A632.6.3.RB - The High Cost of Conflict

Just recently I had a conflict with one of my co-workers over several issues. Our building was going through a very busy period where additional warehouse worker hours were required, mostly in the form of overtime. My job was to approve the overtime hours and include them in my plans. This is tricky because you want to make sure there is enough overtime to accomplish our goals, but not too much to where we run out of work. This is all based on forecasts and how many warehouse workers are signed up. I approved it for one department and realized the next day after 8 additional team members showed up that staffing was entered wrong in the tracking file. I called this manager on her day off and let her know that the staffing was not only wrong, but that the forecasts were lower than expected so we did not have enough work for the overtime team members. The next week her staffing was wrong again and we ended up not meeting our daily plans for that department because of it. I ended talking to her about it again and what the impact of her missing her staffing was. I also followed up with her manager because this was a negative trend that was beginning to start.

The cost of conflict was higher than I was comfortable with. The miss in staffing that one day led me to create production plans with resources that were not even available that day. This caused the building to lose the level of service on priority cartons that the stores needed. It also gave me a negative feeling toward the manager because I felt like she didn’t value her job, nor did she value mine, being that staffing was so important. This affected our relationship as it created tension between us.

After looking at the ten principles of new thinking, I could have followed some of the beginning steps in more detail, as this may have preserved the relationship part of this conflict. Creating partnerships earlier in the process could have prevented the second occurrence from happening. However, I feel that this manager did not possess the qualities to be able to deal with the conflict in a more effective way. She did not take accountability for the staffing misses, nor did she commit to making it better going forward. I used my feelings after the first time and thought that she was going to improve, but I was wrong and she failed to meet her commitments.

This exercise helped me realize what types of costs are associated with conflicts of all types; even those at work that you feel are minor. When this conflict was happening I did not think of the impact it would have on our relationship. These conflicts have impacts greater than you would imagine, especially in a high speed, fast pace work environment where small mistakes have big effects.

A632.5.5.RB - Protected Values in Decision-Making

My three protected values include my marriage, my health and well-being, and the education of myself and my family. I value much more than these three that I have listed, but I protect these values the most and they coincide with one another, along with all revolving around my family.

My marriage is the most important of all protected values. My wife and I make time for one another each week, and make it a point to invest in our marriage by continually improving it. This value is non-negotiable, and only in extreme cases do we make plans to refrain from spending time together. We recognize the importance of building our relationship, so we make every effort possible to carve out time during my days off to participate in activities that involve the two of us. This is why I protect this value the most.

My second value, which is my health, is something that I have to make concessions for, even though it is one of my protected values. Our family buys only organic, natural, and fresh foods, primarily from local farmers and organic food stores. We feel this maximizes our health and gives us more energy to exercise and spend time outside. I thoroughly enjoy the outdoors, so exercising and playing sports is common for me. There are times when I cannot eat the way I want to, like when I travel, so I have to eat whatever is available. Also, there are times when I cannot exercise due to long weeks at work, so I will take a few days off to help my body recover. This is something that is negotiable, depending on the situation.

Education is my third value, and I feel rather strongly about this one as well. I participate in higher learning studies to set a good example for my children and to have a good career. I will, however, sacrifice my education for my children’s if I had to. I feel that they need a strong foundation and educational background to be successful, and with my wife starting homeschooling this year, the costs associated with good programs are very high. Therefore, I may have to push back my education so they can get theirs.

My decision-making is all centered my values, which entails my family. I make all of my decisions in my personal life around my family and their well-being, health, and happiness. We are very tight-knit and enjoy spending time with one another, so I am now in a routine to where it’s common practice for me to involve them in the choices I make. I feel strongly about each of these values, so it’s not hard to include these in my personal decision-making process. 

A632.4.5.RB - Deception in Negotiations

Being deceived and lied to in negotiating is more common than we may think. I’m certain that there are thousands of negotiations that take place on a daily basis that involve complete strangers who have one thing in common: to get the best deal possible. There are several ways in which to help from becoming a victim of deception while negotiating. They include setting goals carefully, assessing underlying uncertainty, paying attention to norms, and preparing carefully.

