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After watching the “Gallery Furniture Video Case Study” by Jim “Mattress Mack" McIngvale and the “Listen, learn ... then lead” video by Stanley McChrystal, it really does help tie-in the lessons from this chapter to actual experiences from the leaders currently going through organizational change. Reflecting on the information gained from the videos, I know gained a better understanding of the importance of leadership during times of transformational change in an organization. Leaders help influence and begin the transformation needed for an organization to succeed but, employees carry out those strategies, they are the ones who actually change the culture. In other words, top management can demand practices, tell employees what to do but without the employees buy-in and understanding, that type of change or strategy will only be successful in the short term.

A good example of this is Jim’s video on leadership during organizational change/transformation. In the Gallery Furniture video, Jim explains that the furniture business drastically declined in late 2007 during the house market crash (Gallery Furniture, 2012). Later on, Gallery Furniture suffered a huge fire accident in one of its warehouses, which caused further financial damage to the entire organization. During such hard times Jim realized that it was time for a change, but in order for the change to be successful Jim needed to change organization’s culture. This meant changing 30 year-old practices, implementing new technologies, training employees, implementing new practices, and much more.

Reflecting on Jim’s video, I would say that Jim’s approach to change and transformation applies to both the strategy-culture matrix (figure 15.5) and to the relative strength of corporate culture (figure 15.4). In the strategy-culture matrix, Jim’s approach to change seems to fit more with quadrant 1, manage the change. In other words, instead of talking about change and asking employees to change, Jim involved everyone including himself. Jim shared the new organizational vision, reshuffled power (although not explicitly mentioned in the video), and reinforced the new value system by creating incentives and rewards to those making the effort to change. Jim didn’t force the change into the organization; he influenced it and explained to employees the benefit to changing.  In respect to the relative strength of corporate culture, by what Jim explains, it seems that member commitment to the organization’s values is high and by Jim influencing the organization’s culture with the values already respected, he was able to gain the buy-in, respect and trust from employees to transform the organization into one more technological, well-respected in the industry, and so on.

In the second video “Listen, learn ... then lead” video by Stanley McChrystal, an Army leader, McChrystal explains how technology required him to change his leadership style. In the video, he talks about how it became difficult for him to lead, influence, and motivate other fellow army members who were far from his reach. Meaning, as technology has increased its presence in organization, it has become a challenge for old leaders to adapt to this new form of leading through the use of technology. Instead of talking to employees who were under the same roof as him, McChrystal now needed to lead Army members over video conference because they were all spread out throughout the globe. To me, it does seem challenging because it isn’t easy to say inspiring or motivational words without using hand gestures, giving a hug to a fellow team member, and so on. Technology has come a long way and it does help us communicate faster, but it does limit the amount of contact we have with those we are communicating with and this is where a new form of leadership is needed.

Applying my understanding of the video, I believe McChrystal’s form of leadership applies to both the relative strength of corporate culture and the strategy-culture matrix. Brown mentions, “Implementing strategic changes can be done more effectively when the culture of the organization is taken into consideration” (Brown, 2011). This is very true and applies to McChrystal as he took into consideration (the mission, different backgrounds but the same learning, and the different location of each member) the culture of the organization when he sought out a different form of leading through the use of technology. My main understanding from this video is leading by example. McChrystal mentions that every Army member receives the same type of training, they all rely on what has been taught to them by their superiors but this isn’t what makes a good leader; what makes a good leader is their willingness to trust, communicate, and learn from those around them (McChrystal, 2011). It is evident throughout the video that the Army’s culture is a strong culture where members are committed to the values of the organization and there are a high number of members sharing the same values. It is also evident that McChrystal reinforces the culture due to the high compatibility of change with the existing culture while there is little need to change the strategy of the organization.

           

Reference:

Brown, D. (2011). An experiential approach to organization development (8th ed.). Boston: Prentice Hall.

Gallery Furniture. (2012). Retrieved November 30, 2014, from https://www.vitalsmarts.com/casestudies/gallery-furniture/

McChrystal, S. (2011). Transcript of "Listen, learn ... then lead" Retrieved November 30, 2014, from http://www.ted.com/talks/stanley_mcchrystal/transcript?language=en#t-78245

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Reflecting on what I have learned thus far, there is a change on what is required from a person, as a leader, in order for him or her to get to the top management level. About 5 years ago employees who had powerful personalities, a strong vision, strong technical skills, and a strong work ethic would rise to the top management level within a few years of being in the organization. These types of traits and characteristics where thought out of as unique, strong and powerful which were needed to lead an entire organization to success in a tough business environment.

