Prompt #1:  What did you learn about organizations, and/or the behavior of individuals within an organization?  How do the ideas presented in Part Three (the Human Resource Frame) of the B&D textbook enrich your understanding of the ways in which organizations and the people working in them function?

“People are imperfect cogs in the bureaucratic machinery.  They form relationships to fit individual styles and preferences, often ignoring what the organization requires.  They may work, but never only on their official assignments.  They also express personal and social needs that often diverge from formal rules and requirements.” (Bolman and Deal page 162)

The above quote was really powerful to me and my current job.  About a year ago I was really struggling in my job, trying to follow the exact rules to a T.  It was not easy on me, on my team, and our numbers and morale reflected that.  My boss was really putting a damper on everyone’s mood, and you could see is district wide.  I had to make a decision.  Finally what I decided was to use my knowledge, and continuous learning through this degree plan to run my banking center the way that I felt was best.  I went out of my way to build the relationships among the team, and continued to reinforce that.  I did not totally disregard what the overall goal and message from the higher ups was, I just approached it differently than they were telling us to.  I also made it clear to my team that we were kind of doing our own thing (which may or may not have been the right thing to do).  The end result was a team that cares very much for each other, we all want each other to succeed, and we have each other’s backs.  Our sales numbers jumped through the roof, our customer service scores went up dramatically, and the morale was much better.  Reading this whole section of the text made me feel like I wasn’t a horrible manager or employee for doing these things, that I wasn’t alone.  No one wants to dread coming into work every single day, but you can’t let the end goal of the organization be lost either.  You have to play the game, but make it work for your specific team.

 

Prompt #2:  How can you apply the concepts that you have learned about in the readings to your personal or organizational life?  Be specific.

I kind of covered this in the prompt above, but basically you have to focus on the human relationships, the human resources aspects of things to really be successful in the end.  You have to find a balance, which I a finding to be a recurring theme  in this book and my other leadership classes, between the human relationship and the actual work and end goal aspect of things.   A lot of upper management’s lose touch with the human aspect of things, and are only concerned with the end result, the end profit.  I feel like my job as a manager lower down in the company is to provide more of the balance, and the human resources aspect.  I do my best to keep my team happy, their morale up, and have their backs, and in turn they produce amazing things for me and for the organization. 

 

Prompt #3:  List the reasons cited in the text (Chapter 7) as why managers persist in pursuing less effective strategies than those obtained through high involvement, high performance or high commitment management practices.  How have you experienced these organizational pressures in your own work life (please elaborate)?

One reason is that Theory X managers are scared to lose control or to indulge their staff.  A second reason is that investing in people takes a lot of time and persistence, and in the end it does not always pay off.  Because managers are already under so much pressure to make changes so quickly, it is sometimes easier and faster to just cut costs, change a strategy, or reorganize something.  A third reason is that some organizations only see the benefits of financial assets and nothing more, and they feel that human resources are subjective where as numbers are black and white. 

I work in the banking field, and that is mainly a numbers game.  Numbers are black and white, there is no doubt about that, but in order to get the numbers you have to use the human resources aspect to get people to perform better.  A lot of times the upper management only focuses on the hard hitting numbers and reports.  I work for a very large bank, and it is impossible for them to know all of our names or anything more about us, so in turn, they only judge us by our numbers.  When my manager or someone higher up questions me about something, I tend to lean more toward the human resources type approach because I know my team, I have a relationship with them, and I can see how when I accommodate certain personal needs they have, they produce much more and have better attitudes.  I have met with some backlash because they only look at numbers.  It is a hard balance to find, especially when the higher ups are somewhat out of touch with what goes on in the day to day banking centers. 

 

Prompt #4: As outlined by Bolman and Deal (Chapter 7), although every organization with productive people management has its own unique approach, most of their strategies can be captured in six general strategies.  What are these six basic human resource strategies?  How have you experienced these general strategies in your own work life (please elaborate)?

The six Basic Human Resource Strategies are:

1. Build and implement an HR strategy-Develop a shared philosophy for managing people and build systems and practices to implement the philosophy.

2. Hire the right people-know what you want and be selective.

3. Keep them-reward well, protect jobs, promote from within, and share the wealth.

4. Invest in them-invest in learning and create development opportunities.

5. Empower them-provide information and support, encourage autonomy and participation, redesign work, foster self-managing teams, and promote egalitarianism.

6. Promote diversity-be explicit and consistent about the organization’s diversity philosophy and hold managers accountable.

The previous bank I worked at was not very good with #2, 3, and 4.  It was very frustrating working there for almost 10 years, and being one of the lowest paid people in my position, but the highest producing.  It was never their theory to promote from within.  They would always look to the outside for new people to bring in, and then ask people like me, who had been there for a long time to train them.  Because they came from the outside they felt they had to pay them more.  I always thought it would be easier to promote from within, there is so much less training required, and why not reward the employees who have worked hard and been loyal to you.  When I went to my boss and she went to the higher ups to try to get me a pay raise, they said the only way I would get a pay raise is if I had an offer letter from another company.  I felt really betrayed at that point, like they only want me if someone else wants me too.  I was the number 2 producing sales manager in the entire company, and I was the second lowest paid out of all 251 sales managers.  They never had any real intentions in moving me up to the next level, and I had to fight for other promotions earlier on in my career there. 

