Making the Grade at Attain Learning free essay sample

The comparison between Sunderland and Morgan’s on the style of management and works This case puts the emphasize on the conflict between Sunderland and Morgan due to the harsh situation which is Sunderland had to deal with Attain’s Content Director, Mike Morgan, and Sunderland’s most important customers Gramen Equipment Company. Morgan, having a Master’s degree from project management, got a background from the small company for the software making and specialized in lean manufacturing training. When it comes to the management style: Morgan loves more chilling, relaxed and entrepreneur surrounding, but not some kind of the bureaucratic way to manage the enterprise, and he leads his team members to follow his own way. He is portrayed as â€Å"supporter and partner† and his teams appraise him a lot. Like Sunderland, Morgan went straight to Chama, and is on the same level of the organizational hierarchy as Sunderland whose style of management is depicted as â€Å"formal, and efficient, always setting expectations at the outset of a project† she is also criticized for being somewhat inflexible and overly demanding at times. In terms of relations with clients, Sunderland is reportedly â€Å"stubborn in the mud† in her notions to achieve exactly what clients really want . However, her experiences still achieve her expertise and confidence for managing massively, high-profit accounts, and she also has a great strategic mindset and provides insightful critiques, suggestions as well. In the other words , Morgan , roll up his sleeves and pitch in whenever needed, would try his level best to protect and guide his own teams and subordinates in terms of being criticized for their works or be misunderstood by the seniors ; on the flipside, Sunderland is not afraid to speak her mind . She really pushes the entrepreneur to the best products for their clients. However, the downside of her efficiency model is that she is somehow over-persuading her team and without the elasticity for the missions for the clients. Sources of power The conventional definitions of â€Å"Sources of power â€Å" are concerning about deductive logic thinking , the ways of analyzing theories and situations. Morgan, having master degree in management, experience from 3years at a star-up firm which created training software , and as a project manager for 7 years for specializing in lean manufacturing training system , has the abilities to deal with the amount of the difficulties from being the sole content development director in the company. On the other hand, Sunderland, used to be in the position of assistant account executive and joined IBM Solutions as an account executive in their health care and life sciences industrious, has tremendous experiences for building not only her expertise and confidence in managing large, high profit account but her specialists on both business and strategy-making. Hers experience at IBM had been one of well-defined, formal reporting roles and micromanagement. Conflicting between two managers Gramen Equipment is a $3 billion manufacturer and landscaping gears marketer. Attain CEO Nicholas devoted himself on an initial training contract (emphasize on improving the financial sensitiveness of unfinancial employees and managers at Gramen) with Gramen’s first Chief Learning Officer (CLO), Juan Nunez, in 2009. Nicholas and COO Chama expected to the possible improvement chances of extend training at Gramen regarding the success of the initial program, assigned to Account Director Kay Sunderland. As far as Morgan’s first concerns for Gramen’s training program (relating utilize a Gramen acquisition as a case study) was nixed by Nunez, who was adamant that training focused on Gramen’s two top priorities for 2011: increasing inventory turnover and capital utilization. Morgan and his team even spent next two weeks for achieving their new proposal, exploring the account receivable account further in order to satisfy Nunez; however, he was still not convinced and still required they to put more focus on the pre-discussed top priorities. Sunderland, busy with dealing tons of her own clients and devoted nearly all of hers efforts on her own schedule for programs deploying at the first quarter of 2011 , were bothered by the complaining calls and voices mail by Nunez on the ground that Morgan tried to call Nunez so many times for arguing case study stuffs. Nunez tried to persuade Sunderland to deal with Morgan first in that as account manager it seems she was obligated to discussed with Morgan initially and settled everything down but not just received tons of calls from Morgan. The otherwise, Morgan’s actions would jeopardize the good working relationship she had established with Nunez. Worried about it might put dangerous for the good relationship between them, Sunderland tried to deal with this problem as soon as possible because it seems that Morgan’s efforts to contact Nunez was out of bound, not mentioned about as an account director, she had to deal with all client-facing activities. Steps for solving the problem In the first place, the importance of comforting Nunez’s irritated temper