Module 3: Problem Solving and the Decision-Making Process

I currently work for Direct Radiology, LLC (http://www.directradiology.com/), a pretty awesome teleradiology company based out of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. For the past two years our company has experienced exponential growth, which has definitely brought along some growing pains as the small numbers of staff and loose policies we started with were no longer cutting it with the amount of work that needed to be done and the need to segment into dedicated departments and roles to better handle the workload.

Specifically, When the growth really started to get significantly under way the department I was in at the time had very loosely defined roles and people just stepped up and did what was needed when it ws needed, there was no specialization. Suddenly, that method was no longer working as we fielded more client calls, more outgoing calls for critical results, increasingly exam volumes and tighter turn-around times, as well as more technical issues from the sheer volume of customers. Dan, our department manager quickly saw that there was a problem as the quality begin to dip and things were beginning to get sloppy. He recognized something had to be done very quickly before we reversed the growth trend by not being able to provide the high level of service we normally could to our clients, accomplishing the first step of the problem-solving process (McShane & Von Glinow, 2016, p. 108). We had a meeting where we discussed the problem and did an informal root-cause analysis, consistent with the process noted in this week’s lecture. After we realized that the lack of structure was now hurting us as a department we talked about how to address it, and coming to a consensus as a department that it was time to specialize, while maintaining the ability to perform all tasks, by implementing a rotation through the basic areas of our department. This accomplished two things: we could fill in for one another on sick days etc, and we were able to specialize during our shifts to deliver better service to our clients. As time went on we tweaked the system as needed, but the change immediately reversed the negative trend we had briefly encountered. By involving us in the diagnosis and decision, Dan was in line with Borkowsky’s (2011) assertion that seeking the input of others while looking for root causes and generating alternatives is important to successful problem solving (p. 270). The selection step was carried out as a group as well, and implementation quickly followed as the meeting ended, with Dan analyzing the results and adjusting after the fact (McShane & Von Glinow, 2016).

Borkowski, N. (2011). Organizational Behavior in Health Care. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

McShane, S. L., & Von Glinow, M. A. (2016). Organizational Behavior. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.