The Gallery Association, a not-for-profit organization representing independent art galleries in the province employs five staff members in addition to a CEO. It is located in a major Canadian city.
The team is small, has been together for over seven years, and generally gets along. However, for some time now, they have found that they are having challenges with managing special events projects that they offer to the galleries they represent.
Upon closer review it seems that each staff member has some role in designing, planning, and coordinating the event, even though there is a staff member responsible for special events. The CEO has recently discovered that there is little communication between the various staff members on the events, as each takes the responsibility of managing their “part” of the process, but is not up to date on what the others are doing. It has also been discovered that much of the information and records for the previous years’ events are not stored in a central “location,” but in a binder kept in the special events manager’s office. Other staff members rarely access it for future events as it seems “private property” of the special events manager.
a) Identify the main causes of the challenges this organization is facing.
b) What degree of organizational learning is taking place in the association as related to the special events?
c) Discuss how the concept of knowledge management can assist this organization.
An organization experiencing challenges with absenteeism, turnover, productivity, and overall employee morale has identified several training needs. The general manager feels that the training will solve many of these issues and is pressing the training manager to start working on the training programs and roll them out in the organization. The training manager is concerned about the general lack of employee engagement among the staff and wants to address this before starting to develop and deliver training programs.
You are the training manager for an organization and have one direct report. This trainer has just completed a certification program to be able to teach team training and is keen to promote this workshop throughout the organization. You are concerned that the trainer is becoming a “onetrick pony” and is only recommending this team training to your internal clients rather than exploring other solutions.
a) Is this a legitimate concern on the part of the training manager?
b) What is the downside to the trainer only recommending team training?
c) What should you, as the training manager, do in this situation?
You are the restaurant manager for two family-owned restaurants. You have been asked by the owner to get a new customer service training program for all of the staff, as the current one is quite out of date. You don’t really have a lot of experience with training and don’t think this is something that you can do on your own.
a) What do you decide to do?
The staff in your organization are big fans of reality television shows like Survivor and The Apprentice/Celebrity Apprentice and often discuss these shows over the lunch hour. At a recent department meeting a decision was reached to develop some new team training, as teamwork is becoming more necessary in your organization. As the person responsible for designing the team training, you think it would be a good idea to create some of the Survivor – or Apprentice- like elements in the training. You have to be able to explain this to the general manager to get approval.
a) What would you say to convince the general manager that this is a good training approach?
b) What issues would you need to be wary of in this type of training?