Company Organization

Blog Entry
Men’s Wearhouse is a men’s specialty retailer that has over 1,200 stores across North America.  According the Men’s Wearhouse website they carry a full selection of designer, brand name and private label suits, sport coats, furnishings and accessories.  The Men’s Wearhouse will also rent tuxedos. 
The management philosophy is also outlined on the website.  The company put together a code of ethics that is used by all senior management in the company.  The highlights of the code is that the company will always conduct business with highest standards of honesty, integrity, and with compliance with all applicable laws.  With this in mind the company’s objectives are to maximize sales, provide value to their customers, and deliver top-quality customer service while still having fun and maintaining their values.
If I was going to conduct a needs assessment for the Men’s Wearhouse to see if future training is needed,  I would want to get stakeholder feedback from management, customers, and employees.  In the organizational analysis I would want to ask the following questions to employees:

1.  How might training help your relationship with customers?

2.  What might customers, employees and management need to know about a training program done by Men’s Wearhouse? 

3.  How does this training program align with the objectives outlined by Men’s Wearhouse?

4.  What do you need from managers and peers to make training work?

I would want to ask management the following questions:

1.  What might the company, management, customers, and employees need to know about the training program?

2.  How would a training program align with the objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

3.  What features of the work environment might interfere with training?

4.  How will employees perceive a training program offered by Men’s Wearhouse?  For example, would they see it is a  reward, a punishment, etc.

The biggest objectives with company would deal with customer service.  I would want their feedback on the following:

1.  Do you feel like you receive good customer service from the employees at the Men’s Wearhouse?  Please explain.

2.  Do you feel like you are purchasing quality merchandise from the Men’s Wearhouse?  Please explain.

In the Person Analysis piece of the needs assessment I would need the following questions answered on the part of management:
            1.  Why types of situations call for training from you?
            2.  What keeps you from being a good trainer?

3.  What common types of performance problems to all employees have?  New hires?

4.  What are the basic skills needed for an employee to do a good job at Men’s Wearhouse?

For the Person Analysis I would want the following information from employees:

1.  Do you feel like you have been offered or had proper training to successfully perform your job?

2.  Do you feel that there are incentives for you doing a good job at the Men’s Wearhouse?

For the task analysis piece I would need to work with subject matter experts (SME) to do a task analysis to identify skills, tasks, and duties that employees of the Men’s Wearhouse use, should be using, and what would help them in the future.  Part of this is asking employees the following questions:

1.  What tasks do you do on a daily basis? What should you be doing on a daily basis that would make your job successful in meeting the objectives of Men’s Wearhouse?

2.  Do you feel the job you are doing help’s to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

I would want management to answer the following questions:

1.  What tasks should employees be doing on a daily basis, what is required on a daily basis?

2.  Do you feel the job you are doing as a manager is helping to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

In order to get a feel for the way training has been done in the past and for how training, if needed, should be done in the future I would want to look at the company strategic plan, study previous customer satisfaction surveys, employee satisfaction surveys, previous employee/management manuals or handbooks, and any previous training programs that have been implemented within the company. 


I would use the following techniques to acquire the information needed for the needs assessment:

1.  I would use observation so that I can perform task analysis to identify skills, tasks and duties done to perform the job of manager, employee at Men’s Wearhouse.

2.  I would use questionnaires and interviews to do the organizational analysis and person analysis, plus with a company as large as Men’s Wearhouse this is a cheap, efficient way to collect data.

3.  Interviews of all levels of management to get an idea of previous training.  To also learn what they feel the causes of any problems are and what they think could be possible solutions.

4.  I would want to see previous documentation.  I want to see previous training manuals, previous employee handbooks to get a sense of how things have worked in the company in the past.

5.  I would also use online technology.  This is a national company with over 1,200 stores.  This would be the most efficient and cheapest way of communication and data collection.

