Experience Is Best Defined As the Process Or Fact of Personally Observing, Encountering

Daniel Youse ORGB-300 Prof. Leaning on Experience: An interview with Rob Gedman

Experience is best defined as the process or fact of personally observing, encountering, or undergoing something(“experience”, Dictionary.com). The subject of organizational behavior can be difficult to understand without experience in a wide range of different organizations.

Luckily, experience is transferable and we can benefit from the knowledge of those that have come before us. I chose to interview Rob Gedman, the Director of Operations at Cobham

Defense Electronics Sensor Systems Lansdale, because of his wide range of job experience and current position at Cobham. As the Director of Operations he is still active enough in the daily activities to maintain a finger on the pulse of the organization but also understands the goals of upper management and the direction they are driving the company. In short, he is in an optimum position to gauge and comment on issues related to the organizational behavior. During the interview I asked him questions pertaining to four distinct areas. First, I asked him about his background to gain perspective on the level of experience his observations carried and to establish the range of his experience. Second, I inquired about managerial and business practices he had employed or been exposed to. With this I hoped to understand some of the lessons he has learned during his career and what methods he has found effective. The third focus was stress, anyone that was able to rise to the Director of Operations has had to adapt to a wide range of stressors and found ways to mitigate that stress. Finally I wanted to discuss motivation, both his personal motivation for getting to where he is and the ways he has found to motivate others. As a manager finding ways to motivate employees is key to success and I hoped to learn new ways to approach this. Rob Gedmen started out on an assembly line at Optomax while attending night school to become an electrical engineer. After he obtained his degree he became a laser technician with the same company and was promoted to his first supervisor position. He then moved to Hercules

Aerospace as a Supervisor and Manufacturing Engineer. He then transitioned to a small startup company and filled several roles including Manufacturing Engineer, Technician Supervisor, and

Facilities Manager. Finally, he transitioned to BAE Systems as a Manufacturing Engineer and after a year was promoted to Manufacturing Engineer Manager. Following an organizational realignment that promoted the Operations Director to a higher position at a different location,

Rob was promoted to Director of Operations. The site was then sold by BAE Systems to

Cobham PLC and rebranded Cobham Defense Electronics Sensors Systems Lansdale. Rob has also obtained his degree in Business Management but feels his technical background has helped him the most in advancing his career.

His career has flowed through several companies both big and small. This has exposed him to a wide range of business cultures and managers. When asked about the different cultures he commented that “The bigger the company the more formal it becomes”. He describes how smaller companies have a “squashed” hierarchy and it is common for a normal employee to talk with the owner. While larger originations are stretched out with many levels of management and all communication is formalized. He also alluded to the fact many smaller companies may benefit from what “Organizational Behavior: Essentials for improving Performance and

Commitment” describes as “Affective Commitment” and “Normative Commitment”. The smaller family like culture allows employees to feel connected to a company in ways that are difficult to achieve in larger organizations. His level of exposure to different managerial styles has taught him that the best managers find the environment that allows the worker to succeed. His approach is malleable and changes to conform to the employee. He described one example in which an engineer was extremely technically savvy and his work performance was extremely high when preforming tasks related to his technical expertise. However this employee wasn’t very committed to doing certain kinds of routine paper work and became frustrated as the level of daily hassles increased. After this employee’s performance started to suffer Rob made a commitment to finding ways to mitigate the level of routine paperwork this employee faced and allowed him to refocus himself on his passion. This move was in line with the company’s goal of staying on the leading technological edge in the industry. He described how the employee’s performance at the company almost immediately turned around and he has been a high performer while staying committed to company ever since. This type of managing by adapting the environment so that employees succeed follows in line with the study summarized on page 61 of “Organizational Behavior”.

The study indicates that actual work itself is the largest contributor to job satisfaction. Rob’s use of the Value-Percept Theory in his strategy plays right into ensuring employees are satisfied and enables them to perform at a higher level. He also admits that few examples are as cut and dry as the one he described but often only a little change to a working environment will go a long way toward pleasing frustrated employees.

While reducing the stress of employees should be a goal for any manager, reducing personal stress is essential to your own performance. Rob’s admitted that stress is part of his current role as the Director of Operations. He described his “whirlwind of the daily tasks” and how he focuses on organizing the tasks in so that he can complete as many as possible. He very accurately labeled this practice “Triage”. A part of this process he felt was essential was letting people know the things you won’t get to stating, “As you long as you tell someone I can’t help you today … just that little bit (of communication) people tend to be understanding.” Rob was mainly referring to the work responsibility stressors that come along with his current job and also stated that “the work will never end”. This statement conferred to me that he has accepted the stress as part of his daily job. This acceptance itself has been a coping mechanism allowing him to approach work as it comes and not get overwhelmed.

While stress is an important part of Rob’s current role I was also interest in what drove him to rise to where he is now. Rob attributes this drive to his personal confidence in his abilities. “You get involved where you think you can do it better... in the work place when you look at how someone is doing something and say I can do better than that.” He didn’t originally aspire to be the Director of Operations but through constant evaluations on how he could improve on the work currently being done he distinguished himself. Obviously this mindset isn’t universal but helps differentiate people that truly want to improve. Rob also believes motivation is a personal thing. You need both progressively minded people and people that can be relied on to be happy doing their daily jobs. When approaching the motivations of his employees he believes the single most important motivator is what he calls “empowerment”. “Employees need to know their inputs are heard, they’re evaluated, they’re included and they have the ability to change things and make some decisions.” He also pointed out that people that are treated as machines to be utilized tend to “check out”. Rob then pointed out one of the most interesting observations of the interview, lean environment doesn’t foster creativity. Standardizing and marginalizing employees into functions, that you give inputs and they produce outputs, can lead to those employees feeling constrained. One way to help the situation is to include these workers when forming the standard work practices so they don’t feel like something is being forced on them. This conflict of cultures is something that businesses face when they implement a rigid standardized work place.

In summary the interview with Rob Gedman was very enlightening about several different organizational areas. His broad range of experience adds weight to his observations and inferences about business culture. I enjoyed learning about his malleable approach to management focusing on elevating the environment for the employee so they can succeed. He understands that he, as a manager, doesn’t succeed , I did appreciate his ideas about mitigating stressors as best you can while accepting what you can’t accomplish. Finally, I believe his personal motivation lies very close to my own. The need to contribute what he believes he can do better has driven him to a very successful career. I am sure I can build upon Rob’s experience as

I start out on a career of my own. Works Cited

Bardes, Mary. Organizational Behavior. Philadelphia: McGraw Hill, 2011. Print.

"experience." Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 14 May. 2012. .

Gedman, Rob. Personal Interview. 8 May 2012.