Archive for change
Post-Independence Day Quote Blog: Happy belated birthday, America.
Posted by: | CommentsIn honor of yesterday’s 235th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, we bring you a thought-provoking quote from U.S. President Barack Obama:
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
In other words, be your own agent of change. Carry this message with you in your personal life and in your career as a reminder that you cannot just sit idly by and wait for things to get better; you have to get your hands dirty and get involved. So take a risk and speak up for the changes that are important in your life; as President Obama would say, “yes you can.”
Do You Have a Good Balance Between Your Work and Life? Tips to Balancing Work and Life
Posted by: | CommentsHave you ever wondered how well you balance your work with your life? How about wondering how you can better balance your work and life? There are many resources out there regarding this conundrum. A good book is by Steven Hobfoll, PhD. titled Work Won’t Love You Back: The Dual Career Couple’s Survival Guide. I know I have often wondered how I can better balance my work and life. Unfortunately, I have work, internship, school, and life to balance. It starts getting very complicated the more dedicated activities that are added to your schedule. This complexity is especially true when you add children to the mix.
I am often asked how I manage all of my activities. My usual response is that I have to manage it, so I just do. I think back to when I was a child and wonder when I started to manage multiple priorities simultaneously. High school was the beginning of juggling multiple activities and projects. My time management just went from there. I don’t remember a time since then that I have only had one activity (such as work) for an extended length of time.
The question is: What are good ways to manage and prioritize your time? How will employees who balance work and life well benefit the organization?
Individuals who manage time wisely have more time to dedicate to specific activities. If one activity suffers then the other is likely to suffer as well. Everyone has had an experience where life is out of whack and time spent at your job is not as productive. The opposite is also true. If your job is running into your life, then the time spent away from work suffers. It is more than just making your employees more productive. Having happier, more engaged employees will naturally increase their productivity. It is in the best interest of the organization to help its employees better manage their time.
Some simple ways to start better managing time is to prioritize activities. You should write down a list of important aspects of your life. This list can include things such as work, spouse, children, etc. Now order the pieces on the list according to the importance to you.
This list should be prioritized not by what you thinks should be important but what is important to you. If you could focus solely on one aspect of your life, what would it be? What would the second and third things be? Keep adding aspects until the employee feels satisfied with the list. This list does not need to be shared with anyone other than the employee.
You should schedule private time. You schedule work, daycare, and other activities, why not private time? You schedule important aspects of your life and private time is just as important. If you don’t schedule it then it will probably get taken over with other tasks.
When you’re at work, focus on work. When you’re at home, focus on home. Focusing on one think at a time will allow you to accomplish more of that activity. Your family will also appreciate that you are mentally, as well as physically, at home. Quality time is not just being with your family but also leaving work at work. You usually can’t accomplish work tasks at home so why stress yourself by thinking about them at home? You and your family will both appreciate the quality time you spend at home.
The last tip is to remove all the unnecessary tasks and activities from your schedule. Plan only activities that are important. The rest can be removed because they take away time from the activities you find important.
All of the above tips can be used to help employees and yourself better manage your time. These tips are just one way to manage time. Any time management skills are better than none. With the work place now able to go everywhere with you, it has become increasingly difficult and more important to be able to separate yourself from work. Awareness of the struggle and a conscious effort to handle your time is the first step to balancing work and life.
Adult Learning Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsTen employees are sitting in a classroom at 9:00am waiting for the trainer to arrive and begin a training that is scheduled until 5:00pm. I look around the training room and everyone looks bored and ready to leave. If polled, most employees in the training would respond that they had better things to do. Most wonder how this training will benefit them and will not have this question answered by the end of the training.
I have sat through a training where I was explicitly told that this would not be used in my department. I am sure that many employees have had similar experiences in training. What benefit does this training have for organizations and employees? What would be a better approach to training?
Considering that most employees are adults, andragogy would be a vital piece of knowledge for organizations to have. The design of a training program for adults would look a lot different than the design for a group of children. Experiential learning is the preferred way for adults to learn. They like to learn by doing the task themselves. Give the participants a chance to practice the newly learned skill. This is especially helpful with a complex task. Allow time in the training after each new skill to practice. Conclude the training with a practice session that combines all of the skills learned.
Adults also like to know how the training benefits them. They like to know that the training will not be a waste of time. Tell participants how this training will be useful as soon as they leave the session. Give them reasons other than that it is required by the organization. Show them how it can be beneficial in their everyday tasks.
Adults like to have control over how they learn. If your organization has several ways to conduct training (traditional classroom, online e-learning, discussions boards), then allowing adults to choose which way they learn will increase their engagement. It will also be cost effective to allow employees to use e-learning rather than traditional classroom learning.
Adults prefer multiple methods of training. The tell, show, do method can be very beneficial. This method involves telling participants what is going to be taught, showing them how to do it, and then allowing them to do the skill. A small lecture followed by a demonstration and then a practice session. This is three methods combined to create a form of training that will engage adult learners.
