Monthly Archives: May 2015

THE RISE OF PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA

Dear Mrs. Hillary Clinton,

We at Miracle Consulting Ltd. believe that you have the potential to be the 45th President of the United States. Comparing you to the current president, Barack Obama, we can see many similarities. Therefore, we would like to assist you in your rise to Presidency.

Factors for a likely candidate

Creating an effective team greatly helped President Obama during the elections. By hiring David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Chris Hughes, Obama put together a strong team that was essential to his campaign. Not only did his team have the skills required to perform effectively, but the team was also the perfect size and had a common purpose. His team was able to create an effective campaign strategy, which focused mainly on three positions rather than trying to cover every issue. The team also came up with a strategy to target high school students who were old enough to vote, hoping that it would influence the vote.

President’s Obama’s enthusiasm is an important personality trait that gave him a positive perception. By spreading the idea of hope through the use of his enthusiastic attitude, he was able to motivate people intrinsically. During Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 24th 2004, he placed an emphasis on “the audacity of hope”. Because of Obama’s enthusiasm and personal charisma, he was able to gain a larger share of the votes and positive media attention.

Another one of the biggest factors was that President Obama possesses the qualities of change management. Obama best demonstrated this during the Economic Crisis. Unlike Senator John McCain who stated that the “fundamentals of [the] economy [is] strong”, Obama decided to quickly change his campaign messages to address the issue of the global economy. Soon after, Obama addressed the issue by announcing his plans to fix the economy, which included a focus on working families as well as a specific plan for Wall Street and Main Street. By addressing the issues and the willingness to change his campaign messages quickly, Obama essentially won the debates regarding the economic issue.

Factors for an improbable candidate

Despite the many factors that made Obama a likely candidate, Obama’s run for presidency was high in risk-taking as he faced daunting hurdles, two primary ones being race and religion. Having a father who was a black Kenyan aroused “huge skepticism that people were unsure of whether America was ready to elect its first African American President”. Since there had never been a previous African American President before, people who stereotyped and had prejudice against African Americans were less inclined to vote. Moreover, earlier on in his campaign Obama didn’t receive support from African American leaders because they had doubts about Obama’s motives and his loyalty to the African American community. The issue of Obama’s religion was controversial since people were dubious about his religious position believing that he was Muslim when in fact he was Christian.

When running for the Democratic presidential candidate, another huge concern was that there were many other highly qualified candidates, such as you, who had been loyal Democrats with a bigger presence in both Democratic politics and amongst voters. Since your husband’s presidency was remembered as a “relatively prosperous time economically and stable time in military”, and your experience in Senate upheld a strong track record, this placed you as Obama’s main competition. By having a strong campaign as well as having a well-respected name amongst the black community, it was evident you were “the front runner”and Obama was in for an upward battle.

Another cause for the doubt in Obama’s suitability of becoming the next president was his “change vs. experience” platform that focused on new ideas. While this was met with excitement from some, this also received criticism from others. Not only if elected would Obama’s term of presidency go against the traditional of 44 past Caucasian presidents, but also challenge conservative views. Obama faced individual resistance of the general public and also faced organizational resistance of his new ideologies and political stance.

Most Important Reason

The way that President Obama is able to solve problems is one of the most important reasons that he won the election. During his run for candidacy, Obama was faced with many challenges including the controversy with his pastor and the continuous allegations about his race. Not only was he able to get past these challenges, he did not attempt to avoid the problems. Instead, he opted to address the issues directly. During the controversy with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama publicly disapproved the comments made by his pastor during one of his most memorable speeches, rather than trying to avoid the issue altogether. During the same speech, Obama directly addressed the issue regarding racial inequalities. Instead of ignoring the issue of race, he argued how race should not be used as a distraction to the election and that the focus should be placed on the issues. By having his campaign target the younger adults through the use of the internet as a political tool and utilizing social networking, it allowed Obama to create a strong message of change while establishing both a connection and a likeableness to the younger voters. Not only is this genius in motivating younger adults to vote for Obama, but by establishing a personal connection with the people so that they want to vote this has helped solve the issue of a reduction in younger people voting.

