Running head: SINK OR SWIM

Sink or Swim

E. Garcia, T. Landeros, R. Balderas

South Texas College

Capstone II

June 22, 2019

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Sink or Swim

Having to make decisions under pressure can be quite a bit to handle, especially if all the

hard work and planning for an event seems to be falling to pieces. This exact scenario had

befallen the Sloan Women in Management (SWIM) club. The annual conference held by SWIM

had become the organizations largest attended event. On February 7, 2013, after 11 months of

planning, the SWIM club encountered a difficult decision (Ankeles, Graham, Pittore, &

Ramamurthy, 2013, p. 1). The club’s third annual conference was scheduled to begin within a

few days, when the weather station reported that a snowstorm was forecasted to hit the New

England area, including Boston--the location of the conference (Ankeles, Graham, Pittore, &

Ramamurthy, 2013, p. 7). SWIM had a decision to make; continuing with or canceling the

conference.

What processes could the organization use to decide how to handle the circumstances that

were transpiring before them? What decisions could they make when the available information

was insufficient? The planners had succeeded in selling 500 tickets, had hit their fundraising

goal, and had confirmed 15 speakers for the conference (Ankeles, Graham, Pittore, &

Ramamurthy, 2013, p. 7). The decision facing the leadership team was not an obvious one; the

club had already gone through many obstacles organizing the annual conference. In order to

prepare for the upcoming situation, they needed to utilize the four essential functions of

management—planning, organizing, leading and controlling.

While some of the speakers and attendees were already on their way to Boston, many

attendees were inquiring whether the team would reschedule the conference; the team began

organizing and weighing the potential ramifications of their final decision. They wondered what

would happen if they did not cancel the conference and MIT ended up closing later in the day .
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SWIM needed to make plans for the different scenarios they would face. What if they did cancel,

MIT did not close, and the storm was not the showstopper it was predicted to be (Ankeles,

Graham, Pittore, & Ramamurthy, 2013, p. 11)? What would be the potential fallout with

attendees and corporate sponsors? Would SWIM’s reputation be impacted if they decided to

cancel the conference? Moreover, how would it affect the bottom line?

Because they had already invested a reasonable amount of time and money into the event,

the leaders would face a difficult decision. The organizers had already sold tickets and booked

conference speakers—some already on their flight to Boston. By leading, the SWIM leaders

began dictating the individual responsibilities to all individuals involved. From the guest

speakers to the ticket purchasers, the leaders decided to let everyone involved know that the

event was to continue. However, once they had already sent emails to all the participants, news

about the storm began to worsen. The attendees began to send emails, asking if and when they

were getting refunded (Ankeles, Graham, Pittore, & Ramamurthy, 2013, p. 8).

Thirty-six hours till the event day and they are already receiving emails from attendees

asking for postponement and cancellation options; now was the time to manage the situation.

The members decided it was best not to notify the parties involved, about the situation. The team

also decided to hold off on printing the 500 nametags they needed for the next morning but

decided to notify the vendors that everything was going to move forward as planned, even if they

did not know yet if the conference was going to commence or not (Ankeles, Graham, Pittore, &

Ramamurthy, 2013, pp. 9-10). SWIM would need to come up with a contingency plan for the

probable storm; The impending storm was not a certainty. With four days to spare, all the pieces

of the conference-planning puzzle had come together.

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SWIM had a huge decision to make; to either cancel the conference due to the

approaching snowstorm, even though there was no cloud or snow to be seen or continue with the

conference. Another obstacle, with graduation coming around the corner, there would be no way

to reschedule the conference again if canceled. Twenty-four hours before the conference, the

leaders from SWIM held a meeting, at which time multiple contingency scenarios were

discussed, and an email was sent summarizing the meeting and the scenarios (Ankeles, Graham,

Pittore, & Ramamurthy, 2013, pp. 9-11). With limited time to decide which scenario would be

better for the club, they weighed choices that would affect the organization; either positively or

negatively. Whatever decision they made it would have a long-lasting impact on the organization

and event.

The SWIM organization had to choose one of three options: cancel everything to save

operational costs, hold a half day with concurrent speakers, or wait last minute to decide based

on the forecast (Ankeles, Graham, Pittore, & Ramamurthy, 2013, p. 11). While they muddled

over their options, the planning team could not help but keep in mind that the conference

revolved around the theme of coming to the brink of failure and still finding a way to succeed.

How can the SWIM organization function when facilitating a productive discussion

under duress when there is no single decision maker? Because of the possibility of diverse

personality types and learning styles within the club, this can impact team dynamics. Within

organizations, good leaders must build great teams by creating one shared purpose and be able to

achieve the same goal; members must learn about teamwork as this is the structure within which

an organization’s work is accomplished (McKee, 2014). For example, SWIM organized

members into different committees: speaker recruitment, marketing, operations, and sponsorship.
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By creating a sense of personal identity within each group, they were able to achieve their team’s

goal, which individually they knew could not happen on their own (Ankeles, 2013).

Knowledge-intensive work can be cognitively difficult and complicated, especially when

individuals have to rapidly shift their frame of reference in order to truly understand an evolving

situation such as the weather predicament (Ankeles, 2013). The SWIM organization committee

members changing dispositions toward cognitive engagement may explain why some are more

likely than others to seek out different inputs to challenge and transform their mental models.

Those who enjoy thinking about problems, are tolerant of differences in opinions, and are willing

to try to see problems from multiple perspectives and are more likely to solicit others’ potentially

divergent ideas. (Butler, 2015).

