It would be very comforting to believe that "business people" or at least "corporate people" had their act together and knew what they were doing. In my experience it is common for undergraduate students to expect that when they get to their "real job" there will be leaders who lead, managers who manage, and a clear overall sense of what the organization is doing and how it is going to get where it needs to go. Sadly, the bulk of my email messages and communication from alums makes it clear to me that the "real world" is no more, and no less, organized and smoothly functioning than this unreal world of the University.
People are people and their attempts to organize are always complicated by the fact that we are not robots or automatons. People do the right thing, but they also do the wrong thing. People work hard, but they also get lazy. People act rationally, but they also act nonrationally. It is always hard to get all the necessary people on "the right page." To my thinking, this is one reason that there are so many theories of organization. Certainly our understanding of what work should be like change and theories must change accordingly. But business theory, the stuff in chapter three, has also been notoriously ineffective in predicting and controlling life in the organization (theory is supposed to allow for prediction and control). So managers and other people do their best. They invent TPS forms to try to manage a chaotic situation but somehow the form just adds to the chaos and they have to try something else. A consultant arrives with the latest theory and makes suggestions for change. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't but eventually the "people-ness" of the organization wins out and a level of chaos returns.
Think about Enron. The situation at Enron was an ethical nightmare, of course. But think about that fact that an organization of that magnitude, with facilities around the country and the world, with thousands of employees, could collapse so absolutely and so fast. It reminds us how tenuous the threads that hold organized activity together really are. I remember reading an article in the Minneapolis paper a year or two ago. I wish I remembered the name of the organization but it was a pretty good sized national organization. The organization was in trouble and the CEO was getting pressured to resign or get fired. At the heart of the problem was that he had hired his girlfriend to be the CFO (chief financial officer). She was in over her head and had caused a number of problems. I remember thinking that it was incredible to me that a big Fortune 500-ish company could be seriously brought down because the CEO hired his girlfriend. It sounded like the thing that might happen in a little two or three person organization or even in a club in high school. But in a major organization with hundreds of employees. I was amazed! But as I said, people are people and putting them in high powered organizational contexts does not change that.
All this is not say that we shouldn't learn theory of course. There are many valuable tools in chapter three. It is only to serve a reminder that whatever theory you may use those are people out there and as Depeche Mode says "people are people..."
--Rick
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So ok, I'll admit I’m a control freak to a point. When reading your prompt, I was taken aback by the comment that "the "real world" is no more, and no less, organized and smoothly functioning than this unreal world of the University." I would love to believe that I am going to go to a job where "there will be leaders who lead, managers who manage, and a clear overall sense of what the organization is doing and how it is going to get where it needs to go." Having all of the above will help reduce my level of stress because I will always know what to expect, hopefully have a clear understanding of the job at hand, and be able to keep everything organized. To learn that the "real world" is not going to be so organized is going to be a huge adjustment. I understand that the world we live in is constantly changing so things will not always remain consistent. A question that I have is, with the lack of organization how will these fortune 500 companies remain on task and complete their goals? As for the whole ethical side of businesses I will never be able to empathize with someone who believes it is a rational decision to hire an inexperienced employee for whatever position it may be. I don't think that I would ever be completely satisfied knowing that the company I worked for was making unethical decisions. I think that it would be a PR's worst nightmare having to repair the damage of someone's unethical decisions. I think the only way to approach this new idea that the "real world" is not going to be an organized haven, I will have to stay optimistic that I can implement my communication skills within my company and at least try to maintain a good sense of community among my co-workers. I think I’m definitely going to have a wake up call when I enter the "real world" to find that it's unorganized and I can expect to possibly have five different careers. Boy do I hope I’m ready for it!
It definitely scares me that the "real world" is no more, and no less, organized and smoothly functioning than our unreal world of the University. I always considered that while being a student I was living in a bubble. The scary world around me was at a distance and I didn't necessarily have to worry about it, at least not yet. Previously I viewed organizations as well functioning and organized places. If they were set up correctly there would not be miscommunication or error. In addition, I used to believe that employees were the only causes for problems because it is inevitable that all humans will make mistakes. However, I have now come to the realization that neither organizations nor their employees can be solely responsible for a downfall of the company. I think one of the most important steps in constructing a successful organization is to consider the best organizational communication FIT. Founders need to consider what kind of culture they envision for the company and relate that to the management practices of either classical management, human relations, or human resources. We shouldn’t judge any of these practices as being bad or good, but rather consider which best fits an organization. It is also very important to not just implement a specific practice without the correct amount of empowerment to employees and support from management. You can find the best fit, but without support an organizational downfall would be inevitable.
