Final Entry: Broad Topics

Our world today is dominated by large organizations; they can greatly influence the economy, politics, and society as a whole. Under law, corporations are separate legal entities that function as a human being: they pay taxes, they can be sued, and they even have a social security number. It is easy to see why people think of companies like General Electric or Exxon Mobil as these independent corporate behemoths rather than thinking about their lifeblood: the people that work there. This course has taught us that organizations are more than the product they produce or a bottom-line sales figure, it has taught us to think about the people of an organization when considering how they succeed and fail. In summary, these are ways we believe people affect every major topic we have discussed with respect to organizations:

• Motivation and Meaning – managers/employees need to be properly motivated to be effective, and a great way to do that is to employ tactics that make employees feel that they are doing meaningful work and contributing positively to the organization
• Learning and Feedback – members of an organization need to be told whether or not they are doing a good job; this is constructive and will lead to more success and a higher quality of work
• Culture and Socialization – organizational culture should be identified as it is very important to its functioning and image; the organization should employ members that fit with the culture and make assimilating into the culture easy for those that may be different but still have a lot to offer
•  Mentoring and Social Networks – mentors are very important as they can provide guidance and create a sense of membership for another member; social networks are very important in achieving one’s end game as they can be very beneficial in disseminating a message or communicating the existence of opportunities
• Positive and Negative Interpersonal Relationships at Work – when people work in stressful atmospheres, which are often found at work, there are bound to be bad relationships that will form; the organization should commit effort and resources to solving disputes before they affect the achievement of goals and objectives
• Teams and Trust – teams are much easier to work in when everyone understand their responsibilities and trust that each member will do quality work and contribute equally
• Power and Politics – organizations are very hierarchical, so it is natural for people to seek power as that often comes with higher pay; however, this gives rise to politics, which are essential to individual success but definitely come with a fine line should not be crossed
•  Conflict and Communication – conflict will arise in organizations for the simple fact that people have very different opinions and feel that they are correct; organizations must seek to resolve conflict through communication between the members involved before the conflict hurts the organization
• Negotiation – people involved in a negotiation must understand their positions relative to each other before diving into a negotiation or it will just turn into an argument; there are ways to effectively negotiate and achieve one’s ends and these methods usually lead to respect between parties as well
•  Managing Change – the fact that change can be scary is a fact of life; it is up to management and leaders to not assume that people are consciously resisting change and make the change process as smooth as possible by understanding the people they work with
• Crisis Management – many organizations will experience crisis in their lives; the best organizations have people that are trained to deal with these tough times and people that can react quickly to crises and develop courses of action

In conclusion, we must remember that organizations are just collections of people, which is why some succeed and some fail; it is all about the talent and types of people and organization employs.

Managing Change

This scene is instigated by previous weeks of discontent and conflict on the team and in the community.  The team is being affected by both external and internal forces. External forces such as changing demographics in the area and in their school, as well as social pressures have set the scene and created an overall clash within the two groups. Furthermore, internal forces like conflict and organizational culture are being disrupted and causing friction.  At this scene, coach is trying to establish a sense of urgency by saying things like “if this continues you too will be destroyed.”  Without changing something, the group will cease to exist at all. He is developing a vision and strategy for success that begins with small victories.  First, they must learn to get along so they can be a team. Then they can move on to playing well together and reach their ultimate goal of winning.

If organizations are around long enough, they will certainly go through change at some point or another.  I worked as the assistant to the Food and Beverage Department Manager at Sterling National Country Club a few summers ago, and that organization went through quite a bit of change.  At one point, the country club completely overhauled the way we accounted for inventory and loaded the beer carts, which was a major source of revenue.

The old system was as follows:

·      The four beer cart employees come in in the morning and stock their carts

·      They sell food and beverages all day while recording how much they are selling

·      They stock up when necessary, and sell and record as usual

·      At the end of the day, they would give me their sheets of what they sold and I would enter it into the system

What we found is that there was no real way of knowing if those were the real amounts sold because they only took a physical inventory every two weeks or so, and to make it worse it seemed like we were losing money somewhere.  So, with the manager we developed a system much different than the usual routine:

·      Every morning, I supervised the employees load their carts with equal amounts of product while I recorded how much had been taken

·      When they needed to restock, I supervised then as well and recorded the amounts of inventory taken

·      At the end of the day, they totaled up how much product they had left and I subtracted that from the amount taken to get the amount used and a sales figure for the day

·      The excess product was put back into inventory

This was obviously much more regimented a process and the employees thought it was a pain at first, even I felt like the bad guy at some points, but it was effective.  Looking back when considering what I have learned in this class, the way the change was implemented is strikingly similar to Lewin’s Change Model:

1.     Unfreezing – we had a meeting that showed where we were losing money and why the old system was risky and inefficient without being accusatory

2.     Changing – we put in place the new system under direct supervision

3.     Refreezing – we helped the employees integrate this behavior into their normal ways of doing things through direct supervision and recording inventory and sales while we also offered free lunch rewards for lunch for the top salesmen of the previous day

-Mike Daw

Politics

Organizational Politics, or when someone acts to influence or protect the self-interest of individuals or groups, can be irritating if you are witnessing it on a daily basis.  One form of organizational politics is known as “brown-nosing,” and I witnessed quite a bit of this at my internship this summer.  One of the other interns, who I will refer to as Chris, was always trying to get ahead by playing politics via brownnosing.  He would regularly ask the bosses if they needed coffee, exuberantly praise their work while subtly criticizing the work of other interns, often take credit for the ideas of other interns, and much more.  The other interns, including myself, noticed it and so did the upper-level employees.  It was annoying, but while taking this class and learning about Organizational Politics, I gained greater perspective to why Chris may have acted the way he did.  He probably tried to politic in this way because of uncertainty; five common sources of uncertainty and how they relate to Chris are:

1.     Unclear objectives – us interns knew basically what to do, but not how it really fit into the puzzle at the bank, so Chris was obviously lacking some information

2.     Vague performance measures – we did not have formal performance reviews or any metrics to see how we were doing, so a lot of “how we were doing” was up to us; Chris oftentimes prodded for feedback so he could do a better job but it came off a bit pretentious

3.     Ill-defined decision process – the bank was doing well, but it was structurally weak, which gave rise to uncertainty among all interns and lower-level employees as the decision making process was not clear

4.     Strong individual or group competition – there were four interns and the bank traditionally only offered one a full-time position, so Chris was definitely trying to gain an edge on us to get the offer

5.     Any type of change – we often changed what we were doing and how we were doing it throughout the summer as our work was not very structured, which gave rose to uncertainty and lots of questions, which Chris always asked in a bit of a whiney fashion

Comic 1

Comic 2

Organizational Politics can have both positive and negative effects on people depending on how central they are to a group. Many times, the political behaviors are rewarded (comic 1), but when they go too far, people can get fed up or disagree with the ethics of it (comic 2).  Conformity and flattery are among the tactics that are not as maliciously intended, while acclaiming and favor have a natural tendency to have a negative connotation.  Organizational politics shows up in every type of group dynamic including companies, classes, and families.  We have all experienced a class where there are clear teacher favorites, and it is often reflected in grades.  Students often use supervisor-focused tactics in order to reach their ultimate goal of self-promotion.  Others are expensed for their own selfish interest.  While organizational politics benefit the individual, they are more likely to do more harm than good for the rest of the organization.     

Conflict

Above: How to NOT handle conflict

Below is an example of a great way to handle conflict...

"I have not had many conflicts at work, mostly because I believe I am a relatively hard-working employee who dedicates all of my time to the job rather than interacting with people that may cause a conflict.  Also, I have not worked in that many work groups at my previous jobs, which is often a hot bed for controversy and conflict.  However, I was in a situation in one of my classes when I studied in London that closely resembled a work place, group conflict.

During fall of my junior year, I studied abroad in London through NYU, which had a very large Jewish population.  I have a few very good friends that are Jewish, so I am comfortable with the culture, just as other non-Jewish NYU London students were.  My friend and I took a very interesting marketing course and were paired with three girls who were friends and very devout Orthodox Jews.  The assignment was a six week project that had a written, research deliverable component and an in-depth PowerPoint presentation at the end concerning marketing strategies of European companies.  It is often hard coordinate when to do group work while abroad as many people are traveling, people are very diverse and have different work styles, and friends of group members are often visiting from other countries.  What made this group particularly difficult to deal with was the fact that those three girl could not do work on the weekend; their religion permitted them from doing so while they could also not do basic activities such as turning on lights or riding in a taxi.

Three weeks into the project, we had gotten very little done, relative the amount we needed, and my friend and I were the only ones that had done anything.  The girls could not work on the weekends and were always travelling with each other on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  We felt like we were doing all the work but still falling behind, which created conflict.  We felt we were pulling the load while the girls accused us of not being considerate to their religion, which was certainly not the case.  In the end, I proposed that instead of telling people when we cannot work, we should devise a calendar that says when we can, so we could effectively choose dates.  I also offered to do all the typing and research on the weekends as long as the girls were there to contribute ideas and information that they had done on dates they could work.  We ended up getting an A on the project and becoming good friends with the girls.