But in the recent years, due to technology and environmental changes, we have seen organizations move more towards seeking a leading personality; a personality that consists of teamwork, strong work ethic, visionary, a creative person who has different technical skills, and is all-around knowledgeable of the complexity of the organization. He or she does not need to know every detail of the organization but he or she must know how each department interacts, works together, how one department depends on the other for success, the importance of teamwork, the importance of good communication, great decision-making, employee empowerment, and so on. In other words we are now asking for more than just a typical strong leadership trait. Organizations want someone who understands the complexity of the organization, is knowledgeable, can think on his/her feet even when he or she doesn’t have all the answers/information, is flexible and can quickly adapt to the ever-changing business environment. Organizations like Google, Cisco, Facebook among many others, have these types of leaders; leaders who don’t just see a running engine but also see how each part interacts with another part to make the engine run. When an engine part is missing (communication isn’t clear in an organization), the engine begins to malfunction or continues to function with various hiccups, that when ignored for long enough it would, eventually, break down and mess up the engine.

Overall, it is difficult for a leader to grow into a person who can lead a system-wide change effectively because it is a big responsibility and you need to have everyone’s buy-in for the system-wide change to remain and be effective. If the leader cannot or does not communicate effectively his or her vision to the rest of the organization, the employees who do not understand it or see the benefits and how the change would affect them will resist the change. Employees may also resist change when someone who isn’t liked or respected implements it. Part of the reason why it is difficult for a leader to grow into the type of leader needed to implement a system-wide intervention effectively is because the leader no longer only does his or her own work alone or repetitively. The leader must be able to communicate to managers, supervisors, employees the vision of the organization, must be able to make effective decisions, delegate, recognize others’ success, give rewards/incentives/punishments, give yearly reviews, set expectations, be resourceful, honest, have confidence, be committed, coach employees, “have a positive attitude, have intuition, be able to inspire change, inspire others, have good ambition, interpersonal skills” and many more skills (Javitch, 2009).

Unfortunately, I have not experienced working for a leader who has tried to implement a system-wide intervention or change, nor have I worked for an organization that has implemented a system-wide change. But from the material I have read throughout the course I have been able to form my own opinion about this subject, being a leader now is no easy job but it is rewarding and do-able when you have the right attitude, support, confidence, cooperation, and commitment.

Reference:

Javitch, D. (2009). 10 Qualities of Superior Leaders. Retrieved November 23, 2014, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/204248

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After reading page on 274 about EcoSeagate and watching the video on EcoSeagate Team Development process, I can see the value and the importance of the team development process. By taking everyone from the organization to outdoor experimental laboratory training outside of the workplace, it makes everyone see each other as equals. They no longer respect each other because of the authority they hold or because they are high in the organizational chart, they actually earn each other’s trust through hard work, commitment, and cooperation. In all of the exercises shown throughout the video, no one seemed to be left behind, no one arguing about which one route they should take, or how quickly they needed to move to get there first. All I saw was communication, teamwork, trust, commitment, cooperation, determination, effort, hard work, everyone giving it their all (performance), empowerment, praise as a way to boost each other to complete the task. In an organization that is so big, a team development process like this is very valuable and important. Even when outsiders think that it is too expensive for the organization to do this type of activity, it does become very important for them to continue doing it in order to build communication channels, get to know each other, learn to work as a team, understand different view points/perspectives, understand the importance of diversity in decision-making, and much more. This type of outdoor training where everyone is equal and is being equally challenged is a great opportunity to build teamwork.

            In a high performing organization, it is very important and even necessary to continue developing ways to learn about teamwork, trust, communication, commitment, cooperation, and much more. Every high performance team has a goal and typically, after the goal is reached, the team dissipates. When high performance teams stay together for (let’s say) longer than 6 months, the team can become stagnant, slow down, and even begin to develop groupthink. It is common for this to happen because they no longer feel challenged, they know each other more, and to complete tasks with such a team is like completing tasks with a natural team. An exercise like those shown in the video help continue the development of team work and it also shows employees throughout the company that they are valued and important for the success of the organization.

