Is yours a learning organization？

The survey result：

（by Steffani）

(By Angus)

Scaled Scores

Below are your scaled scores for the composite building blocks and their subcomponents.  For comparison, at the bottom of the page, you can see the benchmark scores as published in the HBR article

Psychological Safety:  57.1

Appreciation of Differences: 35.7

Openness to New Ideas: 35.7

Time for Reflection: 45.7

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT COMPOSITE: 43.6

Experimentation: 42.9

Information Collection: 31

Analysis: 51.4

Education and Training: 52.4

Information Transfer: 53.6

LEARNING PROCESSES COMPOSITE: 34.9

LEADERSHIP THAT REINFORCES LEARNING: 52.5

(By Cyrus)

Scaled Scores

Below are your scaled scores for the composite building blocks and their subcomponents.  For comparison, at the bottom of the page, you can see the benchmark scores as published in the HBR article

Psychological Safety:  77.1

Appreciation of Differences: 75

Openness to New Ideas: 78.6

Time for Reflection: 65.7

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT COMPOSITE: 74.1

Experimentation: 75

Information Collection: 71.4

Analysis: 65.7

Education and Training: 42.9

Information Transfer: 57.1

LEARNING PROCESSES COMPOSITE: 59.3

LEADERSHIP THAT REINFORCES LEARNING: 75

(by Marisa)

Scaled Scores

Below are your scaled scores for the composite building blocks and their subcomponents.  For comparison, at the bottom of the page, you can see the benchmark scores as published in the HBR article

Psychological Safety:  60

Appreciation of Differences: 64.3

Openness to New Ideas: 82.1

Time for Reflection: 65.7

LEARNING ENVIRONMENT COMPOSITE: 68

Experimentation: 75

Information Collection: 66.7

Analysis: 65.7

Education and Training: 95.2

Information Transfer: 76.8

LEARNING PROCESSES COMPOSITE: 54.4

LEADERSHIP THAT REINFORCES LEARNING: 67.5

(by Leo)

Lesson 4 - Professional Development

Activity 4 :

What PD happens in your workplace?

What strategies does your organization have in place to encourage development, change and innovation?


(post by Leo)
In my workplace, professional development is happened sometimes. Staff meeting is held every month. Staff include, teachers, principal, administrative staffs will seat together to discuss problems and define some new visions for improve student learning in our college. Every new tasks or plans will be assigned to one of our staff as the leader to work on, so every staff can be the leaders and distributed leadership is always occurred in our college. Staff training is sometime occurred when the new systems is launched, so we can be familiar with what’s going on in our college.

Since our staff always receives different enquires from student and have the chance to meet them sometimes, so the college encourage us to drop down the useful information and bring up in the meeting.  It is better than just give the questionnaire for students to give comments, as most of them find it trouble and don’t willing to do so. So we can easily identify the problems that student get and define the new vision for improvement. Our aim for the professional development is to provide the best place for student learning.

Reference:Distributed Leadership.  IN WCU. From http://www.wcupa.edu/_information/afa/VPAdminFiscal/DistLead.htm


(posted by Steffani)
The school I worked in stressed professional development. The school has Professional Development Team to organize some seminars, talks and activities, and the team also manages the record of the professional development of the teachers. Class teachers meet every week to discuss the student affairs of specific grade; subject teachers meet once a month to discuss the teaching schedule and learning difficulties of the students; functional teams meet once a month as well. Whenever the teachers, or functional teams encounter any problems, they can raise the problems to the Professional Development Team. The team may give advice or find external professional groups to solve the problems of the teachers. The Professional Development Team also keeps the teachers update about current educational issues, e.g. S.E.N., talent development. Training is provided to the teachers as well. The team also suggests what courses/ seminars available for the teachers to attend.

The school required all teachers to attend the seminars provided by EDB. Each teacher should attain not less than 30 hours in a academic year to fulfill the requirement set by the school. Teachers are also needed to share what they have learnt from the seminars to other teachers.

(Posted by Angus)
Professional Development happens sometimes in the Logistics Company I work in. The HR Department organize training to different department according to their needs in different channel like training workshop, seminar. For example, HR Department held an Occupational Safety and Health Training course to warehouse and transportation department to improve the working efficiency of the operation teams. Also, some talks may held by department manager to train staffs in order to improve their skill.

To encourage the innovation and development, the company encourage staff to attend seminar organized by the Professional Organization to collect and share experience with same professional. This help company close to market and help staff to have more idea to create new and better solution to different clients.

