Essay Instructions: THIS ASSIGNMENT IS DUE today September 25th before 12:00 P.M
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This assignment is due Midnight, Eastern Time Zone, USA Monday, September 25,2006
Your response should be submitted as an ATTACHMENT with an rtf or doc extension.
Important: Please be sure to read how this assignment will be evaluated "Critical Response Paper Evaluation Criteria" and follow instructions carefully.
Critical Response Paper Evaluation:
I will evaluate your critical response paper based on the following points. My goal is to help our succeed in this course, so please read and follow these comments carefully.
Your article selection: Did you choose an appropriate peer reviewed journal article? Was the article appropriately cited? Was your article choice appropriate to the topic of discussion?
Organization of the Paper: Did you include appropriate subheadings so that the reader could follow your reasoning? Did you include your name, course name, module number and name and date submitted? Did you use standard citations in the body of your paper and in the reference section? Did you follow generally acceptable grammar and composition practices? Was your paper organized and thorough?
Format: Was your written assignment generally free of typographical errors? Did you follow instructions for the submission of the critical response paper? Did you submit the paper by the deadline? Was the paper prepared according to instructions, e.g. paper page length, type of font used, no clip art, etc.
Content of Analysis: Did you summarize the main points of the article in your own words? Did you include insightful comments and original observations? Did you integrate concepts discussed in class, based on your personal experience, if any, in this area? Did you include additional references? Did you support any observations that you made with examples to illustrate your points? Did you include a conclusion? Did you answer the questions that the instructor posed, if applicable?
Assignment: High Performance Management
Module 1: Managing Internal Processes
Critical Response Paper Assignment
Instructions: Choose an article from a peer reviewed management journal on One of the following topics:
1) management education
2) learning organization
3) business reengineering
4) quality improvement
5) total quality management
6) cross functional teams
Write a four page, double spaced typed paper that critically reviews the major points in the journal article. You may use the discussion points raised in our on-line participation classroom, the text and other outside readings. Do not simply summarize the article. Please see previous information on how to write a critical response paper.
IMPORTANT Critical Response Paper Instructions
Students are expected to prepare a concise summary and critical analysis of their article. The paper should be typed, double spaced using 12 point font in Times New Roman. The paper should not exceed the number of pages assigned.
Content and Organization of Paper: Your critical response should include a complete citation of the article and the following subheadings: (1) Your Name, Date Submitted, Title of Article, Module Number and Name, Course Name (2) Article Summary and (3) Critical Analysis. The goal of these critical response papers is for you to clearly and concisely summarize the main points of the article in your own words (i.e. do not repeat the article abstract), and to critically evaluate the article (i.e. discuss the article?s strengths and weaknesses, and compare its major points to those discussed in our class discussions and the Belasen text. Do not include a title page.
Students must meet the assignment deadline. MS Word should be used and the paper should be attached to the Submit Assignment as an rtf document.
IMPORTANT: PRINT OUT THIS PAGE SO THAT YOU CAN REFER TO IT.
High Performance Managers
High Performance leaders have multiple frames of reference that require them to have cognitive complexity but also behavioral complexity or the ability to play a variety of roles in their organizations (Hooijberg and Quinn, 1992). Managers who demonstrate their ability to play these multiple roles, outlined in the Competing Values Framework, have been found to be perceived as more effective by their peers compared to those managers with less paradoxical capabilities or behavioral complexities (Quinn, Spreitzer and Hart, 1992). These findings have lead to the hypothesis that ?the simultaneous use of the vision setter, motivator, analyzer and task master roles by executives [are] associated with high performance on all three performance dimensions-financial, business and stakeholder (Hart & Quinn 1993:556).
Flexibility
HUMAN RELATIONS
The Motivator
Internal OPEN SYSTEMS
The Vision Setter
External
The Analyzer
Internal Processes The Task Master
Rational Goal
Control
Managers As Vision Setters
Top managers are concerned with strategic decisions that affect the equilibrium and effectiveness of organizations. They must have the ability to articulate an emotionally meaningful vision of organizational change or mission. This must be clear, consistent, compelling. They must be able to mobilize support for that vision using their charisma. These high performance leaders are people who influence the core values of their organization, shape its structural arrangements and institutionalize the new vision through their personal example. They are engaged in maintaining the effective flow of communication both internally, through informal networks and externally through environmental scanning so that they can sense emerging trends and shape the direction of the organization. They have great interpersonal skills and they have a good deal of knowledge about their industry?s inner workings.
Managers as Motivators
Top managers who are motivators are those leaders who influence the construction of organizational shared reality. These are a core set of concepts and priorities which infuse and energize organizational members. Using innovative structures, programs and processes, these managers challenge people to assume new responsibilities, gain new competencies and achieve higher levels of performance. They manage meaning through the sue of symbols, sagas, rituals and metaphors to help create a commitment to overarching goals and the cross functional synergies needed to maintain these goals.
Managers as Analyzers
Top managers? span of attention involves overseeing internal operating efficiencies through decision and rule making that shape internal processes. They ask difficult questions which force business and functional managers to think in new ways. Their skills as analyzers are to make sure that organizational capabilities and core competencies are in place to achieve the organizational vision.