So the next time your organization decides it needs training, look to Malcolm Knowles theory on adult learning. Employees will be more engaged and appreciative of the training method. Engaged employees are happier and more productive employees. Employees engaged in training will learn more and be able to utilize this training faster and better.To learn more about Malcolm Knowles andthe theory of andragogoy click on the link below:
The Compilation of 12 Adult Learning Presentations Part 1
Posted by: | Comments“Western managers need to get out of the old mode of thinking that knowledge can be acquired, taught, and trained through manuals, books, or lectures. Instead, they need to pay more attention to the less formal and systemic side of knowledge and start focusing on highly subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches that are gained through the use of metaphors, pictures or experiences.” I. Nonaka and H. Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company (excerpt from Life at the Edge of Chaos by Mark Youngblood)
After sitting in class for three hours through 12 presentations on the same topic, I think I have a much better understanding of adult learning. There are two distinct learning theories: andragogy and pedagogy. Pedagogy is the oldest theory of learning. It stems from the process of teaching children. Andragogy was introduced in the early 20th century and is focused on how adults learn. The difference between the two theories is that adults have experience to draw from and prefer to use this experience to link to new knowledge. Children don’t have as much experience and therefore don’t have insights to share with a teacher.
Malcolm Knowles is credited with introducing adult learning theory. He introduced 5 principles of adult learning which are shown in the figure below.
Adults have experience to draw from, they are internally motivated, ready to learn, self-directed in their learning, and problem-oriented. All of these prinicples should be taken into account when designing training for adults.
Question: How can an organization benefit from the knowledge of the difference between andragogy and pedagogy?
Making the Change: Part 2
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I know you are all dying to read the conclusion of yesterday’s blog, so I won’t make you wait any longer…
To put the question of change into perspective, today we are going to look at the tenets of Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. Switch is about “how to make change when change is hard” and apparently getting a mass population of people addicted to technology to stop tweeting/texting/Facebook status-ing while driving is HARD. In order to make change happen you must relate to the rider, the elephant, and the path.
But you may ask yourself… what does an elephant have to do with getting me to put down the cell phone? Good question. When you make a decision to do something, your brain is thinking in two parts: the rider and the elephant. The rider is the logical, rational decision-making part of the brain. The part of the brain that says, “Yes, I know it is dangerous to tweet and drive and I know that in many places it is now against the law.” The elephant is the big, immovable emotional decision-making part of the brain. The part of the brain that says, “But what if it is a really important call and someone needs me to tweet the number to 911?” You know you shouldn’t, but it is just too tempting…
The rider directs the elephant, but first the rider must know exactly which path to take. To harness the rider, Switch says we must “script the critical moves.” If we want people to stop using cell phones while driving, we must point out step-by-step in absolute clarity how this is done. For example, a PSA outlining a person getting in the car, turning off the phone, and putting it in the glove compartment. Simply telling people not to use the phone while driving is not specific enough. This is not to insinuate that people are dumb, but we all need a push in the right direction that does not leave any wiggle room for interpretation.
To harness the elephant, Switch says we must “find the feeling.” I know we have all seen the horrific (both in content and production value) videos shown in driver education classes across the country. While negative images are not always the most effective, vivid pictures of car crashes have a way of making young drivers think twice about driving under the influence of alcohol. The elephant is moved by an emotional appeal. Maybe it would be valuable to have a magazine ad of a woman holding a baby. The tagline underneath reads, “This image would not have been possible without the help of millions of drivers NOT using their cell phones while driving.” I think that’s a pretty strong and positive image and would move me to think twice about texting and driving.
Finally, in the final stages of decision-making the rider and the elephant move down a path toward the intended direction. To build upon our long and lengthy metaphor, if the path is littered with boulders and quicksand the rider and elephant will not make it very far. One way to make the path easier to follow is to “rally the herd.” Make it something that everyone is doing. As much as we may want to think we are individual thinkers, we’re not. People feel pressure to do what everyone else is doing, and it is a powerful feeling. Oprah has done a great job at tackling the path of distracted driving. She has created the No Texting Campaign where you can go to make an oath to refuse to text and drive. You should do it. All the cool kids are.
So there you have it. Move your elephant rather than tweeting about your dog if you want to make a change in people.
Question: Can you think of any ad campaigns, office situations, or other that have used the tenets of Switch (the rider, the elephant, and the path) to make a hard change?
Saving Lives, One Un-Tweet at a Time: Making Change Part 1
Posted by: | CommentsA recent study by Stanford professor Dr. Clifford Nass revealed that humans may be able to do it all…but not all at once. Multitasking may actually be detrimental to those that undertake it. And nothing is more emblematic of this than the tragedy that is driving and Tweeting.
If you haven’t had time to scour the B-roll of the news lately, Hollywood plastic surgeon Frank Ryan (creator of Heidi Montag 3.0) was the victim of a fatal car accident in Malibu on Tuesday. The culprit? Twitter. Reports say he was uploading a picture of his dog Jill on a sand dune to TwitPic while driving from his home, and he accidentally went over a cliff. Amateur clairvoyants have surfaced all over the nation, attempting to decode the predictive nature of this final tweet. Dog = God? Those that haven’t pulled out their crystal balls have instead taken to wishing the dog a speedy recovery. What no one seems to be doing is pointing out how foolish it was that his tweet could not wait until he wasn’t behind the wheel of a car.