can’t be over-emphasized in order to make sure that the good relationship between 2 companies wouldn’t be broke. Second, there is no denying that she should achieve her limit to contact with Morgan immediately and make sure that he is working on developing practical, high-quality training content that would meet to Gramen’s specific objectives for this project, and meet the February 7th deadline. Third, in order to accomplish those stuffs Sunderland must come up with the concepts that whether she could cooperate and work with Morgan whose project team should put all of their focus on the actual content which Nunez really wants. She must realized the question that is that possible for her to work with Morgan without conflicts and peacefully, if not, then she should turn to Chama for favors and assistances. Form Sunderland’s perspective She would definitely be irritated by Morgan’s inappropriate behavior, tons of calls and voice mails to Nunez, and also the responds from Nunez to her in as much as she, being overwhelmed by her own works, nearly had time for dealing the conflicts between Morgan and Nunez. However, As mentioned above, Sunderland doesn’t even know why Morgan was so desperately to contact Gramen. the reason for that was because Morgan was pretty worried about the issue of both core concepts and deadline. Nor did sunderland tried to interpret and understand the main conflicts between them and figure out some ways to solve it, Instead, Sunderland felt such annoying and abrupt for calling Morgan to solve the problem. She should contact with Morgan as soon as possible according to his works schedule or just simply email him or call him; furthermore, explaining the whole situation to Chama seems to be a good option as well. From Morgan’s perspective The reason why he constantly called Nunez is due to he really wanted to discuss about the main theory of the project and the issue of deadlines in order not to press his teams and pursuit the most perfect outcome for such a huge-potential long-term collaborative enterprise in the long run. However, he really violated the regulation of Attain, which made account Director responsible for all client-facing communications. From the perspective of Attain’s rule and hierarchy structures ( the relationship between Sunderland and Morgan) The hierarchy structure of Attain is pretty much the same for them. Morgan and Sunderland are on the same hierarchy level, and they both report and follow the instruction directly to Chama. In accordance with Organizational ranking, Sunderland didn’t even have any right and power to order Morgan due to her wills. She and Morgan are technically coworkers. In the meantime, Sunderland seemed to receiver more power due to Attain’s policy, account director should confront with all the affairs regarding communications between clients and Attain, the thing which caused the ambiguities and conflicts between Morgan and Sunderland because Morgan was the one on charge of all the development and details about the training programs for Gramen, and seemed she didn’t concerned this thing as her business. The recommendations for Sunderland It seems her most important mission was not only keep the good-relationship between Attain and Gramen but also solve the conflicts between at both she and Morgan and Morgan with Nunez. As far as I am concerned she should set up a conference with Morgan and his team immediately to figure out what is exactly going on and what kind of the helps she could attempt to provide. I strongly recommend she don’t report that to Chama until having communicated with Morgan in order to keep the good atmosphere within colleagues. Moreover, this could also help them focus more on the problem-solving strategies related to the Gramen’s training programs, which need to be taken to Chama. She should inform form Morgan for coordinating with her to have the conference with Chama and discuss the Gramen account. By doing so, this will make it less likely that the arguments and conflicts happened between Sunderland and Morgan will be aroused and offer the chances for Chama to make the final decision. Generally speaking, such actions would be regarded as matured, professional, and efficiency in crisis-dealing abilities, and she probably could get trusts from Morgan and Chama by organizing her specialties and Morgan’s together to solve the problems but not just complaining and leaving it rotten without doing anything meaningful. Regarding dealing with Morgan, she should set up meeting with him right after realizing how serious it was and how dangerous this kind of the situation would severely jeopardize the company’s business. Trying to explain and put the emphasis on Morgan’s rule-violated behavior politely and sincerely, she could possibly eliminate the biases inside Morgan’s mind and stop him from calling Nunez again. Not only she should note such behavior is inappropriate but she also should give Morgan the chances to catharsis his frustrations and opinions with Nunez and the Gramen account. After consulting with Morgan, she might know exactly how she could help Morgan to achieve the project within the deadline and cater to client’s needs.