Managers as Task Masters
Top managers emphasize external goals, effective performance and optimal results. Their main concern is to improve productivity and profitability. This is probably the most common role that top managers play (Quinn and Hart 1993).
Characteristics of High Performance Leadership
High performance leaders are both instrumental and transformative and transformational leadership is anchored in action. Action Learning requires flexibility and adaptation while adaptation requires the creation of a fluid organization with horizontal management, multifunctional teams, and self-management emphasis. Renewal and continual improvement are important for the success of team based organizations
While quality improvement and process reengineering are vital for the achievement of performance breakthroughs and transitioning an organization into world-class leadership positions. All world-class organizations use internal and external networking to continuously realign themselves with the external environment. This is an ever evolving process which can be supported by a high speed management system, sustained by action learning, and inspired by high performance leaders. High performance leadership is the moving force that helps organizations create a vision of success, embrace new technologies, structures and processes, and carry out a reformulated mission with excellence and compassion.
(Belasen, A. (2000). Leading the Learning Organization: Communication and Competencies for Managing Change. New York: State University Of New York Press)
Module Managing Internal Processes
Overview In managing internal processes the manager takes on the roles of the coordinator, monitor, facilitator and mentor. These roles emphasize internal process functions within the organization.
As cross-functional and self-managed team leaders, coordinators are the critical links between concept of quality and the involvement of employees.
In the monitor role, managers must optimize the balance between technical knowledge of the work process and internal personal skills required for high performance. Leaders must set clear goals and assure that teams goals are aligned with larger goals in the organization. Facilitative leaders foster collective effort, build cohesion, morale, and manage interpersonal conflict. The role revolves around generating membership and commitment to group goals in support of overall organizational goals. In the mentor role, the leader must learn to leverage people resources as the fundamental strategy for success.
Objectives Mastery of this module will enable you to:
Identify and acquire the knowledge, skills and behavior for successful job, team and business performance;
Lead self-managed, cross-functional teams;
Apply incremental or breakthrough learning to your organization;
Understand a customer focused approach to management learning
Increase your understanding of horizontal organizations, total quality management, business process reengineering and enhancing organizational learning
Learning Activities Class Discussions & Critical Response Papers
Short Essay Examination
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Managing Internal Processes
Source: Readings: Belasen, A.T. (2000). Leading the Learning Organization. Albany, NY: State University Press (Chapters 4-5; Chapters 8-9)
Chapter 4: Managing the Value Based Organization: Hierarchical Structures and Cross Functional Teams
In managing internal processes the manager takes on the roles of the coordinator, monitor, facilitator and mentor. These roles emphasize internal process functions within the organization. In this role the manager uses such tools as Total Quality Management for organizational empowerment. Total Quality Management organizations emphasize cross-functional teams & allow employees greater access to information. This is a must and a means to encourage the empowerment of employees to increase their involvement. Empowerment means employees get delegated managerial authority and the creation of opportunities to influence work outcomes. However, employees then become accountable for their decisions, actions and outcomes when they control their own destinies. Empowerment is transactional in the formation of technical and operational interdependence. It is transformational in the evolution of a new culture and mindset. Transactional characteristics of a leader must be balanced against the transformational characteristics of a leader.
As cross-functional and self managed team leaders, coordinators are the critical links between concept of quality and the involvement of employees. Team leaders are expected to teach quality concepts and dynamics; get team members involved in problem-solving; work well with other people in other units; help the team develop a charter of boundaries and outcomes; and resolve conflicts and manage interpersonal aspects of the team.
Horizontal management is reinforced by high-speed communications, elimination of useless work & the people who do it, and running what remains with a new set of principles and skills. Leaders move toward horizontal management if they are faced with a strong motivation to change such as globalization or tough competition; and they assess the outcomes of change. Managers work to close the knowledge gap between managers and workers by exposing workers to factors affecting organizational operations and outcomes. The challenge for transformational leaders is to provide enough coaching and training so that professional growth can occur in the right direction. The distinction between manager and non-managers blurs, especially with respect to information, control over assignments, and access to external relations.
Self Managed Teams are formed to improve work unit functioning diagnostically by identifying problems and their solutions. They are highly interdependent, multiskilled, and responsible for a whole work process that delivers a service or product to an outside group. The effectiveness of SMT is judged by team members? input skills, process orientations, quality outputs, and the degree to which they work interdependently in the future and how well the team has promoted personal growth and personal well being of the team members.
Chapter 5: Organizing around Processes and Outcomes: Quality Programs and Reengineering
In the monitor role, managers add internal value by managing between the white spaces.Since vertical, hierarchies are being replaced by flexible networks,adaptive systems, informal structures and horizontal structures, the new organizational center is cross functional teams. Leaders must optimize the balance between technical knowledge of the work process and internal personal skills required for high performance. Leaders must set clear goals and assure that teams goals are aligned with larger goals in the organization. Once a team reaches maturity, the leader should empower the team members and gradually reduce leadership involvement.