            Currently, I’m not working so I cannot say that my current organization can benefit from a similar activity. But, thinking back to my old organization I would say that my past organization would greatly benefit from a similar exercise. I would’ve loved to take advantage from such exercises because I could even learn about my own strengths and weaknesses. This would even help me develop my leadership skills even if I’m not the leader. There is a great amount of value for both the organization and to the person completing this type of exercises because you not only learn along with others, you also learn about yourself. In my past organization, there is a sense of teamwork but there is a big disconnection between the floor employees and management. You can see that both teams don’t see eye-to-eye and because management has authority, the floor team members either quit when they don’t agree with something or they give in to what management demands. An exercise like this would really bring the company together.

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According to Paul Tesluk (2008), a self managing teams is a team that has formal authority and responsibility for making their own decisions on how they organize their work and how they decide how they are going to get their work done; it is up to the team on how they structure themselves and how they go about organizing their workflow and processes. There are many benefits to having and implementing self-managed teams. Some of the major benefits to self-managed work teams are: confidence, high performance, results, knowledge, innovation, effective decision-making, cost savings compared to having natural teams, increased productivity, creativity, commitment, cooperation, trust, improved employee and customer satisfaction, high work morale, motivation, focus, resourcefulness, initiative, flexibility, variety of skills, ownership of tasks, and much more. But, just as there are benefits to something, there are also drawbacks.

The biggest drawback to self-managed work teams is the development of “group-think”. Groupthink brings down the innovation, effectiveness, resourcefulness, knowledge, focus, the variety of skills, and the diversity of the decision-making process. Groupthink is when the team begins to think alike, make the same decisions, support each other even when they know that a certain decision is not effective but they do it to support the team because they are comfortable in it. This is very destructive as it reduces the amount of effort given by an individual within the team and it is disruptive in the organization as performance goes down and results decrease. The team becomes comfortable with the team norms that they no longer challenge each other or raise issues/concerns. Another drawback happens during the first implementation phase of creating a self-managed work team. While the team learns to do things on its own, it has a lot of meetings, it takes longer to make a decision, it can be counterproductive as people learn about each other strengths/weaknesses, and there is a sense of chaos because members don’t have a leader to look up-to to ask questions, voice concerns, and so on. In other words, there’s a feeling of having no guidance, purpose, and importance. Lastly, there is a sense of inefficiency and high investment for something they may not feel confident or capable of doing. So until the team learns about itself and how to succeed, it will take both time and investment.

In respect to self-managing teams, I admire the way self-managing teams work. Reason being is that self-managing teams are smart, unique, have a variety of skills/information, and they are capable of managing themselves both efficiently and effectively. It’s like a good marriage because they communicate openly, share the same goals, dreams, they care about each other (workwise) so much that they empower each other to do their best, to learn new things, and to continue improving. As a human being, that is basically what we all ask for. We want to do our best and be the best that we can be and having that type of support and empowerment just fuels your workplace satisfaction level that it makes you never want to leave because you enjoy what you do. From my past experience, I felt this way once with one supervisor named Jackie. I felt capable of exploring new territory, trying new things, learning new practices, and overall it just made me feel whole, wanted, smart and so on. So, yes I would love to feel like this again. I would love to work for such a team that fuels my creativity, strengths, learning, and so on.

In order for me to become an effective external manager team I will need to first develop more skills, gain knowledge, learn new practices, understand my leadership style, come out of my comfort zone, gain experience, become comfortable with what I know, be confident, and learn how to lead a team where I am the leader before I can even think about becoming an external manager of a self managed work team. It just feels like before I can teach someone else to be the best that he or she can be, I need to learn to be the best that I can be. I have the tools to do so, I have the education, but I need the confidence and the experience. I will also need the trust of the team before I can teach them how to be a self-managed work team. Being young gives me the opportunity to be a sponge, to learn good habits, good practice, good leadership and grow both professionally and personally. Once I’m confident on who I am, I can help others become confident and use these tools that I have to be an external manager to a self-managed work team.

