10-1 Communicating Effectivley

This is my final reflective blog entry for my introduction to management course, thanks to everyone that read my blog and left a comment your feedback has been very encouraging and helpful.

It is important that organisations communicate effectively to their employees and stakeholders, to prevent confusion and keep their organisation stay organised. Five key steps to communicating effectively are:

Form of Communication

Choosing the proper form of communication is important, not all issues need to be dealt with face to face or it is not feasible for all the needed participants to meet face to face. Sometimes its is best to have a face to face meeting to deal with sensitive issues, or you may  send a email to ask a quick question. The right medium for communication will allow all parties involved to participate in a constructive and effective manner.

Be Prepared

Being prepared and focused can help the communication of new ideas and information, doing your homework on subjects you want to introduce to the work place will help you communicate with confidence and help you clarify any misunderstanding there may be. Even the most mundane emails should be thoughtful and be treated with some professionalism.

Find Solutions 

When dealing with problems don't just dump the issues on the laps of your co-workers, help find solutions and work with people to come to the best possible conclusion. Being actively involved in problem solving is important to instilling a sense of team work in the organisation.

Composure

Sometimes emotions can get the best of us, we may feel someone isn't listening or they are being inconsiderate, it is important to keep a cool head and not say or do anything we may regret. It may be necessary to take a brake and collect our thoughts so we can look at things in a rational manner. If you notice someone is loosing there composure try to listen to their opinion or give them some time to cool off so communication can be productive and meaning full once again.

Listening and Feedback

I feel listening is the most important part of communication, if you clearly understand what is being said and asked, you will be able to move forward appropriately. Ask questions and be involved in the conversation, it will help you understand and let the other person know you are involved in the activity. Giving feedback will help the other party improve their skills in communicating ideas in a meaningful manner or provide additional information if required.

All members in an organisation have to communicate with each other, doing it in a productive and organised manner is important to the future success of any company.

Models of organizational change 9-2

In this blog post I will discus three steps to manage change in an organization. The three steps I will use as examples are unfreeze, move and refreeze as outlined in our text book. I feel these three steps are necessary to effectively manage change in the workplace.

Recently the shop I work at has introduced a computer system to do our work orders and as a time sheet, this decision was made by the top line managers at our company to allow them to better monitor their staff and help in organising our inventory better. Our old system was all paper based and many of our mechanics were not in favour of this new change. This was a top-down change and was implemented in a matter of a month.

Unfreezing the status quo was accomplished by our managers by having a staff meeting to explain the changes to the staff and why the new system is necessary to the operation of the shop. The managers also explained that this new computer system will allow everyone to be more efficient and spend less time doing paper work. 

The move to the new computer system was accomplished by training the staff to properly use the system and we also implemented a transition period where the system was not live and we still used the paper as a back up un till all staff were comfortable using the new system. We also brought in extra help to do inventory and input all needed data into our parts data base.

Refreezing the new status quo was re enforced by implementing a new bonus structure to reward those employees that were meeting their productivity and quality standards. This was a great incentive and actually boosted moral in the shop and was a great way to refreeze the change.

If properly managed changes can be implemented in a positive and constructive way that benefits all stakeholders in any organisation. My workplace has been more organized and the mechanics have been productive since the computer system was implemented and because the managers took the proper steps to make the change there was very little resistance or issues to the new way of doing things.