Advice

A successful leader always puts people first. They consider what others think and demonstrate empathy. By doing so, the leader can gain trust and support. A flaw with your previous campaign plan was neglecting the smaller districts and focusing on people with high power. During your next campaign, we recommend that you follow Obama’s strategy by also targeting both the older and younger generation. This can be achieved by having a common goal that is beneficial to everyone and a positive attitude, which would motivate the nation and give a sense of transparency. We believe that the moral foundation of leadership is essential towards your goal of presidency. By doing so, this is a step forward to becoming a level 5 leader.

People are attracted to resilient leaders who know where they are going and are passionate about their purpose. These leaders have the ability to build confidence in their followers and lead them to believe that anything is possible. One of Obama’s most famous speeches “Yes We Can” used powerful phrases to empower his supporters and reinstate hope when they sensed despair. Although Obama faced many problems throughout his campaign, he pushed on and through this he was able to exemplify strength, creative tension, and genuine belief in what he was fighting for. For a female candidate like yourself we sense that your platform will focus on America’s first female president. Similar to Obama who became the first African American president, we advise you to tackle the issue of gender inequality and carry forward the idea of positive change. By being an effective collaborative leader and using your passion to pull supporters rather than push them, this will not only strengthen your team but also allow it to grow and attract more supporters.

You should consider the concept of change management. The idea worked well for Obama and should work well for your campaign. He was willing to alter his campaign platform almost immediately to reflect the changing concerns of his citizens. By doing so, he essentially won the debate about the economic crisis over his opposition. Additionally, President Obama’s honesty and his ability to be direct can be seen as an attribute to his popularity. Whether it was addressing the controversy with his pastor, his race or the issue of racial inequality, he did not try to avoid the concerns. By being direct about the issues, he not only was able to overcome the issues, but also was able to solidify the support of many voters since he demonstrated that he has the ability to overcome difficult situations, which if handled incorrectly, could slow his progress.

Your relationship with the media has not been an easy one. During your keynote speech on March 24th 2015, you expressed interest in a fresh start with the press and in “new beginnings” . We believe that this is a good step forward towards a new start, however, we believe that you must continuously attempt to strengthen your relationship with the media. Following Obama’s campaign, voters liked how they were able to relate and trust him because of his transparency. Following the Hersey and Blanchard’s situational theory, the most ideal followers are those who are both able and willing. By having a positive media relationship, transparent ideas and experience, we believe you could achieve a loyal following.

Because of the positive similarities between you and President Obama, we believe you are a great candidate to be the next President. Therefore, we conclude that by following our advice, your chances of becoming the President should greatly increase.

Works Cited:

Cillizza, Chris. “Hillary Clinton Promised a New Relationship with the Media. She Was Kidding.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 24 Mar. 2015. Web. 25 Mar. 2015.

File, Thom. 2013. “Young-Adult Voting: An Analysis of Presidential Elections, 1964–2012.” Current Population Survey Reports, P20- 572. U.S. Census Bureau, Washington, DC.

Hopkins, Mark. “Creative Tension.” Personal Excellence 1 July 2013: 5. Print.

Krell, Eric. “EXPLORING WHAT IT TAKES TO LEAD IN THE 21ST CENTURY.” Baylor Business Review 31.2 (2013): 4-11. ProQuest.Web. 25 Mar. 2015.

Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A. Judge, eds. Organizational Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson, 2010.

Loannidou, F and V Konstantikaki. “Empathy and emotional intelligence: What is it really about?”. International Journal of Caring Sciences 1.3 (2008): 118-123. Print.

Obama, Barack (BarackObama). “Our Journey is Not Complete.” 22 Jan. 2008, 4:34 p.m. Tweet.

Russ, Linden. “Abraham Lincoln and the Art of Collaborative Leadership.” Public Manager 1 Jan. 2013: 3. Print.

Seelye, Katharine Q. “Bill Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Stirring Race Issue.” The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 24 Jan. 2008. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.

Thomas, David A., Laura Morgan Roberts, and Stephanie Creary. “The Rise of President Barack Hussein Obama.”Harvard Business School Case 409-115, June 2009.