Status is significant when it comes to leading teams. High-status members can directly

influence the outcome of group activities and processes, such as communication and conflict. On

the other hand, low-status members have less influence, weaker efforts, are less direct, and often

less effective (McKee, 2014). Staffs’ power in a team can be associated with social status,

providing sources of power through which to influence groups. Positive interdependence

(cooperation) results when students promote and facilitate each other’s efforts to learn (Brewer,

2006). What this means is that groups with no structured interdependence can have significantly

more cognitive interactions than with those having a role or reward interdependence. However,

role interdependence, when used in the current study, participants exhibited more group process

interactions such as in the case of Sink or SWIM; the team’s committee role interdependence

groups focused on managing their task requirements and individual responsibilities, confirming

that employees generally do what they are told to do (Brewer, 2006). With this information, we

conclude that diverse personality types and learning styles can impact team dynamics.
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So how should leaders handle managing people over whom they have no authority?

Today, the business industry requires leaders to influence and inspires people. They accomplish

this by building a long-term commitment with the employees, suppliers, customer relations, and

community in general. In the SWIM club, the speaker recruitment, marketing, operations, and

sponsorship committees all had a successful close (Ankeles, 2013).

Communication in any organization is crucial for effective performance and achieving a

common goal. Future leaders need to be vigilant in behavior and verbal form in order to maintain

the image they want to represent in the organization. Leaders can instill the idea that “we are in it

together” when managing people over whom they have no authority over such as customers,

vendors, or sponsors. Positive politeness is a process of reinforcing shared or mutual values and

seeking common ground (McKee, 2014). By understanding the rules of proper communication,

individuals can interact with others, allowing them to do the same. Effective leaders can manage

the public through positive politeness communication effectively and efficiently.

With all the unforeseeable circumstances, how did the organization manage this issue all

the while upholding the organization’s name? Perhaps by utilizing steps in Lippitt’s Phases of

Change Theory, Fiedler’s Contingency Theory, or a combination of both. Lippitt’s theory is an

extension of Lewin’s Change Theory; however, instead of the three-step model introduced by

Lewin, Lippitt’s utilizes a seven-step theory. His theory focuses on the role and responsibility of

the change rather than the evolution of the change itself. As per Lippitt’s theory, the seven steps

are to:

“Diagnose the problem, assess the motivation and capacity for change, assess the

resources and motivation of the change agent, choose progressive change objects, the role

of the change agents should be selected and clearly understood by all parties so that
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expectations are clear, maintain the change, gradually terminate from the helping

relationship (Kritsonis, 2005, p. 3)”.

The premise of Fiedler’s Theory is that there are too many external and internal

constraints that will alter the leadership style in different given situations. In other words, a

leadership style change contingent with the situation at hand (Flinsch-Rodriguez, 2010).

With the uncertainty of the storm making its way towards Boston, the team had to make a

decision that would affect the organization if they had to cancel the conference. Choosing to

cancel the conference, the SWIM conference team posted the following message on their

Facebook page. “As you can imagine, this was an extremely difficult decision for us to make…it

has become increasingly apparent that it is not safe to have people travel in tomorrow’s predicted

storm, as conditions are expected to worsen throughout the day (Team, 2013)”.

The impact on the leaders, event workers, and most importantly, the organization due to

the approaching snowstorm was an ironic twist for the conference team that had overcome

several trials during the months leading up to the conference. The fallout from the aftermath

could have lasting repercussions if the team did not handle the cancelation properly. Vendors,

caters, speakers, sponsors, and attendees could lose their trust in the SWIM club. Even if the

organization came up negative, the ethical thing would be to return revenues from ticket sales,

compensate the caters and vendors for monies already used to prepare for the event, and return

donations from sponsors. By doing this, the SWIM club would show itself to be a trustworthy

organization. Sponsors, vendors, and attendees would continue to support future conferences.

Even with everything looking bleak for SWIM, there was still a silver lining to the unfortunate

events.
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After they had decided to cancel the event the night before the conference, an associate

director approached the club leaders with the idea of writing a case study about their experience.

This idea provided an opportunity for the leaders to take a negative and turn it into a positive

learning experience. They had put much effort into the event and were not able to see the results

of that work.

Throughout the events the SWIM organization had to overcome, the most obvious and

critical was the conflicting leaderships styles and lack of communication within the team. To be

a great leader, it is the responsibility of the Leaders to provide vision and mission to its staff.

plan continuously, influence the behaviors of others, allow individuals to make mistakes, and

value their creativity. It is obvious that the team was also not adequately prepared for unexpected

obstacles. Initially, they had a good plan set for how they were going to ensure the conference

succeeded, but with constant unforeseen setbacks, they failed to have a contingency plan in

place, until it was to late. Only time will tell if the SWIM organization learned from this

experience.
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References

Ankeles, L., Graham, M., Pittore, R., & Ramamurthy, P. (2013). Sink or SWIM. MITSloan

Management, 1-19.

Brewer, S., & Klien, J. D. (2006). Type of Positive Interdependence and Affiliation Motive in an

Asynchronous, Collaborative Learning Environment. Educational Technology Research

and Development 54(4), 331-354.

Flinsch-Rodriguez, P. (2010, December 26). Contingency Management Theory FAQ. Retrieved

from business.com: https://www.business.com/articles/contingency-management-theory/

Gray, P., Butler, B. S., & Sharma, N. (2015). The Interacting Effects of Distributed Work

Arrangements and Individual Dispositions on Willingness to Engage in Sensemaking

Behaviors. JOURNAL OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND

TECHNOLOGY 66(10), 2085-2097.

Kritsonis, A. &. (2005). Comparison of Change Theories. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF

SCHOLARLY ACADEMIC INTELLECTUAL DIVERSITY 8(1), 1-7.

McKee, A. (2014). Management A Focus on Leaders 2nd edition. Upper Saddle River, New

Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Team, S. C. (2013, Feburary 7). Facebook post. Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of

America.