Introduction
The experience that I have had when playing the role of a manager in a local organization was truly priceless in terms of the insight that is provided and the lessons that I learned. As a manager, I had to pay particular attention to the controlling function, with the job of an administrator and a supervisor being the key ones.
Experience Description
Due to the need to communicate corporate values and steer staff members toward the desirable outcomes, I had to make connections between the theories that I had learned in order to produce the strategy that would empower staff members to excel in the results that they delivered in the workplace. These theories included the Administrative Management Theory and the Human Relations Theory (AMT and HRT). The combination of the described frameworks has allowed me to use all my assets to the advantage of my team. For instance, the AMT has helped me to focus on maximizing the positive output resulting from staff performance. The introduction of the HRT principles, in turn, has allowed me to focus on managing relationships within the team by resolving conflicts, increasing the speed and effects of professional and personal learning, and encouraging a cross-disciplinary and multicultural dialogue within the team.
Since the HRT suggests that an organization should be viewed as an entity in which every employee plays a vital role, and the AMT approach allows focusing on internal processes, the two frameworks allowed me to maintain a balance between meeting the needs of the company and those of its key stakeholders, including employees (King & Lawley, 2016). Finally, the theoretical framework of Kaizen mentioned above was also deployed to improve the performance within the team and promote continuous improvement as the key philosophy. With the current extent of my responsibilities, which includes supervising the quality of work delivered by 191 members of the Mixing Department at the Bridgestone Aiken plant, the theories in question were critical to ensuring that every process reaches its goal. Reinforcing the significance of the Standard Practice, Working Standards, and Process Control Plans, I have been keeping the quality levels at the Mixing Department at the required rate. The specified task required enabling staff members to train new skills to ensure process capability, perform defect analysis, and deploy other practices that would help to improve outcomes.
Conclusion
In retrospect, the Kaizen philosophy that I used to create a functional team and encourage staff members to build the required competency levels was quite beneficial due to the opportunities that it provided. Integrated into the environment of the cross-disciplinary collaboration of the Bridgestone Aiken plant, the Kaizen framework allowed correcting deficiencies that occurred due to high levels of workload and significant time pressure. For example, the Kaizen approach served as the tool for encouraging employees to improve their performance and acquire new knowledge, as well as be more responsible in the workplace, in general. After several discussions about the significance of Corporate Social Responsibility, the incidents involving workplace errors have been minimized, which has affected the company’s performance and completion of several crucial projects. The focus on orderliness, standardization of work, and self-discipline, which the Kaizen philosophy encouraged, helped me as a manager to set the standards for high-quality performance, simultaneously enabling employees to meet the specified standards (Yoder-Wise, 2018).
References
King, D., & Lawley, S. (2016). Organizational behavior (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Yoder-Wise, P. S. (2018). Leading and managing in nursing. New York, NY: Elsevier Health Sciences.