Campbell and Bailyn’s Boston Office: Managing the Reorganization

Dear Mr. Ken Winston,

First, thank you for hiring Miracle Consulting to assist you in the next few months to improve Campbell and Bailyn’s. The changes that your company has implemented have both positive and negative aspects to them. The establishment of the Key Accounts Team and the New Performance Management System are great ideas. We feel that your KAT team was implemented much better than your performance management system since the KAT team followed most of Kotter’s eight-step plan for implementing change, while the Performance Management System didn’t. It’s obvious that the Performance Management System is a good idea because the results were positive based on annual sales. However, the ideas could’ve been implemented better since there are several key issues. Even though we believe that the issues are detrimental to your company’s well-being, they aren’t impossible to resolve.

Issues and Analysis

Issue 1: Fears of Job Specializations

It has been expressed by your team members that they’re worried about the new team structure limiting their future career prospects. Managers often neglect to further develop skills of employees that are in a specialized role since the managers are satisfied with their employee’s current role and performance of their employees(Tucker). However, if your team members start to believe that their current role has no advancement opportunities, they may leave your company to find a career that provides better opportunities to learn transferable skills and the possibility to advance further in their career. Therefore, this may lead to your company seeing a higher turnover rate.

Issue 2: An increase in customer dissatisfaction

It’s obvious that, because of specialization, trades have become more complicated for your clients since they would have to communicate with several different departments rather than dealing with just one generalist. This made trading more complicated and tedious for your clients and about half of them didn’t believe the change was necessary. Also, by forcing your clients to deal with more than one person, the personal connection between client and generalist is lost.

Issue 3: Resistance of Performance Management System

Currently, there’s tension and resentment within your sales staff due to the rash implementation of this system. Unlike the introduction of the KAT team, we noticed there’s little communication during the transition period. Employees are less likely to accept change when there is a lack of communication and they feel excluded from the process (Langton 551). According to the cognitive evaluation theory, the increase in working pressure to make higher profits has also shown to be an ineffective method of encouraging employees in the long run. If your employees continue to be dissatisfied with the new management system this may lead to a continuance commitment or an increased turnover rate.

Alternatives

Alternative #1: Resign of Evaluation System. With the new system, the bonuses are solely based on feedback; however, we don’t think this is the best solution to judge a person’s efforts. We advise you to redesign your effectiveness evaluation system by considering both sales volume and feedback in the evaluation. Financial incentives are still necessary, so that employees are rewarded both intrinsically and extrinsically. It’s common that people may focus too much on getting the compensation. However, the new performance management system may destroy the work environment and cause them to lose their target while they’re chasing the sales figures.

Alternative #2: Unlimited Vacation Days

We initially thought of offering your employees unlimited vacation days. Not only will your employees feel recharged from the extra time off, they may also enjoy the feeling trust that’s bestowed upon them since they’re asked to take time off at their own discretion. However, this policy can be both underutilized by employees, when they’re too scared to take time off and abused by employees who don’t care about the company. Therefore, we believe our recommendation of communication and setting team goals would be more beneficial.

Recommendations and Solutions:

Recommendation 1: Problem-Solving Team and Job Rotation

We recommend that your company should develop a problem-solving group consisting of members from the Key Accounts Team and hold weekly meetings. We believe that this would provide your employees with more opportunities to develop their personal soft skills. The purpose of each meeting would be to increase communication within the company, so all members are well informed of any major decisions.It also allows group members to express any dissatisfation with the company and therefore, would be in the “Voice” quadrent of the Job Dissatisfation Response Chart. Also, a job rotation system should be implemented with quarterly rotations. We believe that your organization should still have specialized roles since it increases productivity (Tucker). Not only will job rotation increase motivation, it’ll reduce the fear of future job prospects since employees can learn a wider range of skills (Langton 189).

Recommendation 2: Conference Calls

Due to specialization, the process for in-house traders to receive information is now more complicated. Therefore, your company should utilize conference calls that would include the client and all the members of the KAT team. This would allow the client to receive all the information they’re looking for at one time, rather than having to make three different phone calls. This could also please the clients since they’re now receiving more facetime with the employee that they’d initially worked solely with.

