Interview on managers
Interview on managers
Interview on managers
The following is an interview contrast summary on strategies that managers develop in their organizations and how they maintain a successful change culture that encourages both creativity and innovation while encouraging cultural diversity in their organizations. The first interview was conducted with Respond Industries operations manager, Mr. Shonda Tallent. Respond Industries is involved in setting up independent distributors for selling first aid and safety products to the corporate environment. The second interview was conducted with Cintas Document Management general manager, Mr. Chris Hill. Cintas Document Management provides document destruction services for any organization that has paperwork they want shredded so no one can find sensitive data on them.
Respond Industries' mission is Exceed our customers' expectations'. According to Mr. Shonda Tallent, Respond Industries is guided by a corporate culture which is based on the spirit of ethics and cooperation with each other in the organization. On the other hand, Cintas Document Management Company's mission is To maximize the long-term value of Cintas for its shareholders and working partners by exceeding our customers' expectations'. As part of its corporate culture, Cintas views its employees as partners within the organization whereby the organization and the employees starting from the management to the subordinates, there is a partnership relationship. The similarity between these two organizations is in their mission statement. Their missions revolve around exceeding customers' expectations. It can therefore be said that both organizations are customer-centric organizations where all organizational processes are directed towards satisfying the customer's needs and wants. The corporate culture of the two organizations is also similar as according to Mr. Shonda, Respond Industries value cooperation of all members of the organization while according to Mr. Chris, Cintas views its employees as its partners. There is therefore an element of cooperation in both organizations where a strong employer-employee relation is maintained.
However, in terms of encouraging creativity and innovation in both organizations, there is a disparity. According to Mr. Chris, Cintas engages its partners; the employees, in finding out how best they can do their job. Upon finding out the best way that the employees can do their job, Cintas then provides them with the necessary tools. In contrast, in Respond Industries, creativity and innovation is more of a management job and not the whole organization's job. According to Mr. Shonda, Respond's management meets regularly to identify the areas where they think creativity and innovation is needed. For example, Mr. Shonda says that the management recently introduced a new way of selling first aid and safety products to new corporate by making sales calls to these organizations. They then informed the employees on the decision where by the sales department is supposed to make sales calls to their new customers. However, he says that this has not been well received by the sales department as they say that the procedure of making such calls is not clear to them as they were not involved in identifying the strategy. Nevertheless, Mr. Shonda says that they are planning to start involving the employees in making decisions concerning creativity and innovation.
From Respond's perspective, there are two types of organizational changes. That is, there are small organizational changes that make little difference in the way the employees work and there are large changes which affect the way employees work. According to Mr. Chris, Cintas view organizational changes from the caring point of employees. If employees don't care about the change, then it is said that it does not affect the organization. However, if the employees care about the change, it is then viewed as a change which affects the organization at large.
Currently, Respond Industries is experiencing a change which Mr. Shonda terms as a difficult change. Employees in Respond Industries are doing more with less in terms of the number of workforce. The organization fears to hire more employees for the fear of letting them go if the economy gets worse, and therefore, employees are currently doing more than they used to. Cintas is also experiencing rapid change in technology as it has to change from the old computer system to the new computer system. It is therefore experiencing difficulties in meeting their current customers' expectations as well as the new customers while maintaining a high level of service. Both organizations are seen to be simultaneously involved in multiple large-scale organizational changes.
Mr. Shonda was of the opinion that the best coping strategy that he can suggest to employees involved in organizational change is that employees should give change a chance to work. Where the change does not work, then they should rethink of ways of doing the job. He gives an example of how he inspired his employees to view change positively when they were initially resistant to change. Mr. Shonda made the employees read Who Moved My Cheese' and then they discussed the book in an open forum, a thing which made the employees understand why change is important. At Cintas, Mr. Chris helped employees cope with organizational change by letting them give their opinion about the change. Where an employee constructively criticizes his/her opinion in a rational manner, then everyone in the organization listens to the opinion. He says that he involves the partners (employees) in a one-on-one talk, listens to their concerns and looks for means of addressing their concerns when they seem to be resistant to change. The approach by the two managers in helping employees cope with change has a similarity as both managers focus on getting the employees' concerns and then create avenues where the employees' concerns about change are addressed mutually.
Both Mr. Shonda and Mr. Chris are of a similar opinion on how managers can remove barriers to change in their organization. They suggest that the best way to do it is leading by example. According to Mr. Shonda, a manager should actually buy off on the change. By doing so and believing in the change, the employees start believing in the change too. Similarly, Mr. Chris says that one should get 100% behind the change. He says that if the employees see that the manager or the management is not behind the change, they tend to resist the change too. He adds that the employees should also be given time to adjust or implement the change slowly.
In conclusion, both organizations have experienced simultaneous large-scale organizational changes in the recent past. The best way to cope with organizational change and to reduce employees' resistance to change according to both managers is by; giving the employees a chance to air their opinions concerning the change, discussing about the effects of the change openly, giving the employees time to adjust to the change, and finally, the managers or organizational leaders should lead by example by first showing support for the change.
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