Question

Please read the following scenario and answer ALL THREE questions (1-3) at the end. You are the project manager of a team of 25 people. Tom from the purchasing department has never been on one of your teams but is considered to be a procurement specialist.

During your one-on-one meeting with Tom, you inform him that you will need 100 pallets of a particularly rare and expensive raw material. You tell Tom to find the supplier with the lowest cost ASAP.  

Ten days later, you receive a panicked call from the inventory control group that 100 pallets of your rare and expensive raw materials have arrived at the dock and must be placed in storage. You are sick to your stomach, as the project budget did not plan for an early shipment, let alone for all of it to be shipped at one time. Upon investigating, you find out that Tom signed the purchased order on your behalf. Ask yourself the following as you answer the questions: Is the message clear, unclear or ambiguous? How was the message or information described by the sender? How was the information received by the receiver? Was feedback necessary on either end?

QUESTIONS:

1. What went wrong?

2. Who was at fault?

3. What could the Project Manager have done to avoid or minimize the situation?

Answer 1

Answer

✓ in the scenario, project manager didn't communicated clearly with the tom(procurement specialist), he it was ambiguous and he didn't inform Tom the time specificity to acquire the raw materials. The sender's message conveyed the urgency of finding the supplier for expensive raw material which made Tom think that manager is in need of materials. The receiver thought that manager want materials as soon as possible without asking any further information. Feedback is really necessary to make the message more clear and avoid any misunderstanding which may cost heavy later on.

1) project manager communicated to the tom about the need of raw material and to find the supplier of certain expensive raw material but, he didn't tell him till when he need to order and receive the delivede. Neither did he asked Tom, nor Tom asked further details about it. This led to the misunderstanding and early delovery of raw material without budget and storage arrangements.

2) the sender and the receiver both are at fault because of miscommunication and misunderstanding, which occurred because of not using feedback mechanism.

3) project manager would have conveyed it in a clear and unambiguous manner by stating the date of procurement and arrangements for the materials so that Tom will not be at any misunderstanding and hurry to fulfill the urgency.