Improvement of Decision Making Methods

The problem-solving techniques which can be implemented by team in order to overcome challenges mainly include the improvement of decision making methods. The process of decision making is considered to be an important process which is helpful in the effective operations of the management of Museum of Springfield. The management of the organization needs to reduce the levels conflicts which have taken place in the operations. The conflicts can thereby be resolved with the help of proper decision making by the management of the Museum of Springfield. The communication based issues which have taken place in the organization have been affecting the operations in a huge manner (Parke, Campbell and Bartol, pp.20).

The task which has been provided to Paul, the media coordinator of the organization by Mary Weston is quite important for the effective operations of Museum of Springfield. The organization can gain high levels of corporate support with the help of proper design which can be provided to the media. The communication between the members of the team is considered to be highly important for the ways by which the media can be created. The creativity levels of the team can be increased with the help of proper problem-solving based methods. The systematic process of problem solving is thereby considered to be a major part of the ways by which the team will be able to provide effective results (Driskell and Driskell, pp. 440). Mary Weston will play the most important role in this case, which will be helpful for solving the issues which have occurred in the organization. The organization can maintain its operations and gain corporate support with the help of proper level of problem solving with the proper collaboration of the team. Problem solving is considered to be the most important part of the operations of Museum of Springfield in the industry. 

In terms of making decisions, the most effective method will be evaluation of the alternatives. This is due to the reason that if the employee can have the access to large number of alternative before taking the decisions, then they will be more benefited by having different solutions in hand before taking the decisions. This will increase the probability of effective decision making process for them (Cox and Bobrowski P. 789). In addition, it should also be noted that building consensus in the decision making process will also helps the member s in resolving the disagreement. This is due to the reason that building consensus will involve consideration of the opinions of all the members in the team and no one will feel deprived in the decision making process. It should also be noted that more diverse ideas will be generated from the decision process and the problems can be solved effectively and properly. Inclusion of the all the internal stakeholders in the decision making process will further ensure that more ideas and approaches will be generated for a given problem. It is also identified that the major reason for emergence of disagreement among the stakeholders is the differences in opinions. Thus with the help of the consensus based decision making process, more members will be involved in the discussion with the increase in the coordination and cooperation among them. The more will be the coordination and cooperation among the members, the more they will be able to have the fair understanding about the skills and approaches of each other. This will be beneficial in taking the decisions and the disagreements can be mitigated in the initial stage only. Thus, it is recommended that consensus based decision making process will be the most effective for the members. 

Virtual Communication for Remote Teams

There are several ways that can be pivotal to do communication without having a face-to-face interaction. In this regard, it can be stated that the virtual communication process will be an effective method in order to make a communication without having presence in person. It is more of an example of visual communication techniques. According to Forceville (55) the visual communication technique is considered to be an effective tool in the present case scenario where people have no scope or time to get in contact in presence. In case of the Museum of Springfield, Elaine Dorsch was the site designer of the museum who lived in San Francisco and Julia Winger, the corporate liaison in Museum of Springfield had her office in Minneapolis. Therefore, it became difficult for them to get in touch face to face. Therefore, a visual communication system will be effective in order to connect all the members associated with the event.

In this context, Delhey and Peters (35) stated the visual communication is effective in corporate decision making in order to make remote intelligence comes into play. It is pertinent to get acknowledged with the ideas and planning of each and every member through visual communication. The visual communication techniques include live video chatting mechanism that is able to connect people from distant parts into an unitary digital platform. As a result of that in modern times it becomes not a problem for remote intelligence to make a better framework of communication. In response to this, conducting the event in Museum of Springfield, it is helpful to make a visual communication system that can be able to get all the actors in one fold so that they can able to share their planning and understanding related to the framework. Therefore, it can be argued that it will be able to deal with people without having a direct meeting in place. 

As the conflict has occurred due to lack of communication, in order to organise a successful meeting the crisis must be resolved first. Simultaneously, to address the communication gap meetings must be arranged. Considering the study of Chang, Wen & Long, and Chun & Yi Lee (990), Paul might take initiative to arrange a virtual video conference to inform all the group members across varied locations, to join the meeting. Acknowledging the professional ego between two members, Roger and Julie, Paul realizes if he cannot retain these two members within the project, he might fail to deliver the project on time and with efficiency. The next agenda of the meetings would be to make the members understand the importance of mutual collaboration irrespective of their field of operation. As creation of a website needs everyone’s involvement, insisting conflicts will not help them to complete the project within time.

