Organization Change and Innovation: Skill-Building Overview
Interpersonal skills include the ability to communicate with, understand, and motivate both individuals and groups. Communication skills refer to the manager's abilities to both effectively convey ideas and information to others and receive ideas and information from others. This exercise will help you develop both of these skills as they relate to implementing a change.
Exercise Background Assume that you are the manager of a retail store in a local shopping mall. The store is part of a large major retail chain that owns several different brands. Your staff consists of seven full-time and ten part-time employees. Each full-time employee has at least three years of experience in your store. They all like one another and work well together-they often refer to themselves as a team. Your part-time employees are all local college students; a few have worked in the store for more than a year, but there tends to be a lot of turnover among this group.
Your boss, the regional manager, has just informed you that the retailer plans to open a second store in a new section of the same mall. This store will carry similar merchandise at similar prices as your store but under a different brand name. She has informed you that you must implement the following changes:
1. You will serve as manager of both stores until the sales volume of the new store warrants its own full-time manager.
2. You are to designate one of the full-time employees in your present store as the assistant manager, since you will be in the store less often now.
3. In order to have experienced workers in the new store, you are to select three of your current full-time workers to move to the new store, one of whom should also be appointed as assistant manager of that store.
4. You can hire three new people to replace those transferred from your existing store and three new people to work at the new store.
5. You can decide for yourself how to deploy your part-timers, but you will need a total of ten in the existing store and eight at the new store.
You expect that many of your employees will be unhappy with these changes. They all know and, as noted earlier, work well together. However, the new store will be in a new section of the mall and will be a very nice place to work. You are now contemplating how to proceed.
Use your interpersonal and communication skills
1. Is the change you will be making a result of external or internal forces?
A. External forces
B. Internal forces
2. Regardless of how you decide to inform your full-time workers, which of these approaches would most likely be the most effective?
A. Tell them about the re-assignments; at the same time tell them about the new assistant manager positions but that you have not yet decided who will be appointed to these positions.
B. Tell them about the re-assignments; at the same time tell them who you intend to appoint as assistant managers.
C. Tell them only about the re-assignments; do not mention the new assistant manager positions in the initial meeting.
3. As you think about communicating the change to your workers, does it seem more logical to view all of them as one group about to undergo a change or two different groups comprised of full-time workers and part-time workers?
A. It probably makes the most sense to treat them as one large group of 17 employees.
B. It probably makes the most sense to treat them as one group of seven full-time workers and one group of ten part-time workers.