Project Paper

For the final project in this course, you will develop an executive summary presentation with speaker notes. Imagine that you are a human resource professional in an organization that is struggling with a conflict regarding a critical strategic project. Leaders in the organization are looking to you to assess the conflict, determine what the key issues are, and recommend an action plan to resolve it. Organizational managers, and especially human resource professionals, need to develop a mindset that sees organizational conflict as a naturally occurring, expected event in any organization. Conflict brings attention to “pinch points” in organizations and needs to be perceived as an opportunity for improvement, not as a distraction to the job at hand. This course introduces key concepts of organizational conflict in this context, and provides you with some common industry tools and templates you will use as you seek to understand the root causes of a conflict and develop action plans to address them. In this project, you will use organizational tools associated with the define, measure, analyze, improve, and control (DMAIC) process, a Six Sigma problem-solving methodology that many organizations use to solve a variety of issues. By following the rudimentary elements of the DMAIC process, you will define the problem, measure its impact on the organization, analyze the issue in order to assess how best to resolve it, develop recommendations to improve the situation (propose a solution), and suggest an ongoing process to ensure the proposed solution controls the issue, preventing a flare-up or reoccurrence of the original issue. The project is divided into three milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Three, Five, and Seven. The final product will be submitted in Module Nine. In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:  Analyze conflicts involving organizational culture for determining the root causes of dissonance between organizational values and the individual values of its members  Propose data-driven processes that determine critical variables present in conflicts between employees for addressing organizational conflict situations  Develop evidence-based strategies for addressing future conflicts involving organizational culture  Assess the effectiveness of organizational leadership for informing organizational leaders on how to increase employee engagement, foster collaboration, and build effective teams  Develop appropriate gap-analysis strategies for assessing the congruence of ethical, moral, and legal variables present in conflict situations between employees and organizational values For your project, you will choose one of the case studies provided—Final Project Case Study One or Final Project Case Study Two—and develop an executive summary presentation with speaker notes and citations based on the case study. In your presentation, you will analyze the case study, determine the cause of the conflict, recommend corrective actions to resolve the conflict, and make recommendations to avoid similar conflicts in the future. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed: I. Defining Goals: In this section, you will summarize the desired resolution to the conflict in the case study based on your knowledge of the organization’s business goals, customer needs, and the process that needs to improve. A. Construct a problem statement that clearly articulates the personnel conflict that has arisen. Be sure to consider the project scope and futurestate goal in contextualizing the conflict. B. Complete a stakeholder analysis, identifying the key stakeholders that are involved in or affected by the current situation and future-state goal as articulated in the problem statement. C. Develop a high-level suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers (SIPOC) process map, identifying the quantitative and qualitative variables that are likely to contribute to the conflict. II. Measuring Performance: In this section, you will create a process to gather data on the current situation. A. Propose a process to effectively collect data on the identified variables (from the SIPOC analysis) and appropriately evaluate it. B. Construct an Ishikawa diagram (fishbone diagram) of the variables that contribute to the conflict, selecting the critical variables that require further analysis. C. Describe the role of these critical variables in developing corrective changes to address the conflict in the problem statement. III. Analysis: In this section, you will begin to create a picture of what the future state will look like, focusing on the proposed solution. A. Determine the root causes of the conflict by assessing the variables you identified and the information provided in the case study. B. Construct questions you would ask of the stakeholders (voice of customer) if this were a live situation to pressure test your initial assessment of the probable root causes. C. Using the “Five Whys” process, construct additional questions you anticipate needing to ask as stakeholders answer your initial question. IV. Improve: The goal of this section is to demonstrate that the solutions you propose should resolve the organizational conflict in the case study, leading to an improved future state. A. Recommend appropriate corrective actions to address the previously determined root causes of the conflict. B. Propose quantifiable metrics that could measure progress in implementing the recommended corrective actions. C. Identify potential areas of resistance to the recommended corrective actions, providing recommendations to reduce such resistance. D. Assess the effectiveness of various leadership styles on employee engagement and employee empowerment in the case study. E. Determine how an effective team-building process could have prevented some of the issues with the dysfunctional team in the case study. You might consider team-building models like Drexler/Sibbet or Tuckman. F. Recommend effective leadership styles and team-building processes that organizational leadership could use to promote increased employee engagement and foster collaboration moving forward. V. Controls: This section will recommend methods that should help ensure the proposed solution resolves the defined problem now and in the future. A. Describe how you would address ethical, cultural, and legal variables that present challenges when working with team members from different backgrounds and different geographic regions. Support your response with relevant examples. B. Explain how organizational values can be identified, validated, and codified to reduce the potential for organizational dissonance. C. Develop an appropriate gap-analysis strategy to periodically assess the congruence, or lack thereof, between an organization’s espoused values and its enacted values. Be sure to consider the ethical, cultural, and legal variables in the development of your gap-analysis strategy. Milestones Milestone One: Defining Goals In Module Three, you will take what you have learned about Define and begin your work on your selected case study, establishing the Define phase of the DMAIC process. This milestone is graded with the Milestone One Rubric. Milestone Two: Measuring and Analyzing Conflict In Module Five, you will provide the Measure and Analyze phases of the DMAIC process and apply them to your selected case study. You will first measure performance by creating a process to gather data on the current situation and then begin to create a picture of what the future state will look like, focusing on the proposed solution. This milestone is graded with the Milestone Two Rubric. Milestone Three: The Improve Phase—The Path to Solving Conflict In Module Seven, you will submit a draft of the Improve phase for your selected case study. It should focus on your Improve recommendations, while also probing those recommendations for unwanted consequences. This milestone is graded with the Milestone Three Rubric. Final Submission: Executive Summary Presentation With Speaker Notes In Module Nine, you will submit your final presentation. It should contain your compilation of your learning, incorporating all instructor feedback on your three previous milestones and showcasing the DMAIC process for your selected case study. It should be a complete, polished artifact containing all of the critical elements of the final product. It should reflect the incorporation of feedback gained throughout the course. This submission will be graded using the Final Project Rubric. Guidelines for Submission: Your executive summary presentation should be 10 to 12 slides in length, accompanied by speaker notes. It should be of professional quality. Use APA formatting and citations.