Core competencies involve value adding for the organization as reflected in its collective knowledge and ability to perform activities. They include the transference and synergy, and coordination of technology and the human resources and knowledge needed to create and deliver value to the organization. Core competencies use systems thinking, managing across functions, leveraging collective organizational knowledge, network learning, and integrating and communicating performance targets across organizational boundaries.
Broadbanding is a competitive line management organizational strategy that supports the streamlined developmental format of organizational structure. Managers organize staff specialists according to their contributions to the organization instead of their disciplines. Because broadbanding supports the creation of networked learning, it can enhance the ability of an organization to concentrate its synergistic brainpower to respond quickly.Using broadbanding and forming networked learning teams organized around core competencies will provide organizations with an integrated approach to organizational transformation. This achieves organizational flexibility and high performance by organizing around these core competencies. The challenge for organizational leaders is to also incorporate the need for integration and consistency.
Managers at the high levels should manage interfaces and be responsible for work flow processes. They should establish objectives, strategies, monitor internal and external feedback and evaluate performance and allocate resources. They should also be responsible for process improvement. Using business reengineering, management can focus on fundamental rethinking and radical redesign to achieve dramatic improvements in critical and contemporary measures of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed. Through this process, the organization can create operational and organizational breakthroughs. However, because reengineering is total system change, it generates resistance from people who are satisfied with the status quo. The leader must act as a catalyst for change by the act of reinforcing critical and creative thinking. High performance leaders must be able to institutionalize the process.
They should recognize when to use TQM and when to use BPR.
Chapter 8: Enhancing Organizational Learning Communication Strategies and Methods
In the role of Facilitator, the manager fosters collective effort, builds cohesion, morale, and manages interpersonal conflict. The role revolves around generating membership and commitment to group goals in support of overall organizational goals. The manager clarifies the roles expected of individual team members and encourages interaction through the sharing of knowledge and unique strengths. The leader encourages organizational learning. Organizations learn by acquiring new knowledge and updating their organizational memory with that knowledge. Fluid organizational structures increase the capacity of an organization to process more information, acquire knowledge, and improve organizational learning and memory.
Organizations learn by direct experience: communication intensive organizations can transmit knowledge rapidly and effectively across the organization. The choice of media to transmit knowledge can affect its timeliness, revision, summarizing, delay etc; interpretations of history: learning happens by drawing on shared meanings, construction and management. Knowledge transfer will depend on the ability of organizational members to develop shared language, symbols, rituals that glorify the past, rationalize the history and experiences of the organization. The retrieval of knowledge from organizational history is important. Knowledge is stored and retrieved by conforming to existing patterns of communication and regularized behaviors. Staff use symbols and patterns that differentiate themselves from other staff, but they also work and store information along core values. Personal learning occurs through reflection and experimentation while organizational learning occurs through sharing the experiences of people. Horizontal organizations benefit from the capacity of people to share knowledge much more than vertical command and control hierarchies and centralized networks of communication do.
Managers can leverage communication processes by creating lateral relations that increase the ability of a company to process information. In this way, cross-functional teams and self-directed work units enhance an organization?s responsiveness to customer needs and link organization internally. Managers can also increase learning by getting information externally through formal scanning processes and boundary spanning activities. Finally, leaders can increase learning by disseminating information through nondirectional communication relations between organizational members by converting environmental data into meaningful information. This process enhances organizational knowledge and guides decision-making.
Chapter 9: Learning to learn: competency education for management development
In the mentor role, the leader must learn to leverage the people resources as the fundamental strategy for success. Underlying assumption of the competency movement is the identification of knowledge, skills, abilities and behavior for successful job, team or business performance. This is the direct link to actualizing the shared mission of all organizations-achieve and maintain competitive advantage domestically and globally.
A high performance leader acting in the mentor role must recognize that adult learners use a frame of reference and mental constructs that are based on their intuition and common sense regarding what works well and what fails. They are trained and develop requisite skills that conform to the need to become highly proficient and productive in fulfilling their tasks. They are taught to think critically, be decisive, initiate actions, and add tangible value to their work units and organizations. The ability to understand the world from different perspectives allows the business manager to be more flexible, better able to compromise and negotiate and better able to cultivate useful working relations, motivate people and understand diversity. Managers must recognize that continuous learning is like a race without a finish line.
The key to successful mentoring is developing and maintaining effective relations between the manager and their employees. The cycle of developmental relations moves through initiation, cultivation, separation and redefinition. Each phase has particular affective experiences, developmental functions and interaction patterns shaped by individual and organizational needs.
Mentoring can potentially enhance the career and professional development of employees and team members. Through psychosocial functions such as counseling, confirmation, role modeling, acceptance and friendship, team members can develop a sense of confidence and competence.High performance or transformational leaders will become self-defining with strong internalized values and ideals about the future direction and the role of their organizations.They recognize people as resources rather than costs. These leaders have trust and confidence in their employees and they are first to delegate and trust and empower their employees.As mentors, these leaders develop a cadre of competence managers with an inner purpose. They cultivate these employees with their congruent values who can potentially become future organizational leaders.
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