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A630.5.4.RB – NASA Culture Change

Why did NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe address NASA employees to describe the plan to bring about proposed changes to NASA's culture?

            The NASA administrator, Sean O’Keefe tried to address the ways NASA could make progress to improve values and culture. Mr. O’Keefe suggested that NASA already instills high values in and around their company culture from a survey standpoint, but there continues to be room for improvement. He goes on to mention there are three things good organization needs: respect, safety practices, and someone to witness it. Initially, respect for each other and the work completed at the work place, resulting in communication improvement. Secondly, safety practices need to be followed to a more strict protocol. This should be a fundamental requisite to employee day-to-day actions. Moreover, a good way to start the safety practices process with the “yes, if” mindset, because it sets a positive tone. Last but not least, someone needs to notice it. The reason this is important is because employees appreciate being recognized for their efforts and exemplar behaviors. 

Was he believable? Is it important whether he appeared to be believable?

            This video about the changes at NASA shows how highly intelligent Sean O’Keefe really is and how much he cares for his company and people. And, he wants what is best for the administration and the future of this country. However, his speech is not trustworthy because it does not come from his heart. It is a fact that he wants the agency to improve; yet, he does not show the capacity nor the willingness to do whatever it takes to get there. Rather, an air of bureaucracy with an undercurrent of timelines and expectations surrounding deliverables, i.e., programs, successful products, and better shuttles is heard. In short, it sounds like his passion is not for the people and what happened in them that allowed the tragedies to occur.  He said, “This is about a much broader approach of values” (CSPAN, 2004). He stated that safety and integrity should be proven in everything they do; yet, is he willing to hear news about a launch being delayed because of a safety concerns?

            Absolutely yes, visual believability is extremely important. It can be the difference between the employees accepting O’Keefe’s message or writing it off as public relations damage control. Gerald M. Nosich said, “ Critical thinking, in the fullest sense, results in belief. It even results in action” (2012, p. 10). On another note, something very appealing about the video is the audience, which seemed to be distant, disengaged, uninterested, and certainly not passionate about taking steps towards culture change.

Why did he talk about NASA values?

            Values are key to the success of any organization. For example, in my organization, we value customer service and teamwork and therefore, we focus all are hard work towards achieving such values to improve the quality of our work and organization. Ideally, the daily decisions people make and overall success of a company are rooted in the values they hold most important to them. Such compromising values lead to an agreement for quality. O’Keefe emphasized that NASA had rich values but they need to be focused upon all aspects of their work.  This could potentially lead to a higher standard of employees’ productivity, equality, and dedication to safety. Talking about NASA's values drew upon their rich history, creating a positive sense of nostalgia but also calling upon members to adhere to them to ensure that another disaster like that never happens again.

What can you take away from this exercise to immediately use in your career?

            If there is something to take from this exercise towards my career is that safety comes first in anything. As a medical assistant and hopefully future doctor, there is nothing that should matter more than the safety of our patients. In order to apply safety, the need for organizational planning is imperative. Additionally, employees’ commitment to do so is a must. “To be successful in the twenty-first century, organizations must have flexibility and the ability for rapid transformation. However, many organizations move along a well-worn path, and problems are often concealed or hidden” (Brown, 2011, p. 116). Lets not wait until the last minute when things are already wrong to do something about, and instead, lets create a culture where organizational safety is the preferred norm.

References

Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th edition.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

CSPAN. (2004). NASA Cultural Changes. Retrieved from C-Span.Org: http://www.c-span.org/video/?181348-1/nasa-cultural-changes

Nosich, G. M. (2012). Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the curriculum (4th edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.

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A630.4.4.RB – How Companies Can Make Better Decisions

            Marcia Blenko, the leader of Brain & Company’s Global Organization Practice, explains how to effectively make decisions at the center of a business. She defines decision effectiveness into four components, “Quality: was it a good decision? Speed: how quickly do we make decisions compared to our competitors, Yield: did we executed decision the way we intended, and Effort: using the right amount” (HBR, 2010). In their hypothesis, the company was able to conclude all these components are correlated with financial performance. The correlation between employees engagement and decision effectiveness comes from clear objectives. In my opinion, it has been my experience that if my superior knows how to and when to make a decision or delegated, then followers like myself, will know what to do next, resulting in exceptional organizational performance. As Blenko suggest the four elements for good decisions, in my opinion, decision effectiveness should also entail how to sustain a culture that supports such employee engagement for long-term decision-making.

