Case Analysis Case Study Example

- Chet is an executive of one of the biggest plant of the Norris Company. The work pressure is very stiff, and there is a lot of things that he expects to do in any particular. Looking at Chet schedule for one particular day, one can see that several principles of time and stress management have been compromise. Although, Chet is trying to improve the situation sincerely, there is a lot going on his mind. Even the basic principles of stress management and time management have not been following resulting in stress, time-loss and poor work-life balance. Chet is right in assuming that he owes some of the time to his family and God, which he is constantly failing to give to them.
The basic problem for Chet is lack of delegation. This is evident from the fact that he has to make excessive tours to the plant throughout the day. He is keeping a very wide span of control. This can result in time loss and too much stress trying to control too many things along. As a result, a lot of time is wasted and Chet complains about achieving nothing.
Secondly there is not formalized structure for Chet in how to get the things done. He tries to take and solve problems as they come rather than anticipating them and solving them before hand. He also does not have any one to control the foreman which has increased his span of control unnecessarily. Another problem that can be identified from the case is the fact that decision making is too centralized and everything has to pass through Chet. There are also no staff coordination meetings to make sure that they can settle out the things among their departments, rather than keeping Chet involved for some petty issues.
- The main problem for the organization is its inability to realize that Chet is only a human. He can give so much to the organization as much time he has. He has only 24 hours, whereas work and tasks expected from his far too much. As a result of which he fails to achieve his targets despite giving his 100% efforts. He is trying to improve, but the organization must also realize that going forward the way things are might not work out. Either the growth of the business will stagnate, or Chet will look for another less stressful job. The organization should divide the responsibility to the different people in the organization. There should also be certain positions that should be created and filled in order to reduce the burden on Chet. The organization’s other problem is wide span of control. Chet is controlling the entire day shift. This is wrong. Just like a night supervisor, a supervisor for the day shift should also be hired. Chet should then only ask for reports from him. The responsibility for that supervisor must be to decide on production and achieving the targets given to him. Chet could give monthly targets to the supervisor rather than having to look into the day to day matter as he is doing currently. This is wasting not only Chet’s usesul time, but it is also not good for the organization as they are going nowhere in terms of planning or improving process. The situation must be resolved sooner rather than later before the things go out of hand.
- Chet is a sincere executive, but there are some characteristics that are resulting in his poor performance. These characteristics are personal, as well as learned through his constant engagement with the organization and his past bosses. First of all, Chet tries to overestimate his competence. He thinks that no one else can do a good job apart from him. As a result, he tries to keep all the tasks to himself. There are so many tasks that he can delegate to his subordinate which he controls himself. Chet might be a believer of old-school management. However, the recent school-of-thought of management clearly instructs the modern managers to try to delegate the tasks to lower level management as much as possible to save the time for other more important tasks. As an executive, Chet should be spending more time into future planning, but as of now, his entire day is exhausted on day to day matters. That is not good for the organization in the long run. Another personal trait that is aggravating the problem is that Chet gets distracted by the day-to-day matters. He should try to focus on a bigger picture of the organization rather than focusing on day to day matters. One another personal trait that is hindering Chet’s working routine is him trying to do the job of his subordinates. He tries to follow the principle of upward delegation that is completely prohibited in the modern management. Yet, he tries to do that and as result more important task that are expected of Chet are neglected and as result he does not achieve much.
- As a consultant, I would propose the changes in Chet’s style of management and certain changes in the organization’s structure. Both the style of management and the organizational structure are faulty resulting in unproductive activities being carried out by Chet. Chet is probably the most important person on the plant, and by wasting his day on day-to-day chores, he is leaving no time for himself to plan ahead. This is causing a lot of damage to the organization. If this damage is not visible now, it will surely be visible in the years to come and the company and Chet both will regret if they do not make the required changes immediately. First of all Chet should try to figure out some of the unimportant tasks in his daily schedule and try to delegate them. Similarly, the authority of the supervisors should be increased and they should be allowed to make their own production schedules after taking into account the needs of the company. Secondly, Chet should make an effort to hold weekly staff coordination meeting. This will help the staff to solve some of their petty problems among themselves without Chet having to get involved in anything. There should be a day and time selected for these meetings and they should be held regularly. This will start improving the things for Chet and will give him more time for planning, and controlling. Secondly, Chet should decrease his span of control by hiring supervisors for foreman. This will again help him save time and stress as he will have to deal with only one person rather than having to make excessive plant visits and wasting his time on unimportant and petty details.