Well it is kind of sad that something like that can bring down a ginormous corporation. It is scary that things don't get more organized as we enter the real work world. I guess I have noticed in my own workplace though. We are so unorganized and it feels like somet hing is always going wrong, or we're out of something, or people just are showing up for work. While all this is happening there are 3 managers on at work that can't solve any of these problems. That doesn't really make sense. It is actually really aggrevating for the people that work underneath them. We are doing our part, why aren't they? And while all this is going on, we have to deal with repricussions from the customers. As soon as the managers seem frazzled the workers get frazzled. And these problems are just happening at a restaurant. I can't imagine being a part of an organization with these problems at a higher level. It's like being a part of a group project and somebody doesn't do their part and you get the bad grade. I feel like thats how the organization you described is like. Kind of a weird analogy, but it makes sense in my head.
Being in the college of business I have heard a lot about Enron and the problems that arose because of it. In fact for one of my accounting classes we had to watch a movie on Enron and write a paper on it. Boring I know. But as boring as the movie and paper were, I did get some things out of the downward spiral of Enron. First no company is like it seems. Even if you think everyone is being ethical there is a good chance that someone isn’t. That was one of the problems with Enron. It was the top guys who started being unethical but then it worked its way down the chain of command to others. There was a part when Enron employees were calling the power plants in California and telling them to be creative and think of a way for the plant to be shut down for a period of time in order to make the demand for energy (and therefore the stock price) to rise. The communication of how well the unethical behavior was working was spreading really fast to all levels of Enron. Second, I learned that even if you have loyalty to an organization you shouldn’t let that influence you decision to become a whistle blower if there is unethical behavior happening. The whistle blower of Enron (I can’t remember her name) had tried to go to upper level managers and directors to express her concerns, but since those managers and directors were the ones who started the unethical behavior they didn’t care so she took it to the authorities.
It is also very scary to think that the real world isn’t going to be much different than life in college. But when you think about it, didn’t we think that college was going to be very different from high school. Don’t get me wrong, some things are completely different but some aren’t. For example, there are still those “cool” people you wish you were friends with, and the feeling that you want to be a part of something. There are still cliques, which are most likely going to be in an organization as well. I just hope that as we move on with our life’s experiences, others will be doing the same and maturing as well. I don’t think I could handle working with people that act like they are still in high school.
Communication is always stressed to us as a necessity in a company. For most if not all of the jobs that I have had over the years, very few had good communication between everyone. Some companies had better ways than others, but none ever excelled at what was necessary to have all the employees perform to their potential.
One of my jobs, I was a waitress at an ice cream shop. When I got hired, I was suppose to be a car hop in order to get to know the menue and their codes before they moved me inside. Instead, my first day I was hurried inside, expected to know the menue and codes, know how to make all the ice cream desserts and know how to use all the equipment. I was lectured to about how I needed to know the information, but no one was willing to work with me and teach me it. Needless to say, I didn't stay their long. Most of their employees didn't. If you are not willing to communicate from management to employees about basic instructions with orders, it makes working their very difficult.
Not only do you need to make sure that you have good communication between managers and emplyees, but also between all the managers/all the employees (horizontal communication).
Although it is difficult to find a company that has good communication throughout the organization, you can see how they have shifted how they conduct business so they can benefit the company. There are more group work where communication is necessary inorder to achieve whatever you are working on.
As I get older I begin to notice more and more the aspects of life that never change. When you're in junior high its commonly said, "wow, I can't wait to get to highschool because there won't be nearly as much drama." And leaving highschool I felt that students had the same idea about college. Getting to college you realize that theres still dramatic situations similar to the ones you experienced in highschool. Even though theres a pattern here, I still have the idea that when I enter the "real world" that everything will change and that everyone will be professional and mature. The story posted about the CEO of the company hiring his girlfriend as the CFO just goes to to verify my theory of things never changing. Its amazing how someone's selfish decision could have such negative reprecussions for an entire corporation. And it makes you only hope that you don't experience an unfortunate situation like the employees of that company did. And even though very simple the quote at the end of the original post fits perfectly with my idea. "people are people." Saying that even though we grow up and change there are some human qualities that never change, even in the working world.