            Moreover, the interview mentioned that more complex companies, the evolution of companies moving to different global markets, leadership behaviors getting on the way, and not having the right talent to make such decisions could lead companies to decision-making obstacles. I believe health organizations are to be named complex companies because of their rigorous policies and everyday patient’s relations. The health care system is so complex when it comes to insurance policies. When you call the patient’s insurance to obtain a prior authorization for a surgery, for example, they provide such verbiage that if you are not paying attention, it could easily mislead to a future denial. In addition, more often than anticipated, leadership has a lot to do with how decision-making goes. In some occasions, the leadership is focused on the wrong target and decisions are based on how much money can be made instead of how to improve customer service for example. And of course, not everyone is set to be a manager or leader, making it really hard for the organization to succeed under less than capable talents. In the other hand, Marcia Blenko provided five steps to reach successful decision-making:

1.     Understanding how well you are doing and how you are making decisions

2.     Identifying the critical decisions

3.     The what, the who, the how, and the when

4.     Making sure all the organizational things support those individuals decision once they have been reset, the talent, the culture.

5.     Making sure you embed that throughout of the organization.

            My take-away from this exercise to immediately put into practice in my career is that if I am ever in a leadership position, I will make sure to provide a clear vision for those who follow me to establish a better outcome for the organization. Most importantly, decision-making is what makes an organization successful by enhancing the message transmission between leaders and followers.

References

Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th edition.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Harvard Business Review (2010). How companies can make better decisions. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbxpg6D4Hk8&feature=player_embedded

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A630.3.3.RB – A Day in the Life of the Culture Committee

            What is a culture? “A culture is not the behavior of the people ‘living in it’; it is the ‘it’ in which they live—contingencies of social reinforcement, which generate and sustain their behavior” (Brown, 2011, p. 10). Moreover, norms can be defined as “organized and shared ideas regarding what members should do and feel, how this behavior should be regulated, and what sanctions should be applied when behavior does not coincide with social expectations” (Brown, 2011, p. 10). With that been said, I believe Southwest Airlines culture committee is effective at establishing cultural norms. The reason is very simple. Society as a whole tends to follow trends for as long as someone else did them first. In other words, establishing cultural norms depends on that single person who dares to try it first. If the results are positive, then everyone else is on board. Gary Kelly, the CEO suggests that “the Southwest culture has thrived, but it hasn’t been easy” (Southwest Airlines, 2008). Nevertheless, the company’s endurance for this kind of culture has been both their “biggest accomplishment and our most significant challenge” (Southwest Airlines, 208).

            The Southwest Airlines culture committee purpose is based on creating awareness through out the company where employees can take responsibility for their own culture while promoting or motivating others (employees) into presenting above average job performance. Mr. Kelly suggested that in order to create a winning corporate culture, one must make everyone responsible for the corporation’s culture; he also comments that the components that make up a culture should be part of the leadership expectations; and the necessity to have two culture committees in order to concentrate the culture, a local culture committee and a corporate culture committee. Reflecting on my own organization, I recognize that we strive for teamwork, as we all need from each other to make the organization work. In order to make this a possibility, the organization incentives cultural norms, which demands the evaluation of every individual’s responsibility and failure in one area comes from everyone and not one person. For example, as we face a high demand of incoming patients, we are constantly receiving messages from patient’s requests. Although, each employee has a message center, we are all able to see each other’s messages and if we find ourselves free, we are committed to take over someone’s messages to help. I think a viable mission would account for team assessment.

            Indeed, this exercise has a lot to offer for my future relations with my organization. I like to believe that my organization strives for perfection and we really put significant emphasis on becoming outstanding health providers. Nevertheless, we still need more help as to where to start and how to create a culture committee. I would love to feel that my organization has more fun into helping others by making sure nobody is overly worked. Establishing norms that are more feasible for employees to follow and not take as a demand. The Southwest Airlines video provides hope to those who are in the search of a new culture for their organizations.

References

Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th edition.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Oswald, Dan (2009). Corporate culture Done Right: Southwest Airlines. Retrieved online from http://blogs.hrhero.com/oswaldletters/2009/11/29/corporate-culture-done-right-southwest-airlines/ 

Southwest Airlines (2008). Southwest Airlines “A day in the life of the culture committee” video presentation. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7P0T9IbYKU&feature=youtu.be

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A630.2.4.RB – 21^st Century Enlightenment

            Matthew Taylor is the Chief Executive at RSA, a charity organization focused on finding innovative and practical solutions to social challenges faced on the twenty-first century. When he says, “to live differently, you have to think differently” (Taylor, 2010), he refers to the ideal opportunity to be unique. Mahatma Gandhi said once, “Be the change that you wish to see in the world,” and he was not wrong. To approach innovation, an organization or individual must be able to foresee a future where change is acceptable and demanded starting with one-self.  Thinking differently does not come easy as change brings its own challenges. In today’s world, competitor brands, organizations, technology, media, etc., are all making living a difference. Therefore, Mr. Taylor is asking people to risk the unknown, to be or to think differently.

