Survival of the Fittest!

RM's control of the District was marked with massive resignations, followed by loss of confidence among memberse towards the management. It is definitely commendable for the new RM to impress his Division Manager with changes, programs, incentives, etc. provided that such changes complement to the efficiency of the system and growth for the district as well. But if he makes a complete reversal of the current but effective system, such changes produce deleterious effects to the survival of district.

In the first 6 months alone, an unprecedented number of resignations had occured. A very competent Scheduler was fired. Barbie, the newly promoted AM has resigned due to overwork and fatigue. Another AM (Let's just call him Dave) also resigned and eventually worked for an airline manufacturer. Amanda, the most qualified Training Manager of the District has resigned! Another AAM from Tukwila Ms. Maureen, a hardworking AAM, was fired for no sufficient reason! Supervisor John B, Supervisor Chen, Supervisor Joni, and other very qualified people from the same District have resigned in a domino effect!

Supervisor Fernand also expressed his intention to step down since he is getting all the little stores and not getting the usual hours he had prior to his being a supervisor. Many candidates for the supervisory positions have expressed their intention to discontinue their training including Little Barbie, KMoore, Lhays, and some very good people from the Lynwood Office as well. All these happened in the first 6 months!

Why is these happening? Some, interpreted it as a power trip. There have been some friction between the Managers from the Tukwila office and the newly opened office at the Lynwood. Historically, the Tukwila office used to be the main office and the Lynwood office used to be only a satellite office. But RM has reversed the system and made the Lynwood as the main office instead. With changing of the seat of power, it created a power shift and power control. The Lynwood managers appeared to have won the control. And that created some friction.

So, in order for the Tukwila office does not experience an imminent extinction, and impending power outage (literally and figuratively!), RM has decided to sent Manager Brian to Tukwila, which is currently inhabited by the lone survivor Manager Eva.

Did the district gained any benefit from these changes? Definitely NOT! Did RM made the right decision? Nobody has agreed that he made a good decision. Except for few (at least 2 to be exact) people from Lynwood office who may have influenced the decision making of RM. Now, it has been proven that such decision has backfired with a debilitating aftermath!

In order for RM to put the district back on track, he assigned one AM to oversee the entire scheduling process. But such strategy has gained nothing but redundant store assignments, massive cancellations, wrong staffing of people, and a deteriorating scheduling process.

So, to save the scheduling from its premature demise, RM has decided to keep the original scheduling strategy to where it is used to be. After all those incidences of redundant store assignments , massive cancellations, wrong staffing of people, etc., he now realized that the original strategy is still the best and the most workable process. Is this a trial-and-error style of decision making, where RM randomly choose a strategy and if it proven to be non-doable, he would select the remaining option until he finally gets the right one? Trial and error is a non-directional, non-linear, and non-goal oriented type of decision making. And this is evident among managers without a solid sense of direction, undecisive, inexperience, and myopic leadeship.

The worst is, as of this writing, NOBODY has replaced yet those that he fired and those who have resigned from January last year! The current number of Managers at Tukwila is 2. Nothing has been added. The other 1 might resign pretty soon!

He could have avoided these, should he become more careful with his decisions, strong sense of brinkmanship, being a people person, excellent business acumen, and future sightedness.

Lessons learned:

When you are a new Manager assigned or take control of a new district, ANALYZE the situation first. MAKE positive yet careful changes one step at a time. DO NOT OVERHAUL an already effective and working system. Be SENSITIVE to your subordinates, be a people person. And most importantly, do not act like a superman if you are not! If you choose otherwise, you will lose your competitiveness and sooner or later, you will eventually extinct like an unfit flightless dodo doomed for eternal oblivion.