It is amazing how much organizations have changed over the past century. Every time I go into a grocery store I see products that boast how long they've been produced (some dating back over 100 years!) and wonder how each organization has worked so well for so long. You see, those companies have found a way to work well, not just with others, but within themselves. They've realized that the real world isn't perfectly organized, so a system was developed that made everyone content within the company. Today, there are companies like Enron who don't have that organization and fall apart. No offense to my fiance, but I wouldn't hire her for an important position within my company unless she would truly contribute to it. In the case with the hiring girlfriend = company meltdown I would assume that the CEO had the wool pulled over his eyes when conducting interviews. He obviously wasn't thinking with his brain...
In conclusion, I can use another situation that helps make this organization communication make sense: Sega was a competing game company that was trying to get ahead of Nintendo back in the early 1990s. Their last real product was the Sega Dreamcast, the competitor to Nintendo's N64. Somehow, Nintendo won out and Sega ended up signing on later with them. I believe that if Sega had worked together and hired some people who were just a bit more creative than greedy they might still be competing. Organizations have to be organized if they want to stick around for at least 100 years.
I would have to say that working in a pretty bureaucratic organization over the summer has helped me to see how the "real world," isn't, in fact, terribly different from the one we find ourselves in here at the University. I was both surprised and disappointed by this, and at the time I can remember thinking to myself, "I am glad I will still be in college when fall comes around!" It is a bummer that a lot of organizations don't seem to have it all together, when it comes to (fair) treatment of employees, organization, etc. I think in a lot of ways it is up to us, like anything else, to make the situation the best that it can be. I mean, you can look at your life in college now and say, "Wow, this really sucks--I hate doing papers and projects." Or you can think, "Even though this is a lot of work, I know it will be useful to me in some way, and beneficial." In the same sense, there is only so much we can do once we are in the working world, especially if we work for an organization that still utilizes the classical management approach. I think there is hope, and a lot of organizations are striving to treat their employees better, listen to their employees' voices and ideas, and give them better benefits, but in general, we still have a long way to go.
It seems to me that the "real-world" is a lot like the world we live in now. I've worked in call-centers and office settings since I have been 17 so I like to think I have a somewhat grasp on what porfessional comm will look like. I regards to the small scandals that seem to have rocked large companies, i think alot of it has to do with compartmentalization. Except for maybe at the highest levels, no group or team has access to all company information. Thus, info gets bottled up at higher levels and doesnt get disseminated downward. This makes others unable to make decisions based on all the information available which leads to collapse.
I have never been especially sold on the “real world” concept, I feel I have always lived in a real world and when I graduate I will just be entering a different arena of that world. So it comes as no surprise to me that there are organization problems that mirror the communication problems we have had our entire life. I would like to echo the statement that we are not all robots and we do not all act the same. We don’t interpret things the same and even if we did they would not be executed the same. That is not to say that all hope is lost. We have to believe that better communication can be learned otherwise our discipline would be worthless. It is due to our human nature that causes our problems but also can spawn our solution. When made aware of organizational communication flaws and the money that can be made/saved, it is human nature to make efforts to fix those problems. At the same time there is no clear cut solution, or theory, to take down communication problems. Looking back at this blog I feel like I have almost confused myself with saying the organizational problems are naturally unfixable, but we must think they’re fixable so what we study is worthwhile, even though when it comes down to it they might be unavoidable. I left all this confusion to probe my point that it is all very difficult to deal with, I am org com BOOM!
As Rick has already mentioned, I too think the "real-world" that I will be entering next year will be more like an extentsion to the world I am already living in. Sure my financial situation will change and I will have a heightened sense of responsibility at work, but I am used to meeting deadlines, working hard and handling stress. On the other hand I will be entering the workforce with little "real-world" working experience. However, isn't that how everyone starts? I feel confident in my work ethic and intelligence to survive and even succeed in this so-called "real-world." My experience in organizations so far has been greatly formed by different levels of effective communication. Some organizations have run smoothly due to fairly good communication, while others have seemed disastrous due to extremely ppor communication. I predict the business world is very simliar, with a wide range in effective communication, and therefore effective organizations. It is therefore no surprise to me that many businesses and organizations have communication problems, which may often be linked to poor manegement. That is not to say all fault lies in the managers, but afterall, isn't it the job of managers to communicate effectively?
