Communication Case Study

Carefully read the following hypothetical scenario. Write a properly formatted and well-organized memo that adequately responds to the situation.

You will be sending the memo as an email attachment, so you also need to write the email to the intended recipient.

The Scenario: PSC’s Communication Conundrum

You are a partner at Solve Your Problems, LLC, a business consulting firm that specializes in helping organizations diagnose and correct issues in their operations that are hindering their efficiency and success. Because of your background, you lead the team that works primarily with organizations in the accounting services sector.

Your team has been hired to assist the leadership at Payton, Sears, & Cobrunner (“PSC”), a regional accounting firm that was founded 15 years ago as a small firm with a strong presence in the niche market of non-profit accounting services. PSC started with just a few employees, but as its success and client list quickly grew, so did its size – to approximately 500 employees.

Over the past couple years, employees have increasingly expressed concerns about how PSC operates in general, and about one partner’s leadership style in particular. Pat McBucket has PSC’s top client, RGF Coal & Petrol, as well as several other large corporate clients, and he supervises a significant percentage of PSC’s staff. PSC’s managing partners have become concerned about staff morale and retention in both Pat’s team and the firm more generally.

As part of your initial assessment of the client’s organization, you have asked the communications specialist in your team to collect some data (see attached) about employee perceptions of communication and the amount of information they receive, as well as their overall satisfaction with various factors.

After taking some time to review and analyze the data, you meet with your team to discuss problems and solutions. The goal of your meeting is to think through the situation as fully as possible, so you can identify all of the problems and possible causes / contributing factors, create effective strategies to address the issues, and identify areas where you need to gather more information before recommending a specific course of action (e.g., conduct additional interviews with Pat McBucket’s RGF audit team).

You have a meeting scheduled with PSC’s leadership to go over your initial assessment. To make the meeting as productive as possible, you are sending a memo in advance that outlines your team’s key findings.

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Table 1

Topic Area

Amount of Information Received Now

Amount of Information Needed

Rank

Performance appraisal systems

2.0

3.2*

How decisions that affect my job are reached

2.6

3.6*

Promotion opportunities

2.2

3.2*

Staff development opportunities

2.5

3.5*

Important new service developments

2.1

3.1*

Goals of the organization

3.2

2.2*

Audit team goals

2.0

2.9*

Major management decisions

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2.4

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3.3*

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7

Improvements in audit services, or how services are delivered

2.4

3.3*

How my job contributes to the organization

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2.8

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3.6*

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10

Specific problems faced by the organization

2.3

3.1*

Pay, benefits, and conditions

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2.1

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2.9*

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10

Things that go wrong in my organization

2.7

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3.5*

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10

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My performance in my job

3.0

3.5

The total range of services offered

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2.9

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3.4

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14

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How problems which I report in my job are dealt with

3.4

3.8

What is expected from me in my job

3.0

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3.4

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17

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MEAN TOTAL

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2.5

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3.3*

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Data Notes:

ï‚· Scoring key: 1=very little; 2=little; 3=some; 4=great; 5=very great

ï‚· *p < 0.01

ï‚· Ranking based on differences between means for information sent and needing to be sent

Table 2.1

Question

Level of Satisfaction

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Job satisfaction

6.69

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Supervisor trusts me

6.01

Right amount of supervision

6.53

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Information on policies and goals

5.24

Compatible work group

6.41

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Supervisor open to new ideas

6.11

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Data Notes:
ï‚· Scoring key: 0-10 scale (0=no satisfaction, 5=average satisfaction, 10=high satisfaction)

Table 2.2 Sample content analysis of interview data (N=42, Responses=62) “What do you think are the greatest communication strengths of the firm?”

Rank