There have been quite a few organizational communication mishaps and victories at the place I work. Depending on how you read my little story you might think there was a failure or something good happened.
A new-ish project manager recently had a very successful and well received (by the customer) deployment of some applet-type enhancements for a piece of my company’s software. The CEO decided to ask the project manager to write up a brief 1 pager about the implementation, testing, overall strategy of the project. This turned out to be a 4 page presentation, but anyway…a group of people including myself were called into a manager-type meeting to have an open discussion on the process. The meeting was supposed to take 30 minutes, ended up about 70, and it included about 25 employees.
After some solid discussion (which included) bickering and yelling between the CEO and one of my fellow employees we finally came to a conclusion. The CEO waved his hand and magically created two groups of people each with different tasks but with the goal of implementing “agile development” in my workplace. Agile development was never mentioned or hinted at in the document written up by the project manager, but it was rather insinuated after our group discussion as a necessity for better deployments going forward.
This was bad because: the meeting took longer than planned, people shut up after the CEO and one employee started yelling, two more tasks groups have been added to the countless other committees, groups, etc. of people trying to get work done.
This was good because: ultimately we have two groups of people who need to work towards implementing agile development.
As your example shows, when individuals let their emotions get the best of them in an organizational setting effective communication severely declines. Thus, it is important for managers and employees alike to be aware of the negative influence their emotional reactions can have on communication. If the CEO and employee had not become involved in a yelling match more employees may have participated in the communication, and a different, possibly more effective solution, may have resulted from the meeting.
ReplyDeleteYour example certainly highlights how drastically results can differ when individuals do not stay on task and let their emotions get to them. Had the CEO and employee refrained from bickering at one another, other employees would have been more inclined to participate in the discussion. Not only this, but the time factor probably irritated alot of people. After sitting in a room listening to two people fight for over an hour would certainly not provoke me to prolong the meeting by voicing my opinion. Moreover, I would fear my views would result in another heated discussion. Needless to say, people should refrain from letting heir emotions get the best of them.
ReplyDeleteI have seen this too. The meeting is called for one thing and somehow the outcome is another. Like you observe, sometimes that is good - a better decision. Many times it it just more work.
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