Week 9-5 Keys to Creative Idea Generation

Chapter 11 page 335 talks about keys to creative idea generation. From my personal experiences in projects i worked on at school or work we had the best results when every one is involved in the process. The best approach that worked for us is for every one in the team to come up ideas (its a requirement not a option), discuss each ones ideas, spend a considerable amount of time on discussion. Most of the time the discussion will bring up things that none of the team members thought of before the meeting, most of the time the team used to end up with a plan that was not close any one of the team members initial ideas but was very concrete and clear.
This discussion and brainstorming is useful only when everyone participates and comes to discussion with their ideas and suggestions.

Week 9-4 Change

Chapter 11 talks about Change and challenges that come with it. I think change is difficult for a lot of people to adjust to.
I do not like changes, if something is working good or some thing is in some place for a long time, I have great difficulty in changing them.
In organizations when changes are done people tend to compare them with the things or process they were used to before and normally feel the old one is better as they learned to use it or get accustomed.
In our company, a year back we changed all the phone infrastructure from traditional phone lines to VoIP phones. Before to change there were a lot of complaints about the existing system and people are not happy with it. But when the new system was introduced even small issues are considered serious and users would complain the previous one was better. But the reality is a lot of features they are complaining about were not even there in the old system. But as they get comfortable with it they will accept it. I think change needs time to be accepted and messages about change should come with very positive energy and enthusiasm so that people can feel that energy. If we can convince people that the change is for good I think it will be easier to gain acceptance.

Week 9-3 Social Support

Chapter 10 page 300 takes about various functions of social support. Emotional Support Involves the provision of messages of care and regard for the other person. Informational support involves offering facts, opinions, and advice on matters of concern. Instrumental and material support involves the provision of tangible resources. Appraisal support involves evaluative message that encourage an individual to continue performing well.

From my work experiences I feel that I always had good emotional support from other people at work and are good at this. Instrumental and material support is also acceptable and is provided if asked for. One thing that clearly lacks is informational support. When I started working I was really surprised to see in meeting etc when someone raised concerns about issues they were facing with certain things, people would just keep quiet and do not say anything. But when my manager assigned some one to help me or anyone with that then i could clearly see that they knew the problem and the solution but were just not trying to help on their own unless they are asked for. When I was in school doing my undergrad this never used to be case, people around you would always volunteer to share information if they knew the solution. Even when asked for feedback unless managers force people to do it with in a certain time normally no one would really care about providing feedback which is really important.

Week 9-2 Negotiation Strategies

I was reading this article "World Class Negotiating Strategies" by Frank L.Acuff. The article presents 10 strategies and explains in deal how to handle each one of those. I wanted share this information as I felt the article was very informative and useful.

Ten Negotiating Strategies that will work anywhere

Strategy 1: Plan the Negotiation
Strategy 2: Adopt a win-win approach
Strategy 3: Maintain High Aspirations
Strategy 4: Use language that is simple and accessible
Strategy 5: Ask lot of questions, then listen with your eyes and ears
Strategy 6: Build Strong Relationships
Strategy 7: Maintain Personal Integrity
Strategy 8: Conserve Concessions
Strategy 9: Make Patience an obsession
Strategy 10: Be culturally literate and adapt the negotiating process to the host country environment.

Week 9-1 Conflict Handling Modes

The five conflict-handling modes discussed on page 290 are based on a person’s strategic intentions along two axes: (Source: K.W.Thomas, "Toward Multi-Dimensional Values in Teaching: The example of Conflict Behaviors (1977)"

a. Assertiveness-desire to satisfy one’s own concerns.

b. Cooperativeness-desire to satisfy the concerns of the other party.

Below are some of the appropriate situations for the Five Strategic Intentions presented by K.W.Thomas

The five conflict-handling modes are:

1. Competition

- When quick, decisive action is vital

- Against people who take advantage of noncompetitive behavior

2. Avoidance

- When an issue is trivial, or more important issues are pressing

- When others can resolve conflict more effectively

- When potential disruption outweighs the benefits of resolution

3. Accommodation

- When you find you are wrong-- to allow a better position to be heard, to learn, and to show your reasonableness

- To minimize loss when you are outmatched and losing

- When harmony and stability are especially important

4. Compromise

- When goals are important, but not worth the effort or potential disruption of more assertive modes.

- To achieve temporary settlements to complex issues

- As a backup when collaboration or competition is unsuccessful

5. Collaboration

- When your objective is to learn

- To merge insights from people with different perspectives

- To work through feelings that have interfered with a relationship.

Week 8-5 Systems of Control In Organization

Chapter 9 page 263 discusses about Systems of Control in Organizations and ideal types for it.