Recommendation 3: Team Goals and Increasing Communication

Currently, the biggest concern is the loss of customers due to specialization. In order for the performance management system to resolve this we suggest increasing lunch visits, dividing the customers amongst the specialists, and integrating customer satisfaction into the performance evaluation. Through this, close working relationships will be maintained and your company will be able to keep their personal connection with clients which can build trust and loyalty. Another crucial change needs to be an increase in communication.By allowing your employees to provide feedback, it gives your employees a voice and is a good indication of how well the new system is working. Furthermore, just as you had shared sales figures from a competitor you should continuously share valuable information regarding your company’s position compared to competitors to motivate employees. The feeling of purpose and meaningfulness to the company are high intrinsic motivators for employees (Langton 190). Not only will this improve the overall satisfaction of the employees but studies show this will increase customer contentment and loyalty (Langton 101). Lastly, by creating small goals for the team and rewarding these short-term “wins”, this will increase both teamwork and the likelihood of the new system being accepted by employees.

Conclusion

After a careful analysis, we strongly believe that our recommendations will be highly beneficial for your company. Not only will they decrease the fears about job specialization, they will also increase communication between employees. We also believe that they will solve the problems that your clients face, especially having to make several calls to receive the information that they need. Attached to our analysis, we have included an implementation plan that will give you the initial steps of using our recommendations.

The image above is our suggested implementation timeline. We believe that, immediately, you should implement conference calls since it takes very little effort to implement it. Also, by using conference calls, you are also increasing communication immediately. After one month, we believe you should have set goals for your team and extrinsically reward them for being able to work as a team. By month 3, we suggest that the problem solving team is implemented and that you begin the quarterly job rotation. We wanted to introduce the problem solving 3 months in rather than immediately so that you are given an opportunity to communicate the idea to your team members.

Work’s Cited

Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A. Judge, eds. Organizational

Behaviour: Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition.

Toronto, Ontario: Pearson, 2010.

Rouse, Margaret. “Soft Skills.” Search CIO. TechTarget, n.d. Web. 28 Feb. 2015.

Tucker, Kristine. “Job Specialization Pros & Cons.” Globalpost. Demand Media, n.d. Web. 27

Feb. 2015.

TEAMWORK TURMOIL

Dear Mr. Tony Marshall,

First, we would like to thank you for the opportunity that you have provided for Miracle Consulting Incorporated. As you already know, there are several major issues within your team and with these issues, your team will not function to its potential. Your team is composed of people with different backgrounds and therefore will have different values and methods for how they work in a team. However, a diverse group can be beneficial since it can bring in a “greater number of ideas, perspectives, knowledge and skills” (Langton 236). The issues, though big and important, are not impossible to resolve. If you decide follow our recommendations, we believe that your team will not only see an improvement in productivity, but also a stronger team efficacy.

Issues & Analysis

Issue 1: Disorganized Meetings

Your group does not have defined goals. A lack of goals can cause team members to lose motivation. Also, since your group’s meetings are not structured, there is a substantial amount of time wasted during disagreements about what should be accomplished next. The issue became apparent when Delery disagreed about doing takeaways for each meeting claiming that the group never agreed to do it every time and that time could be used more efficiently.

Issue 2: Bad Relationships

Currently, many essential team skills are missing within your group such as trust and respect. Often, individuals resist any changes because they do not trust the person initiating it (Langton 548). Without trust, the level of effort towards the project could decrease due to members feeling that they are being treated inequitably. Without respect, group members can begin to feel disrespected and therefore, compromise any trust that was built before (Ray). This is best seen when Onyealisi fails to preread the case and Delery votes against dividing up the work because he believes he would have to redo Onyealisi’s part.

Your group has bad relationships on both an individual level as well as within a team. By looking at the big five traits that influence organizational behavior, it is apparent the traits of agreeableness and openness are missing from some individuals. These are relevant to your team because when members challenge others’ ideas and handle the process poorly this can lead to frustration and poor team performance. Griffin and Cooper display this when they constantly bicker and question each other’s standpoints when in actuality they argue about the same ideas.

Issue 3: Norms

Since your group has undefined behavioural expectations this can lead to bad norms, which ultimately will lead to inefficiency. Bad norms can cause a variety of problems such as tardiness or poor team interaction. One instance of this was when Onyealisi was late to the meeting and other group members were unaware if he was coming or not. Not only is this an example of the lack of communication between your group, but also this critical event can create a bad norm of being late. Furthermore, if the group continues to neglect addressing unacceptable behaviour this can lead to multiple bad norms, which can create group conflict. The second instance of potential bad norms forming is when Onyealisi comes to the meeting unprepared. By failing to read the case prior to the meeting this prevented Onyealisi from contributing meaningful ideas to the group. This issue can tie into continuance commitment as he has no passion about the group study and always exhibits a negative attitude.