            “To resist our tendencies to make right or true that which is merely familiar and wrong or false that which is only strange” (Taylor, 2010). This quote is very familiar to my previous position about change. When I was younger, I experienced significant change in all aspect of my life. I probably assisted more than 12 different schools before starting college, changed homes every year, and made a lot of friends all over the world. Nevertheless, change has always come to me with a high price to pay. Taylor’s metaphor explains that most us, humans, reject change, which in turn makes us relate it to wrong and strange feelings. Gerald M. Nosich (2012, p. 120) talks about thinking within a field or disciple and explains:

Trusting a discipline, then, does not mean believing it completely or automatically. It means taking it seriously, treating it as something to be learned from, rather than as something to be doubted automatically or put aside or reject out of hand. After consideration, you may reject an idea or find it inadequate in one way or another. But to trust a discipline means to ‘try it on,’ to think in terms of it and see how it helps you understand the world in a new and richer way.

            In the same manner, understanding and confronting unfamiliar challenges can at least bring the satisfaction of trying rather than rejecting it, as we are more confortable with things we know about. Therefore, Matthew Taylor suggests that most people would rather stick to something they are barely familiar with than something they know nothing about.

            Taylor argues that our society should eschew elements of pop culture that degrade people and that we should spend more time looking into what develops empathetic citizens. Would this be possible? “Managers today face risk situations unlike those of the past, and in an era of accelerating change, managerial excellence derives from the ability to cope with these changes” (Brown, 2011, p. 33). While working in the medical field, I have become first hand witness of change and the repercussions it could bring. Medicine is nothing like it used to be many years ago, and today some doctors and organizations are more interested in finding ways to see more patients in less time by double or triple booking their schedules. Technology has made it possible for doctors to conquer such amounts of patients, since now laptops can be carried around rooms with little time to waste. Patients are rushed into rooms, medical assistants try to get as much information as possible, get vitals, run x-rays, and write reports for doctors to know what to expect on the patient’s visit, and all of this under ten minutes. Hence, society should try to spend more time looking into what develops empathetic citizens despite the challenges because it is possible. “The idea that progress should be designed to increase human happiness has turned into the assumption that pursuing progress is the same as improving human welfare” (Taylor, 2010).

            When Taylor suggests about atomizing people from collaborative environments and the destructive effect on their growth, it is unclear to determine what did he implied. Perhaps, he tried to direct attention to negative aspects of not finding collaborative groups to reach success. The founder of Southwest Airlines and currently Chairman Emeritus was asked how to renew a big organization and he responded, “The way that we accomplish that is that we constantly tell our employees . . . think small and act small, and we’ll get bigger. Think big, be complacent, be cocky, and we’ll get smaller. To be successful, organizations must develop a managerial style and culture that can adequately handle the challenges and opportunities they face” (Brown, 2011, p. 34).  The implication of organizational collaboration focuses on working with others and embracing diversity while individualism can lead to self-focused results.

            To conclude, the biggest take-away from this assignment is to concentrate about the bigger picture and being able to recognize that empathy, team collaboration, and change need to be embraced. In developing organizational change, challenges will be present but it should not stop anyone from pursuing it. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that has” (Taylor, 2010). What are you going to do about it?

References

Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th edition.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Nosich, G. M. (2012). Learning to think things through: A guide to critical thinking across the curriculum (4th edition). Boston, MA: Pearson.

Taylor, M. (2010). The 21^st Century Enlightenment. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=youtu.be

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A630.9.4.RB – Hiring and Recruiting

            Eric Schmidt description of the Google’s culture does indeed make sense to me. After reviewing the short video, Hiring and Recruiting, it is clear that the CEO at Google has a significant understanding on how companies should run. It has been demonstrated that companies, organizations, or any set of groups find themselves struggling against settings that do not permit them to express their capacity freely. As such, a variety of growing companies have come to the conclusion that failure or success can be managed by the way they empower their employees in the long run. Donald R. Brown, describes empowerment as, “the process of giving employees and work group members the ability to make decisions about their work, being held accountable for the outcomes of their decisions, accepting responsibility for the outcomes of their decisions, and solving problems on their own” (2011, p. 223).

