Tabel 1-1

How Managers Develop OB Management Skills

Stage General Description
Novice Behaving mechanically.
Following elementary rules
and procedures.
Advanced Beginner Memorizing elementary
rules. Using rules under
various conditions.
Developing circumstantial
rules.
Competence Developing rules of thumbs
and the ability to focus on
important information.
Proficiency Developing the ability to
read situations unconsciously
and respond intuitively.
Expertise Developing the ability to
respond intuitively in a wide
variety of situations.
Management Analogy
Practicing applying
textbook theories in case
analyses and experiential
exercises.
Discovering workplace
cues that indicate
applicability of textbook
theories.
Developing personalized
models of how to solve
management problems
effectively.
Developing the ability to
respond intuitively to
particular management
problems.
Developing the ability to
respond intuitively to a
wide range of management
problems.

And formulate solutions. For example, you might read a chapter on work motivation
in this book and use the theories you learn to analyze a case about lagging productivity. In
performing case analyses, you learn how to use OB theories as tools to solve real-world
problems.

An experiential exercise is an activity, often completed in a classroom, in which you

learn by doing. For instance, after reading a chapter on motivation, you might work with
classmates to determine how to award incentive payment to the members of a fictitious work
group. Experiential exercises may reinforce textbook theories and provide personal insight
into how to use them, or they may extend beyond the textbook to provide you with
information about related topics.

Case analyses and experiential exercises give novice managers the chance to practice
using textbook information about OB and management much as behind-the-wheel training
enables novice drivers to practice textbook driving skills. When students work on cases and
exercises in groups, they can share what they know and help one another out. In these ways
novices learn that theories provide “what-to-do” guidance that can help them cope with
management problems in a skillful-thought at this point mechanical-manner.
Advanced Beginner

as novices practice applying theories they’ve learned, repetition reinforces the rules of
skillful behavior and the rules become easier to rememeber. At the same time, as novices
apply rules in different circumstances, they learn that they cannot follow the same rules in
every situation. Thus, as novices develop into advanced beginners, they learn to base
behaviours on an expanded set of rules that now includes both textbook rules and the
circumstantial rules that experience has suggested. By driving under different road conditons,
advanced beginners learn to allow greater distance between cars when, for example, passing
at higher speeds of driving in stormy weather. Similarly, novice managers grow to become
advanced beginners as they learn that certain workplace cues indicatewhen particular
textbook theories can be used as managerial tools. For instance, after a year or two of
experience, a manager might discover that a company’s low productivity is caused by a
variety of factors besides poor motivation such as faulty equipment, inadequate supervision,
and defective raw materials. The manager could then conclude that motivation theories would
not give all the insight needed to solve productivity problems in his or her firm.

The stage of skill development in which people learn to base behaviors on an expanded set of
rules that includes both the elementary rules of novice and circumstantial rules discovered
through experience.

Intuitive understanding that replaces conscious thought. They do not have to think
specifically about motivation, supervision, or other such factors to solve a productivity
problem. Instead, their gut instincts tell them that only certain factors cause the sort of low
productivity they confront and that a particular type of program will lead to acceptable
improvement. Expert managers know what needs to be done without having to think about it.

3. Putting OB Skills to Work

As you can see in our examples, developing greater ability to identify and solve
organizational problems lies at the heart of the progression from novice to expert manager.
Indeed, as you will discover in Chapter 3, many of the problem solving. Identifying problems
and solving them effectively requires that managers put their OB skills to work, it is
important that you understand the process of problem solving and become proficient at
experimenting with ways of becoming a better problem solver. To accomplish these aims, it
helps to realize that most managerial problem solving can be simplified by breaking it into a
process of diagnosis, solution, action, and evaluation.

Diagnosis

Problem solving begins with diagnosis, a procedure in which managers gather

information about a troublesome situation and try to summarize it in a problem statement.
Information gathering may require direct observation of events in or around an organization.
Consultants often praise the practice of “managing by wandering around,” partly because it
provides a source of rich, first-hand information that can be used during problem-solving
procedures. Managers may also conduct interviews to gather facts and opinions, or administer
questionnaires to collect others’ views. Both these approaches lack the immediacy of
personal observation, but they do enable many individuals to provide needed information. Of
the two, interviewing has greater flexibility since it allows additional questions to be asked if
any come to mind. In contrast, once written and distributed, questionnaires cannot be
changed to add new questions. However, questionnaires do not require face-to-face
interaction, so they offer the benefit of collecting information from many individuals in little
time. Interviewing hundreds of individuals may be infeasible, but hundreds of questionnaires
can be administered without difficulty.