Consensus-based Decision Making

As a coordinator, Paul must deliver this message strongly and he must come up with new communication plan to address the communication gap between members.  Within the new plan, he must include plan of technological support to overcome cultural and professional barriers. Developing a healthy environment at work is the ultimate priority to address the theme of allocated assignment. Responsibility is huge and while addressing all the requirements of “Images of Springfield”, it must be remembered about its community friendly approach. According to Chan, Teresa, et al (301), as responsible adults working in an esteemed organisation how important is that to mitigate conflict that is known to all. It will be beneficial if Paul emphasizes more on virtual modes of communication to maintain both the professional and social interaction as both San Francisco and Minneapolis are distant locations from Springfield. The meeting will be conducted on the agenda to mitigate increasing tension between employees to accomplish the collective goal of creating a website for the Museum’s upcoming new show “Images of Springfield”. 

The face-to-face communication is one of the major factors that helps in the proper and effective communication among the members of the given business organization. In the given case study, a communication gap is observed to have taken place among the various officials who have been serving at the Museum of Springfield. Paul might be advised to maintain the posture in case of the face-to-face communication. The body language is one of the major factors that have been affecting the communication within the Museum of Springfield. The maintenance of the proper body posture helps in the depiction of the open and the relaxed nature of the communicator and helps in the easing of the communication between the involved parties. The communicator should maintain a proper eye contact with the other parties involved in the face-to-face communication (Battiston, Vidal, and Kirchmaier). This helps in the conveyance of the respect towards the audience of the communication. The maintenance of the eye contact refers to the sincerity, conviction as well as the truth among the communicator as well as the audience of the meeting.

The communicator should opt for the proper words and should choose them by applying the wisdom. The choice of the words should be in accordance to the audience of the concerned communication. The communicator should choose the jargon with special attention to the audience of the communication (Hall, Lecuona, and Cummings). The audibility of the communication is known to have been a huge issue for the in case of the face-to-face communications. The communicator should be advised to be audible to the given audience which in turn might help in the proper conveyance of the messages that are discussed within the meeting. Thus, from the above discussion, it might be stated that the communicator, in discussion, Paul should implement the discussed techniques in order to enhance the effectivity of the communications.  

Reference

Battiston, Diego, Jordi Blanes I. Vidal, and Tom Kirchmaier. “DP11924 Is Distance Dead? Face to-Face Communication and Productivity in Teams.” (2017).

Chan, Teresa, et al. “Conflict prevention, conflict mitigation, and manifestations of conflict during emergency department consultations.” Academic Emergency Medicine 21.3 (2014): 308-313.

Chang, Wen & Long, and Chun & Yi Lee. “Virtual team e?leadership: The effects of leadership style and conflict management mode on the online learning performance of students in a business?planning course.” British Journal of Educational Technology 44.6 (2013): 986-999.

Cox, Pamela L., and Paula E. Bobrowski. “The team charter assignment: Improving the effectiveness of classroom teams.” Journal of Behavioral and Applied Management 1.2 (2016): 789.

Delhey, Kaspar, and Anne Peters. “Conservation implications of anthropogenic impacts on visual communication and camouflage.” Conservation Biology 31.1 (2017): 30-39.

Driskell, Tripp, Eduardo Salas, and James E. Driskell. “Teams in extreme environments: Alterations in team development and teamwork.” Human resource management review 28.4 (2018): 434-449.

Forceville, Charles. “Relevance Theory as model for analysing visual and multimodal communication.” Visual communication(2014): 51-70.

Hall, David, Ramon Lecuona, and Jonathon N. Cummings. “Walk and Talk: The Interplay of Work Dependencies, Spatial Distance, and Face-to-Face Communication.” Academy of Management Proceedings. Vol. 2017. No. 1. Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management, 2017.

Parke, Michael R., Elizabeth Margaret Campbell, and Kathryn M. Bartol. “Setting the stage for virtual team development: Designing teams to foster knowledge sharing.” Academy of Management Proceedings. Vol. 2014. No. 1. Briarcliff Manor, NY 10510: Academy of Management, 2014.