Case Study Outline of Cerner Corporation
A. The first sign of communication problems surfaced at Cerner corporation on March 13th, 2000
• The CEO, Neal L. Patterson sent a memo to the entire corporation with extremely hard remarks
• The CEO did not consider the fact that this memo can be leaked to outside worlds if sent to entire corporate
• The CEO did not consider the impact of his message on the all different kinds of employees that the company has
B. The message sent by CEO has no objective
• The message should have been discussed with senior management first
• There are other better ways to motivate the employees rather than bluntly accusing them of not working the full 40 hours and making them defensive
• The CEO needed to find out what issues were caused to the company if the parking lot was not full at those given times and highlight them in the message
• Similarly, the CEO needed to identify the benefits to employees in terms of increased productivity, reduced surprises of completing the work for the day and highlight them in the memo
C. Suggestions for the CEO
• Need to analyze who the organization’s constituencies are; what each constituency thinks about the organization; what each knows about the communication in question
• The CEO needs to define the corporate communication strategy a Perform the constituency analysis b Identify the right channel to communicate c Identify the right objective for his message d Identify what he wants the employees to do as a reaction to his message e Monitor the feedback
• Analyze the identity of the organization f What perception of the company has been formed by the employees g Is this perception contributing to the issues mentioned in Neal Patterson’s memo? h Is the perception different from reality?
• Analyze the image of the organization i reflection of the organization identity as seen from the viewpoint of the constituencies j Can get a sense of the image in employees by conducting research and survey k Image can vary however
• The CEO, Neal L. Patterson sent a memo to the entire corporation with extremely hard remarks
• The CEO did not consider the fact that this memo can be leaked to outside worlds if sent to entire corporate
• The CEO did not consider the impact of his message on the all different kinds of employees that the company has
B. The message sent by CEO has no objective
• The message should have been discussed with senior management first
• There are other better ways to motivate the employees rather than bluntly accusing them of not working the full 40 hours and making them defensive
• The CEO needed to find out what issues were caused to the company if the parking lot was not full at those given times and highlight them in the message
• Similarly, the CEO needed to identify the benefits to employees in terms of increased productivity, reduced surprises of completing the work for the day and highlight them in the memo
C. Suggestions for the CEO
• Need to analyze who the organization’s constituencies are; what each constituency thinks about the organization; what each knows about the communication in question
• The CEO needs to define the corporate communication strategy a Perform the constituency analysis b Identify the right channel to communicate c Identify the right objective for his message d Identify what he wants the employees to do as a reaction to his message e Monitor the feedback
• Analyze the identity of the organization f What perception of the company has been formed by the employees g Is this perception contributing to the issues mentioned in Neal Patterson’s memo? h Is the perception different from reality?
• Analyze the image of the organization i reflection of the organization identity as seen from the viewpoint of the constituencies j Can get a sense of the image in employees by conducting research and survey k Image can vary however