As for promoting diversity, I always do my best to not only promote it but celebrate diversity.  I think the things that make people different from one another are very interesting.  My husband works for a company that does not do a very good job of promoting diversity and holding the managers accountable.  He works for a natural gas company here in Texas, and holds an upper management position there.  He is the only black person in a management position in all three states that this company covers.  Generally he doesn’t mind that, but what he has found is that when he really exercises his managerial rights, and enforces rules that others may not have, he gets called some very hurtful racial slurs.  Most of the time he kind of lets it roll of his back, he says it comes with the territory, but I always tell him that it shouldn’t come with the territory and that his company should be doing more to prevent that type of treatment.  Other mangers do not discipline their staff for calling him names, and a person can only be called such names for so long before it really does take a toll on them.  It is unfortunate because he has made great improvements for his company and has only been there a short period of time.  A lot of the higher ups are looking to mold him into a future VP which has always been his dream, but he isn’t even sure if he wants to stay with this company because as much as the higher ups say they respect him, not a single person is doing anything to make sure he gets treated equally or with respect.  As his wife, it frustrates me to no end.

 

Prompt #5:  Throughout your progression in the Organizational Leadership program, you have had a number of courses that include content complementary to the human resource frame – perhaps more connections here than with any other frame (in your various leadership courses – and courses like OGL 220 Behavioral Dynamics in Organizations, or BIS 343 Social Processes).  Please highlight what you would consider to be two of the most important things (ideas, concepts, theories, models, processes, skills, etc.) that you have learned in previous coursework that you can relate to the Human Resource frame.  Briefly discuss each key learning, the course where you learned it, and its connection with the Human Resource frame.

In quite a few of my leadership courses at Arizona State, we have taken the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, “a popular tool for examining management styles.  Built on the principles from Jungian psychology, the inventory assesses four dimensions: introversion versus extroversion, sensing versus intuition, thinking versus feeling, and perceiving versus judging.” (Bolman and Deal page 173)  My score comes out as ESTP-extrovert, sensing, thinking, and perceiving.  Taking this assessment, and giving it to other leaders I know has been very helpful.  It is great to be able to really pinpoint what type of leader you are, and that helps you know what areas you are strong in and what areas you should put more emphasis on.  My score shows that I put a lot of emphasis more on the human resource aspect of leadership, and reading this section of our text just proved that to me even more.

In my Diversity and Organizations class, we focused a lot on the human resources aspect of things.  It is one of the Basic Human Strategies talked about in Chapter 7 of the Bolman and Deal text, to promote diversity.  “A good workplace is serious about treating everyone well-workers as well as executives, women as well as men; Asians, African Americans, and Hispanics as well as whites; gat as well as straight employees.” (Page 155-156)  This is an important issue that sadly still causes our country and our organizations a lot of problems.    An issue that I take very seriously, and I wish more emphasis was put on in the workplace.

 

Prompt #6:  How do the Human Resource aspects discussed work in an organization with which you are (or have been) affiliated?  What sorts of personnel policies and management strategies are espoused theories versus those in use?   (This is about the concept/frame not an HR department.)

One big thing we have going on in the banking industry, or at least the bank I work for, is about the importance of giving credit card disclosures before a credit card application is taken, asking word for word the questions on the application, reading the verbatim income disclosure, and then giving the client a final disclosure after the application has been approved.  These are federal regulations that all financial institutions have to follow, and if they are not followed then we can be fined millions of dollars as an organization.  What they have found is that managers and sales staff believe that they are doing it properly, or at least they tell upper management they are doing it step by step the right way.  After being secret shopped by both internal people and third party companies, what they have found is that these are espouses theories and not theories in use.  As a person who takes the applications sometimes, I can see where the discrepancies lie.  When making a sale, you have to find the verbiage and sales tactic that works for you, and reading line by line some very technical disclosure makes things a little awkward.  It is easier to reword, and make it more your own when saying it to client.  It keeps things more relaxed.  In the end, you feel like you still shared the same important information, so that is why we believe we are using the specific set of rules, but unless the exact words are read, then it breaks the law and causes many issues.

 

Prompt #7:  How does morale or other human resource issues affect outcomes in your place of employment (for customers, employees, stockholders, surrounding community and/or any other stake-holders).  Describe enough of a situation concretely to provide context and use concepts from the readings in your response.   If you don’t think there are healthy or unhealthy aspects in your organization relating to the human resource perspective going on, think again more carefully and perhaps revisit the readings to broaden your definition and understanding.

Morale and other human resource issues affect everything in my day to day life at work.  Like I mentioned above, the upper management is looking solely at the numbers and reports about the banking center, but being here day in and day out with my team, I see how all of the human resource issues and aspects affect their performance, their attitude, and their morale. For example, my last district manager was very micromanaging and she never celebrated anything good that anyone did, only emphasized the negative.  It made us all feel like nothing was ever good enough.  Every single morning we had a manager conference call with her, and she would just go on and on about how bad we were doing at everything and she would emphasize that everyone is replaceable.  Because we were never encouraged, never told what we did well, and never provided any support, we all felt beaten down and it was hard to motivate our teams.  The district morale as a whole suffered greatly.  People who had been with the company for over a decade were leaving without even having another job because there was no benefit to staying.  Those of us who did stay dragged day in and day out.  The customers could tell and everyone’s customer service scores went way down.  There was a large increase of calls and complaints to our HR department, and what we were told when we would call is that they were hearing the same thing from all across the district.  I think that was even more depressing, that we all knew that there were so many complaints to HR and that nothing was changing.  It made us all feel like our organization didn’t care about us as anything more than replaceable pawns in their game.