This week's readings relate to my challenges in convincing a client to
move forward with several action plans to leverage the use of social
media to increase their market reach. I have provided several sets of
suggestions for change but have been met with unwillingness to respond
to my suggested action plans. I realize that my client, the marketing
manager of a large car dealership consortium, is quite overloaded with
work and is unable to respond to every request. Leveraging the
dealerships' social media presences is not her highest priority. It is
my mission to move my suggestions higher up her list of work priority
items.
Though the client is my boss, in a manner of speaking, she
also needs management, in terms of buying into the value of my
suggestions. Morgan's exploration of metaphors applies to this
situation. The metaphor of an organization being an organism relates to
how I need to more deeply understand how she thinks. Understanding an
organism's life cycle will give insight into how to manage an analogous
organization (Morgan 1998). So the more I can understand how she thinks,
the better I can tailor action steps to fit her mental eco-system.
Bettis-Outland's
concepts regarding processes of decision making in organizations have
several applications to my challenges. One recent initiative met with
very poor results. This experience can serve as a learning tool to
suggest several steps to avoid in carrying out similar initiatives in
the future (Bettis-Outland 2012). The negative experience can actually
be a greater learning tool than a positive experience would have been.
Another
direction Bettis-Outland suggests is decision making through
incremental learning. The more initiatives we try, the more we will
learn (Bettis-Outland 2012). Reminding my client of past successes can
serve as a reminder of the strong possibility of future successes.
Concepts
tried by Frederick Winslow Taylor, related to organizational
efficiency, can apply. Trying an A/B approach to implementing a
suggestion could easily prove the effectiveness of a particular
direction (Wren & Bedeian 2009).
Finally, information
overload may play a key role in my client's inability to take action on
the many suggestions I provided. If I narrow down the suggestions to a
very short list, I may increase the possibility that she will be willing
to take action on them (Bettis-Outland 2012).
References:
Bettis-Outland,
H. (2012). Decision-making's impact on organizational learning and
information overload. Journal of Business Research, 65/6, 814-820.
Morgan, G. (1998). The images of organization. (pp. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Wren,
D. A., & Bedeian, A. G. (2009). The advent of scientific
management., The evolution of management (6th ed.). Danvers, MA: John
Wiley & Sons Inc.
By Nik
ReplyDeleteIsn't it great when you in a sense are managing your bosses? I don't know if you have looked into Qualtrics much but it is a great market research instrument, maybe it has some application in convincing this marketing manager of the vital roll social media (should) plays
By Paul
ReplyDeleteI've heard of it but have not used it. I will check it out! Thanks.
Paul, I am glad you could apply this week's readings to your own organization. Do you see any drawbacks to using the organization-as-organism metaphor? If we operated under this metaphor, do we limit our thinking a bit? One theory that will be of interest to you is organizational ecology, which we will cover in a couple weeks (and is an option for the midterm as well).
ReplyDeletePaul,
ReplyDeleteDr. Pade seems to be getting at what Morgan refers to as the simultaneous power and limitation of metaphor. I found his treatment of this dichotomy extremely compelling. In fact, Morgan's introduction made what was at once the most accessible and most sophisticated case for practitioners to develop a wide base of theoretical knowledge that I've ever read.
Of course, the organization as organism is a great metaphor that offers one framework for approaching management. But as Morgan might say, "organism" does not offer a complete description of the organization, and there are a number of questions raised by this metaphor. For instance, we all know that organisms (like businesses) are made up of many systems that must function in tandem. But who "leads" an organism? Proponents of the "business as organism" theory also point to the life cycle of the business, but as a change management practitioner, it is my fervent hope that businesses are not limited to a linear birth-growth-death trajectory.
You point to some great suggestions for different implementation approaches. But if you had to choose one other organizational metaphor to complement the power and counter the limitations of the "organism" metaphor, what would it be?