This is a tall task for company such as the Men’s Wearhouse to take on.  If done well, a good needs analysis could save a company such as this a ton of money.  Training is not always the answer.  A needs analysis could turn up that the company is doing a great job and that there just needs to be a few tweaks here and there.  On the other hand, the needs analysis could open up the eyes of management and employees alike on to what the company can do to improve relations with employees and customers to meet the needs of all of those involved.  A plan of improvement can be developed to create training so that that all stakeholders can perform better in the future. 
References:
www.menswearhouse.com
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Company Organization

Blog Entry
Men’s Wearhouse is a men’s specialty retailer that has over 1,200 stores across North America.  According the Men’s Wearhouse website they carry a full selection of designer, brand name and private label suits, sport coats, furnishings and accessories.  The Men’s Wearhouse will also rent tuxedos. 
The management philosophy is also outlined on the website.  The company put together a code of ethics that is used by all senior management in the company.  The highlights of the code is that the company will always conduct business with highest standards of honesty, integrity, and with compliance with all applicable laws.  With this in mind the company’s objectives are to maximize sales, provide value to their customers, and deliver top-quality customer service while still having fun and maintaining their values.
If I was going to conduct a needs assessment for the Men’s Wearhouse to see if future training is needed,  I would want to get stakeholder feedback from management, customers, and employees.  In the organizational analysis I would want to ask the following questions to employees:

1.  How might training help your relationship with customers?

2.  What might customers, employees and management need to know about a training program done by Men’s Wearhouse? 

3.  How does this training program align with the objectives outlined by Men’s Wearhouse?

4.  What do you need from managers and peers to make training work?

I would want to ask management the following questions:

1.  What might the company, management, customers, and employees need to know about the training program?

2.  How would a training program align with the objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

3.  What features of the work environment might interfere with training?

4.  How will employees perceive a training program offered by Men’s Wearhouse?  For example, would they see it is a  reward, a punishment, etc.

The biggest objectives with company would deal with customer service.  I would want their feedback on the following:

1.  Do you feel like you receive good customer service from the employees at the Men’s Wearhouse?  Please explain.

2.  Do you feel like you are purchasing quality merchandise from the Men’s Wearhouse?  Please explain.

In the Person Analysis piece of the needs assessment I would need the following questions answered on the part of management:
            1.  Why types of situations call for training from you?
            2.  What keeps you from being a good trainer?

3.  What common types of performance problems to all employees have?  New hires?

4.  What are the basic skills needed for an employee to do a good job at Men’s Wearhouse?

For the Person Analysis I would want the following information from employees:

1.  Do you feel like you have been offered or had proper training to successfully perform your job?

2.  Do you feel that there are incentives for you doing a good job at the Men’s Wearhouse?

For the task analysis piece I would need to work with subject matter experts (SME) to do a task analysis to identify skills, tasks, and duties that employees of the Men’s Wearhouse use, should be using, and what would help them in the future.  Part of this is asking employees the following questions:

1.  What tasks do you do on a daily basis? What should you be doing on a daily basis that would make your job successful in meeting the objectives of Men’s Wearhouse?

2.  Do you feel the job you are doing help’s to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

I would want management to answer the following questions:

1.  What tasks should employees be doing on a daily basis, what is required on a daily basis?

2.  Do you feel the job you are doing as a manager is helping to accomplish the goals and objectives of the Men’s Wearhouse?

In order to get a feel for the way training has been done in the past and for how training, if needed, should be done in the future I would want to look at the company strategic plan, study previous customer satisfaction surveys, employee satisfaction surveys, previous employee/management manuals or handbooks, and any previous training programs that have been implemented within the company. 


I would use the following techniques to acquire the information needed for the needs assessment:

1.  I would use observation so that I can perform task analysis to identify skills, tasks and duties done to perform the job of manager, employee at Men’s Wearhouse.

2.  I would use questionnaires and interviews to do the organizational analysis and person analysis, plus with a company as large as Men’s Wearhouse this is a cheap, efficient way to collect data.

3.  Interviews of all levels of management to get an idea of previous training.  To also learn what they feel the causes of any problems are and what they think could be possible solutions.

4.  I would want to see previous documentation.  I want to see previous training manuals, previous employee handbooks to get a sense of how things have worked in the company in the past.

5.  I would also use online technology.  This is a national company with over 1,200 stores.  This would be the most efficient and cheapest way of communication and data collection.

This is a tall task for company such as the Men’s Wearhouse to take on.  If done well, a good needs analysis could save a company such as this a ton of money.  Training is not always the answer.  A needs analysis could turn up that the company is doing a great job and that there just needs to be a few tweaks here and there.  On the other hand, the needs analysis could open up the eyes of management and employees alike on to what the company can do to improve relations with employees and customers to meet the needs of all of those involved.  A plan of improvement can be developed to create training so that that all stakeholders can perform better in the future. 
References:
www.menswearhouse.com
Noe, R. A. (2010). Employee training and development (5th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw Hill.