- There were several mental blocks that were present in the case of Mann Gulch Disaster case. First of all, they were told about the fire and set off to solve the problem. They had a predefined problem, in their mind and had solved half the problem in their mind before even experiencing or exposing themselves to the actual problem. This resulted in limited thinking for them. If they undertaken an actual tour to find out about the problem, all their tools and mental approach would be different. They would have known in this case what is that they are fighting. This created a massive conceptual block. They were fighting the fire which they were sure they would contain by 10 am. They also ignored the ranger’s advice and took it extremely easy. This is evident from the fact that they were having supper, and enjoying themselves rather than fighting the problem. There seemed to be no panic or willingness to solve the problem by the smoke jumpers. This resulted in the problem getting aggravated and it soon went out of hands causing Mann Gulch disaster which took the lives of many and created great loss to the forest. All of this was due to the unprofessional approach and conceptual blocks that were in the mind of some jumpers. They were also unwilling to drop their tools and take cover when asked by one of them. They thought in order to remain firefighters they need to keep hold of their tools, which was another conceptual block witnessed in the case of Mann Gulch.
- The major problem in the case is the fact that firefighter based their problem on an opinion rather than a fact. If they had collected the data and fact rather than opinion that it is only a containable fire, they would have come more prepared and would have been better able to solve the problem. They unfortunately relied on an opinion and did not relied on fact and as a result, the problem got out of hands. Secondly, the smokejumpers did not consider an alternative way of solving the problem. This was due to the lack of time available to them. They wasted the useful time they had in supper and other unnecessary things which could have been done later. Later in the case, they were divided into different school of thoughts. One school of thought was in favor of running from the scene, while the other wanted to fight. However, this created a problem as there was no clarity of vision to solve the problem. Secondly, the firefighters had no one with position power. There was lack of leadership, and as a result they were confused whether to run or fight the fire. This all created confusion and chaos. Similarly, no analytical approach was used in the case. If the problem was not short circuited and proper problem solving skills were applied, it would have saved the tragic loss of lives and would have prevented this disaster from turning into a mega disaster.
- Good decision making comes from discussing the problem and then find a good solution. However, in this case, the time was short and quick decisions were need. There was also a lack of leadership and everyone was their own boss. This is a situation where decision making was a problem. It is often assumed then in cases where discussion of a solution is not possible, the leader takes over the situation and chooses the solution he likes. That is missing from the case, since there was no leadership among firefighters; everyone was taking their own decision. This resulted in timely actions not being taken. Then at later stage, the lack of leadership resulted in two different group formation. One group asked the other to run, while the other was in favor of fighting the fire. There was no mutual ground on which different people were coming together due to lack of leadership. This result in decision making issue and ultimately the collapse. Only Dodge was brave enough to use critical thinking to save his life and one other firefighter. Out of seven only two survived because they used critical thinking approach in decision making. Rests of the smokejumpers were not willing to solve the problem innovatively and paid the price for it. The loss of life is tragic in this case, but it also teaches a lesson to the students of management, that they need to be flexible and should take innovative decisions in order to solve the problems.
- The case can relate to several theories learned in the class. The case is an excellent example of how to use different theories in different situations in order to protect the organizations and lives of others in a given situation. To assume that Dodge did manage to escape the disaster is very farfetched. Dodge might have been in such a situation before, or he might have been trained in facing such a situation. Otherwise, he would not have shown such courage and calm. Therefore, training does play an important role in difficult and crisis situation as we learned from the textbook. On the issue of leadership, the text is pretty clear on having a clear leader. The absence of leadership in this case resulted in the problem going out of hand. It created problems as the group was divided into two sects and were thinking themselves as their own boss. If someone like Dodge had position power, the situation could have been avoided. The other issue that we learned from the text is to keep calm in crisis situation. Though, it is the rule of thumb and everybody agrees with it, but when it comes to actual situation, panic usually sets in. This is what happened in the case. if other smokejumpers had remained calm like Dodge, they would have avoided the problem and would have saved their lives. Unfortunately, they panicked and as a result, not only they lost their lives, but the disaster was aggravated.
- The information in the case and other material from the class clearly highlight one point, preparation. Preparation is the key to solve all the crisis or events that might turn into crises. One must be prepared to solve all kinds of problems and should not rely only on opinions. It’s the facts that should be used in preparation. Smokejumpers prepared themselves according to the opinion of others about the disaster and when they reached the actual situation, they found it to be extremely critical and far from what they were hearing. They were not prepared to tackle such a big fire, and they heard that they would be fighting only a small fire. As a result of which there tools were not up to the market and the number of people dispatched to tackle the situation was far less than what the number should have been. This is the problem in the real world. For example, when RedBox entered the market, Blockbuster underestimated them and took them very lightly. Similarly, when the founders of Google tried to sell their search engine to Yahoo and Microsoft, both of them were not impressed. When Google was launched, Microsoft again took it very lightly. Today, Google Is growing faster than Microsoft and Yahoo is nowhere close to Google’s growth and earnings. The lesson learnt from the case is simple. One must be aware of his opponent or the person he would be dealing with. If you took it too lightly, there are chances that your opponent would surprise you. Therefore, you need to be fully prepared to keep your opponent at bay and making sure that it does not surprise you pulling the tricks out his hat, because you know too less about your opponent that his moves seem novel to you. This is the strategy to win. Knowing, preparing and not taking your opponent lightly is the key to success and all good companies, businesses, and managers should use this rule to succeed and get the best out of the competitors.