            Is this a reasonable way to view the work that most people are doing in your workplace? I would like to believe that most of my coworkers and managers look forward to employ individuals with outstanding ethical manners in the sense that they will require little to no “babysitting” and produce the amount of work necessary to succeed. Nevertheless, in some occasions we find that some team members need to be pushed in order to be proactive and other times some team members lack the necessary motivation. The company’s CEO, Eric Schmidt suggested, “that as part of the recruiting, you need to look at whether they’re sort of compatible with the other people” (2011). To make an organization work, team compatibility needs to be present; otherwise, everyone will start pulling in different directions.

            As a leader, I completely coincide in making an organization implementation such as that of the CEO of Google, takes a great deal of courage. His innovative points of view bring dreamed possibilities to employees and most importantly, the gift of loving your job. The Journal of Organizational Behavior defines work passion as, “an individual's emotional and persistent state of desire on the basis of cognitive and affective work appraisals, which results in consistent work intentions and behaviors” (Perrewe et. al., 2014, para. 5). Having passion for what you do is the number one route to success. When passion is not present, then that individual is unfulfilled and disconnected from his or her job. Therefore, courage can be found on being fearless and willing to take chances and opportunities in things never done before. A leader with such capabilities is a courageous leader. The kind that sees beauty in uniqueness and is tempted to create new rules where followers want to follow.

            Needless to say, as reviving as this approach may sound, it could easily backfire if the rules are not set from the beginning. Eric Schmidt suggested for example, “Another thing we have is something called 20 percent time, where we tell people, especially in engineering, that they can spend 20 percent of their time on whatever they want” (2011). Although it would be great to be given with twenty percent of free recreational time at work, it could escalate to the point where employees take advantage. In other words, instead of having employees using those twenty minutes, they could potentially abuse their time and exceeded.

            A learning lesson I can take away and put into practice while at work is the fact of thinking of my company as a whole and trying to implement new ideas to reach success in a team level and not as an individual. Imagine if we all were to follow this CEO’s ideas and points of views? I believe our organizations would be standing firmer than ever before. Cultivating and demonstrating passion is the ultimate goal in my organization. Passion is a culture.

References

Brown, D. R. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th edition.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Perrewé, P. L., Hochwarter, W. A., Ferris, G. R., McAllister, C. P. and Harris, J. N. (2014), Developing a passion for work passion: Future directions on an emerging construct. J. Organizational Behavior, 35: 145–150. doi: 10.1002/job.1902

Schmidt, E. (2011).  Eric Schmidt on business culture, technology, and social issues. McKinsey Quarterly. Retrieved from http://whispersandshouts.typepad.com/files/eric-schmidt.pdf

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A630.1.4.RB – Board of Directors

            What entails an organization? Harry C. Carter, a municipal fire protection consultant defines organization as “the pattern of ways in which people, too numerous to have face-to-face contact at all times and engaged in a wide range of tasks, relate to one another in a conscious systematic manner; for the accomplishment of mutually acceptable goals” (2014, para. 2). Many times, it seems as if organizations are set up to fail when in reality, the answer to fix the problem is at anybody’s reach. In my experience, I have seen my organization go through the phase of loosing what matters, vision, power, and the crowd. When you are at that point, your crowd no longer feels the need to follow the organization. Instead, the organization suffers a lost of morale and that is when pessimism and pragmatism take place; they take over an entire organization.

            The medical facility I work for underwent significant problems. It all started when the office added a new practice manager for the medical assistants. Previously, there was only one manager who was in charge of the human resources and the personnel aspect of the organization but the owner of the practice noticed the personnel was suffering because it was too much work for one person. When the new practice manager started, as with any change, there was a lot of push back. The practice manager was a person with leadership skills who care about her employees compared to the other manager. She had a vision to where she wanted to take the organization. She started by creating a training manual for everyone as before training was done only when the time was available and employees could only count on their on notes. 

            My practice manager wanted to start an organization full of teamwork, where she did not have to tell everyone what to do and what to help with. Nevertheless, employees were very pessimistic about the entire change. And as it is expected, those who were pessimistic started to recruit others into following same behaviors and would do anything to make office practice manager look bad. Gary Yukl described leadership as, “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives” (2013, p. 7). When the practice manager started to notice how the organization was becoming apart, is when she started to be more pragmatic. A full staff meeting was setup and all the issues were discussed. She requested for everyone to be honest with her either with the group setting or in private in to make improvements to the office and create a “happy medium.”

           

            She was definitely a “go-getter,” and had the power to make others listen to her vision. After that meeting, more employees were able to understand where she came from and where she wanted to direct the team. The crowd started to follow her without hesitation and the changes started within the employees and simultaneously reflected on the organization. Although, our leader did the impossible to make others understand that “a better future is possible” (Kohn, 2007), there will always be a pessimistic crowd.

