Susie’s Management Challenges

Introduction

**separate the critical issues from the introduction. Introduction should be in most two short and brief paragraphs.

Susie Mellors, from Sheffield Hallam University graduates with an honors degree in business and marketing. She secures a job at the University of Midhampton, department of central marketing as an intern in the marketing department.  She is a hardworking young motivated intern that soon earns the trust of her superiors and gets a promotion to the position of permanent marketing assistant in the department. This is attributed to the good work ethics, team player qualities and ability to be trusted. She also has several awards from school to add to her degree in marketing that makes her an all-round person in the department. Two years into her new job, with excellence in her post she is soon promoted to the position of marketing officer with the role of supervising administrative assistants. She succeeds in her new position again thanks to the technical marketing skills she learned from being an all-round student in college.

She was popular among workers in her department and was known for her organizing skills and made very many friends. In three years an opening presented itself she applied and was appointed as the marketing manager. It is the first time for the company to appoint someone from within. When everyone doubted if she would emerge successful, she was chosen.  Jealous and rivalry mixed with the pressure to perform are now part of her daily frustration at work. Suzie faces various challenges at work. First, no one in her workplace prepared her for the increased workload that comes with a promotion. She has to cope with even longer hours of work as head of four sections in the marketing department and six marketing officers and six assistants directly at her helm, they are answerable to her.

It was draining her zeal. The next challenge Susie has to deal with is the employees’ rivalry. Some think they would have been a better choice than Susie who has not stayed at the institution for long.  This threatens to jeopardize her work. Another problem Susie is facing is inexperience. She is a team player but lacks the basic skills of being a team leader. She does not know how to run the team that she has always been part of as a junior. She does not create time to listen to her subordinates; she doesn’t have time to hang out with the crew as they used to do (Farmer, 2017). She is always in meetings and more meetings. Lack of cooperation in her crew makes her want to overwork to prove a point to her superiors. This is a wrong approach for personal management.

Lack of management skills is also a big challenge facing Susie as the leader. Instead of using division of work in the office she wants to fill herself in to compensate for another member who calls in sick. This greatly puts a strain on the working conditions as she has to do work meant for the other employees and at the same time do her management and supervisory duties which are already a big move to her side. Susie has no experience in managing people which is the hardest of the jobs in management (St-Aubin, 2018).  Lucy and Andrew who have been on the team for way longer and they feel like they are both qualified to run the positions are jeopardizing her.  She does some work meant for allocation to the juniors.

The other member Ben is grumbly and this poses a serious threat of lack of respect. She doesn’t seem to know what to do about all the problems.  Some other employees call in sick after being allocated work, there remains to be a setback to Susie. Reduced staffing by the department has a serious effect on her as she works with limited personnel on a workload that is already too much to handle, employees feel she is overworking them on purpose.  She gets frustrated and she lashes at the employees who have special off work duties to take, like Andrea who usually leaves work at four to pick children from school. Instead of being a leader she still is stuck in the past. Instead of taking full responsibility for what is happening in the departments, she turns to blame games that may cost her big.

Susie does not embrace conversations in the organization; she is so deep in saving herself instead of saving her team that in turn has to save her. She does the opposite of what she is supposed to be doing (St-Aubin, 2018).  The group due to the many problems it is experiencing is so disintegrated to try putting something tangible together. Susie also faces a challenge of group revolt. She has to be at the helm, taking control and doing whatever it takes to get the team on board, instead of playing blame games.

Actions Susie should take to improve

On the top of her priorities, Susie needs to start by evaluating herself on the areas she is strong and her weaknesses. This can be done in several ways among the most effective ones is learning the act of listening and the act of being able to learn something even from her juniors and not act out of rage. She should read widely about management and various challenges and how best to solve them. This will go a long way to knowing how to handle her juniors while at the same time not looking like she is begging to have the employees do their work. She should read on authority and the limits to the authority in and out of office. Susie ought to read books on leadership and challenges.

Instead of being a fruit of circumstance, start taking charge of the decisions and actions. That will help her long way that she understands that all the actions that the employees take are personally responsible to them and she should demand rather than beg for them to do the right thing. Susie should also start having conversations about the issues affecting the junior employees (challenges facing managers today., 2017). This can be achieved by holding regular meetings with her junior staff from every department.  She should allow the employees to air their views and grievances they all face in the organization. Talking about the challenges to her will mean identifying the problems they are facing and solve them. The more she solves and handles the questions the nearer she will come to taking charge of the workplace thus ensuring greater service delivery.

Susie faces also faces a problem of lack of experience.  She should deal with inexperience by consulting with other people who are experienced in the office. She should consult with the other managers and her predecessors as to how they have handled problems of employee motivation and deadlines in line of work. The more she talks about the problems she faces with the right people the more knowledge she gains on how to run her operations well. Since she has four departmental heads under her, Susie should consider the allocation of work to them and allowing them to allocate it to their workers. By doing this she ensures that the employees under the various departments hold the heads accountable for the workload instead of her. This division of work mechanism also holds the heads accountable for their crews instead of starting to blame everyone for laxity. All the heads will that way be accountable for any non-performer on their own.

