Individual
Assignment 5
The concept that change does not
need to take a long time or difficulty was interesting to me. I thought, before this week, that change in
an organization would take a good amount of time. After reading the chapter Change or Die, I realized
that the points made are valid and make logical sense. If people are given deadlines they usually
wait until that deadline. If you use a
sense of urgency then people will tend to make the change faster. This allows an organization to implement
changes in a faster manner. Kotter also discusses the sense of urgency when
making changes in a business as well. He
also states that people who are resistant to change, no matter who they are in
the organization, keep them out of the process.
The importance of this is because, as Kotter states, those people will
do damage to the change process. They will
eventually hurt you more rather than help you at all. The only problem that I see with this is that
some processes may take time to develop and implement. Therefore it may not be as easy to get them
done in a short period of time.
The concept of being you at work I found
to be another helpful point. The two
examples from the book that stood out to me were about Libby Sartain and
Southwest. Some companies did not like Sartain
to display her real personality because they thought that it was not
professional or did not suit their organization. In essences, she became someone else when she
went to work. Coincidently, Sartain
worked at Southwest for some time and is currently at Yahoo. Southwest has an environment where it embraces
their employees personal lives. Perhaps this
is why Sartain fit in at this company. Southwest
has no problem with intercompany relationships and tries to make the organization
feel like a family atmosphere. Although I
enjoy the concept of feeling more comfortable at work, I do believe there still
needs to be a level of professionalism. Organizations
still need to conduct business and cannot always be a relaxed setting similar
to a person’s personal life.
Beth Miller wrote, “The Successful Entrepreneur’s
Secret Weapon-Employee Engagement,” which discusses a way for entrepreneurs
to be successful in their business ventures.
Miller discusses that entrepreneurs get wrap up in their business ideas
that they forget to engage their employees.
Keeping their employees happy can increase their productivity and help
their business to grow. Miller
references studies that have been conducted to measure the relationship between
workers’ engagement and an organization’s profitability. The author also refers to some statistics
that she acquired for Gallup. A global
research that analyzed forty companies over three years to show their profitability
relevant to their employees’ engagement is mentioned as well in Miller’s
article. With this data that Miller
collected, she provides steps that entrepreneurs can take to focus on employee engagement. Miller did her research on the subject matter
and the data in the article, in my opinion, would be evidence-based.
This week’s session was a learning
experience. I am someone who resists
change, this week’s discussions made me realize that I should try to embrace change
more than I do. Hofstede’s dimensions of
organizational culture made me analyze my company that I work for and perhaps I
should try to be more motivated at work then I currently am. Overall the week was helpful and I enjoyed
the readings and videos.
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