Harvard Business School
John Smithers at Sigtek
It was a few days before Christmas, and a light snow had covered the New England town where John Smithers lived with his wife and two young children. But instead of planning surprises and wrapping presents, Smithers was working on his resume. He had already warned his wife that within weeks he expected to be fired by Sigtek, his employer of three years. His boss and mentor had just been demoted to what appeared to be an extraneous position. He figured it was just a matter of time until his job was taken, too.
Eight months earlier, things had looked very different. Smithers 's boss, Andrew Cross, had selected him for what appeared to be a challenging and
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By April, Telwork was ready to begin training instructors from each of its subsidiaries in the Total Quality program.
Smithers Makes a Choice
Andrew Cross, Sigtek 's vice president of engineering, asked Smithers to become one of two site instructors for the Total Quality program (see Exhibit 1). Smithers looked up to Cross as a mentor, and the two men had similar ideas about the best way to manage people. Although Sigtek 's overall management style could be characterized as autocratic and largely unresponsive to worker concerns, both Smithers and Cross had been working within the engineering side of the business to encourage problem solving and open communication, and to enlist worker participation. Moreover, Smithers had already demonstrated an ability to identify problems within the engineering group and to come up with effective strategies for resolving them. Less than a year earlier, Cross had promoted Smithers to head up engineering services, the group responsible for doing product design work and documentation for manufacturing, and one of Sigtek 's more troubled units.
As engineering services manager, Smithers had to redefine a haphazard design process, correct inadequate documentation, and cut the highest employee turnover rate in the company. Relying on several
Evaluating his approach to bringing about change in his organization. Comparing his approach with that of Jack Welch.
Harvard Business Review case, The Nuclear Tube Assembly Room, is an excellent example of how managing and leading a team effectively can make a substantial difference in terms of results and goals achieved, all the while creating new ambitious expectations for workers. This particular case revolves around Ralph Langley, general foreman of the process department at American Radiotronics Corporation. Within the first 24 months of being promoted to general foreman, Langley has swiftly changed the mentality and efficiency of the workers in the nuclear tube assembly room. He has changed their terrible reputation into one of the most
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Jack Early was recently hired to be one of the higher-level managers. Jack had completed his M.B.A at one of the more well-known universities, and applied his knowledge and training, that he gained in school, to his work at Rockmont. He made such a good impression in a relatively short period of time, that he received many commendations and an early salary adjustment.
Mr. Braaksma worked a string of 12-hour days, and at the end was taken back by how small his paycheck was. While this was frustration for Mr. Braaksma, the most stressful part was understanding that line of employment could disappear overnight. (Braaksma, 2005)
The use of the competing values framework was demonstrated through Ralph Langley’s management style. He leveraged the four distinct models collaboratively as he led the production staff of the nuclear assembly room. His management approach help lead to the following: an increase in profits for the tube manufacturing operations, team cohesiveness amongst the production staff, individual ownership and problem solving during the production process, staff pride in meeting production goals and deadlines, and respect as well as admiration for management in the assembly room. The current positive direction of the nuclear assembly room staff under Langley’s leadership was in contrast to the department two years prior to him assuming the role as general foreman. It can be concluded that Langley displayed mastery of the competing values framework within the scope of his role as general foreman for the assembly room at American Radiatronics. He was able to develop a word class staff that was able to work as a team to accomplish the goals of the production unit and the company.
Though Mr. Zimpfer’s attorney was able to get a report from an I/O psychologist, Dr. Josephs, which verifies his ability to perform the duties described in the ad for the managerial position, the county could also get its own expert to rebut this psychologist’s findings in the report. If Dr. Josephs is able to convince this jury then there is sufficient evidence to conclusively prove that Mr. Zimpfer was a victim of discrimination, since her report shows that he is clearly more qualified for the position than Mr. Merriman is.
“This,” Terrill announced, “is the reason for the lack of productivity in the Sales Engineering division. These are the reports your people require every month. The fact that they sat on my desk all month shows that no one reads this material. I suggest that the engineers’ time could be used in a more productive manner, and that one brief monthly report from my office will satisfy the needs of the other departments.”
The Goal is a book that has an enormous provision on enhancement in management. It will undoubtedly encourage the Total Quality Management expressions when trying to build up and advance their production. In the book Alex Rogo the is manager of a manufacturing plant who is failing and receives a proposition from Mr. Peach, the Division Vice President that his plant will shut down in three months if Mr. Rogo is unable to increase production and decrease cost. Mr. Peaches visit to the plant made Mr. Rogo aware that his plant was not operating to the best of its ability. Rogo struggled with how to show significant improvement in his plant in three short months, until he remembered the conversation he had at the airport with Jonah who works as
In early 1990’s, Teradyne experienced a major change in leadership with the new CEO Alex D’Arbeloff. Alex grew interested in the risk of losing Teradyne’s competitive edge due to quality and reliability concerns. Although D’Arbeloff believed the team was exceedingly competent, he believed there were major operating problems regarding reporting and performance measurements. To minimize these problems, D’Arbeloff embraced total quality management (TQM). After 5 years of intensive effort, TQM principles were embedded into most aspects of work at the company and resulted in noticeable improvement in manufacturing quality and customer service. However, the engineering organization was resisting TQM because of the resulting late and over budget projects.
kept a somewhat level head through all of it and managed the engineers and other people
The general understanding of democracy is that it is a state of leadership where citizens of a country participate equally either directly or by representative individuals in the establishment of laws, which run the society. However, like many other forms of leadership, democracy has its cons and may not give the citizens the necessary freedoms that they think they have. Different philosophers have different insights on democracy in terms of concepts such as liberty, which they embraced. This paper will look at Benjamin Barber and Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of democracy contrasting their definition in terms of citizenship, obligation, rights and duties of each individual in the society declaring whose idea of democracy creates a compelling vision (Terchek & Conte, 2001).
Being a Harvard student Monroe has the skills to tackle the unprecedented challenges Also because the post of Director Business Operations is one of the top posts in the hierarchy of the organization therefore Monoroe has deiced to choose the best rate.
The President Ralph Larsen has realized that Wengart has some major problems with the quality however he is focusing on the profitability instead of the longevity of the company. He needs to have the team focus on improving the quality problem or the company’s profits will continue to decrease. Larsen in the effort to improve the quality has decided to seek out help from an OD practitioner who suggests to Ralph to implement Top Quality Management (TQM). Larsen feels that this should be easy to implement and hands it off to Kent Kelly the Vice President. He feels that the TQM program was a matter of common sense (Brown, 2011, p. 365).
b. Heterogeneous goals and priorities. Each function’s different goal and subunit orientation causes it toview problems differently. Subunits have become competitive as the attempts of one to achieve goalsthwart the attempts of another.c. Bureaucratic factors. Rondell’s structure has evolved historically and status inconsistencies havedeveloped among different groups and managers—between the heads of R&D and engineering. Althoughthe head of R&D, “Doc” Reeves, formally reports to Frank Forbus, the director of engineering,informally Reeves has more status and power. The manufacturing manager is concerned about his lack of a degree, which he believes lowers his status, so he deliberately causes problems for other managers toincrease his power and status.d. Incompatible performance criteria. Each function is evaluated according to its goals, so when slowengineering design raises manufacturing costs or results in lost customers or penalty clauses in customer contracts, functions come into conflict.e. Competition for scarce resources. Some functions, such as R&D, can command whatever resourcesthey want. Engineering services is running very lean, its engineers stretched thin, and no resources for aneffective preproduction unit. Given that profits have fallen, competition for resources might increase,which will worsen the