Our conflict was rooted in lack of communication as well as a sense that the other members of the group were not being understanding.  However, I believe we achieved all three of the desired outcomes of a conflict after we resolved our issues:

1.     Agreement – we sat down made a calendar stating when people can and would work and stuck to it, while the girls agreed to be there while my friend and I compiled information

2.     Stronger Relationships – we learned to trust each other and like each other not just as team members but as people too.  We actually all ended up travelling to Morocco together in a large group and had a great time, while one of the girls bought my friend and I two customary Jewish garments.

3.     Learning – we learned a lot about conflict resolution, effective communication, each other, and Judaism throughout the process which made us closer friends and teammates"

Teams

I really enjoyed working in a group with Tom, Allison, and William in this BEM 311 class.  At this point, I would not stop at calling us a “group,” but rather I think we are a team, and one that trusts each other as well.  The reason I see us as not just a group but a team is that I believe we fit the five criteria of becoming a team: we all act as leaders, we are accountable on both individual level (to each other) and a collective level (to the class and professor), we have a defined purpose, we spend a good amount of time problem-solving, and finally, our success and effectiveness I measured in how we perform in this class and on our assignments.

To clarify those five criteria and how they apply to us, here is how they relate:

·      We share responsibilities and all act as leaders within our group; anyone can present an idea and take charge of a project or situation

·      We are accountable to each other, in that we set deadlines for work to be done and quality of work while exercising expectations about competencies, while we are also accountable to the class and professor to show what we have done

·      Our defined purpose is to cohesively work together to produce the best quality of work possible in order to receive the best possible grade we can

·      We are constantly problem-solving, whether its choosing a multiple choice answer between two possible answers, or deciding when is most convenient to work

·      There is an indicator of how well we function as our team: our grades on the assignments we work on together

What makes us such a good team is that we all trust the other members.  There are six steps in building trust among team members, and though we did not consciously go through each, I believe they all apply to our team:

1.     Communication – we keep each other informed on our individual and group work by meeting regularly and keeping an open Gmail thread

2.     Support – everyone on our team supports each other, whether that means giving advice on work one of us has done and understanding when someone simply cannot meet due to other obligations

3.     Respect – everybody in our team respects each other as a person and as a student, so we know will be able to produce quality work

4.     Fairness – we give credit where credit is due, whether that means giving a pat on the back for knowing a multiple choice answer or commending someone for a great idea for our projects and assignments

5.     Predictability – we are all reliable and predictable; when people are supposed to be somewhere or be doing something for the team, they are; this has been great for our productivity

6.     Competence – we all emit a sense of professionalism and usually know what we are talking about, so we have gained credibility with each other

The bottom-line is, I really enjoyed working with my team because I can trust them.  We are always on time for meetings, unless there are circumstances out of our control, we delegate work well and contribute equally, we listen to all ideas and come to meetings ready to work and with a thorough understanding of the material and what we need to accomplish.  We have been a very well-functioning team.

-Mike

Mentoring and Relationships

One of my most memorable work experiences was during a summer at a camp in Missouri.  I worked in the main office with three other girls my age and our boss, Jenny.  Jenny quickly became a strong influence for my work and she taught me both about work related tips as well as good general life lessons.  She became a mentor for me in the workplace that I could go to for any question and she constantly offered up advice to help me succeed.  We both benefited from the relationship because I was gaining knowledge, and she was gaining and more effective employee.  She protected me when I faced hard challenges with people outside the company and also helped me to form relationships within the office.  I still keep in touch with Jenny and know that I will always be able to go to her for future connections or just good advice.    

-Alison

Work relationships are undoubtedly important, as they often determine one’s happiness, career success (Uzzi & Dunlap) and work satisfaction (Roy), among other things.  Of course, as with any relationship, there are positive and negative forms.  On one end, my current employer, Todd Crannell, president and founder of Q2 Sports and Entertainment, is probably my biggest career mentor.  As we learned in class, mentoring is “the process of forming and maintaining developmental relationships between a mentor and a junior person.”  Without a doubt, Todd and I have formed (and continue) this relationship.  As a successful sports agent, he is the perfect person to help guide me in my career aspirations.  Todd has taken time out of his schedule for the past 3+ months to speak to me nearly every day, and help me on different projects related to the sports and entertainment industry.  Unfortunately, there is also the other side of work relationships.  The first one that comes to my mind is my relationship with a coworker of mine at the 3M Championship last summer.  Because we didn’t see eye to eye on most things, and frankly didn’t get along, my work satisfaction was drastically effected for the worst.  Fortunately, it was just a summer internship, and we were able to eventually set aside our differences for a short period of time.  Had this been a long-term relationship, however, there might have been more of an issue.

