Every student in the class has to study this case and come prepared for discussions in class on Friday 07-07-2017
Management Basics – Calm Seas case
Tasneem Khan is the General Manager for Calm Seas, a small ocean kayak manufacturing company in western Canada. It is the end of the day in mid-October. Tasneem is wondering where the day went. She has gotten nothing done on the “to-do” list that she had with her when she started her day. And yet, she had been busy from the moment she walked in until now. She shrugs her shoulders and starts to tackle some of the work piled up on her desk. Everyone else has left the building by now. Perhaps she can get in a couple of hours of uninterrupted work before she goes home.
Tasneem had been promoted to General Manager almost two years ago. She had been the Sales Manager before that for 3 years and had worked in sales for another company for 3 years before that. As she sat at her desk, she thought that the job of General Manager was certainly challenging.
Being a manager was tough. There was always something going on to eat up her time and keep her busy.Tasneem wondered sometimes how she ever got anything done. She knew how to do her job – thatwasn’t the problem. It was trying to get things finished! She thought back over her day to try to figureout what happened.
Her day had started before she even got to the office. Her cell phone had rung when she was driving towork. The caller was one of her sales staff who was on his way to a client’s office, but his car had brokendown. A car was essential for the sales person’s job and he had an important client visit to make thatmorning. He had tried to contact the Sales Manager, but he was on a plane and couldn’t answer hisphone. She promised to see what she could do about it when she got to the office.
As she walked through the parking lot, she saw the sign on the wall of their building, advertising for
two more production assistants. That sign looked as though it had been up there for ever. They were
always looking for production assistants. Tasneem made a mental note to ask their Human Resource
Administrator about that.
When she walked into the office, Tasneem asked her Administrative Assistant to arrange for a rental carcompany to take a car out to their sales person, stranded on the side of the road.Tasneem turned her computer on, knew it would take awhile to start and decided to go to the employee lounge for a coffee. She chatted for a few minutes to a couple of other employees who were there, flipped
through the morning paper, glanced at the notices on the bulletin board and returned to her office.
She opened up her e-mail and watched all of the new e-mails enter her inbox. She shook her head and
wondered how she could have so many new ones. She had checked her e-mail from home last eveningand had gotten caught up. Now, she had 60 new e-mails! How was that even possible? She looked moreclosely and realized that half of them were e-mails that she had been copied on, but didn’t necessarilyneed to see. She was tempted to delete a lot of them, but then thought she might miss out on someinformation that she needed to know. She sighed and opened up her calendar to see what was scheduled.
She had appointments that day with the company lawyers to go over the papers to buy a small piece
of land beside their office so that they could build an extension of their building. They needed more
production capability and they were delighted when this land came up for sale. She got it for a fairly
good price and the expansion could start at the end of the month.
In addition, there was an appointment scheduled with the contractors to review the designs for the new building. This was the first meeting for them to get together and they needed to really get detailed ontheir requirements and budget for the construction.
Just as she had returned to look at her e-mail, her Administrative Assistant had come in to her office,
complaining that she couldn’t get the numbers to reconcile on the sales reports. The Assistant was
responsible for ensuring all of the sales figures submitted by the sales staff matched the invoices. Usually she had no problem with this, but they had just installed a new software program and this month, the numbers didn’t work out. Tasneem sat down with her and spent the next thirty minutes trying to figure it out. Finally, one of their delivery people, who was good at computers, came along and gave them some ideas for trouble-shooting. Fifteen minutes later, they solved it.
As Tasneem walked back to her office, the sales staff with the car problem phoned back to say his rentalcar still had not arrived and he was getting anxious about his upcoming client visit. They talked for afew minutes and as he was talking, the car arrived. Tasneem got off the phone. The meeting with the lawyers came next. These were lawyers they had used on a number of occasions before for legal issues, so after the legal matters had been taken care of, they visited with one anotherand chatted over more coffee. The meeting lasted an hour.After the lawyers left the building, the Production Supervisor waved at Tasneem and asked her to come into the production room. There was a problem with the finish surface on four of the kayaks that werebeing completed. The finish on the kayaks looked bumpy, which was unusual and spoiled the look of the kayak. This had not happened before and the kayaks could not be shipped to customers in that condition!
Tasneem asked the Production Supervisor to call the Production Manager, the production operator and the buyer, who was also a chemist, for a meeting to figure out this problem. An hour and a half later, the bumpiness on the surface was gone and the finish looked perfect.
Tasneem next drove to the bank. She had an appointment there to discuss the financial arrangements
that they needed for the expansion. As she drove there, she called the friend she was supposed to havelunch with, and cancelled. No time for lunch today. She rummaged around in her briefcase for an energy bar. She made a mental note to grab a sandwich later.
The afternoon just sped by. Tasneem had the meeting with the contractors, got reports from the sales
staff containing recommendations on pricing structures, had a conversation with the Sales Manager
for some new product ideas and talked to accounting about some budget projections that she had to
present at Calm Seas next Executive meeting. She asked her Administrative Assistant to run out and
buy her a sandwich.
Finally she caught up with the Human Resource Administrator before he left for the day and they
discussed the problem they were having finding good production assistants. Tasneem wondered if the
Human Resource Administrator was having trouble doing his job. She had hired him only two monthsago and thought that she’d have to check in more often to see how he was doing with his responsibilities.
That brought Tasneem to the end of the day. The building was quiet now. Most people had left for the
day. She looked at her computer and sighed. Over 100 e-mails! She opened up her sandwich and settled in to examine her messages. Another busy day.
what a hectic business schedule.
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