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Conflict Scenario Paper During last week’s class discussion the objective that Team B felt most comfortable with would have to be learning and dissecting Benchmarking and Core Competencies. The class activities engaged our team into learning how they both work together to prevent outsourcing. Benchmarking is a strategy that compares an organizations practices, processes and product against an organizations competitor. Core Competencies are the functions a organization utilize that is just as good as the next organization or better.
Establishing the core competencies will determine if benchmarking is needed. Another topic that we as a team felt most comfortable with would have to be departmentalization and establishing the advantages and the disadvantages. This topic relates closely to all of our current work environments. Since all of our organizations are departmentalized it gives us a better understanding of why the advantages work for certain organizations and why certain advantages may be a disadvantage for another organization.
For example; one advantage of departmentalization is employees will develop, master and increase knowledge based on a specific specialized skills Just Right Tire Company is working on a new tire tread design for a brand of tires the company plans to launch in the fall. Jan, Sally, and Mark are a marketing team for Just Right Tire Company. The team has been asked to develop an ad to promote the new tires that will be launching in the fall. During this project Jan, Sally and Mark were unable to agree on any of the project details.
As a result, the team has stopped working together on the task and each member is developing an ad on their own. The project deadline is near and the group is not close to completing the project. During the course of this paper, Group B will develop a strategy to resolve the marketing team’s conflict as Jan, Sally, and Mark, to achieve the ultimate goal of creating a great ad for the company. Team B has reviewed the conflict scenario involving Just Right Tire Company. In view of the conflict raised and the approaching deadline, the first course of action is for the project manager is to call a meeting.
In this meeting the manager will access the progress made by the group, since each team member has worked on different portions of the project and reiterate the deadline. The team will be required to present their individual progress for evaluation. The manager will review the progress and address any conflict that may pertain to the tire ad project. Since the team has worked well together in the past the manager will act as a mediator to iron out any conflict. The reason for the conflict is not clearly identified; it could be some person feelings, personality conflict, or lack of communication.
The manager will try to get the team to put any personal feeling aside and focus on the task at hand since they are facing an approaching deadline. The manager will request that this ad issue is resolved before leaving the meeting. Informing the team that the important issue at hand is to meet the current deadline, the manager will ask that the team come together again after the current ad has been published to review the ad project, iron out any issues, and discuss how they will avoid any conflict in the future.
During the marketing team’s meeting Jan expressed her perspective of the issues that aroused during the development of the ad. Jan’s strengths are developing the overall ad idea. In which she feels that Mark is not grasping the idea behind her ad. Jan feels as though Mark thinks his slogan is the best and should rewrite the ad to fit his slogan. In the past, Jan worked well with Mark. There were no communication issues and all ideas were a collaborative effort.
Jan sense that Mark is just being arrogant and big headed because he has a 90% chance of getting promoted to the Director of Marketing. Jan came to this assumption because Mark is due for a promotion this year and the current Director of Marketing will be retiring soon. Jan is confident that her ad ideas are remarkable and Mark wants to take charge of the marketing project to demonstrate that he has the ability to act as a Director. Jan refuses to change her ad idea’s to accommodate Marks selfishness and
Mark is not changing his slogan because he feels that his slogan is way better than Jan’s idea. Since Mark has management experience under his belt, he assumes that he knows a little more than Jan. As the mediation meeting continued Jan expressed that she also thinks that Sally and Mark has a personal relationship due to the fact that when Sally was trying to be the mediator, Sally was siding with Mark and was not listening to Jan’s idea’s at all. Sally’s perspective in regards to the team’s disagreement was slightly different from how Jan expressed.
Sally is the graphics designer of the marketing team, who is tired of trying to resolve all of the problems that have come about during this project. She was so glad when the manager called for the three of them to air out their creative differences. The whole problem for the group is that Jan and Mark’s ideas for the proposal are totally opposite. Since she is the one that had decided to be the peacemaker of the group, she is making graphics that would fit either idea so that whatever happens in the meeting she has all her bases covered.
The manager has asked them to either mesh all of their ideas together or have a survey style format to have others pick and choose the best idea. The conflict has caused lost time and has called for the manager to ask for all three of them to put in extra hours to make the concept work. Sally has made graphic designs for both Jan’s ad campaign, and Mark’s ad campaign, and has also created graphics for her own idea, just in case a survey format is used. The manager has informed all three team members that any unused idea will become candidates for the next campaign.
As it seems Sally has been the mediator for the duration of the team project, however has not had much success in eliminating the conflict between Mark and Jan. According to Mark the team has not been able to agree on an ad to promote the new tires. Mark has come up with a terrific slogan for the ad, but Jan believes the slogan does not go with the multiple options Jan created. Sally is trying to mediate between Mark and Jan to compromise. Mark believes that Sally and Jan are trying to team up against him.
Mark knows this because he heard this through the grapevine. Also according to the grapevine Sally and Jan does not like Mark’s slogan. Sally and Jan just want to do the project by themselves with no help from Mark. In the past the group has worked well together, but because of the grapevine Mark does not want to work with Sally or Jan. Mark believes he has been disrespected and betrayed. Due to the confusion and the team not close to reaching the deadline management has decided to call a meeting to discover what the issue is.
At the meeting management could see that Mark was extremely upset. Management quickly asked Mark what was going on. Mark responded telling management what he had heard through the grapevine. Management informed Mark that he cannot listen to what he hears through the grapevine because the information is often inaccurate. Management also informed Mark the he should go to the source when he hears information through the grapevine to check the accuracy of the information. With that management had Sally and Jan explain what they had been discussing with each other.
Once Mark heard what Sally and Jan had been discussing, he knew there was a misunderstanding. Mark wanted to work with them to finish the project once the team came to an understanding. In the meeting Mark learned not to listen to the grapevine because the information is often inaccurate. Mark also learned that there are no bad ideas and that when working in a team everyone must compromise. Management also explained that to listening to each other’s ideas will lead to one great idea.
Mark also learned that working in a team the individuals must put aside their differences for the greater good of the team. In conclusion, reading through the four different perspectives it is obvious that there was a lot of miscommunication as well as jumping to conclusions between the team members. This form of conflict resolution was very much needed. If the team members did not air out their creative differences than they would have never knew how each other felt and why. It is very important for a team to agree to disagree but also communicate those disagreements with each other.