1. Simple: Supervision is direct, personal, and arbitrary, and monitoring of work processes is also direct and personal.
2. Technical: Supervision is mostly indirect, impersonal and highly standardized.
3. Bureaucratic: Supervision exists in variety of forms, but is chiefly done through implementation of rules, regulations, standards, procedures, and policies.
4. Concertive: Self Supervision, employee empowerment, and team-based peer supervision are encouraged within a broader mission or vision and within parameters set by top management.

The last one as the textbook mentions is similar to what most high-tech companies follow with some adjustments.

Week 8-4 With Power Comes Responisbility

I guess most of us know where we heard "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility". This is one of the statements that I really like. Any kind of power if properly used will help any organization. For example, In some countries where corruption is a big issue people with power use it to exploit people and make money. In those situations they are not responsible with the power they have and are misusing it. Also, people with power should try to analyze how they need to communicate and Box 9.1 on page 247 gives very nice explanation of this. In some situations persuasion might be better and in some others you might need to be authoritative

Week 8-3 Deming' 14 Points

Page 221 in Chapter 8 list the Deming's 14 points for Total Quality Management (TQM). One of the points is to Break down barriers between departments. This is one thing we hear about almost everyday. Issues between Sales and Marketing etc., I see some companies now trying to integrate the different with issues into one like Sales & Marketing so that the management chain has control over both functions and can try to achieve better communication between the teams. Another interesting that happened few years back in our company was IT was made part of Finance group which when i told people they were surprised. But this decision was made because they can have the finanical expertise working closely with the IT experstise as lot of money is spent every year over IT infrsturcture and projects.

Week 8-2 Employee Participation

In Chapter 12, page 219, authors present three main categories of management-sponsored programs.
1. Employee participation as problem-solving or decision-making groups that are to some extent outside of or beyond regular work activities.
2. Employee participation as a restructuring of work processes and activities, using self-directed or semi-autonomous work teams.
3. Employee ownership as economic investment in and/or overall governance of the organization.

I think the first approach is more suitable for Japanese culture, where spending lot of time at work and time with co-workers after time is common. In Silicon Valley, I think the third approach is widely seen where employees are commonly involved in stock plans, Incentives linked to companies performance etc.,

Week 8-1 Teamwork

In Chapter 8 page 214, authors talk about how terms like "Teamwork" means something very different in Japan than in the United States, in Sweden than in Israel. This is the exact issue that makes teamwork more important in United States. The definition of these terms and understanding is developed from a persons culture. In United States there are people from different countries especially in fields like Computers. This makes is really challenging to instill the sense of these terms as the meaning associated by various people is different. But by trying to clear explanation and written expectations of what the words mean in a particular organization the task will become easier for employees as they can then try to follow the instructions and adapt and understand.

Week 7.5 The Human Touch

In Chapter 7 box 7.9 talks person-centered organizational principles:

1. Pay attention to "golden gripes". The things people complain about the most are the most important to them, and they often have great ideas about how to fix those problems.
2. Encourage open communication between associates at all levels of the organization.
3. Provide all associates with access to leadership.
4. Promote an honest, open, humane culture.
5. Support employees personal and family lives and needs.

Often in organizations, when people go and complain about somethings a lot of managers i knew would say they would look into it or something. They normally never used to ask for their suggestions on how to fix it.

In some organization, they have a open door policy where if the door to a manager or senior executive is open then people can go in and talk to them if they have something to discuss.

Week 7.4 Life-Cycle Model of Leadership

Chapter 7 Page 191 talks about Hersey & Blanchard's Life-Cycle Model of Leadership. They say that Leadership Style is the pattern of influence behaviors used, especially directive (task behavior) and supportive (relationship behavior).

The initial stages in learning involve more of the directive style and the directive behavior is gradually reduced as the person gains skill and confidence, and supportive behavior is increased to encourage the person. Supportive behavior is reduced as the person gains confidence to work their own. For someone at high maturity level they recommend delegating style.

I think the most difficult and important task for leaders in this approach is to understand in which stage the people he is leading are in. For example, a kid might know how to do their math homework and just need guidance when they ask questions, but parents might still try to sit with them and guide through each step as they did when the were learning the initial numbers. I think the challenge is to understand that which is difficult when you are not looking from outside.

Week 7.3 Communicative Characteristics of Effective Supervisors

In Chapter 6 Page 153, authors talk about Charles Redding's studies. Redding Concluded that more competent supervisors are:
1. Communications Minded.
2. Empathic Listeners
3. Persuasive
4. Sensitive
5. Open

I think the above are very important, and from my personal experiences I have a supervisor who is normally very silent and man of few words but in meetings and discussions he is very involved. He is very patient in listening and I feel people who talk while others are talking or cannot wait to put their point across are not good listeners. They are more interested in sharing their own opinion rather than trying to be part of discussion. I clearly observe this in class discussions when people repeat the same point that some one else already mentioned and was discussed in length. They concentrate all their energies in getting their point out and do not concentrate on the discussion. People who listen have a lot of questions and normally are clearly understood when they ask something.

