Team Management Activity and ReflectionAshford UniversityMGT, Lecture notes of Accounting

Download Team Management Activity and ReflectionAshford UniversityMGT and more Lecture notes Accounting in PDF only on Docsity! 2 Team Management Activity and Reflection Ashford University MGT330: Management for Organizations Team Management Activity and Reflection Does a leader tend to follow the normal process as others do or do, they change up the culture to make it more successful? Think about Jeff Bezo’s and Amazon’s structure as a business in today’s world. Their structure seems to be linked to a hierarchy structure, as they have leaders above one another along with front-line employees to manage. Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, “shares with his employees to always think and maintain the Day 1 culture and continue to launch innovative products and services” (Galetti, Golden, Brozovich, 2019). Some would say that on day one for Amazon, they wanted a culture and structure that matched that of an adhocracy one. Adhocracy structure is where everyone contributes a little portion of their daily job to complete the task or goal at hand. This would be the type of culture I would want to follow as a newly appointed warehouse manager. Although, there are a lot of details that I would take into consideration when coming into a new environment such as not knowing the individuals and their work ethics, this would not be an easy task. In the following below, I will discuss how I would utilize the five management functions; planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and control to help ensure another business unit and its structure are a success for Amazon. 3 Planning First is the planning portion for a newly appointed leader. What does the planning part consist of when you are a new manager? In this situation, I want to make sure my employees are still following the mission statement of Amazon which is to be the Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customer can find and discover anything, they might want to buy online. I believe this mission statement is the same for the warehouse also because if there were no individuals to help pick the orders, the customer would not receive their product on time, then the company would get a bad review and therefore would not have any customers. In order to achieve this goal, strategic planning needs to take place. Strategic planning is a purposeful effort direct by management within an organization, which when conducted effectively, draws on the knowledge, skills, and abilities of employees at all levels of the organization” (Baack, Reilly, & Minnick, 2014). Planning is an important part of a leader because this can give you a base or foundation to start on when it comes to the preparation of certain goals to help the business be successful. “Bezo’s likes to follow a concept called the “flywheel” which entails a virtuous cycle of the three main goals at Amazon” (Dumaine, 2020). As a new manager, coming into an environment I am are unfamiliar with, I want to lean on some of the disciplined employees at that location to get a sense for how the culture and the workflow is completed daily. With incorporating the feedback from those leaders on site, I will also analyze each business unit within the warehouse as this will help my finding where costs are, how much product we are producing, our production as a warehouse, the quality of the products and more. All of these items put together can help keep me organized along with starting to build a strong culture. Organizing 6 focus on day 1 which focuses on customer needs and innovative products and services. This is a testament to Bezo’s leadership as he states that “day two is stasis, followed by irrelevance” (How Amazon, 2018). Bezo’s follow the transformational leadership which garners trust, seek to develop leadership in others, exhibit self-sacrifice, and serve as moral agents” (Baack, Reilly, & Minnick, 2014). Transformational leadership is the type of style I want to mimic as a new leader as it helps benefit my employees to better themselves and motivate them to become an improved version of themselves. Most companies tend to focus on finding this type of leader has it provides more of a growth opportunity instead of a transactional one where they are more focused on getting results. A transactional leader is not a bad one, but they can lack the skills of motivation which can hinder the performance of their employees which in turn reflects your leadership ability and how I control the success of others. Control “Controlling is the process of evaluating performance against established goals and creating methods appropriate to take corrective action to maintain or improve performance in any area of the organization” (Baack, Reilly, & Minnick, 2014). Control is a skill a manager has to develop when looking at employees that may have had issues with their job performance or a newly hired employee. This entails looking at past performance reviews from those individuals. When a leader is in the planning phase of management, they are often thinking about the control phase as well. This would entail that employees are following the mission statement of Amazon as well as the standards that are put in place and are observed based on the four steps: establishing standards, measuring performance, comparing performance, and making decisions. How I can apply the four steps is making sure that in the planning phase, I make sure to set goals that are attainable and realistic. I will then make sure to measure the specific performance based of the 7 goals set by looking at items such as production, quality of performance, delivery performance to name a few items. Comparing this goals set will be based on past performance for part of it while the other part would be based on how the individuals adapted to the change along with the quality of work they did. At last, based on all of these factors put together, a decision will be made by myself on whether or not the individual was successful in fulfilling the mission statement of Amazon. This decision can be either successful or unsuccessful with the latter being the least possible outcome if they were led properly and taught during the year on what they need to work on to achieve the specific rating of that end of the year. This is the type of control most companies tend to follow as it gives specific goals for their employees to achieve with coaching opportunities throughout the year to help them improve on their performance. Conclusion In closing, becoming a new manager of a warehouse where I do not know any of the individuals I would be leading or the type of environment they have been accustomed to, can be hard. The five management functions will allow me to follow an outline that I have set up for myself in making sure I have a plan in place, it is well organized with the right staff in place and will allow me to lead those individuals and help control their performance. While the five management functions are an outline of becoming a new manager, there are still a lot of aspects that will be learned while on the job. With this plan mentioned above, I will want to be careful to not push my employees in a manger that sees me as a micro manager but also do not want them to see me as lenient. There is a fine line for becoming a new manager and moving to a new environment with new employees but having a base or foundation of how I want to achieve the goals and ensure a successful transition will help get me started in the right direction. 8 References Baack, D., Reilly, M., & Minnick, C. (2014). The five functions of effective management (2nd ed.). Dumaine, B. (2020). Amazon Was Built for the Pandemic. Fortune, 181(6), 86–92. Galetti, B., Golden, J., III, &Brozovich, S. (2019). Inside Day 1: How Amazon Uses Agile Team Structures and Adaptive Practices to Innovate on Behalf of Customers. People & Strategy, 2. How Amazon’s sphere of influence just keeps on growing “Jeff believes people shouldn’t do jobs software can do” In the first of a series, James Dean examines the culture driving the ecommerce giant to ever greater success. (2018). The Times (London, England).