S.M.A.R.T Plan

6^th Feb 2014 – LPM – Module 2: Support Team                   Mr Jamali

 Second lesson Support team. Today topic covered on organizational structured – purpose, goal and objectives. It gives me a better understanding of how a company structured, the characteristic of the organisaton , it defines and limits the behaviours of members.

 There is one interesting topic or should I say a point about “Conflict Tolerance”. It describes how well an organization deals with arguments and clashes; are staffs encouraged to air grievances and difference openly. Today topic also touches the SMART Plan (Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Realistic and Time-based) I remembered my experienced working with an enterprise in tourism industry.

As an experienced staff in the front office and has a handful of foreign talent working closely with us – one thing that was a big headache to us was the conflict among the staff at the front counter –“Lateness”. We are the main ferry operator to an island thus we could not make the effort to delay our ferry or worst still to call the Master to hold the ferry, as a minute delay caused monies. I was given the task to rectify and solve this problem of staff coming late to work thus contribute to lesser check-in counter for passenger and this will then lead to delay in immigration clearance and soon affect the ferry departure time and arrival in the island itself.

I was referred by my superior to be in the Focus Group for this project. It took weeks of brainstormed and days of self-observation and monitoring. When we finally, came up with a solution - We done up two big frame slightly bigger than size of A4 paper, one which we named it “Star of the Month – I am Officially Famous” and we hang it at our counter floor and one to “Wall of Shame” we placed in our pantry area – it not our intentioned to shame any of the staff but we had to be harsh as at that point of time as this issue was among the crucial one.

Our emphasized was more to boost the morale of the staff then to shame anyone, the frames recognized and appreciates the effort made by staff who was always progressing and showed their effort at work. A small token of appreciations was given to the ‘Star of the month’ for their good progress and to top it all appointed as Ambassador in the ferry for the following month.

Initially, I was the sudden enemy of my colleagues and a lot of rumours was heard about resigning, biased and definitely unhappiness BUT the management loved it. It was put on trial for a period of times till the management decided to let the idea stay. From then on the ferry departure had improve significantly or no complain from the ferry Master being called to hold the ferry except for unforeseen circumstances of the tourist or guest themselves with the customs. This had also lead to profitability to the organization and I had also seen the increase of customer satisfaction in view of many positive feedbacks and staffs showed more initiative to exceed customer needs and wants.

The ‘S.M.A.R.T’ plan that our focus group implemented was indeed a successful one. I was told the frames are still in practice even though majority of us in the focus group was no longer with the company. I too learned a very useful lesson during class in LPM that is by understanding the issue and taking positive action, I can help solve the problem and I can transform the office a place where I  really want to be