Promoting diversity requires some proactive research my managers in order to successfully implement diversity in the workplace. A good example in the video is that if a person practicing Muslim does not look you in the eye in an interview then you should understand that this is a sign of respect and not disrespect. Little things like this are important to watch out for because it could be easy to subconsciously slip and feel as though they are being rude. In one of the examples the company even provides specific training to employees on how to handle diversity and accept differences. A lesbian employee talks about how much of a different it made once she was able to bring her partner to different functions and become part of the team and feel as though it was truly a place where she could be herself. Understanding it is not a social or economic issue alone, that combine this means "more clients, different clients." This helps the business from all angles obviously. The most productive working environment is one that makes people feel comfortable throughout their working time spent at your company. I agree with all of these points and it is a good article to explain why diversity is so important in the workplace!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGyhCC4Dj6U
Alec
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Diversity & Organizational Culture
Why Innovation Thrives at the Mayo Clinic:
This is a great example of an organization that set the standard for creating a culture of diversity and innovation. As this article discusses, Mayo Clinic developed the approach for cross-functional teams that is now implemented by many hospitals and corporations throughout the country. Cross-functional teams have been proven to be incredibly efficient at problem solving and are known to generate a significantly greater amount of innovation. The idea behind cross-functional teams is that you get a diverse set of individuals from all across the organization, representing many different branches and departments, and put them together on one team to work together to come up with creative solutions and new ideas. This illustrates how diversifying the skill set of a taskforce will produce unique results; due to the fact that they are capitalizing on a greater collective ability to approach a situation.
I find this article especially interesting as it combines two topics we have spent a lot of time discussing in class: diversity and organizational culture. Mayo Clinic has a long history of a organizational culture that formed around the central idea of a diverse set of skilled physicians coming together to provide the best medical treatments possible. As a result, Mayo Clinic is the most premiere hospital in the Midwest, and one of the most respected hospitals in the world. This adds further credence to the concept of diversity and specialization being an effective key element to an organizational culture.
Josh Throop
Diversity with Social Networks
Companies are branching out to other countries to find out what is "trending" and what the hot items are flying off the self. Or how companies are recruiting the best employees? How are certain companies like AT&T getting a step ahead of their competitors?
Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin, and Twitter are all social networking sites that are helping companies get ahead of the competition. Websites like Facebook are helping companies like AT&T get ahead of the competition outside of the United States. The idea of a Facebook AT&T page in Spanish was brought up because of recent surveys that were released that claimed that Spanish speaking people were using mobile phones for internet purposes more often than any other ethnicity.
Most importantly companies like AT&T are using websites like Linkedin to find higher end employees. This websites allows you to post your resume and your references and makes everything clean and organized. AT&T uses this website to help find diverse employees that wouldn't have a normal chance of applying for a position. The internet helps these companies create a new culture in the work place. Artifacts which are from Chapter 15 are symbols of culture in the physical and social work environment. These new artifacts in companies like AT&T are helping them think outside of the box and try and put a new spin on some of their ideas to reach out to more customers.
These companies are reaching out to not just the millions of people in the United States but to billions of people around the world. They are using networking sites to find out what are the hot topics in other countries and were to find qualified employees that can take their companies to the next level. These companies like AT&T are trying to create a new organizational culture in the workplace. Organizational culture is defined in Chapter 15 as, refers to a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs that show employees what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior. These new ideas of using the company and social networking sites to help spread diversity in the workplace is slowly catching on, not just in the United States but all around the world.
Brian Gabriel
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Reflections on CSI Normal
1) I thought that for the CSI Normal exercise our team had many roles that were divided up to complete the task. There were Contractor, coordinator, and communicator roles on our team. I felt that I was mainly a communicator and would try and help connect the dots of peoples’s findings.
2) I think that a coordinator was very useful because it put together different ideas and got the job done. I think they every role was important and essential to our success.
3) I believe that our team is still in the development stage and I say this because we are still changing and developing our strategies to better accomplish the tasks and our success is becoming more and more regular. We have almost won every challenge (or tied).
Reflections on "CSI: Normal"
1.
I saw Contractor, Contributor, Completer, Cooperator, and Communicator roles being filled during this exercise. Personally, I felt I was fulfilling the Contractor role during this team activity as I was facilitating discussion and assigning duties. Right as we were provided with the packet of information on the case and were told we could begin, I promptly started handing out different sheets to different people so that we could all begin working. After we had all read through the case details, I then started filling out the arrest sheet with the information that I knew to be accurate. I also listened to the input I was receiving from my team members and recorded the information they had gleaned from their reading as well. Since I was also the one taking the initiative to fill out our paperwork, I suppose I was additionally fulfilling the Completer role during this class assignment.
2.