-Tom

Mentors are very important to have in work organizations as lower-level employees, and even upper-level managers, can reap valuable benefits from an intensive and lasting developmental relationship with another person affiliate with the company.

This summer, my mentor at my boutique investment banking internship in New York City was a third-year associate named Zach.  Zach was a senior member of my fraternity when I was a freshman, so we were familiar.  He had gotten wind from a senior that I was closer with that I was looking for a banking job in New York City and called me one day during my junior year to see if I was interested.  I was, so he set up an interview with the boss, which I performed well in, so I got the offer and decided to intern there at Livingston Securities.  Zach also helped me find an apartment in the New York City and was very helpful in my transition to the Big Apple, a place I had never been before.

At work, he definitely acted like a mentor to me.  During my first week, he took time out of his day to take me out to lunch (and pay) while he explained how the company does business.  He introduced me to the senior members of the team and also briefed me within the first week about their personalities and backgrounds, as well as what they like to see out the interns and what type of work is most effective and presentable to them.  Zach also took the time to explain what we were specifically looking for in the companies we sought to acquire private placement capital for, so that I could narrow my focus.  He forwarded me much of the work he did as an intern when he was still at Wake Forest while he gave me lessons on his computer covering various programs that the company used, all for my knowledge of the company operates.

Throughout the summer, I forwarded all of my work to Zach and he would regularly pull me aside quickly to review it and point out what was good, what was bad, and what would catch the attention of the bosses; oftentimes he even gave me a great idea and took no credit for it when I included it in my work.  What was most helpful was definitely his pointers on what the bosses were looking for, as I always tried to stand out among the other interns, though he often gave similar tips to them.  Zach was a great mentor for me this summer at Livingston Securities and I would hope many people would be fortunate enough to find a mentor like Zach in their organizations.
-Mike

An aspect of work the work environment that will never change are the relationships formed and the bonds that strengthen between co-workers and even business-business relationships. It is important to treat these relationships with respect and integrity in order to gain the trust and respect of your co-workers. Strong relationships mean that people want to work harder for you and will give you their best effort. One of the strongest forms of relationships in a work environment is the mentor relationship.

Two valuable mentors in my life both work for SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Arts) in Winston-Salem. I have been interning for SECCA on and off the past semester in order to gain knowledge of a larger art institute. Michael and Kristin immediately took me under their wing noticing that I was an ambitious business minded student with a broad knowledge of art, but lacked understanding of the more current and contemporary art world. I believe Michael and Kristin were successful mentors because of their age. Being in their late twenties I could relate easier to them and was able to communicate in a more lighthearted yet serious manner. Through their mentoring I was introduced to several artists and successful art enthusiasts, learned how to archive art exhibitions and learned the ins and outs of the museum business that I may not have learned with someone I could not have communicated with so easily, respected and knew that I had their respect as well.  

-William

Internship Feedback: Formal vs. Informal

Summer Internship Feedback:

Formal

As Wake Forest requires, I received formal feedback from our tournament director at the 3M Championship.  At both the midpoint and end of the internship she filled out an online form that was sent to Professor Dickson (my internship advisor) and myself.  Although the formal feedback was nice to have, it wasn't as thorough as I was hoping.   In fact, my supervisors feedback was so brief, I initially thought she wasn't pleased with my performance.  (Something I later found to be not true).  In all, formal feedback is a good, tangible way to tell how you are doing, but it often isn't as beneficial as the alternative, informal feedback.

-Tom

I received formal evaluations from my supervisor at the midpoint and end of my internship. There were both positive and negative aspects of this feedback that I noted.  I loved getting positive comments about my work because I could see that my hard work was being noticed, and it encouraged me to work harder. I also got to evaluate my relationship to my boss and see how I responded to formal instruction and praise.  However, the downside came in the fact that there was not a lot of constructive criticism.  I did not get a chance to improve much because my boss did not provide specifics to work on.  Also, I had to wait periods of time to receive this feedback and after the final evaluation I was not able to change things for that job. I could however, carry forward that feedback to my next position.

-Alison

I found that my internship experience was a valuable one, but due to the size of the company, the lack of formal training, the start-up nature, and the amount of business they drummed up, I definitely missed out on a lot of feedback.  I was supposed to receive a formal evaluation at the end of the summer, but business really kicked up at this time and CEO and Managing Director responsible both were often out of town meeting with potential clients.

-Mike