                                           

Research shows that difficult yet realistic goals trigger aggressive and sometimes unethical behavior while negotiating. It’s better to enter the process with goals that are reasonable and attainable without being too demanding as this could facilitate a more ethical negotiation process. Uncertainty leads to communicating information in a self-serving way. When negotiating, use facts and real information, ask direct questions, and ask specifics. This eliminates ambiguity and forces the negotiation process to be less deceptive.

Norms and self-perceptions lead to a dishonest and unfair negotiation process. Create an atmosphere that eliminates any cultural uncertainties and one that will spur ethical behavior. Lastly, prepare carefully by asking open-ended and specific questions, preparing responses to questions, asking unexpected questions, and following-up with questions that can help weed-out the lies.

A few months back when my wife and I were purchasing a used car, the salesman had explained that the batter had been replaced the previous year. It was February when we were car shopping, but I never thought anything of it. He had used the same response when being asked about other items on the car, and I questioned him by wanting to see the maintenance records. The services were completed last year, but it was in March the previous year, so nearly a year before this. He was right in stating it was done last year, but failed to elaborate that the car had either been sitting in their lot that long or that the service was done almost a year ago.

My son wanted me to take him to the to store last week, so I made an agreement with him and told him that as long as he helped clean the garage with me I would take him. He happily accepted because normally the garage is an easy clean-up job. This time, the garage was tore apart from various projects, but I did not disclose this to him. He was disappointed when he found out about the state the garage was in and that he already agreed to help. Being that this was my son, I wouldn’t have went much farther than hiding a few facts from him. I don’t do it very often, but I do it from time to time. I would say that overall I am an honest person, but depending on how serious the negotiation process is and who the other party is, I may hide more than I think. Just as the text states, aggressive goals can lead to this, and I think it has in the past for me.

A632.3.4.RB - Reflections on Decision-Making

The three ways to avoid frame blindness are conducting a frame audit, identifying and changing inadequate frames, and mastering techniques for re-framing. Conducting a frame audit revolves around viewing the frames of others and understanding what’s important to them. Once this is determined, it will be easier to understand how and why they make the decisions that they do. Our organization had a mandatory exercise for each operational department called Connections. Managers from the same department got together and shared personal stories, values, and life experiences with one another. This exercise was meant to help these departments connect on a different level and help understand what drives the decision-making process of each person, based on their values, past experience, etc. It not only helped build relationships but opened the eyes of each individual participating. This helped me understand my own framing process and the process of others.

Identifying inadequate frames in my organization and personal life meant that I had to evaluate myself and seek feedback from others. One of exercises I did at work, with the help of my manager, was to seek feedback from my co-workers about my strengths, opportunities, decision-making process, and personality and use it to become a better leader. When getting this feedback, it’s hard to come to the realization that some of the frames were not needed, some were unbalanced, and some needed adjusting. I had assumptions about processes and other co-workers that were preventing me from establishing better relationships. The way I was measuring success and productivity in departments was different than what the organization was looking for.

Mastering techniques for re-framing is enjoyable. Last year when I started with Target I had been placed in a role to manage 30 team members in an environment that was foreign to me. I had good relationships but felt that I should know their jobs and what they deal with on a daily basis to better understand their decision-making process, essentially, using multiple frames. I chose to job shadow each and every one of them in different functions to learn their job, identify obstacles, and help them through them productively. At the end of the 4-week process, I even challenged some of them to a productivity race to see who could earn the highest productivity in a set amount of time. This helped tremendously with viewing other people’s frames and walking through the decision-making process with them.

One of the biggest benefits of this exercise was being able to see how deep decision-making processes go in organizations. Values, experiences, and personality all contribute to the decision-making process, and if you are disconnected from others than it’s hard to view their frames and understand them. I think that the biggest factor that has helped me is establishing relationships with those who I work with and interact with often. These relationships help understand the thought process of one another, and allow some understanding of values and experiences that contribute to decisions-making. This exercise has helped me realize that I fall into frame blindness more than I think, mainly due to the assumptions that I have. It’s so easy to make assumptions about other people and processes at work, based on what you may or may not know. I feel that it will help me with asking more open-ended questions to individuals to reduce assumptions and allow a better understanding of their thought processes.

