Case Study Thomas Green: Power, Office Politics, and a Career in Crisis”

Candidate Peduto displayed clarity when briefing his complete five paragraph order, however he lacked confidence and often seemed unsure of the details in which he was briefing. Candidate Peduto did not lead by example, and was the last member of his Fire Team onto the platform. His position in the fire team did not allow him to fully understand if his solution was feasible. He asked his Fire Team member “tell me if this board is long enough.” If Candidate Peduto was leading from the front and better positioned he would be able to make decision and assess the problem. It took over five minutes for Candidate Peduto to get all members of his Fire team involved in solving the problem, wasting time and not moving toward mission

2. Evaluate Dan’s evolving relationships with Scott and Henry. What “principles of best practices” did he overlook?

During communications with Chung, Leary could never gauge exactly what Chung was thinking and never recognized that communication constraints could have been causing a barrier between them. Instead Leary kept her suspicions about Chung and checked over his work on a daily basis to ensure compliance but never had Chung’s full commitment.

Green and Davis had fundamentally different working styles. Green had a directorial approach whereas Davis was an analyser. Within two weeks of Green’s promotion, Davis complimented Green on his ideas, but did advise him to concentrate more on preparing for client meetings, developing significant support details for market analysis, which Green ignored.

|Give at least two examples of how other people/team’s political behaviour in the organisation could impact on the | |

Grey we thought to discuss a budget issue. The meeting left me feeling not only dissatisfied but feeling as if he could have careless about informing us then about hearing himself speak. He failed to inform us about why we were even at the meeting. He rambled about how it was too hot to work outside, why did the General want to change the speed limit down range and how the Red Sox were doing. I feel like he just wasted my time because he never even mentioned the budget. He failed to prepare any set goals of the meeting. “There are three general speaking goals: to inform, persuade, and entertain.” (Elmhorst, Adler, & Lucas, 2013, p.

Better communication needs to be created between mid and upper management. Proper communication will lead to a better understanding of the goals desired. Feedback is provided by upward communication, which makes employees feel involved and can help managers to get employees to understand their concerns (Thrilwall, 2012). Cooke and Peterson communicated scarcely and poorly. No regular meeting were scheduled. When the two did communicate there was no clear and actionable dialogue. Communication is only successful when both the sender and receiver understand the same information as a result of communication ( MindTools, n.d.) Both Cooke and Peterson should establish regular structured communication. This can be accomplished by setting periodic meetings, written updates via e-mail or memos. These meeting will provide downward communication that will allow information to be dispensed to the team working on the projects in question. These meeting will make Peterson and her team feel more involved in the direction of the project and it will also keep Cooke abreast of the attitudes and values of her employees. Cooke can defuse any potential problems

Carter Racing and NASA examples discussed in the class taught us the value of the voice of dissension. While Stevens acts like the character of Tom from Carter Racing, Jack Bryant from Personnel Audit team would have been the voice of Paul. Carter should have included him on the team and listened to his experiences while talking to the employees and their managers. After all, his “on-the-ground” experience and intuition gained through the audit process was more likely to reveal the real situation than PAS or the brief audit reports. Just as NASA, after the Challenger Disaster instituted a rule that a launch could be vetoed by anyone in the team, including Jack in the conversation would have served as an antidote to overconfidence bias that would otherwise creep in.

Keeping the lines of communication open will foster a positive working environment. Associates will be able to address concerns with their manager immediately, versus his or her concerns, and thoughts bottled up inside. This causes conflict and disputes to arise within a team, staff, or company. All it takes is one associate to be dissatisfied and his or her feelings can be spread throughout the team as second and third person opinions of a process or manager.

In chapter 1, and the videos presented to us, we learned that there are bad decisions being made at all levels of management. We assume that as executives the answers should be straightforward and easy. The reality is such that decisions made by these individuals are flawed from the beginning due to nature of thinking applied to them.

The primary problem in this case deals with a source of tension between two employees that have recently received promotions. There are various individual factors that may be a source of conflict that the case points to; however both parties need to look beyond their own personal perspectives in order to move towards the organizational goals. In the case of Thomas Green, he certainly has a lot of maturing to do before he is able to perform well as the next stage in his career development. In the case of his supervisor, Mr. Davis, he must also learn how to help disgruntled employees fill into their position in their new roles without any personal feelings get in the way. Several observations were made as to how both employees could address the problems. However, given the fact that both employees are new to their roles, the best case solution may involve a more senior management professional getting involved and setting a good example for both employees by resolving the sources of conflict and aligning them towards organizational goals.

Jamie Turner faces a difficult situation at Modern Lighting Industries Inc. (MLI). The company is struggling financially and has recently been acquired by a larger firm. Turner was hired as Vice President (V.P.) of marketing and sales by company president Pat Cardullo. Turner was all but guaranteed Cardullo’s position in less than two years when he was hired. However, six months later, the young manager’s future at the company is in serious jeopardy. The root cause(s) can best be summarized as: The denigration of their relationship; which can be traced to two main issues.

During the conversation between Ron Davis – the relatively new general manager of the machine tooling group at Parker Manufacturing and Mike – a plant manager who reported to Ron, Ron had violated some principles of supportive communication and supportive listening. First of all, Ron had violated Descriptive and Problem-Oriented principles. For example, Ron expressed his thinking and opinion about what Mike did and stated Mike’s personalities: “I think you’re too chummy with some of your female personnel” or “I think you’re creating a substandard impression by not wearing a tie” and “Having things in

Recommendation #2: When the organization ignored Howard’s behavior and allowed it to intensify over the course of 18 years, it affected other employees and their motivational levels. His supervisor, Frank Silverton, gave up trying to get him to work on time, and he settled for getting some good work done. By doing this, it created stress and job dissatisfaction for Dan and Mel, and Vince is displaying signs of Howard’s negative behaviors. Vince is young and right out of high school, so he is learning this behavior is acceptable. Dan and Mel jumped at the opportunity to work on other projects, so they could avoid working with Howard. Dan transferred to work for the manufacturing department, so he did not have to work with Howard in engineering. In addition, Mel has soured on the company over their lack of response to Howard’s incompetent behavior, and he thinks it was wrong that they moved the surveyors out of the plant. Once the pipeline project was over, Mel dreaded working with Howard again.

Thomas Green is an ambitious and bright individual looking to advance his career at Dynamic Displays within the