1 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 – that wasn’t the problem. It was trying to get things finished! She thought back over her day to try to figure out what happened.
Her day had started before she even got to the office. Her cell phone had rung when she was driving to work. The caller was one of her sales staff who was on his way to a client’s office, but his car had broken down. A car was essential for the sales person’s job and he had an important client visit to make that morning. He had tried to contact the Sales Manager, but he was on a plane and couldn’t answer his phone. 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 car company 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.