I've never really bought into the whole "real world" thing. And honestly, it bothers me some when people use the expression, as it nearly always comes up in some sort of lecturing fashion. We've been in the real world all of our life. Things change, obviously the real world of our youth was easy and fun, and as we grow older and enter new realms of the world we are faced with more challenges and different situations. I don't really expect businesses to be run completely smoothly, there is always some disorder to be found, just like in our other settings in life. The overall transitions might not be so huge during our lives, but it only takes a small adjustment period to quickly throw our expectations aside and get used to the way things really work. I think I got completely off subject and went on a huge tangent, but oh well.
I find myself agreeing with the notion that the full-time working “real world” is pretty close to the world we are living in now. By the way, what world are we living in now? A fake world? The reason it doesn’t feel like it is so different is because we’ve been living in the real world the whole time. People tend to succeed because of their drive and cooperation and cohesiveness with those around us. Others tend to fail because of lapses in judgment, moral dilemmas, terrible organization and even worse communication. These are traits we have recognized throughout our entire life. How is this different from college or even high school? I remember times in high school were I did things that were responsible and ambitious only because I was worried about my future. The same goes for college, and why wouldn’t this apply to us as adults in the real world? When I get my “real job” I will look at management and CEOs as people who have been there longer, not as all-knowing, morally perfect best leaders ever. The fact is that they are just people who were once in our seats learning the traits for success for themselves. We all learn how to succeed, some people are just better at it than others.
I think that rick K makes a valid point about our expectations of the real world. If we all truely thought that when we got out of school and chose our careers that it would be the beginning of an organized and simple time in our lives then many are in for a rude awakening. We hopefully have had our eyes open and stay in touch with current affairs enough to know how the working world is currently functioning.
We, as org comm students, should hopefully feel better about what we can expect because we are being presented with these situations now before we have to deal with them seriously and can throw around ideas and solutions with our fellow students to see if we can be a little more prepared when we have to start dealing with the issues on a daily basis.
Human relations is a huge part of a lot of the issues that have been in the news and affect many companies and corporations every day. The book talks about how much peoples' interactions with each other affect the decisions they make and their behaviors in their work environment. I think that companies that work just as much on their relations with their staff and employees as much as they do with clients and productivity will be better prepared to deal with these problems when they arise.
Clearly most of the people working for the Enron company were not in touch with each other as much as they could have been when they got caught up in all these problems. I know that there are ways to hide what the leaders in this organization were doing, but there are also ways to safeguard the system.
There will always be chaos in organizations, but I think that strong organizations are better at responding quickly and accurately to these situations. They create an environment of open communication with accessible leaders and cooperative employees. We may not all be "people persons" but we should all be able to communicate with others enough to do our jobs and help others to succeed in theirs.
Working at the Recreational Eagle center has been a wonderful opportunity to see the many different functioning parts of an organization. I enjoy going to work, if I'm not in class I'm at the rec, planning and prepping for special events, serving as a member of the student advisory committee within the rec and simply because it is like a second home to me. The Rec is truly a organization that does work. We work to communicate with each other, from the Directors of the Rec to the customers that we see every day. I do feel that as a employee I am valued and what I do is appreciated. So as I take these expirences I have now and step into the real world how much will change? From the perspective of some, it looks like the professional working envoironment that I'm apart of now may not even exist?
Now I'm not saying that you can compare a organization like the University's Rec Center to the melt-down of Enron, but let's not assume that the future is doomed. Isn't that the reason why we are studying to become communication experts? To better the relationships that we form in the real world, with effective communication? I have high hopes that the future will be as good to me as the the experience I have had with the rec. If anything I can take what I have learned and better the organization that I'm apart of some day.
Truthfully speaking, I am semi-disappointed in the fact that my “real job” will not be as structured or really anything like I would have expected a real job to be like. I was always under the impression that we were in college to get prepared for a “real job”, not just for that real job to become an extension of what college learning is like. I guess it makes sense considering when we were in high school, everyone said that college would be different. I know some others mentioned this in their responses, but really college is a lot like high school, just minus the lockers. There are cliques, not usually intentional ones, but if you think about it, most people stick with the people who they are most comfortable with. I agree that theory can be important especially when it comes to looking back on theories to see which ones can actually be applied today. Although it is a very boring and dry topic, it is still important to learn nonetheless. Actually, in my Professional Communication class which I am taking right now, we are learning about the exact same theories that are being discussed in this chapter. Also, it is important to realize that different types of models are applied to different types of situations, in which certain structures would not work for some businesses, and so on.
