Blog Post Due 11/8

Within my experience with RSO’s there had been multiple people that had ended up leaving or were forced to leave the team that I was a part of. In terms of what had happened with the first person had been that they had never really communicated with the team, would miss meetings, and would not accomplish their assignment. What the project manager did at first was an attempt to talk with the member to try and understand their circumstances. The member had said that they had been busy recently but their schedule had cleared up some, and wanted to continue to work so the situation had seemed alright going forward. The member had continued miss meetings and assignments without any communication, so the project manager had asked whether or not the member wanted to be part of the team anymore. The member had reported that they wanted to continue to be on the team, but later on opted to leave the team along with unfinished assignments for a client. I had discussed with the project manager on how the situation had played out. What they told me was that within the RSO, the project manager did not have the power to fire consultants. 
The project manager had told me that with more power, that member would have been let go when the problem first became noticeable. They had explained that within a team, the best type of person to have work for you is someone who wants your job, because that way they will go above and beyond and exceed expectations and requirements. Being far below expectations from the get-go of the project was a clear sign to the project manager that the person was not fit, did not plan for the position, or was not motivated. This is not a direct example of discipline, simply because the project manager did not have the power to give any sort of productive disciplinary action (as they saw it), however I will respond to how the project manager said they would have given discipline if they could have. 
I don’t believe that being as cut throat as letting a team member go at the first sign that something may be off would’ve been my first choice. I would have tried to communicate with the member of the team, and tried to understand what had been causing them difficulty whether it be time management, motivation, difficulty of the assignments (being too afraid to ask questions) etc. There can be a big learning curve coming into the RSO (as there is for pretty much every project in it as well), and it would be easy for a new member to feel as if they are not fit for the role because they do not understand everything from the beginning. I would have first tried to make it clear to them that it is okay to not understand and it is encouraged to ask questions because almost always someone else is too afraid to ask the same thing. If the problem had related to motivation, I would encourage them to create close relationships with the client and understand how important the project may be to them, and many times people will see that what they do has weight to someone. If they had still not found motivation after this I would give them the option of leaving the team, or finding intrinsic motivation of personal growth. Firing the team member is not out of the question if they consistently underperform or don’t perform at all but harsh punishment would not be my first answer.  The end goals of punishments are to teach people to act better or understand something. I believe that the first approach should not even be punishments, let alone harsh or draconian punishment, I believe that productivity comes from extrinsic and intrinsic motivation that can and should be taught so a team can maximize it. 

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanNovember 11, 2019 at 5:22 AM

    While you can't know this, I wonder if the student who shirked and left the RSO nonetheless included it on his resume. That really would be chutzpah, but I'm afraid it's all too often the case, especially in a world where gathering credentials seems to provide so much motivation. Some people are bound to take shortcuts in this case.

    Your story would have benefitted by providing some more background information. How does one become a member of this RSO? Can anyone who applies get in? Or is there some screening up front? And for this particular student, this his first semester as a consultant or had he been part of the RSO in prior semesters? Also, do you know his rank in school? There is a general issue with senioritis, where students become focused on reaching the finish line well before the race has been completed. That becomes the source of delinquency. If the student were a junior or a sophomore, however, the explanation must lie elsewhere.

    There is a related issue of whether severing the relationship is actually efficient, or if that represents a failure with retaining the consultant and improving his performance the efficient outcome. It's hard to know based on how you told the story. But it's something to think about.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Arnold Harberger Econ 490November 12, 2019 at 11:44 PM

      In all honesty, I am relatively confident that the person is most likely using the organization as a credential.

      Not anyone can become a part of the organization, one must submit a resume in order to be considered for an interview, then if selected, there is a behavioral interview and if that goes well there is a case interview. The organization claims to have around an acceptance rate of less than 20%. The person had been a first semester consultant so it was most likely not senioritis, but something else they did not share.

      I believe that severing the relationship would be less efficient than trying to make their performance efficient simply because they had already been deemed fit by a relatively rigorous admission process. Severing the relationship can be efficient after attempting to make the members performance more efficient.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
I have experienced participating in a successful team within an organization on campus when I had been part of a consulting team. I will try to give background information, however I may be limited in how specific I can be out of respect for the non-disclosure agreement I had signed for the project. The basis of the project was that the client had been a college in a large university and they wanted help on creating strategy in order to generate revenue for the college outside of tuition due to a low amount of revenue coming in from the usual expected sources. They also wanted to figure out strategy on how to heighten the quality as well as quantity of their application pool, since awareness of the college had been relatively low. I believe the effectiveness of the team had come from both how the hierarchy had been set up as well as how well members adhered to those roles.  In terms of the team structure there had been about 8 people in total. When discussing the hierarchy in te...
Read more
Yes I believe there are themes from the different posts throughout the semester that tie in together with each other. Aside from the introductory blog post, it seems that the ideas from blog posts are very different however they also build upon each other and intertwine. The themes of the blog posts had been transaction costs, opportunism, successful team structures, and transfer pricing. Within the transaction costs post I had discussed the transaction costs of relationships within work and why they had mattered. The next post discussing opportunism had been a different concept, however I had still been able to write about relationships within work.  In terms of successful team structures, the hierarchy of teams and delegation of work had been discussed but that was also a post that mainly surrounded relationships within an organization. When discussing transfer pricing, I had mostly discussed how “Illinibucks” could be used to affect course registration. This had not discussed t...
Read more
As I was going through the articles, I had tried using private browsing mode but was still not allowed to access the last article that was titled “The Power Of Altruism”. I will try to include how the readings I was able to access may relate to my example. Inside my example of team production with gift exchange, I will base it off of a successful team structure I have participated in. Inside the successful team structure I had participated in, the biggest contributing factor had been the fact that all members had motivation to achieve a common goal together.  In this example of team production, as I had already said having a common goal is the key differentiating factor. However, I believe the hierarchy as well as the motives within the hierarchy were also important. To reiterate for the context of this post, in one of my previous posts I discussed the hierarchy of a successful team that I had participated in. In this team there had been a senior manager, project manager, senior c...
Read more