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).

Alec

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? 

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20051101/handson-strategies.html

            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.

Recession and Diversity

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/03/17/how-the-recession-is-affecting-racial-diversity-in-the-workplace/

This is an interesting article from CNN I found on diversity and how the recession is affecting it.  It was showing that during the recession some companies were laying off people of color first.  "In good economic times, people know they are supposed to support diversity and will tend to hire a minority candidate to get affirmative action points. But when times are tough, people tend to look out for their own group and isolate outsiders, and that's when discrimination can begin to rear its ugly head." This was a quote from the article and I could unfortunately see how this could be true.  What do you guys think?  Do you think this just so happens to be the theme in this one company or do you think it is intentional?  I've gotta hope not but subconsciously I feel as though it certainly could be true.


Alec

CSI Normal Review

We as team 5 were extremely efficient while demonstrating the cooperator role.  The Cooperator role is found in the social part of the circle and according to the textbook is defined as, supporting those with expertise towards the team’s goal.  We all worked together towards a common goal of trying to figure out who the main suspect was.  After reviewing Figure 9.7 in the textbook, I feel that I best demonstrated the contractor’s role.  The contractor’s role is a task role and according to the textbook includes behaviors that serve to organize the team’s work.  I feel that when the project began I helped assign the roles and the topics we should address about the fugitives.  . 

In my opinion our group was missing a major part of the task role, the critic role.  The textbook claims that the critic role is similar to the term “devil’s advocate.”  We all trusted each other in the group and we never picked up on the fact that our sheets were different.  If we had a critic in our group it is possible that he would have wished to see everyone else’s sheets to verify what they said.  He would not go based solely on their word and would request that they verified their answers.  A critic would of kept us in check and provided a lot of benefits to our group.

I feel that we are in the early stages of development as a team.  We are starting to get to know each other and becoming comfortable expressing our ideas as a whole to each other but we have yet to be tested.  I feel that every strong group is tested and arguing occurs to provide benefits to the group, and we have yet to experience that.  Right now we are all calibrating with each other and trying not to start any fighting.  I feel that after we become tested as a group, we will bond even closer. 

Brian Gabriel

You Know What Happens When You Assume...

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-05/intel-chairman-says-board-diversity-must-reflect-global-markets.html

Intel has been a very smart company over the years. They recognized that their product would be a challenge to sell since it is never directly seen by the consumer, so they came up with the "Intel Inside" campaign, which was brilliant and has been wildly successful. Now it would seem that Intel is demonstrating, in just one more way, the kinds of smart decisions that have allowed them to be an industry leader for so long.

This article discusses how Intel Corp. Chairman Jane Shaw stated that Intel is looking to increase diversity on their board of directors. This is because Intel is seeing rapid growth in China, a market that continues to look promising for some time to come. However, while Intel has a large market share in China, they do not have anyone from China represented on their board of directors. This means the viewpoint that the board has is skewed and does not accurately reflect the opinions and concerns of all their stakeholders or consumers. I like that Shaw is looking to diversify the board in attempts to better understand the developing Chinese market and learn how to appeal to it.

Since one of my majors is marketing, I have studied the subject a fair amount by this point in my academic career, and have come to the realization that it is difficult to create advertisements that are geared towards specific target audiences without having an in-depth knowledge of that market. If one is creating an advertisement for a target audience that they belong to, it is rather simple to understand the target audience and create ads with sincerity that demonstrate to the consumer the value of the product. However, if one does not belong to the target audience they are advertising to, it becomes a temptation to assume things one shouldn't, and then mistakes are made. It is invaluable to have a diverse team of people in these situations so that one will have a better idea of how to market to that specific target audience. Shaw has done an excellent job of not assuming that she understands her Chinese stockholders and the market over there. Instead, she desires to bring more diversity to the board, this is prudent. Diversity adds new levels of perception and creativity to any team and that is certainly a worthy goal for Intel to be pursuing with the Board of Directors.

In conclusion, if one assumes that they can make good decisions for groups that they are unfamiliar with, then that person will most likely inadvertently make decisions that have negative consequences for the organization. However, with diverse team, one greatly increases their likelihood for coming up with better solutions.


Josh Throop

Diversity

http://wonkette.com/449148/black-man-arrested-fired-from-job-for-trying-to-cash-large-check

We have been debating whether or not diversity still exists in the work place.  I know Josh discussed surface level and deep level diversity but this article clearly represents that it is almost impossible to get over surface level diversity.   This black man was simply trying to turn in his tax return and was accused of the check being a fake.  After getting arrested, the man lost his job while sitting in the county jail for the weekend.  

