Management Delimma !
from: The moral philosophy of H. A. Prichard, as critiqued by Mary Warnock
"Hew, Drew, Lou, and Sue all promised their mother they would regularly write and let her know how they were getting on during their round-the-world trip.
Hew wrote his letters, but gave them to other people to post, none of whom bothered. So his mother never received any letters from him.
Drew wrote her letters and posted them herself, but she carelessly put them in disused boxes, attached too few stamps and made other mistakes which meant none of them ever arrived.
Lou wrote and posted all her letters properly, but the postal system let her down every time. Mother didn’t hear from her.
Sue wrote and posted all her letters properly, and made brief phone calls to check they had arrived. Alas, none did.
Did any of the children keep their promise to their mother?"
I will leave it to all of you to decide :)
well...from what I see.."someone" really knows what he is doing...and he got the point behind the post.
all I wanted to say is " DUE DILLIGENCE"...do all your best...if an earthquake happened or the post man committed suicide it is not your problem... thats all !
and to someonenew...you are right it is a management responsibility..but there is also employee duty...an employee must be responsible...I prefer to work with responsible people or work alone...but working with those that you have to keep on following up with to get work done then sorry...not my type at all
it's only a question of delivery or not. Failure means not delivering the required result. Even if you did your best, but the mere fact that no mails arrived, it is still consider a failure.
If you have four people and nobody delivers result, close your business or change strategy! That's management!
"dgoodrebel will always be the rebellious good one"
If you wanna prove that you are committed to your job….you should take a lil more effort...irrespective of training and resources...you should think of all the risks involved....you should follow up and make sure that the task is complete..which the first two did not do!
If its just to do as you are told...everyone can do it..even the office boy.
Good one Stallion. Its not what you start. Its what you follow through with and finish.
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I made up the title to relate that to our everyday life...
and not all the ladies failed if I may disagree with you... the last 2 ladies at least can be considered "did their best"...
In management we should care about "results" but also judge based on effort...I personally think the last 2 are to be considerd committed employees but the first 2 should not stay another day in a company if they insist on such logic/ behavior
but stallion, only in your title that you mentioned Management, but as presented, hard to relate. Unless I read the whole article or the book where it was published, then we may understand the message the article wants to relate. If you copied this and paste it, you should have copied the original question or things to sort out by management.
For purpose of discussion and assuming that we are in a management course, still the article is incomplete. Raw data will not give you right judgment, and this article, IMHO, is very raw.
But if you insist a management view, all four ladies failed. No mail arrived to their mother so task was a complete failure, although everyone tried, on a different scale.
"dgoodrebel will always be the rebellious good one"
would you accept it when you tell someone send this...and the person gives it to another person without even following up? you will get mad for sure...
The delimma here is DUE DILIGENCE...how do we define it? we almost all agree that expected due diligence is common sence...and it is the management responsibility to gear their employees towards it
Stallion in a professional world its not just the employees duty to do work, its also management responsibilty to GET WORK DONE. So the management needs to go back and see what actually went wrong, what did Sue do differently to have the letters delivered when Hew n Drew couldn't. Was it really their fault? If you consider dmighty's opinion all of them made an attempt at it but why didnt all succeed? So are u saying that it was Drew's fault that the post boxes were non functional although she did the excat same thing as Lou? Whats the difference between Lou and Drew? Now consider the possibility that Sue has already gone on a world trip and she knows the postal problems that could occur and thats why she was able to do what she did. Thats someone with relevant experience. Can we measure them on the same scale as first timers? What did the management do to make all 4 understand their resposibilities? Did the management warn them abt postal delays/dis function? Did they set the right expectations?
I dream of a better tomorrow where Chickens can cross the Road without having their motives questioned - Unknown
I could not judge it as presented. But since you ask only if they kept their promise, I would say it again, they did. Of course the endings are different. But are saying that they are on the same situations and same conditions. You can not judge if you have not at least seen the intro of this story or of the article itself. What is being tackle in the article? What level of management are you talking about? I would presume that since they are presented as sisters, they have different upbringings (education,background, age, etc, etc.).
"dgoodrebel will always be the rebellious good one"
you are right...!
but say you gave the two below expectation...they will come and say we did EXACTLY like you said..."send the letter"...
I guess it comes down to ethics...if I were their superior I would delay their salaries intentionally and see how they react...they will storm finance with calls and maybe go there to check the problem...I will then tell them "I want you to handle your duties just like you did when your salary was delayed"
I think in developing countries the problem is we have more Hew/Drew type...and the sad thing is no plans to correct such behavior...
From a management's perspective if the four were to be appraised Hew and Drew would come under "Does not meet expectations", Lou under "Meets expectations" and Sue under "Exceeds expectations". If the management were considering someone for a hike or a promotion it would be Sue, Hew and Drew would be warned and put on a performance improvement plan.
I dream of a better tomorrow where Chickens can cross the Road without having their motives questioned - Unknown
morning someone....
Hey Formatted! How're u doin today? Morning MJ! Formatted if I were in HR, I wouldn't be so direct and there would be more sweet talk involved:)
I dream of a better tomorrow where Chickens can cross the Road without having their motives questioned - Unknown
the first 3 should be rated, ISO 0000....
you should be in HR..not in IT..lol
Agree with you Stallion. Lack of responsibility and commitment makes things go wrong.... and sad part is that some poeple at work are not even ready to take responsibly or admit that it was their mistake...
Like in Lou’s case, there are instances where things are beyond their control...cant blame them..but we should make sure that our part is done perfectly.
This can be applied to real life...in Office you always hear employees trying to prove that they did their best...etc. but they did not make enough effort...or lets say they were not THAT serious about doing it.
In my opinion... LOU and SUE are both good...but the first 2...nope...if they work for me I would give them warning for lack of committment
hmmm..well I think they did.. But except for the last one all others did it for the sake of doing it!
"dgoodrebel will always be the rebellious good one"