Reference:

Tesluk, P. (2008). Self-managing teams: Debunking the leadership paradox. Retrieved November 17, 2014, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBnR00qgGgM&feature=youtu.be

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From my understanding, in the past working generations to give someone feedback meant that his or her performance was being judge. In other words, someone receiving feedback during this generation was seen and taken as a sign of not being good enough or not doing your best in and for the company. Basically, it was an insult. Back then it was bad to give someone a suggestion on how they could improve. No one liked being told that they needed to do better because it made them feel inadequate for the job.

Comparing the past working generations to the now (Gen Y) working generation, the newer generation looks for interaction with people and ways to improve in the workplace. We (me included as part of Gen Y) like and sometimes feel the need to receive feedback. We want to improve because we like to stay active, show others what we are capable of doing, we want to grow, learn, and not become obsolete. We are aware that businesses are complex, not every department is the same, technology changes, and decisions must be made quickly. In order for us to learn how to do this we must continue to learn, grow, remain up to date, and most important be flexible enough to expand our horizon of knowledge. In my own personal opinion, because technology was none existent or was very limited for its time, the prior generations did not have to worry about the now ever changing business environment. Since technology has advanced, businesses have advanced with it. According to Miluwi & Rashid (2012), employees in this generation also seek feedback to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the acceptability of their performance.
 

In the perspective of the importance of goals to performance, every organization has always created goals for employees to accomplish. But, in the past generations employees did not have personal goals such as perform better, learn how to use excel, etc. The generation Y does actually set these types of goals for themselves as there is always a new program being invented. Again, in my opinion, it is because we feel the need to not become obsolete and stay up to date with what we have learned and interests us. Majority of us in Gen Y are hungry for knowledge and improvement.

During my working years, I would daily give feedback to the team, as the type of job that we were involved in required it. As a team, we were always busy dealing with customers. We were part of a Starbucks store who was constantly breaking records of monthly sales; so, to sit down or breakaway from the main floor to give feedback was really hard to do. In my point of view, the supervisor (being the only one able to leave the main floor) should’ve provided a more detailed and continuous feedback to the team instead of waiting for the yearly performance review to tell employees how they did throughout the year. It seemed unfair that employees would get “punished” financially on their wage increase because of the supervisor was never present to give the team feedback and goals to meet individually.

In part of giving constant feedback to my team, I always did receive feedback from them as well. At times, it did feel uncomfortable for some of them to give feedback to their shift leader (me) but I always tried my best to ease into the conversation to make them feel at ease, that it was ok and I wanted to receive the feedback. From what I have learned thus far, it is very important to have 360-degree feedback. “360-degree feedback systems gather data from multiple raters, including direct reports, peers, supervisors, customers and the employee” (Nelson & Haertel, 2000). This form of gathering and receiving feedback ensures a 360-degree view of performance by understanding what the goals are, mission, expectation, and so on. In other words, it allows both the employee and management to work together to set specific, hard goals for the improvement of the employee. This also allows the employee to gain a clear understanding of his or her behavior in the workplace and how others view him or her in terms of performance.

Reflecting on my past performance and work experience, I do find it easier to receive targeted feedback for my improvement and it has also led to more engagement and benefits. You have to want the feedback and want to improve in order to not take it personally or as a bad thing. Meaning, if you give feedback to someone who isn’t looking for feedback, you would be wasting your time and he or she would probably just get annoyed by you. When I’m about to receive feedback, I try to take a moment to breath deeply and open my mind. This way a bad remark of any sort is not taken so personally, it doesn’t seem mean, and it does not catch me for surprise. It just makes me feel prepared by calming my mind and focusing on the positive aspect of the feedback. I believe having specific goals and receiving targeted feedback would also lead to more engagement, higher performance and benefits. As a result, this would lead to becoming more committed to learn, grow, rise to the occasion when needed, be more effective, efficient, communicate more clearly, know what is expected and so on. I just feel like there would be benefits for me instead of drawbacks on receiving feedback. “The information obtained from feedback can be used to regulate or improve future performance and may also serve as a motivational function when it provides information about outcomes associated with work behavior” (Miluwi & Rashid, 2012).

Reference:

Miluwi, J. O., & Rashid, H. (2012). The impact of an assigned performance goal on 'feedback seeking behaviour', human performance. Drishtikon : A Management Journal, 3(2), 252-287. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/1477997840?accountid=27203

Nelson, J., & Haertel, J. (2000). 360-degree feedback mirrors performance. Credit Union Executive Journal, 40(5), 38. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/docview/209457514?accountid=27203