            When it comes to a healthy normally functioning company, some characters are needed. I believe, pessimistic agents are not necessary because completely put the organization’s morale down. On the other hand, a pragmatic agent is different. Pragmatic agents tend to be realistic and more often than not, will take into consideration all the possibilities and create a prognosis accordingly without directly rejecting an idea. Moreover, visionaries are the key to the success of an organization. Visionary agents are the bridge to the future as it is shown on the video “ A tale of power and vision.” In order to move forward, we need to know where are we heading and that is what a vision is good for. Power encourages others into doing the impossible and motivates those who have doubts. And lastly, the crowd is also important. A leader can be a leader to him or her self but an organization needs the crowd to make anything happen. The crowd is in charge of putting to work theories that leaders believe will work. They are the testers.

           

References

Carter, H. R. (2014). Do you know what an organization is? Firehouse.Com, Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1573068517?accountid=27203

Kohn, S. (2007). A tale of power and vision. [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZVIWZGheXY&feature=youtu.be

Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership in organizations. (8^th ed.) Dorling Kindersley / Pearson Education, Inc.

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A521.5.4.RB – Aligning Values

            In chapter 6, Transmit Your Values Denning talks about three basic elements of ethics: trust, loyalty, and solidarity. Trust encourages the idea that we will engage and behave ethically towards each other. Loyalty is an extension of trust as the organization expects to be able to trust your commitment to not fail into doing what you are supposed to do. That is when loyalty takes place. And solidarity is the act of taking an interest and genuine concern for other people, in this your work community, and taking action on behalf of your fellow coworkers even if that means no personal gain is obtained. Stephen Denning (2011) asked, could organizations stick to ethical values and still survive the market place? And the answer is, yes it can. These components, I believe are important in any setting not just in the business industry but in a personal setting as well.  Who doesn’t want trust, loyalty and solidarity?  In today’s organizational world, it can be the glue that holds a business together and without it may well fall apart.

            When it comes to my organization, I believe that for the most part, they have these three basic but most important elements. We must trust our manager is going to do her best to get us the training we need to keep up with regulations, the space we need to be able to perform our tasks, and that she will support us in every way possible. On the other hand, she has to be able to trust that we will not take advantage of her generosity by constantly coming in late or leaving early, lying about our work, or not being truthful. But the fact is, she trusts our commitment to work and making the organization work. She does not micromanaged us by constantly checking if we are doing what we are supposed to be doing because she trusts us. Her trust is shows in the many opportunities we are afforded (being able to work overtime when needed, by letting us perform procedure for the first time, and by encouraging us to be the best we can) and upper management sees this as well. Usually, the doctors are not asking why we are doing what we do but instead, they praise her for how well and efficiently we do our work as a team.

            As explained before, trust leads us to loyalty because without trust there would not be any loyalty.  As the company continues to experience growth, we have had some trouble with turnover since I started but that does not necessarily demonstrate a lack of values. Instead, I have seen first hand that most people that decided to leave was because either they were not team player or they just did not have what it takes to be ethical. Additionally, the company offers career growth by allowing you to be the first one to apply into a new position opening rather than getting someone new from the outside.  All in all, we work closely together and the common goal is to provide the best service possible to our patients. It is this trust and loyalty that makes our company so unique and cohesive in many ways. 

            The third component mentioned is solidarity. Solidarity is defined as the “unity (as a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, n.d.). Although this area is still a work in progress, I believe the company is heading the right direction. Sometimes the problem comes more from the different personalities we encounter while at work more so than just not wanting to help other coworkers. In occasions, some of us truly care about the interests of others however there are a few that are only looking out for themselves and they will make a point of letting you know that they are helping you out just in case you forget. It is not about trying to crush others to get ahead in the organization. We are all in this together. This is not what solidarity is all about but thankfully, the company is already taking some course of action to terminate with the negativity. Something I would do to eliminate the problem would be creating more duties that require teamwork and that way build trust across the company.

Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Roger Martin suggests that the era in which the purpose of every firm is to maximize shareholders’ value is coming to a close. Martin notes that pursuing the maximization of shareholder value as a goal suffers from inherent internal contradictions. The harder the firm pushes to increase shareholder value, the more likely it will make moves that actually hurt the shareholders. Martin argues we are now entering an era of customer capitalism. (Denning, 2011, p. 134).

            Therefore, we need to be ready so that when our opportunity arises to become leaders, we become good leaders. The kind that care for their employees and community and the kind that seeks appreciating and equality.

References

Denning, S. (2011). The leader's guide to storytelling: Mastering the art and discipline of business narrative. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass

Merriam-Webster Dictionary (n.d.). An encyclopedia Britannica Company. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated. Retrieved from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solidarity