Susie should also bring on board both Lucy and Andrew to be advisors since they have been in the institution for longer. By doing that she ensures that any rebellion the two had will be squashed and work together and keeps working various department goals. Involving them in decision making will ensure that thy feel somehow being leaders in their capacity rather than bitter employees. Susie should also try separating them by looking into a possible transfer of one in the divide and rule office management system. At the moment Susie should focus more on serving her juniors so that they can serve her. She should find ways to bring the team together through more cooperation with the juniors at doing tasks. She should be more open to suggestions and work closely with the people in finding out what works out for them more (challenges facing managers today., 2017). This should be possible by scheduling some time to spend it with the juniors and get to know them.

The people in the offices have strengths and weaknesses that they need to complement each other. The sooner she identifies the strengths and weaknesses of each the more informed she will be about job allocation depending on their abilities. The team that compliments each other’s weaknesses will achieve more in the organization. This aspect needs Susie to be keen and learn as time goes by and being fast in learning too. She should also identify her problems and learning from them. Susie should also find mentors in her line of work. Having mentors whom she trusts will go a long way of maintaining her sanity too. Frustrations can only go if she talks to people who can help her figure out what is happening at the office.

Suggestions to make to Prisca about wider management

Susie, in a bid to revolutionize her new work and yield more, should suggest the following measures to her boss, Prisha; that she give her sufficient time to adjust to the new working position. New positions in an organization come with a lot of big adjustments. Susie should also be willing to adapt and learn. Good adjustment into her new position will ensure that she executes her duties amply.  By talking to Prisha about the time issue, she will greatly reduce the pressure being mounted on her. Time will mean that she gets time to know her subordinates. All employees under Susie will get time for reflection and set goals. New achievable goals set by the departments under her supervision will be a massive step.  Susie will also sort to iron out the issue with rivalry between her juniors.

Time will allow Susie sufficient planning on what she needs to be achieved. She will organize her staff well to meet her needs in line with her plans. She will have time to divide work and see about not overworking them. She also should suggest to Prisha the addition of personnel to her to help realize her plans for the departments she runs (challenges facing managers today., 2017). The addition of personnel will allow everyone to work on goals on time. All the plans she has for the organization will be boosted by the same. More personnel will improve the strain of leaving on other employees. She will also be able to complete her tasks well. This move can pose a risk to Susie in case she doesn’t learn how to manage human resources.  More personnel will lead to more laxity in case she doesn’t allocate work well.

She should also approach her boss with the suggestion of allocating her a mentor from the other departments of the same institution. This will ensure she has a place to find some management advice. Management advice to Susie is just the answer she needs. With employees slowly turning against her, she needs to get someone who has handled such a scenario before.  The mentor will help guide her well to success which is the one vital aspect she needs in her new management position.  A mentor will also help her to adapt fast to the company need for a manager rather than a worker. Susie also needs a mentor to help her assemble a team to work on the projects which the organization seeks to carry out. This will be of benefit to both her career and the wellbeing of the company.

Susie needs to learn and learn fast to be able to adapt to her position. She should request for suggestions of books to read from her boss. Books will help expand her context of the management world of an organization. Good suggestions from Prisha will come in handy to her in the time when her juniors are demotivated about working under her. The wisdom in the books will help her with very unique insights into her situation. The knowledge gained from the books will form a basis of her tenure. Apart from just gaining knowledge, the books will also help carve out her arrogance about the work.

Susie should also suggest to Prisha to find her other personnel to replace the two rebels Andrea and Lucy. This move will help her organize her authority without initial resistance. The two rebels of workers will make the working environment tense. The possibility of transferring one to a different department away from Susie will also help to deal with one instead of two. The two clearly show signs of jealousy. Jealousy is an organization that creates a bad environment for teamwork. There two can sabotage the work of Susie if she is not careful with them.

The organization through Prisha should take the necessary steps to allow Susie a favorable working environment (St-Aubin, 2018). The steps she should suggest will go a long way to discipline the other employees who otherwise will follow the idea of the two.  Suggest to Prisha that she help fund a get together of the juniors to help forge a way to develop a connection for working together. This will ensure the juniors dissolve the mistrust they have of the leader, Susie. She should suggest weekly departmental meetings and make the department heads to provide a weekly report about how their areas of work are doing. Ascertaining which areas are subject to improvement and the underperforming ones. It gives more time to concentrate on the underperforming entities.

Topics, reflection and application in management position.

A self-evaluation is an important tool in critical analysis of one’s strengths and weaknesses involving goals, skills and experience.  I will self-evaluation to improve the team, help develop personnel and organize the team. I will use this virtue to analyze what needs to be done as the new job entails. I will take into consideration my qualifications to run the organization and the values and attributes are missing to run the department. For my case self-evaluation for the business will start with organizing my curriculum vitae. There I will be able to see what is good at and the bad things in me. This will be a long shot to success. Starting from normal order of importance, I will make a time matrix for the same (Farmer, 2017).

