Successful Team or should I say..."Success-less"....

Since the summer of 2013, I have been working as the front desk clerk for a hotel located in the heart of campus.  For the sake of my employment, I will not disclose the actual name of the hotel on the internet.  Unknown to many, the hotel is comprised of 74 rooms located on the 3rd and 4th floors of the student union.  Due to the relative size of the hotel, the staff consists of only 14 individuals.  This is excluding those who manage accounting and human resources because I am unfamiliar with their roles.

Working at the hotel has given me perspective on teamwork and structural organization.  In the textbook, we learned that organizations exist to achieve a certain goal through division of labor.  Within the 14-member staff, there is one manager, six supervisors, and seven student workers.  Our manager is only in office Monday through Friday in the lenient window of 8am to 5pm.  The supervisors are the full-time workers who cover the 24 hour day by splitting up into three shifts (day, night, graveyard).  Lastly, the student workers are scheduled to help the supervisors covering 6am to usually 10pm depending on the number of expected arrivals of the hotel that night.  

The structural form is of dual authority.  The manager usually oversees everyone, but since he is not in office every moment of every day, the full-workers are the "temporary managers" in a sense as they rotate in and out of the office.  And then they have authority over the students.  This arrangement, as we read from chapter five, only works when a task is divisible, because it reduces the boss's span of control.  Obviously, as a small hotel, our main objective is to provide the best customer service.  And in order to produce that, we must do our job efficiently, not make critical mistakes, and communicate effectively within the office.  Thankfully, there are only three layers to this structure, so accessing the manager from the lower level (students) is not an obstacle.

According to Katzenbach and Smith's take on high-performing teams, we are actually lacking in some of these features.  When we discuss the aspect of developing the right mix of expertise, I feel that this is something that should be applied at the hotel.  As a student worker, I've encountered many moments when some supervisors could not solve some issues that other supervisors would find trivial and easy to fix.  However this supervisor is also the best with interacting with customers, but problems could arise the next day from his mistakes which will in the long run, hinder our customer satisfaction.  Effective teams are known to seek out the full range of necessary technical fluency.

Furthermore, the point made about high-performing teams developing a common commitment to working relationships is something that the staff struggles with.

"Team members must agree on who will do particular jobs, how schedules will be set and adhered to, what skilled need to be developed..."  

First in terms of doing our given job, there is one specific supervisor who is notorious for not doing what he is told, as we mentioned above.  For example, after every shift, supervisors are to check the balances of credit card transactions to make sure the numbers match up.  If one supervisor does not do it and numbers are completely askew, the next shift has to fix it which is harder to do as more time passes.  Next issue--scheduling.  Not following the schedules is not a huge problem unless it is the breakfast shift.  Since there is only one supervisor in the office at 6am, the student must show up to set up breakfast at 6am.  Otherwise, the supervisor will have to close the office and set it up themselves.  And this becomes a complication for the people who need to check out at that time.  The guests have to wait and this in turn does not fulfill our goal for better customer service.  I know this has happened a few times because students refused to wake up.  Lastly, I feel that the necessary skills that need to be developed is not too enforced by our manager.  There are many instances when I would be on the phone and wouldn't know what to say in certain situations.

We need more vertical coordination--specifically in action planning.  As staff, it's important to have the knowledge of how to make it easier to assess how a job is done than measure product.  In the textbook, the authors used McDonald's as an example of how the workers there have a specific way to greet people like with a smile and a cheerful welcome.  Our boss unfortunately does not stress this type of interaction with people so some students sound extremely unenthusiastic with the guests.

Structurally, I feel that our hotel could use some improvement.  This could be fixed with the manager's enforcement of better and effective training, rather than learning as time goes on by experience.  We will constantly "falter and fail if group structure constantly generates inequity, confusion, and frustration."

Opportunism

As we learned in class, opportunism is the act of taking advantage for personal gain and usually hurting others in the process.  Simply put, it is the subversion of morality for profit.  From what I recall, there have actually been a couple instances when I was exposed to the option of behaving opportunistically.

When I was secretary for The Supply at UIUC (the non-profit organization I discussed in my last post), I was in charge of the RSO's emails.  There was one particular email that proved appealing; the subject read "Earn money for your organization!" from a company called DonorsPlay.  By the end of every semester, we were devastatingly over $400 short of reaching our $1000 semester goal.  So naturally, I researched DonorsPlay, and by surprise, the company provides a legitimate means of fundraising for organizations.  Its Student Partnership Program lets students raise money by donating a few minutes of their weekly meeting to testing new mobile applications.  If 20-39 members participated five minutes a week, we'd earn $120 a month.  For 40-59 members, it'd be $200 a month, and so on.  This was our ticket to reaching that $1000.  I immediately contacted the president to discuss the logistics.