Week 7.2 Relational Dialectics

In Chapter 6 page 146 discusses relational dialectics and types of it like connection-autonomy,
openness-closeness, novelty-predictability, equality-inequality, instrumentality-affection and impartiality-favoritism.

The authors explained openness-closeness as the desire to allow information to be disclosed or free flowing versus the desire to maintain privacy. Sometimes at work we get requests for information that are very cryptic and raises a lot of questions in the minds of the team members. Recently, we are asked to provide the list of tasks we own and we work on regularly, describing our duties and responsibilities. This raised a lot of rumors in the team about a possible reorganization etc., The reason for this was when we were asked for such information last time there was a reorganization that followed it soon. To clear the issue after a week we asked the manager in the team meeting why he requested that information. The reason was so that he can enter the tasks in the new time sheet portal we have, he was planning to enter them so that we can enter time cards easily. If he mentioned this in the email when he requested information there would have been no unnecessary discussions about it. I think openness in communication is very important when there are chances for assumptions.

Week 7.1 Work Place Relationships

In Chapter 6 authors present a scenario of a relationship being build between a customer and the store manager. They talk about "moment of truth" which creates a lasting impression of the Organization.

The way the store manager interacted with the customer is very nice and definitely helped her make the sale. But from my personal experience the more important thing is to make sure the lasting impression is not a negative one. I normally do not remember the stores where I had good experience and service, there everything was good so normally I do not make a conscious effort to go back to the same store but they have equal chance of me buying at the store like any other store. But if had bad experience with service in a particular store I tend to remember that avoid those stores in future. I normally do not go back. I think negative things have more impact on us than positives.

Week 6.5 Socialization

In Chapter 4 authors talk about socialization in organizations and how new members socialize. They break down work-specific socialization into three stages. The anticipatory stage which happens before we join the organization, the encounter stage in which newcomers learn from their day-to-day tasks and experiences and finally the metamorphosis stage in which the newcomer seeks to become an accepted and participating member of the organization by learning and adapting to the organization's expectations.

In our company whenever someone new joins the managers normally send out an email to all the extended team members. (In my case people who work in engineering side of IT) This makes everyone aware that there is a new person and they normally look his photo etc on the internal site. This helps that person in communicating with others and become part of the group. Most people will introduce themselves when they run into him.

I think this is very important thing to follow. When I Joined my manager then did not send the e-mail and I had a very difficult time knowing people in the group. As most people do not know who i was and in my culture in India people do not introduce themselves to somebody, but is done normally by someone who knows both the persons.

When i changed the group, the person that was hired in my place who i used to work with a transitioning work was facing a similar situation as the manager again did not send that introduction e-mail. I took the initiative and introduced him to most people in person and i can clearly see that it helped him.

Managers should try to help the newcomers by introducing them to at least the people with whom they work routinely.

Week 6.4 Struggling Just to be Heard

In Chapter 5 authors talk about Struggling Just to be Heard. That talk about how Avis positioned itself by saying " We're #2. We try harder". This marketing strategy acknowledges that they are not the best and clearly communicates the message they are trying to be better. For a lot of companies today when I see their advertisements, I get confused whether they are trying to promote their product or just compare and talk badly about their competitor. In my opinion the slogans we pick or advertisements we do should more about our company or product and should be unique rather than being imitations or modifications of our competitors strategies.

Week 6.3 Organizational Identification

In Chapter 5 authors talk about Organizational identification. I think Organizational identification becomes our personal identification if we really are attached to the organization and are proud of the place. This also becomes much easier when the organizations are big and easily recognized by others. A lot of people who work for IBM or Google normally would answer to a question like what do you do by saying they work Google, not mentioning much details about what they do at Google etc., Some people would say something like i was as "something" at some company. For them may be they identify themselves with the work or the work they do rather than the Organization.

Week 6.2 Work Ethic and Being Busy

In Chapter 4 the authors say that the work ethic also shapes our very idea of what it means to be busy. Few years back one of co-workers gave me a book about "Time Management for System Administrators" by Thomas A. Limoncelli. This book helped me understand how as a System Administrator I can manage time. As System Admins, we get interrupted by phone calls from customers, someone looking for information, an important ticket, or unexpected outages etc., and it is very difficult to have 3-4 hours of continuous uninterrupted time. I used to write post notes and paste them all over my desk to remember things, my thinking was by doing that I will not get distracted from the task i am doing then. Now I categorize things, I look at the task and if it takes less than 10 minutes i will do that then itself as I am already distracted and posting a note will keep distracting me until it is done. For tasks that take longer i look at my schedule and make an appointment so that at that time i can get it finished. This helped me get more organized.