Management Skills Application Exercises

1. Refer to Exhibit 16.2, Exhibit 16.3, and Exhibit 16.5 for this exercise. Pick a business that you are familiar with, and draw their existing organizational chart. You may be able to infer much of the information from their website or through a short interview with someone in their organization. After completing this task, construct an alternative organizational chart and comment on why it may be more effective than the current organizational structure and what risks that new structure may have.
2. You have been assigned the task of working with a company that had a traditional, functional organizational structure with sales, marketing, product development, finance and accounting, and operations teams each reporting to a VP, who then reported to the CEO. The company wants to move to a matrix organization that will retain the efficiencies of the functional organization but also groups employees by product teams. You have been asked to comment on how to manage this change and how to communicate and respond to employee concerns. Specifically, you need to address: What are the desired impacts or benefits of this project on the organization? What are the emotions that your employees may have about this organizational change? How could the employee emotions impact the organization or its operations? How can the organization manage these emotions, or in what ways do you think they should manage these emotions to get desired outcome?