Alternatives

A possible recommendation was to use Robert’s Rule during meetings to help facilitate and keep order. However, we realized this may be too time consuming and limit the closeness between the team as it would create a more formal setting.

Another possible recommendation was to have the group attend team training. By participating in workshops that aim to build collaboration, reliability, and communication, these strong teamwork traits can be applied to their meetings to ensure a more cohesive and productive use of their time. However, we do recognize this recommendation is also very time consuming and may not work if one of the members is unavailable or refuses to attend because of the already existing intrapersonal conflicts.

Solutions

Recommendation 1: Agenda

Our recommendation is to create an agenda for each meeting, with a list of goals that you wish the group should accomplish by the end of each meeting. By creating an agenda, everyone in the group know what to expect each meeting and this would use the allotted time more efficiently. However, for this solution to be effective, the goals would need to follow the SMART criteria. By settling short-term SMART goals such as assigning one member to write up a section by the next meeting, this can help build the team’s efficacy and allow them to rebuild their trust and confidence as a team.

Recommendation 2: Team Dinner or Outing

According to The Five-Stage Model, we believe that your group is currently in the storming phase, however, because of continuous intragroup conflict, we believe that your team should go back to the forming stage before moving up. In order to do this, we recommend that your group should schedule biweekly team outings at a sports bar or restaurant. This is because you have indicated that all the team members are athletic and therefore, we believe that this common interest can be something they bond over. By spending time outside of the classroom, your team can increase their cohesiveness. Alongside the recommendation of the agenda, your team would be at the high cohesiveness and high performance norms quadrant of the relationship matrix, which leads to high productivity.

Recommendation 3: Collectively Setting Team Norms to Abide

In order to have an effective team, you should address pressing issues such as being unprepared for meetings and tardiness, as these have the possibility of becoming bad norms. Norms typically develop gradually as group members learn what behaviors are necessary for the team to function effectively (Langton 222). By collectively deciding the acceptable behaviour for attendance, cellphone usage, attentiveness, and preparedness, this will help meetings go over smoothly and more productively. We propose your team creates a list of norms they all agree upon so conflict and inefficiency will be avoided in future meetings. Furthermore, in the process of group work, we suggest having a team self-evaluation to examine team effectiveness and whether or not everyone has followed the set norms. If positive norms are set in place and followed through, you will have a much better environment of learning and communicating.

Conclusion

Based on what we saw, we believe that your group has great potential to work well, especially because of the group’s diversity. However, we believe that your group definitely has some issues. These issues, though troublesome, can easily be resolved through our recommendations. Our recommendations are not only effective, but they can be easily implemented and used within a short time frame. Furthermore, our recommendations require little to no cost.

Works Cited

Bruce Tuckman’s Model of Group Development. Leadership and Teambuilding. Web. 24 Jan.

2015. <http://wheatoncollege.edu/sail/leadership/student-involvement-handbook/strengthening-

group/leadership-teambuilding/>

Langton, Nancy, Stephen P. Robbins, and Timothy A. Judge, eds. Organizational Behaviour:

Concepts, Controversies, Applications. Fifth Canadian Edition. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson, 2010.

Print.

“PTO Today: Robert’s Rules for Beginners (color).” PTO Today. School Family Media Inc, 11

Dec. 2007. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. <http://www.ptotoday.com/filesharing/document/61-pto-today-

roberts-rules-for-beginners-color>.

Ray, Linda. “The Effects of a Lack of Respect in the Workplace.” The Nest. N.p., n.d. Web. 1

Feb. 2015. <woman.thenest.com/effects-lack-respect-workplace-4633.html>.

Robbins, Stephen P. “Organizational Behaviour 16th Edition Powerpoint Slides.” Online posting. Chapter 5: Personality and Values. Pearson Education, n.d. Web. 26 Jan. 2015.

SMART Criteria. Digital image. Measuring Results – Sustainable Development – Environment Canada. Government of Canada, 27 June 2013. Web. 30 Jan. 2015. <http://www.ec.gc.ca/dd- sd/default.asp?lang=en&n=FE4918AA-1>.