After reading about Joyce Wheat’s problem, I believe that there are a few different issues in the
delegation process that could have been done better. The main issue is that Joyce got extremely excited
that her goal was closer than she had planned for it to be and did not fully realize, or understand how
hard the position may be. When she first took on the role she put a stress of specific number goals,
without having specific processes in place that would assist the team with getting there. Without having
that information, the employees are not going to know what they can do to improve or do better to
assist with raising those numbers. Joyce also believed in management principle follow-up, so not only
would she be following up on their work, she would have the assistant manager and supervisors doing
so to, which could allow for a cause in conflict in delegation.
Regarding critical authority issues that are involved, not taking lead as manager over everyone
seemed as if it was one of Joyce’s downfalls. Although she said she would be following up, she was
clearly not doing so well enough if the numbers were actually falling. When she became the regional
manager, she had more authority and should have utilized that authority to the best of her abilities. It
seemed as if she gave the supervisors unclear directive when it came to their authority in trying to
progress the company. When the ratings began to fall at the first evaluation, she should have used her
authority to her advantage and reeled everyone back in to make sure they were on the same page and
found the flaws in their processes. She had high hopes for the supervisors because they had prior
experience, but they were not using their authority to help make changes.
I believe that Joyce could have done a lot more on her end to assist with the numbers growing in
a positive direction. The fact that she was not extremely directive in the process of reaching the goal she
had set in place was the first thing she could have done better. If that were in place, she should be able
to delegate to her supervisors more directly what exactly their direction would be to make sure that
everyone is going along with the processes. There was a problem when the first evaluation happened
and had used that time to make a change, there could have been room for improvement over the next
few months. I would say that instead of being so straight forward and strict about the numbers goal, she
could have been encouraging and positioned it more about having an increased productivity goal of
about 10 percent and possibly even 10 percent over the whole year instead of just a three-month
1. Usually – 1 2. Usually – 3 3. Seldom – 3 4. Sometimes – 2 5. Seldom – 3
6. Seldom – 3 7. Sometimes – 2 8. Usually – 3 9. Usually -3 Total = 20