My intention is not to diminish the tragedy that is the loss of a life. It’s just frustrating knowing how easily said tragedy could have been prevented. Campaign upon campaign–not to mention municipal laws–spell out the dangers of being a distracted driver. But putting down the phone, in any context, has been met with fierce resistance. We’re expected to multitask. Anywhere, anytime. Changing that mindset is hard to come by. The need to do several things at once can lead to things as trivial as lost time and as serious as the aforementioned tragedy, yet old habits apparently die hard.
Despite any conclusions you’ve come to about today’s impending question, it won’t be about the perils of multitasking, but rather the perils of refusing to change. Change is hard, and people hate it–that seems to be the general consensus when it comes to breaking habits. But some habits, like this tendency toward multitasking at inopportune times, need to be discarded. The question is: why is it so hard to change even the most trivial of tics, and how can people ultimately do so?
Sorry, dear readers. We’ve left you with a cliffhanger today (no insensitive euphemism intended). To find out the answer to this question, be sure to visit MonarMusings tomorrow for Jessica’s information on the real way to make change…
You Say You Want A Revolution: Change Overhaul
Posted by: | CommentsEvolution and revolution. One letter difference, yet a dictionary apart. Evolution, culturally, is the topic of the nature-nurture debate, the intelligent design question, and the perpetual chicken-and-egg paradox (which was recently solved, and the verdict: foul beats embryo). Revolution, on the other hand, covers a large war between the British and the American people and that concept for which the Beatles musically crusaded. Evolution suggests that homo sapiens slid into homo erectus, and revolution suggests coup d’etat. Evolution is gradual; revolution is sudden. Given the general aversion to jarring and quick adaptation, organizations tend toward evolutionary change rather than revolutionary. Most of the time, the organization likes the direction they’re moving in, and prefers making small changes to tweak the system.
Often, though, the goal becomes to change the deep structure of the organization. Sometimes, it’s the company culture that needs to be overhauled. Evolutionary change is not conducive to this kind of alteration. Typically, revolutionary change of this nature only occurs when there is a crisis in the company that requires immediate attention. Rarely does the company itself decide to undergo revolutionary change; it almost always occurs based on external factors, having someone on the outside advise a company how to handle a catastrophic situation. Revolutionary change is terrifying to people who are change-averse, as it leaves very little of anything familiar, and instead aims to revolutionize (for lack of a better word) the company as a whole.
What characterizes revolutionary change? For one, it’s slow rather than rapid. Obviously a complete renovation of company culture will take some time, despite the fact that Mary Poppins makes it look as though it only requires a snap of the fingers. It is non-linear, tending toward a more cyclical pattern due to the trial and error it involves. There is a mixture of failure and success inherent in revolutionary change. And to upper management, the scariest characteristic of revolutionary change is its targeting of central parts of the organization and the most powerful units as opposed to the periphery. At the risk of outdating myself with this metaphor, it’s a game of Battleship, sticking white pegs on the grid using your misses to earn you a hit, and restrategizing after every sunk ship.
The question is: why should companies aim toward revolutionary change? It’s true that it would be foolish to undergo an overhaul every time something needed to be fixed. But why is their aversion to such change potentially harmful?
It might help to look to the barriers to revolutionary change to determine the answer to the question, the first of which is single-minded cognition on the part of the employees. The thought process of the organization is most likely unified, so chances are it’s unlikely they’ll consider changing company culture. If they’re used to doing things a certain way, why would it occur to them to revolutionize? Part of embracing revolutionary change is learning to think laterally, not linearly. It might be worthwhile to look outside of your company’s practices and culture to see how other cultures function. Gaining perspective is a great way to compile a list of best practices for your own organization and begin to improve upon existing cultural tendencies.
Another comes from the benefits to the organization for staying the same. An organization, like an organism, tends toward homeostasis, and for the most part it’s beneficial NOT to change. With the attention toward stakeholders and the desire to provide consistent service, change makes an organization look schizophrenic if not attacked constructively. But the problem is that these benefits quell any motivation that individuals might have to approach change that might be more beneficial than homeostasis. Weaving flexibility into an organizational fabric will in and of itself require revolutionary change, but it can ensure that in the future, your organization won’t stall out in the face of adaptation. Your stakeholders and clientele will recognize that your organization’s attitude toward change is positive, and they–and you–won’t be thrown if it comes time to make alterations.
The idea is not to make it so the organization is constantly changing, because that can hurt your company’s image. Being able to embrace revolutionary change is a means of being ready and willing in the event that a cultural change becomes desirable. Although evolution is a good way to make small changes and ease individuals into the change process, sometimes the change a company needs involves a larger scope.
When you talk about destruction, though, don’t you know that you can count me out?
To our readers: what is your attitude toward revolutionary change? When is it (not) necessary?