A632.2.3.RB - How to Make Choosing Easier

I was very surprised to hear from Sheena that not only do we have so many choices for almost every product, food, and service imaginable, but we have a harder time making decisions when faced with all of these choices. She describes in detail that buyers feel more confident and feel comfortable when given fewer choices. Cutting and concretization resonate the most with me and seem to be more apparent in my personal and professional lives.

I am the type of leader that needs to see results, feel results, and put my hands on decisions that I make. I also agree with the less is more mentality that so many consumers prove to be real and alive. If I were to cut more in my own decision-making in my personal life, it would require some discipline, only because my body is conditioned to having so many choices. This would entail grocery shopping at smaller stores with less variety, shopping for clothes and other amenities at smaller, less famous retailers who do offer so many options. I think in general this goes for everything in our lives because this is what our country is known for. The same goes for work, only at work I am given a few select choices for decisions, but they have huge implications depending on if I were right or wrong. This goes back to the expedient decision-makers that were described in the book. The smaller the choice pool, the faster it may be to make a decision, especially the right one. The larger the choice pool the harder the decision is, resulting in reflective decision-making.

For concretization, I feel that it would be easier for me to make a decision if I could visualize that decision and the repercussions of it before the decision was actually made. Just the other day I failed to make a decision at work because I felt like I did not have enough information to make a sound decision. I couldn't visualize the outcome, nor could I visualize the implications of this decision due to limited information. If there were more of the necessary information and less of the inferior information, it may be easier to make decisions. 

A632.1.4.RB - Multistage Decision-Making

I somewhat agree with the dynamic programming method explained in the book. There are some industries and fields where this type of decision making is commonplace, and there are some that feel lost just looking at the equations involved with it. My decision making style is different, and even though I enjoy using data and calculating risk, I like to have some variability and flexibility in my decisions when dealing with multistage decision-making. I feel that too many variables play a part in decisions and very few things stay constant. It appears that dynamic programming counts on the future to be constant predictable, when in my industry and workplace it’s ever-changing.

                                        

I think that this method forces people to look at the decision-making process differently and tap into other areas that may not get as much consideration when planning. I think there are a lot of managers out there that use a form of this equation, they may just call it something different or use it in another manner or application. I feel that it wouldn't quite help me in my decision-making process because of the emphasis that I place on flexibility and using experience and intuition as drivers.

Dynamic programming would have more of an impact on business decisions than personal decisions. The values we place on certain things and events cannot be taken into consideration when using this tool. I feel like the long-term effects on planning are good in a business sense, as they take probability and risk into account, and the answers to questions could be simplified as long as these numbers are accurate. Again, this process looks interesting but does not suit my personal style. I take decisions one step at a time in my personal life, and use other calculations and considerations when planning at work.

A631.9.2.RB - Video Debrief of Team MA

The environment that Steve Jobs created for the Next team to brainstorm was inviting and conducive to critical thinking. I thought that the open forum he encouraged among the team members was the type of environment that I enjoy working in, sharing thoughts and ideas with like-minded people. Steve clearly took over the meetings as the leader, steering the topics for discussion and doing the most amount of challenging. He directed the meeting, but encouraged others to join and provide appropriate challenges to the team regarding their plan. My leadership type is team-based, so allowing the team to collectively find answers to questions and determine priorities is something that I feel very comfortable with.

One thing that I really enjoyed about the Next start-up team is that they appeared to be getting away from everything to do these meetings, almost like a retreat where they can really focus on the topic at hand and get away from disturbances. I am a big proprietor of creating environments where team members feel comfortable and close, where thoughts, feelings, and ideas are shared openly and without judgment or criticism. This to me is a true team. The Next team knew what they had to do and how to do it, with leadership from Steve, and they planned together on how to accomplish it in the timeframe they established earlier. I also enjoy working out the details and planning to be perfect, which is something the Next team appeared to do quite often. They gave themselves tight deadlines and strict goals with little room for error, making it more important for them to rely on data.

Steve Jobs may not have made the best decisions with his new company, but from a teamwork standpoint I think he nailed it. He allowed the team to work together to determine what they needed to do, how it needed to happen, and with what. The team seemed more efficient and functional before running into financial problems, because they were able to focus on more of the project and end goal. I enjoyed watching the Next team operate and collaborate on building the next big thing.