When the new semester rolled around, The Supply had its first general meeting, focusing primarily on DonorsPlay.  Fortunately, we had a great turnout of 30+ members.  The executive board assisted the members with the installment and registration.  Online I was able to check how much we were earning, and that day, we raised $32 dollars.  Following the meeting, we reminded the members to test the new apps weekly.

After some while, our members eventually got lazy and played with the apps less and less.  One day, I checked online and we had raised just over $140.  After surprising successes of our other fundraisers, people had forgotten about DonorsPlay and no one had cared as to how much we had earned--even the rest of the executive board. Being the only individual to have had access to the value of how much we earned, I was often faced with the option to act opportunistically, especially since people forgot.  No one would even know if I had taken a portion of the earnings.  Having had been struggling financially, I was constantly consumed with the idea.

Thankfully, after much considerable thought, I did not follow through with this plan due to obvious reason.  Although there was probably a two percent chance someone would find out, I still would have been overwhelmed with much guilt.  And, as a strongly moral individual, stealing obviously would go against my stance on cheaters.  Moreover, This was an organization I actually care about.  I would be utterly selfish for using the money for my self gain, especially if it's meant for building up the education of slum youth.

It seems that anyone who wouldn't behave opportunistically would be because of the two reasons I explained above: guilt and immorality. 

Organizational Change/Transaction Costs

Organizational Change

For Spring and Fall 2013, I was Secretary for a fairly new RSO called The Supply Education Group.  The Supply is a worldwide nonprofit organization with a mission to activate the urban slum youth to transform their communities through service learning.  In order to reach our $1000 semester goal, our UIUC chapter has been conducting food sales on the quad, partnering with popular restaurants, and collecting change from students all across campus.

When our chapter was created in 2012, there were six members on the executive board with following positions: President, Operations Coordinator (Treasurer), Fundraising Coordinator (2), Movement Coordinator, and Secretary.  Operations managed all finance-related matters.  Fundraising was responsible for planning fundraising events and reserving spaces for those events.  Movement dealt with spreading awareness.  Secretary covered logistics and emailed members of upcoming meetings and events.  The founder decided it'd be a good idea to switch out the board every year, so within the course of two years, in addition to the change of board members, the organizational structure has also altered drastically.

During my year on board, as an attempt to bring about commitment from our members, we formulated three teams: Organization, Awareness, and Taking into Action.  There would be a board member leading each respective team.  The members would then choose a team after self-evaluating their strengths.  However this structure was ineffective and short-lived.  At this point, it was time for members to apply for board for 2014.  As of now, I can see that the RSO has been growing with the perspective of a general member.  In terms of structure, there are now nine board members with positions geared toward awareness.  Although now more members are committed, it may seem that there is more room for disagreement.

Transaction Costs

Like I mentioned earlier, in order to reach our $1000 goal for The Supply, we had quad fundraisers, where we sold foods like chicken noodle soup, fondue, buffalo chicken nachos, crepes, etc.  In a generation where cash is becoming a minority source of payment, many buyers use credit/debit cards to make their purchases.  Thanks to our Square reader, we were able to accept those methods of payments.  However when it is used, the seller is imposed a 3% charge, which is our transaction cost.  Since our prices were no more than three dollars, it wasn't a big deal at all.

Another example of a transaction cost would be the purchase of the skewers for fondue, plates for the crepes, cups for the soup, and other miscellaneous means of placing the food before giving them to the customers.

In term of time, the board members spend a lot of time in order to set up these fundraisers and make the exchange of food to money most efficient.  Also there is time spent on making the Facebook events in order to spread awareness.  We face transaction costs everywhere, even when buying equipment like slow cookers for the buffalo chicken at Walmart or bargaining with people on the Free & For Sale Facebook group which have students who may sell cheaper slow cookers.

Biography of Paul Milgrom

Paul Milgrom is the Shirley and Leonard Ely professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics at Stanford University and at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a director of Market Design at SIEPR.

After earning a PhD at the Graduate School of Business, Professor Milgrom taught at Yale and Northwestern University before returning to Stanford.  His many contributions to economics include auctions, incentive theory, industrial economics, economic history, manufacturing economics, economics of organizations, and game theory.  Our primary textbook, coauthored with John Roberts, Economics, Organization and Management, had opened a new area to economic research.

He is most noted for his contributions to the theory of auctions and to the practice of auction design.  Professor Milgrom had even advised actions for companies like Microsoft Networks, Google, and Yahoo!

Source: http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/faculty/paul-r-milgrom