Question: Practice Being A Manager

In Control or Control Freak? Control is one of the most controversial aspects of management. Exercising too much control can foster employee resentment and bureaucratic delays. Exercising too little control can raise employee stress and breed organizational chaos. And not only must managers work to achieve a healthy level of control but they must also strive to set controls around the right targets. The control process is about more than charts and feedback loops-it is about focusing personal and organizational efforts toward desired outcomes. This exercise will allow you an opportunity to try your hand at developing a control system that is tailored to a particular company and type of work.

Step 1: Get into groups. Your professor will organize your class into teams of three or four students per team. One team will be designated as Company Leadership.

Scenario: Razor's Edge (RE) is a young and growing company that serves the needs of those who engage in extreme sports, adventure/exploration, and guiding services. Some examples of RE's core market include expert/professional mountain climbers, white-water rafting guides, and polar explorers. The founders of RE are the husband and wife team of Dan and Alice Connors, world-famous mountain climbers and explorers. Dan and Alice have both reached the summit of Mount Everest and each is well respected in the rather small and close-knit community of adventurers and explorers. RE is an eclectic company of employees who, like Dan and Alice, share a passion for adventure and extreme sports. The company not only designs and sells its own lines of specialized products such as mountain-climbing shoes and ropes but also develops software designed to support expedition planning, communication and navigation, and simulation and scenario response (i.e., training tools for guides and newer expedition members). For the fi rst 5 years of its development, RE did not worry too much about organizational policies or controls. Employees were encouraged to climb, trek, and guide, and attendance issues were addressed on a caseby-case basis.

Although officially all employees were given 2 weeks of paid vacation, many employees were allowed to take up to 2 months off at half-pay so that they could complete an expedition. Sick days were jokingly referred to as "mountain fl u" days, and it was not unusual for the small company to be thinly staffed on Mondays and Fridays. But in the past 3 years, RE has grown from 25 employees to 85. The company is too big, and the jobs too diverse, for Dan and Alice to deal with each employee request for "expedition time" away from work. And the "mountain flu" has occasionally weakened the company's response to customers. Dan and Alice have also become victims of their own success as they attracted other climbers to join their company-most climbers want time off in the peak climbing seasons. But this also happens to be a peak time for RE orders and service requests. The company has organized all employees into teams and announced a contest. Each team should come up with an approach for controlling staffi ng levels to meet or exceed customer expectations for responsiveness, while at the same time preserving RE's tradition as a company of active adventurers and explorers. The company has announced that each member of the employee team that develops the winning solution will receive $2,500 worth of RE gear of their choice.

Step 2: Determine staffing levels. You are a team of workers at RE. Design an approach to controlling daily staffing levels so that RE is able to meet or exceed customer expectations for responsiveness without sacrificing its own identity as a company of adventurers and explorers. Keep in mind that RE is somewhat unusual in that even its accounting staff members (five full-time employees) are experienced adventurers and explorers and are expected to answer customer questions and handle their service needs. You should consider the following elements:

• Paid vacation

• Expedition time

• Sick days and "mountain flu" (Monday/Friday absences)

• Dealing with peak times, and/or most desirable times for vacation or expedition

• Knowing whether customers are pleased with RE's responsiveness to their needs

Step 3: Outline a proposal. Submit a one-page handwritten outline of your proposal to the Company Leadership team.

Step 4: Present the proposal. Each team will briefly present its proposal to the Company Leadership team, and members of the Company Leadership team may ask questions.

Step 5: Vote. The Company Leadership will confer, vote, and announce the winning proposal.

Step 6: Debrief as a class. What tensions confronted you as you worked to design an approach to staffing control for Razor's Edge? What trade-offs and challenges might you anticipate for the company when it implements the winning proposal? In what ways is control related to employee motivation? In what ways is control related to organizational culture? Do you think that the winning RE proposal would be well suited for use by a major outdoor and casual clothing company such as Lands' End? Why or why not?