A632.7.4.RB_MedinaM.

Collaboration is a practice where individuals often work together towards the benefits of a common purpose. Getting to resolution in the process of decision-making is resolving any conflicts that may hinder the desired outcome or the benefits of the common purpose. In other words, it’s resolving the issue at hand in order to move forward to a better, fair, and impartial future. In this week’s learning discussions, we discussed Levine’s nine questions that help us clarify the vision in the conflict resolution process. The questions are as follow:

1.     Does the preliminary vision fit everyone’s view of the outcome?

2.     Does the preliminary vision take care of all specific concerns in the situation?

3.     What needs correcting or adjusting?

4.     What do others say about your preliminary vision’s viability?

5.     What concerns or fears does your preliminary vision bring up?

6.     What or who is missing?

7.     What must be learned or discovered to test your vision?

8.     Is it a comfortable place from which to move forward?

9.     Who else has suggestion or insights about anything anyone has said?

The important aspects of these questions is to actively listening and allow the participants of conflict to tell their stories without interruptions. Basically, it’s about allowing those participants to say everything that is on their mind until there’s nothing more to say. This allows the mediator to gain a complete picture of the conflict as well as a preliminary vision of a solution to the conflict.

Any decisions, typically, affect ourselves personally and/or professionally but the decisions we make can also affect those around us. Therefore, it’s important that for any important business decision to involve other stakeholders into the decision-making team. Having people, who are skilled in their respective fields of the decision-making process, can help the overall experience as well as outcome of the decision. Stakeholders can help the decision maker by providing their range of skills as well different point of views and ideas to the decision-making table. Involving other stakeholders helps the decision maker make informative, smart decisions that can help determine the long-term fate of the company or business. But, just as any other team, gathering or collective collaboration methods, there’s always a chance for conflict. Therefore, it’s important for the decision maker to have an understanding on how to deal with conflict and how to move forward to a better future.

A good example of a situation in which I face a decision is the task of saving on cost at the end of each college-student semester. At the end of every semester, I am given the task to decrease cost as much as possible without hurting the business or customer service while increasing profits as much as possible. After reflecting on the different controllable ways I can help the company decrease it’s costs while continuing to maintain good customer service, I realized that I needed to consult other stakeholders in order to identify more effective ways in which to increase profits while decreasing costs. After different short, brief discussions it was decided that decreasing the amount of inventory ordered would be an effective way to meet budget goals. But, I also thought of another effective way to decrease costs without hindering customer service or the business, which is to cut labor hours. Every end of semester business tends to slow down, I thought it would be a good idea to begin letting employees go home early the closer we got to the end of the semester.

Since, not everyone from management understood my idea and others were skeptical, I decided to ask for a week trial prior to the end of the semester. At the end of that week of trial, I was able to save the company about 10 hours of labor, which in turn allowed us to meet budget for that week. Needless to say that after the week trial, management gave the green light to cut labor hours when possible at the end of the semester without hurting business or customer service. There are many different ways that stakeholders helped me reach the outcome that management desired. One way I was able to reach that outcome was by combining the employees’ desire to go home early at the end of the semester. Since business tends to slow down and we were close to the holiday season, some employees requested to leave work early in order to do last minute holiday shopping. Therefore, their involvement in the business and the business slowing down allowed me to help cut labor cost. A second way stakeholders helped me make a better decision, was by explaining to me better the “behind the scenes” of the business (well more like the side of management and budgets).

The third way stakeholder’s involvement in the decision making process helped me reach the outcome was by providing different ideas on which I could help the company cut costs, and the different methods used in the past. A fourth way stakeholders were able to help make an informed decision was by guiding me through the different processes, guidelines, and policies in which different methods and actions can be conducted. Lastly, stakeholders were able to help me reach the desired outcome by providing managerial support when needed. For example, an employee thought I would be cutting majority of her hours. After she contacted management, I explained that I was only cutting one hour from everyone’s schedule business permitting but if others wanted to voluntarily leave early they could.

Overall, I believe I met the objective, which was to cut costs while increasing sales without hindering business or customer service. I’m fairly satisfied with the decisions I made but I honestly wish I had a bit more support from my immediate supervisor. Since she has managed the business for close to 4 years, I would’ve benefited from her experiences as well. Now that I am more familiar and have learned more about the conflict resolution process, I believe that I can use this knowledge to get to the bottom of conflicts, resolve them, and move forward to a better future. From this experience, I have also learned to be a bit bolder and to take the risk if I truly believe on it and if it’s for the best of the company. Lastly, from this learning experience I have learned that management is there to provide support and guide you when needed. Their support and guidance has helped me make better decisions. Therefore, I believe that a good combination of conflict resolution, management guidance, and support will help me to continue making better decisions in and for the future.