Training Elevator Speech

Project Creep

Scope Creep is defined as the attempted improvement of a product in the middle of a project (Portny, et. al, 2007).  While it is admirable when people are working towards a similar goal and want to make it the best that they possibly can there could be unintended problems such as no one knows what is happening or the project becomes too big to manage. 

In my professional life, I am now the offensive coordinator of a high school football team.  Four years ago, I was just the offensive line coach and another coordinator was at the head of the offense.  It became obvious that we needed a shake up in what we do, and we needed to install a new offense.  The five offensive coaches went away together for the weekend and literally locked ourselves into a hotel conference room and tried to install a new offense.  The first day we got a ton of work done. We drew up different formations, looked at personnel packages and schemed about different plays that we could run.  The second day however, the current coordinator and another coach got off on a tangent of the ability to run one play by blocking a different zone.  In theory, if this were to work it would be amazing, but the bottom line is that we are a high school football team, not an NFL team, and there is no way that our players could perform this kind of task.  However, since our project leader was DEAD SET that we could pull it off, we spent four hours drawing things out and trying to talk through what ONE PLAY would look like.  I left the weekend feeling discouraged and not listened to at all.  It was a terrible feeling and one that could have been avoided if we had stayed with the project goals.

If I had been the project manager, which I am now, I would have done a couple of things very differently.  First of all, I would not have allowed myself or my staff to deviate from the task at hand.  I would have constantly referred back to the objective of the meeting and redirected based on the objective, as I needed to.  Most importantly, I would not have allowed myself or others to lead the group so far off task that it was not possible to get back on.  As the coordinator I need to lead by example and make sure that the group stays focused on the task at hand. 

Reference:

Portny, S. E., Mantel, S. J., Meredith, J. R., Shafer, S. M., Sutton, M. M., & Kramer, B. E. (2008). Project management: Planning, scheduling, and controlling projects. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Modes of Communication

This week, we were asked to listen to three types of communication about the same subject, but through different modalities.  The same information was relayed in email, voicemail and face to face interaction.  The outcome of these three communications was very different and this was a fascinating study of how communication should be delivered.

Email-Although there was nothing mean or unprofessional in the email that was sent, it seemed to me to take a very curt and impersonal tone.  While an offer of understanding was made, it seemed very forced and not personal. 

Voicemail-The voicemail had a slightly more personal tone because you could hear that the person leaving the message was not angry, just concerned that this needed to get finished.  There were still a few questions left about if there was anger at the other person, but I did not feel that this was a bad form of communication.

Face-to-Face-This was obviously the preferred mode of communication.  Jane was calm, made eye contact, was not at all confrontational and offered a solution that I did not pick up in either of the first two communications. 

This activity has been important to me because it is obvious that face to face communication is by far the best way to talk to a teammate.  I have to admit, I am an over communicator in email, and I need to remember that it’s important to seek out face to face communication whenever possible.  In my profession, where I am responsible for students for the majority of my day it’s important for me to seek out people that I need to talk to during my planning and break time instead of sending an email, particularly when the subject of what I am talking about could be sensitive. 

Blog Assignment 1-Project Overview

The purpose of this project work has come out of necessity.  In the district where I teach, we do not have a curriculum that fits the needs of all learners.  We have a grade level curriculum where approximately sixty percent of our learners receive appropriate level instruction.  We have several advanced programs including Advanced Placement (AP) classes and International Baccalaureate (IB) classes, which serve approximately thirty percent of our population.  The leftover ten percent of students are not able to keep up with grade level math classes.  For years, they have been given a watered down version of grade level materials, but this is not adequate.  According to our state mandated tests, these students are not only not proficient in mathematics; they are not making the year of annual growth that is to be expected.  It is unacceptable that a student does not make a year of growth and this lies firmly on what instructional strategies and materials these students are exposed to. 

The project will be considered a success if a curriculum is evaluated and purchased for high school students that will be useful and viable in the classroom.  The project manager will make this project a success because of the work that they will do to facilitate the review of curriculum.  The project manager will set norms and have specific guidelines for teachers to look at as they are reviewing each curriculum.