Summarizing information in a problem statement requires that managers use the mix
of textbook theories, experience, and intuition they have developed to state what is wrong.
Often the information before a manager looks much like the kind of data that a medical
doctor uses to identify the source of an illness. Just as the doctor may have to consider
evidence of fever, body pain, and nausea to diagnose a case of influenza, the manager may
have to diagnose the meaning of a variety of symptoms to formulate a problem statement. For
example, when the Buick Motor Division of General Motors dropped Plumley Companies as
a supplier of hoses and other rubber parts due to poor product quality, owner Michael A.
Plumley discovered that workers wanted to produce good parts but lacked the knowledge and
skills necessary to perform their jobs correctly. After reacting to these symptoms and
stepping up worker training, the company improved its situation substantially and now holds
quality awards from GM, Nissan, Ford, and Chrysler. It is often up to the manager, acting as
a diagnostician, to analyze the indiviual symptoms and learn how they identify the larger
problem.

Gathering information about a troublesome situation and analyzing it to develop a

problem statement.

9 general motors’ new saturn Division is an attempt to develop a new way of making and
selling automobiles in North America. Before the first Saturn rolled off the company’s
assembly line in Springhill, Tennessee, Saturn’s management had spent years diagnosing
problems at other auto plants. Solutions implemented to prevent similar problems at Saturn
involve the use of self-managed teams to increase employee inputs into work place decision
making

Solution

Solution is a process of identifying ways to resolve the problem uncovered during

diagnosis. Organizational problems are often multifaceted, and there is usually more than one
way to solve a given problem. Successful managers consider several reasonable alternatives
before choosing one. In the case of Plumley Companies, Michael Plumley considered but
ruled out poor supervision, equipment deficiencies, raw material defects, and employee
motivation and considered a variety of training approaches before settling on the training
programs finally chosen. More generally, managers prescribing solutions must resist the urge
to satisfice-to choose the first alternative that seems workable-and must instead push
themselves to consider several potential solutions and choose the best available alternative.

Whether managers prescribe solutions mechanically, consciously, or intuitively

depends, of course, on the level of skill they have achieved. Nivice managers must refer to
textbook theories-the same ones used as diagnostic tools-to formulate solutions. Managers
with greater expertise may rely instead on personal theories consciously applied, or may be
able to prescribe a solution on the basis of intuitive feel. In all such instances, models like
those introduced in this book provide help in formulating viable solutions. What you learn
now will help you solve problems later in your career.

Identifying ways to resolve a problem uncovered during diagnosis.

Action

Action is setting in motion a proposed solution. In this step, managers must first
stipulate the specific activities they believe are needed to solve a partivular problem, then
oversee the implementation of these activities. Sometimes it is posible to implement a step-
by-step program already developed to solve a similar problem encountered previously or in
another organization. General Motors used this approach when it adopted product quality and
customer service prograams first developed in its Saturn Division throughout its other
automotive divisions. At other times it is necessary instead to start from scratch, creating a
new sequence of activities to be implemented for the first time. IBM forced the developers of
its first personal computer to use this approach by isolating them from the rest of the
company’s operations. Due to their isolation, the development staff could not solve problems
by simply referring to what was done elsewhere in IBM. The innovation and creativity
stimulated by this approach, and the subsequent success of IBM’s personal computer, led
many other companies to emulate the strategy of creating a “skunkworks” for new-product
development.

Stipulating the specific actions needed to implement a prescribed solution and overseeing
their execution

Evaluation

Problem solving concludes with evaluation, the process of determining whether

actions taken to solve the problem have had the intended effect. To evaluate their solutions
properly, managers must identify in advance the indicators of success (such as a 15 percent
increase in sales) and collect measures of these indications as the action stage proceeds. For
example, to evaluate a program intended to improve productivity, managers must decide what
kinds of measures to use, such as count of items produced, questionnaire indices of customer
satisfaction, dollar volume of sales, or similar measures, and then determine how to collect
this information.

The evaluation process highlights any differences between the intended results of a
particular solution and the actual results. Sometimes the chosen course of action completely
resolves the problem. More often, however, additional problem solving is necessary. At this
point, managers use evaluation information as diagnostic data and process of problem solving
begins again.

Measuring the effectiveness of planned actions to determine whether additional action is

warranted.