(posted by Marisa)

The professional development did occur in the workplace(although I haven't took part in a full-time job, i'll talk about sth happened in my part-time workplace)
Once, i worked in a computer retail shopping mall.The first step to be a good sale is to be trained and have some professional course about company and it's characteristics. The HR offered some workshop to make us involve in perfect promotion and recognition of products.Also, some tests would be held to check the workers' skill.It highly motivated workers to work hard and improve themselves.

Meeting and workshop often held for professionals, it encourages them to share experiences and tacit knowledge. or to form a team to launch some innovation and advertisement to sell computer products.

(Posted by Cyrus)
Talking about professional development(PD), since there're lots of different independent positions in my organization, so we cannot just have some collective means of PD organized by the HR department. Instead, we have different PD for each position. Like me, as a writer responsible for corporate marketing and communication, I receive consultation and coaching on writing / translation skills (which encourage improvements in writing) from the editors in U.S. among request. I also have mentoring and reflective supervision on marketing execution (which point out areas of change in job duties) from the marketing manager regularly in formal appraisal or informal dialogues. On top of the bi-weekly meeting to report current project progress (which make information transfer smoother) within our team, we also organized a special workshop bi-monthly. In this special workshop, each of us need to make a presentation about our strength. For example, as a writer, I will have to prepare a topic regarding writing; and as a graphic designer, my colleague has to present something about practical arts at office. This can stimulate innovative idea initiation and exchange when preparing and responding to the workshop materials.

However, so far, the bi-weekly meeting and bi-monthly workshop are organized less frequently as planned. Obvious reason is heavy daily workload. We always skip the meeting and workshop and this makes our PD not as sound as it should be. 

Lesson 3 - Leading Change

Activity 3

Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organization of your choice.

(post by Leo)

Due to technological evolution in the world shows an exponential growth, leaders perceive the changes of today as more complex compared to before (LeadershipWatch,2011). It is true that the charges adopted in my organization always relate to technology issue. In order to improve the effectiveness of our work, provide a comfortable workplace for our colleagues to work should help a lot. It is suggested to add the coffee corner in the office. The role of coffee corner is a bit different from the break room. It provides not only the relaxing area to have coffee, but also computer and online access for them to easily have discussion. So they can choose to use this corner to have causal meeting. The ideas of this change aims to help colleagues to be relaxed due to heavy workload and provide more place for them to have gathering.

Reference:

Leading Change: What does Change mean to You?  IN LeadershipWatch. Retrieved March 4, 2011, from http://leadershipwatch-aadboot.com/2011/03/04/leading-change-what-does-change-mean-to-you/

(posted by Steffani)

Same as Leo, I believe the technological evolution drives the organization change. Kotter stated the forces that drove the organizations to change nowadays were economic and social forces including technological change, international economic integration, domestic market maturation within the more developed countries, and the collapse of worldwide communism. The competition among the organizations and companies became more and more fierce which forces the organization to streamline their structures and also improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the production. Technologies were used to increase the efficiency of the production. Technological advancement helps the organizations to have a faster and better communication with their customers, faster and better transportation and connect the people globally. (Kotter,1995)
Though I work in the school, I also feel the eternal forces that drive the school to change. To help the students to face the fast-changing technological world, school devoted lots of resources in IT learning and creating IT environment in school. Lap-tops, computers, tablets were highly accessible in the school. The self-study area was partitioned and equipped with computers. Teachers are required to use the IT facilities during the lessons to facilitate the IT teaching and learning in school. The school was praised by the parents for the advance IT facilities in school. This shows that the parents also appreciate the IT teaching and learning. With certain IT knowledge, it is hoped that the students can have higher competitiveness in the job market.

Kotter, John P. Leading Change. Boston: Harvard Business School P, 3-31. Retrieved on 16/2/2013 from http://www.shkaminski.com/Classes/Readings/Kotter.htm

(posted by Marisa)

Apart from Leo and Steffanis' opinions about technologies evolution, the knowledge and culture building  will be a moral contribution of a organization.As Fullan states, “if you don’t treat others well and fairly, you will be a leader without followers” (p. 13). knowledge is created as people share across their organization. Fullan suggests a link between knowledge and an internal commitment that leads to meeting the goal.  In result, building a platform or face-to-face situation for workers to share is more inevitable than only completing the work on themselves.  For example, my previous intern work place is a media group which is a professional place for people to   accumulate information and own opinions for a program or an interview.The team work is so essential in the modern organization.
 So,I think the online peer evaluation and sharing system can be the development for IT field.Setting up a private group virtual society for workers for them to promote the relationship 
and strength the spirit. It is the basic part for organization to form its culture and environment.  