I like to think that I live in a character-diverse world where I am just small part of a whole that keeps the world turning. I consider myself a pretty organized ambitious person, but I know many un-organized, lazy people around me that have the same intentions in life. When Rick talks about the “tenuous threads that hold organized activity together” I truly believe that we all are those threads, and although we have different characters we are all in organizations for a purpose. It is one thread that comes loose that can change all aspects of an organization and perhaps come crashing down like Enron, however I don’t always think it’s a bad thing… Sometimes it is a change that is needed in order for a company to flourish and grow. It’s crazy to think that the “real world” it not the organized, controlled one that we see on that visa commercial, where the whole world runs so smoothly until someone has to stop and pay with cash… and that we need theories to help us communicate, but it is that diversity that forces it upon us. To learn about the theories of communication, and what works best in different types of situations helps us to understand the diversity among us, and that there is a need for different management styles in order for everyone to function in their own character.
I can attest first hand to entering a job and not having it be what I expected. This summer I had an internship as the human resources intern at a successful corporate office. I went into the job expecting to be taught of wealth of skills and methods that I would be able to use in future jobs. I guess I forgot to bear in mind that the intern is code for office slave. I spent more time making copies, stuffing envelopes, stapling packets, and making phone calls than I had ever imagined. It wouldn't have been so bad except my managers promised me a variety of human resources training. As the summer drew to a close I realized that they weren't going to follow through with the training as promised and I just got sick of asking. There were many problems with communication because between three managers I would be given various tasks, but the others never knew when I was doing what for whom.
Although it seems unfathomable, I can see how fortune 500 companies run across such massive problems. I'm sure they have communication problems like many smaller-scale companies and combined with the pressure of being successful with greed of making lots of money, they get off track. Except when they get off track it causes major problems for many people.
I have no idea what kind of job I will find when I graduate in May, but I definitely think I will go into it with the understanding that jobs aren't always all they're cracked up to be and even professionals in the highest positions may not be the best communicators.
My brother graduated from college last year and worked at a well-known (I won't name names) company in Minnesota over the summer. During his time there, he said he never had more than a few hours work, even when he alerted his supervisors to the fact that he had nothing to do. Instead of finding more tasks for him or sending him home, they instead sent him back to his desk to spend the remainder of his shift checking and rechecking the work he had already completed. Total, this amounted to approximately 2 hours of real work and the rest of the day devoted to reading his finished task over and over and over again. His superiors seemed not to find this at all problematic. All they were concerned about was that he finished his one task. They didn't care that he could have completed 5 more tasks in the time he spent there. I feel that this goes hand-in-hand with what you were describing in the first paragraph. It seemed as though because my brother found it inefficient for him to sit all day doing next to nothing he found no "clear overall sense of what the organization is doing and how it is going to get where it needs to go." I attribute this feeling to the companys' lack of organization and communication. Those assigning tasks should want to make sure that the most work is being completed as humanly possible. Sure, they should be concerned with the quality of the task completed, but that wasn't the issue. This lack of organization and communication eventually lead to my brother quitting this position, even though it was a fairly prestigious one. Whether right or wrong, he said he'd rather be unemployed than work at a company who seemed not to know what was going on--as it made the days dull, slow, and depressing.
Sometimes I wonder if companies even pay attention to people to people skills. In one internship, I remember all of the anxitey towards the postion and none of it had anything to do with the actual job. Everything that concerned me had to do with asking others to take some of there busy time to help me figure out what I was doing or doing wrong. On the other hand in my part-time job I hate helping new hires when the time comes. It is easy for managers to pawn the newbies off on people below them because they simply think they have better things to do.
I just think that if some companies took of time in training the people that have already been hired to help train the new people then the stress level for all people would be far less.
I guess I can’t say that I’m surprised that the “real world” isn’t going to be any different than the college world we currently live in. As Rodrick said in his post, “people are people.” I agree with that statement and if you really think about it, people will never change. We will all be the same people we were in college and even though we may have experiences that alter certain aspects of our personalities, we are ultimately the same person. I agree with what Ashley K said about thinking that college was going to be different than high school then finding out it really wasn’t, was it? Obviously the experiences are incredibly different but the technical aspects are all the same. For example, if you procrastinated in high school, you still procrastinate now. And in terms of relating to the people around you, it’s incredibly unfortunate that at a higher level of education we still have to feel like our relationships haven’t matured much from when we were in high school. Why then should the work world be any different? I can’t say that I’m entirely optimistic about it because my parents and the people I’ve worked with in my life certainly aren’t. So I guess I can only hope that I end up doing something I love and that makes it easier to deal with all the crap that comes along with the professional world.
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