Team player - Action Learning Review

Assessment 3 : Action Learning Review

Observation

The Longwall department is responsible for the majority of coal production at the mine and hence , revenue for the business . The management group in this department consist of five staff members , with the Superintendent as the senior person reporting to the Mine Manager As Technical Services Manager I am a member of the senior management team for the mine , and a peer to the Mine Manager . However , I have no direct authority over the Longwall department

Although it is suited to the approach , the Longwall

department does not tend to operate effectively as a team . Whilst there is a clear annual performance target set by senior management , there will often be confusion amongst the group when they attend the mine 's planning meetings as to what the specific short term priorities for the department should be and the best way to achieve them . This confusion invariably leads to conflict in these meetings between group members with individuals attempting to ensure that their specific area of responsibility is not affected by the other 's individual priorities There has been a high turnover of staff in the past year and the overall performance of the Longwall has been poor , with production results 40 below budget impacting significantly on the profitability of the business

Analysis

The Longwall mining process is complex and to be successful requires reciprocal interdependence of tasks (Thompson , 1967 . The engineers must work closely with the operations staff in the department through the planning and implementation stages to ensure safe and productive operations with minimal unplanned delays . This requirement of interdependence makes the Longwall process ideally suited to a team approach for management

Although it is a small group comprised of five staff with complementary skills , and a common production target for the year , the Longwall department does not currently satisfy the requirements of Katzenbach and Smith 's (1993 ) definition of a team . They fail to define short term goals and work processes which would lead to achievement of the annual production target and , in addition , the group does not hold themselves mutually accountable for their performance . The lack of team approach towards these highly interdependent tasks leads to competing short term priorities within the group and results in poor overall performance

One of the key reasons that the Longwall department has failed to come together as a team is a lack of group cohesiveness (Shaw , 1981 . The members of the group are heterogeneous (Managing People Organisations 2006 , with different expertise and experience and as a result there is often competition and conflict (Raelin , 1985 ) with regards to the best approach to various tasks . This is potentially linked to the lack of specific short term goal setting completed within the group as they seek to avoid conflict because they lack the interpersonal skill of conflict resolution (Managing People Organisations , 2006 . However , this conflict inevitably occurs when the group attends the mine 's planning meetings , as the individuals promote different priorities and ideas . If the...