Communicating with New Staff (case 2.1 in Zaremba)
What
This case study involves a relatively small unit within a larger organization.
This case assignment has four parts.
Part 1: Describe the current organizational culture and communication climate in the department. As the new manager, what are you goals in terms of changing the culture and communication climate in order to create a high-performing organization? (25%)
Part 2: Which key audiences would you need to reach out to during the first three weeks and what is their communication mindset? (25%)
Part 3: Describe your communication strategy during this critical three-week period €” what are your messages and how will you convey them? And how will you assess the effectiveness of your communication strategy €“ in other words, how will you assess whether your communication efforts have had the desired effect? (50%)
Why
This assignment is designed to help achieve the following course outcomes:
Know the vocabulary and understand the concepts of how communication is fundamentally related to all aspects of organizational performance, leadership, project management, and group interaction, and other organizational disciplines.
Analyze the communication dynamics in a range of organizational scenarios and propose action steps that will improve the effectiveness of communication practices and positively influence organizational performance.
Develop skills of analysis and synthesis in writing, evaluate context, audience, and purpose of writing situations, and understand guidelines for documenting information sources.
How
Carefully review case 2.1 and highlight key aspects of the case scenario.
Review readings and lectures from the first four weeks of the course.
In developing your approach to the case, imagine that you are in Patricia Daniels’ role as a new manager tasked with significantly improving the performance of a unit.
In Part 1, diagnose the situation and discuss your’ goals for the unit.
In Part 2, analyze your communication audiences €“ the people you need to influence in order to improve communication and begin to improve organizational performance. Remember that you need to focus on both the sender and the receivers.
In Part 3, develop a communication strategy that you believe will improve communication and organizational performance and how you will know if you’re succeeding.
Be sure to make specific references to course readings that support your case analysis and recommendations.
This is not a research paper €” base your analysis only on course materials.
APA Citation Basics:
When using APA format, follow the author-date method of in-text citation. This means that the author’s last name and the year of publication for the source should appear in the text, E.g., (Jones, 1998).
If you are directly quoting from a work, you will need to include the author, year of publication, and the page number for the reference (preceded by p.). Introduce the quotation with a signal phrase that includes the author’s last name followed by the date of publication in parentheses. Example: According to Jones (1998), Students often had difficulty using APA style, especially when it was their first time (p. 199).
There is no need to list references at the end of the essay.
1700-2200 words in length, single-spaced €” stay within these limits!