will require a combination of policies, regulations, standards, innovation,

market incentives (and disincentives), and breakthrough technologies, all coordinated in an

intelligent system that moves us rapidly from high CO2-producing energy sources to clean energy

production and efficient use of the energy that is produced. Businesses need to learn to view these policies, regulations, and incentives not as a barrier to their success but as a way to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

BARRIERS

What is in the way of moving in this direction rapidly? Primarily it is the continuing legacy of

the “Dirty Fuels System”: auto companies, coal companies, some unenlightened utilities, and oil

and gas companies. Their influence in political decisions remains significant across the country.

Second, the country as a whole really has no sense of urgency about energy conservation or clean energy research. “Green” is still viewed more as an option than a necessity.