Everything is good, I will take the tasks and do them to the best of my knowledge. The task of managing human resources I will reshuffle the members and allocate work according to a person’s strengths. The self-evaluation practice can be very informative especially when one is looking at areas to work on improving greatly. I will then use the self-evaluation tool to help point out my traits that prove to be useful in management. The bad traits in me will make sure that I improve on them in the best interest of the organization in which I work in. in Susie’s case I will have done a self-evaluation test. That way instead of starting to feel frustrated I will take into consideration my contribution to the way the organization is turning out (Farmer, 2017).

I will need all my employees to do a self-evaluation test on them too. This way everyone in the departments that work on knows their strengths and weaknesses. It also helps in complimenting each other’s weaknesses that way ensuring teamwork. Self-evaluation is chief in the management of human resources and overall management duties in an organization. Just by choosing to use self-evaluation, businesses stand a good chance of survival. Honesty detailed personnel in business is a huge step towards success. Susie ought to use that single shot towards the management of her personnel.

Dialogue in management-it simply refers to communication. I will quickly improve the way I communicate with the juniors in business. As soon as I am promoted, I get into the habit of taking some time to keenly listen and communicate effectively with the juniors who have been my colleagues. I will strive to get ways to discuss issues affecting the business with my juniors. I will do it as natural as possible to avoid taking offense.  However I will stand firm for the ethics of the company. I will make sure that employees get the chance to communicate with me and even disagree on aspects. I will take it my responsibility to take into account the views of all the heads of departments. I will hold special meetings at the end of each week to allow the juniors to air out their views, aspects of the business they see needs improvement. The matters of discussion will be looked into with concern and consider change.

The business grows from dialogues. I will encourage the juniors to embrace the concept of dialogue in their interpersonal interactions. For matters regarding the business, they will be run efficiently. The weaknesses I have for dialogue is that it is a poor organizer of phrases and may not communicate the messages well. Consultation is a broad activity especially in business. It involves all the aspects of borrowing from the best. I will personally look for business mentors who have experience ad asking questions concerning management. Some very many managers always are ready to share their experiences with others.

I will make sure such opportunities do not pass. I will seek advice from the predecessors of the same position I hold. I will seek to find out how they dealt with inexperience and employee non-cooperation. With the information obtained from them I will be in a better position to make informed decisions that affect the organization. I will put into consideration the hierarchy of the consulting process. Information gotten from the experienced folks will go a long way to ensure that I don’t repeat mistakes.  I will learn from the mistakes of my predecessors and help my team overcome the smaller issues of carrying at their work. Together with the team I will ensure that the human resource is empowered instead of relying on others. I will encourage consultation among the team members especially in matters affecting them. Interpersonal consultation in the group will ensure the growth of personnel by ensuring efficient and on-time work. The challenge liked to be faced in a consultation is that other stakeholders may not be as honest.

Care should be taken against following such advice without giving much thought. It may destroy the organization’s overall performance. Susie ought to have embraced consultation among other departments of her rank and her predecessors. It would have given her very vital insights in problem solving and human resource management too. The last aspect I will consider is reading extensively and researching on the topic of management. Reading books about management of a marketing team will be a good step to take considering. I will also research and look for videos, audios and digital books about management. Reading improves one’s thinking capacity. It opens up different aspects that otherwise will have been impossible. Instead of blaming the team which is arrogance, the reading concept will be of help. Researching on various materials that may seem relevant to my understanding of the need is important.

The weaknesses with reading and research are that it is time-consuming. It also involves too much workload to add on the office chores. It will for that reason require a big sacrifice to go research on the management (St-Aubin, 2018). Reading also requires concentration to understand the aspects being discussed in the books. However books today come with well-detailed summaries that one can pass through and get a rough idea of the book. I will sacrifice my time especially after work to read and improve the context I have on management. I will also encourage my employees to read and research on teamwork and the importance of being a team player in the business. I will outline the benefits of having a clear and wide context in business to them. Susie failed at the researching part and learning management in books and audio files. She in turn instead of knowing how to handle her team, she resorted to frustration, that was an act of pure arrogance.

Development plan

Conclusion

Susie a graduate finds work in an organization in the department of marketing.  Thanks to her academic and good technical skills she raises ranks from an intern to marketing manager in three years. She soon experiences several problems in her new managerial position. She hardly has time, the new job is an unexpected change for her and it takes a toll on her. It strains her relationships with her workmates who think she took up a position meant for them. Things get tougher on her as Prisha, who is her direct boss demands results. She leaves work late and reports early to be able to cover for the employees who are out to frustrate her. She has to whatever I take to prove a point to her juniors and bosses. If she has to do something it has to be right.

References

challenges facing managers today. (2017, September 21). Retrieved from growth engineering: https://www.growthengineering.co.uk/challenges-facing-managers-today/

Farmer, C. (2017, May 23). Chris Farmer’s Leadership and Management Training Blog.

St-Aubin, N. (2018, February 22). overcoming challenges that first-time managers face. Retrieved from office vibe: https://officevibe.com/blog/challenges-first-time-managers