This article clearly represents that we can never overcome surface level diversity.  This was an act of racism without a doubt, but this occurred in a workplace environment.   How are we suppose to hire someone based on their qualifications alone and not possibly be accused of not having enough diversity?  

If Chase bank employees are turning down customers because they don't believe they can own a home in a nice neighborhood, well I do not blame the minority group for becoming upset with lack of diversity in the workplace.  All I am saying is that we might as well ignore the issue of race and religion and stop having quotas to hire a certain number of minorities.  This is something that we will never overcome and ignoring the situation would be best for everyone.     

Cultural Diversity in the Workplace

http://www.sooperarticles.com/business-articles/human-resource-articles/cultural-diversity-workplace-2517.html

This article talks about diversity as a whole in the workplace and how it affects employees and management. It goes over the difference from simply hiring a diverse group of employees from things like affirmative action and actually managing that group after they are hired, which is extremely different.  I totally agree with the problems of affirmative action that the article states.  One of the problems with affirmative action is that it began to be perceived as public relation scheme more concerned about quota than about individuals."  This, to me, is a huge downside to specifically going out and forcing diversity among the workplace.  Diversity has huge benefits and is extremely important, but the way in which you create diversity can not be simply a numbers game.  It has to be about the individual and then secondly the diversity of the group as a whole.  I think that at this time we need to cut back on things like affirmative action because we clearly are all ready making up for the issue... "America's workforce is changing- and changing rapidly. "By the end of year 2000, it's expected that only one in seven new employee will be white male."  We need to focus on things like managing the diversity that we already have in place and making sure all employees are comfortable with diversity.  I think in general this article is helpful to see the key points of where we are going with diversity and where we have been in the past.  The old ways of diversity was to simply assimilate everyone (of all backgrounds) to the company's culture.  But now we see what great advantages it is to gather a group of individuals who embrace their difference backgrounds to come together and look at things in a new light and who see things differently.

Posted by Alec

Managing Millennials

The workplace has seen many changes over the last 50 years.  Fifty years ago, people would work one or two jobs for their career their entire lives.  Now we expect to change jobs about every 3-4 years.  Once baby-boomers entered the workforce, this introduced the largest generational class in the workplace and still is to date.  But more and more baby- boomers are starting to retire and with-in the next 5 years the vast majority of them will have retired or very close to retirement.  This brings a big problem to employers who have had baby-boomer employees that have worked for companies as long as 10, 20, or even 30 years or more.  This brings about the largest shift in the workforce, with the introduction of the millennials.

Millennials, or Generation Y as they are sometimes referred to, is starting to enter into the workforce, bringing a huge cultural change with them.  This generation has been brought up in a technology filled environment and sees the world in a whole different way than past generations.  The millennials have known to be very social, free spirited, the troublesome generation, fighting authority and the most difficult to manage.  They also may be the key for success for businesses of the future, not only for how they see the world, but also because of their numbers.

As the once dominant baby-boomer workforce is starting to retire, millions of jobs will open up.  The millennial generation is said to be the next largest (and possibly thee largest) generation to have entered into the workforce.  As I said before this brings about a huge cultural shift, and employers need to be ready for this change, because how they handle this new change will determine how the company will do in the future.

For employers, this means that it has never been more important to attract a younger working class.  It is important for employers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the millennial generation in order to target those needs build a new working class.  Employers and managers need to develop new training courses and mentoring in order to tailor and harness this new generation.  Another very important factor for employers are once they have attracted, trained and have mentored new employees, they need to make sure that they retain this new workforce and continue to grow and develop.  Brought up in a fast pace, ever changing environment, millennials like a work environment that reflects that, so it is important to have new tasks and projects in order to keep them engaged and interested it their work and are more likely to stay with the company.

What does this mean in terms of diversity?  It means that there is going to be a huge generational diversity change, from an older working class to a much younger one in the next few years.  It is extremely important that employers are aware of this and start planning on how to handle this age diversity in the work place and make sure that the work environment fits the needs of younger employees, without discriminating against the older generations.  Millennials are also a much more culturally diverse generation, and so it is important that employers take note of this and attract a wide range of young employees.

As a part of the millennial generation, I find this to be a very exciting time as fresh blood moves into the workforce.  Our generation has a lot of potential for growth and development and I see this as an opportunity to reshape the business world.  Being a more cultural, well-rounded generation, allows us to bring a lot of different perspectives to the table.  With this generational switch, it also means that the competitive job market will become even more competitive, especially as employers are all trying to attract our generation.  But as a very competitive, craving action, full of life and optimism, I feel that we are up for the challenge and adversity that awaits and should bring about a whole new cultural shift.

Posted by Jordan