Organizational Change

During the summers of 2016 and 2017 I was a lifeguard at a small, private club in my hometown. This place has a pool, a clubhouse, a playground, a large field and nine tennis courts. The club had recently introduced a new Manager, parting ways with the guy who had been there for at least ten, or even twenty years (I can't exactly remember). The Assistant Manager, at the time, did not change, as she remained under the new manager for the next two summers (the assistant had also been there for around fifteen years).

For this blog's sake I will call the new manager Mike and the assistant manager Katie. Mike and Katie had very differing personalities, and the fit was already a little awkward since she was working under someone who did not hire her. Mike is a very nice, outgoing, positive personality who is always putting the employees' needs first. The two summers that they worked together, there were always moments of friction when they didn't agree (which was more of Katie not adjusting to Mike's attempts at establishing a different workplace culture).

There were some costs involved with this transition. The members had to adjust to Mike being the new manager, Mike's personality constantly led to some important items being overlooked, and the staff had to figure out how to satisfy both of the parties wishes - which conflicted on some occasions. Once Katie decided to retire, instead of opting for another professional-level assistant manager, they hired me and one other lifeguard to fill her role. My experience within this organization has been positive the majority of the time, and I have gotten to experience multiple positions within it. 

Comments

  1. Professor ArvanSeptember 14, 2019 at 2:24 PM

    Lengthwise this post is kind of skimpy. I did a word count on it. It is under 300 words. The minimum requirement is 600 words. In future posts please write more and go into more depth.

    In particular, in this piece you didn't talk at all about what you did as a lifeguard. This is relevant mainly for how you observed (or didn't, you hear it second hand) Mike and Katie. You also didn't talk at all about who hired you. Was it one of them or did the owners do that? So were you a neutral party reporting your observations here or did you have your own biased as a consequence of who hired you?

    It would also have been good to talk about the scope of work for the manager and assistant manger - first as specified in the job descriptions - then as it played out in fact.

    Then it would help me to understand the timeline from where you started the sentence, "Once Katie decided to retire...." Are you now talking about summer 2018 or still summer 2017. I really couldn't tell from what you said. I gather you didn't work there this past summer. Why was that?

    Let me also say that I don't quite understand places that rely on college student help, but stay open for a while after the U of I begins in August. It's still summer then (and it still is now). Do they have enough high school kids to fill in? Some of that would be useful to know, so how many staff in total might have been part of the discussion.

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    1. George Stigler Econ 490 fall 2019September 16, 2019 at 5:35 PM

      Apologies for the insubstantial post, I will adhere to the word count in future posts. I will try to elaborate a little more here. Day-to-day lifeguard duties included a 45 minute rotation watching the pool and various maintenance and cleaning tasks throughout the day (with breaks in between). I observed the conflict between the two first-hand performing some of these duties. I had been working there one summer prior as a swim coach, so it was Mike who actually brought me in as a lifeguard. However, my family used to be members at the club (when Katie was there earlier), so I knew her as well. I was actually one of the few people that she liked. Therefore, it was extremely tough for me to have a bias, so I tried to stay as neutral as possible. Katie retired after the summer of 2017. The two years moving forward (2018 and 2019) I took her place (with another person). The majority of the lifeguard staff is high school students, which allows the club to stay open during the academic year when the few college kids have to return.

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