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Introduction

Influence Paper 1 Critical Thinking Styles and Forces of Influence Paper MGT 350/Critical Thinking July 22, 2002 Influence Paper 2 Abstract South West Business Corporation (SWBC) is a privately owned company whose home office is located in San Antonio, Texas with a regional office in Orange, California. SWBC has been in business since May. 1976. SWBC provides financial services to financial institutions, credit unions in particular. The Orange, California office specializes in the Risk Management area of lending for Auto and Mortgage collateralized loans. The California office has an identical Risk Management Service Center like the home office in San Antonio, Texas. However, the styles and titles of management are different due to geographical location, gender, culture, and race. The Auto Risk Management Department in Orange, formerly know as the Collateral Protection Insurance (CPI) Department, consists if sixteen in-house Customer Service Representative, three Senior Customer Service Representatives, three Field Customer Service Representatives, one CPI Service Center Trainer, one CPI Services Supervisor, one CPI Services Manager who reports to the Senior Vice President of Operations. The problem is to correct the deteriorating phone stats of the Auto Risk Management Department from the Orange, California as compared to the San Antonio, Texas Service Center as described by the Senior Management from both the home office and Orange regional office. The Manager of the Auto Risk Management Department was given one week to review the concerns of Senior Management and propose some changes Influence Paper 3 ...read more.

Middle

The main issue was a staffing and training problem. The staffing and training problem was easily solved by the promotion one of the Senior CSR who had been with the department and company for over five years to CPI Services Trainer. She felt training and development of new and existing employees was necessary for your department to be successful. She was loyal and would be represent the company in the best light. Plus, she felt the training and development not only of existing employees was key, but especially of the new employees. She felt if she could get them excited about the position, clearly explain and review the departmental goals she could influence the morale and team building of the department. This would help in times of high stress due to work load and incoming calls she felt the department could come together and help each other out. The trainer has the support of the management team and so far in the short time (2 months) has gained the respect of the department and has contributed to team building. The manager had to work in re-organizing the department without an additional to staff. That meant placing people by their strengths. The department originally had 18 customer service representative taking incoming calls and making our going calls. One CSR was assigned to calling out only. ...read more.

Conclusion

SWBC come into the office everyday, plus all the other financial services divisions such as Mechanical Breakdown Insurance, Credit, Life and Disability, and Human Resources, etc. There are heavy politics and jocking for position at the home office. The Orange is faster paced and some politics, but not a great deal. Also, with the distance between the two office it can be an "out of sight, out of mind" situation. I have found in order for any major project to take off or change in the CPI CSR Department Senior Management needs to buy into to and the CSR's need to too. The main objective when discussing a change is to some how make it a "win-win" situation and get feedback from the department. They may be able to shed light on day-to-day functions a manager may have overlooked. Also, I feel anyone in Management needs to ask questions and do their due diligence with some fact-finding to clear away the menagerie of useless information. In our office we have had managers who " fly by the seat of their pants" and managers who are assertive, compliant, and researched pending issues before making a rash decision. The latter seems to be the most successful. Due to the cultural and gender difference between the two offices it has been the experience of the CPI Manager to take copious notes during meeting and be patient. Once the egos are massaged the real issues tend to surface. ...read more.

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