Discussion Board 8
Address the following from McFarland (Chapter 8):
a.
Do you and your company celebrate the times when individuals other
than senior management identify key opportunities or challenges?
Our team focused so much on the frontline customer engagement who can
bring in revenue and sales in short terms. However, one of the salesman
actually pointed out the fact that we should spend time on engaging key
opinion leaders who can have strong influence to the peers in the industry
so out business could be more sustainable. We did not official "celebrate"
but we took his points and further discussed. At the end of the meeting, we
realized that our sales operation should be adjusted to fuel the future for the
business. This actually showed that the frontline staff could provide
perspectives and identify things which senior management missed out.
b.
When making key strategic decisions, do you assign a person or group
the role of playing devil's advocate as you deliberate and how has that
worked?
We never tried to allocate someone to be devil when we have discussion on
key issues. However, we always involve many different people for
brainstorm sessions. I am lucky that my team are quite open and very
willing to provide their genuine thoughts. The management has been trying
to cultivate an environment which everyone is comfortable to share ideas
and also to try new things without fear. Somehow, our team are too excited
to discuss and exchange thoughts to the point we failed to end the sessions
and come up a conclusion and decisions.