I really believe we could have used a Critic, as our team was quick to trust each other and rely on each other’s work and not question anything, even when the information we were providing was conflicting. If we had a Critic on our team, they would have noticed that our pages were different and then we would have been able to finish this assignment rather quickly, perhaps even win.
3.
Obviously, on the day that teams formed in class our team went through the forming stage. Since then, we signed our team contract and discussed a list of statements that helped our team navigate its way through the storming phase into the norming phase. The first in-class activity or two that were designed for teams, our team was still working its way through the norming phase and into performance. Now, at this point in the semester, I feel our team is working well together as a cohesive unit and we are most definitely in the performance stage. We will not reach the adjourning stage until the end of the semester when we are finished with all our team projects and assignments.
Josh Throop
CSI: Normal
1. 1.) For the CSI Normal exercise, our team members played many roles in order to solve that task at hand. Reflecting back on this activity, the different roles that I saw in action within the team were: contractor, contributor, coordinator, communicator, and calibrator. I felt that I best played the contributor in this exercise, with analyzing the information provided, listen to what my other team members would bring up, and also bringing up a couple key points to be made in order to solve this exercise.
2. 2.) Probably one of the more important or helpful roles in this exercise was the contractor, or the person that organized and led the team and then contracted the final document with our findings. All of the roles are very important, but without a contractor, we would have had a hard time finding a starting point and leading the team. Also in regards to finding out about having different sheets; that was something that we didn’t even discover until after the activity, because we just assumed they were the same and trusted each other with the different pieces of information brought up to be true. One role that would have helped in discovering this would have been the consul. The consul would have helped the team discover the different pieces of information and then would have been able to look back and find the root of the issue that the sheets were in fact different and that we were no just losing our minds.
3. 3.) I believe that our team is in the performing stage of development. We are already in existence so we are past the forming stage. Our team has also been through the storming stage of coming up with what our group should be about and discussing possible topics of exploration for the group, and also the norming stage of setting goals of what we want to accomplish and building trust within each other. As for adjourning, we have not reached that stage yet, because we still have several more weeks of class in which our group is in existence, and also we still have not reached our goals and tasks that we had made in the norming stage, and have not reached the point of reflecting back on our work. The performing stage is when we are currently working as a team and completing the tasks that we had stormed and normed about.
Posted by Jordan Carlton
Dealing With Diversity
Research shows that innovation won't happen without a diverse work force. Then why do so many CEOs clone themselves for every position?
In this article, it brings up the point that businesses want diversity in their work force, but are searching to shallow. For the company of Mark VI Transportation and Logistics, you would not likely see this bunch of people together outside of the office. They consist of a cautious president wearing a dowdy bow tie; a former truck driver who climbed the ranks to executive vice president; a lesbian in a company polo shirt; and a 43-year-old mom with a corporate background. The group could not be more different, but once they step into that office, they are all business and really click. For over a decade before the current management team took over, Mark IV had been stuck in a rut, unable to get past the $3 million mark. Then within 5 years of the new management, they drove the company up to $20 million in revenue.
The point that this article is trying to drive home is that diversity works. The original management team for Mark IV was a cozy group of friends who all shared similar thoughts or would all agree with each other, not bringing up any outside ideas. Once the new management team was appointed having an extremely more diverse make up, it allowed for them to bring up topics and ideas that others may not have thought of.
In order for a company to create a more diverse workforce team, it is important that they start off with recruiting and hiring the right people. More times than not, an employer will hire someone who they see is a great fit for their company because that person thinks like they do will most likely agree with them. The article references this idea to be like cloning the CEO of a company or every job. Employers would most likely not admit to this phenomenon, and it doesn’t make them bad people, but its actually the theory of similar attraction taking place, meaning that we like to surround ourselves with people that are like ourselves.
To prove this phenomenon to be true, several academic groups did a study using 50 groups to solve a murder mystery, very similar to the type of exercise that we did in class. The results from this study showed that the more homogeneous groups were both more likely to be wrong and more confident of their answers in comparison to the more diverse mixture groups. “Homogeneity simply does not breed innovation,” says Anne Donnellon, an associate professor of organizational behavior at Babson College.
I think that this article brings up a good point about how important it is to have a diverse mixture in your work force, especially on a management team. Mark IV is just one of many companies who have embraced this and used it to their advantage and turned the company around. In their meetings now, they tend to be a bit more raucous and consensus is harder to achieve. But these arguments often spark new ideas. As a result, the company is constantly spawning and sculpting new innovations in a way the old team never did. Revenue has increased more than six fold.
Diversity is an important factor for employers to embrace, because it really does work. This doesn’t mean though that employers need to radically revamp their entire management team, but have a slow adoption to it over time and they will hopefully see results. It is also important to note that as adversity in your management can benefit in discussion, too much adversity can be destructive, so it is important to monitor it, and using slow adoption process to achieve a more diverse team can help with this. Diversity really does work.
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