Too Much Too Soon Essay Example for Free

Too Much Too Soon Essay The scenario is about Sara Patel; she has finished college and is working in a company called Maddison for three years. The first two years she had worked in sales department but now she is working as a sales trainer in the sales and development department. For a while everything was going smooth, all the people in the department liked her and there was an air of openness, until the department started expanding. The first problem that arose was allocation of funds to the different units in her department, employees were complaining about Sarah allocating more resources in her department. Secondly there were problems allocating funds to the local area head of different departments for the purposes to travel across Canada about training needs with managers and supervisors. As the department grew things started to lag behind and foul-ups started to occur; mixed up schedule, late reports and faulty budgets. The staff started complaining about lack of basic resources like pen and pencils to laptops and phones. It was also talked that she was an unqualified trainer as she was fresh out of college and hadn’t work anywhere else. She didn’t open up to new ideas and any suggestions from her staff instead she developed a conflicting relationship with them. Behavioral symptoms The environment at Maddison was one of warmth and openness when Sara started. As the time went by the air was of stress as the staff started battling over the budgets and resources; they were all being centered on Sara’s department. Also her behavior towards the staff changed, she became more direct with them and started telling them what to do, making them feel like kids. Sara’s unnecessary travelling was an example of misuse of departmental funds. The defensive attitude at the lunch meeting with the staff was a physical symptom of the problem. Operational symptoms The inefficiency in distributing the funds to the various departmental heads was the key operational mess-up. The late reports, messed up schedules and errors in the department’s budget every time, occurred as a result of the increased size of the department. Employees also complained about scarcity of basic stuff including pens, laptops and blackberries. She was wasting financial resources of the department on her useless travelling and unnecessary courses. She had five resignations at her desk at the same time from her functional heads that she gave excellent rating without even meeting, and now she has to explain it to the VP of Operations. Main issue A manager is someone who works with and through other people by coordinating their work activities to accomplish organizational goals. The manager should work effectively and efficiently, getting out the highest output with minimal input. Whereas in case of Maddison, Inc. the staff working under Sara complained of shortage of basic stuff like pen, laptops and blackberries. Manger should also have management skills like human, technical and conceptual. Technical skills refer to knowledge of the field in which he/she is working. Sara had no technical skills; she was an unqualified trainer as she was there fresh after university and had not work experience in her field. Human skills are the ability to work well with other people both individually and in a group. It refers to communicate, motivate, lead and inspire the staff. Sara had no human skills as her staff wanted her to step down at the lunch meeting. Conceptual skills involve the mental ability of a person to analyze and generate ideas in complex situation. These skills help managers to see the organization as a whole and understand the relationships among various departments, but Sara on the other hand didn’t look at the company as a unit but instead favored her department and helped it via different means. Planning and organizing are essential characteristics of a manager but Sara was unable to exhibit neither of those. She could neither plan nor organize her department due to which there were issues like messed up schedules and late reports. She couldn’t even organize the budgets because of which there were many arguments.