(Posted by Cyrus)
As stated by Hansen (2002), task teams in focal business units with short path lengths in a knowledge network (i.e., few intermediaries are needed to connect with other units) are likely to obtain more knowledge from other business units and perform better than those with long path lengths because of search benefits accruing to business units with short path lengths. And I found this short path lengths should be practical for my organization's leading change. Since we don't have particular emphasis on information sharing, we encounter information distortion and difficulties in information collection from different departments whenever a huge amount of information needs to be shared. As information sharing is only part of the working processes, if it is distorted, it will adversely affect the quality and delay the time of further production. Even other parts of the working processes is well valued and equipped, ineffective or inefficient information sharing may ruin the result. For a timely and quality marketing execution, a reform is needed for information sharing system in my organization.
Currently, local information is shared through a local server called HK-shared; and international information is shared through a global server called X-serve International File Transfer. Hardware is well developed, however, the software is an unstructured mess. Inside both servers, the folders and files are arranged randomly with lots of similar subjects or undefined names like 'New folder'. And both of them easily arrive its maximum capacity, with accumulated unused information uncleared. I strongly recommend a regular back-up and clear-up of both servers and both should be establish in a systematical way with a clear and consistent list of  categories, dates and versions.

Reference:

Hansen, M.T. (2002). Knowledge networks: explaining effective knowledge sharing in multiunit companies. Organization Science, 13(3), 232-248.

A framework for leadership ( Fullan 2001)

What can we learn from this framework?

What are the implications in our workplace?

(post by Leo)

From this framework, it gives me a clear concept of what role are the leaders and member in the change process. It is important for the leaders to communicate with the people and groups, accept others comments and seek for coherence. Hence, the change process will easily perform good results.

In my workplace, I think the key success in the change process is the leader’s performance. It is true that leaders act as important role to manage the change. They need to communicate with colleagues and principal, keep track on the process schedule, collect feedback from others and make sure the process is preform as what they expected.


(posted by Steffani)

Leaders need "energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness" which can help the staff in the organizations feel that they can tackle the problems even the problems are difficult. (Fullan, 2001, pp.5-6) Leaders take initiative to reform the organizations who should be able to make informed decision and build good relationship with their staff. Leaders should consider thoroughly how the reform should carry out, what will be the impacts, etc.

In my workplace, the leader is eager to change. He devoted many resources to upgrade the facilities in the organization. However, changes are often top-down. Various stakeholders are sometimes, but not often, invited to express their opinion towards the development of the organization. Therefore, members are sometimes not willing to follow the changes. Therefore, leader should communicate with the staff more often in order to reach consensus towards the changes.

(Posted by Angus)
From this framework, Prof. Fullan states that the successful implementation of change should include five elements and the leader should energy, enthusiasm and hopefulness. The success of the change is much depend on the human factors. It is important that the leader should help the member to understand the rationale of the change and help them to make the change happen by communication and sharing knowledge with member.  

In the workplace, the failure of change may be due to the lack of understanding about leader characteristics. As change in workplace always come from Top Management and they usually act as a Management rather than a Leader. They implement the change only by the Company Policy and the instructions without any communication to the staffs. If they can act as a leader or assign someone to act as a leader to implement the change, the result should be better. 

（posted by Marisa)
This frame clearly indicate the process of communication from leadership to members. It is vital role that the leader must give enthusiasm, hope and energy to motivate the employees focusing on what they plan to reach.Members should absorb the spirit and turn to explicit work. Therefore, the result came up a satisfied outcome.

In my workplace, the leaders' attitude and ways of communication impact on the workers. Leaders should accept other's opinions and talk to their members to make a better decision.The enthusiasm and personal characteristic of leaders ensure that the members' enfficiency and devotion.


(Posted by Cyrus)
In this framework, I have learnt 5 components of effective leadership which will possibly bring about members' commitment internally and externally, and more potential good results. It's a top-down influence to effectuate a change or a project and especially emphasizes importance on leadership's effort on passing the work to the members with enthusiasm, hope and energy.

With regard to those 5 components, the leader in my organization (marketing team of a health-care firm) performs particularly good at relationship building and coherence making. We often have formal and informal dialogue throughout the team. It helps make the working process smoothly and build a strong team spirit. The leader is also passionate about his work and so he understands very well about the moral purpose and each change in the organization. He can present and spread the message well to the team. However, knowledge creation and sharing is paid less attention by him. New ideas rarely come up and sometimes information sharing is hindered.