WP5 - Front Line Employee Web Poster

The topic of this blog was very relevant to my personal experiences. There have been many times where a company's internal processes and operations have caused me to become very irate. I have to take a step back to realize that the brunt of my frustrations, the front line people, have little to do with the problem. I empathize with their role as they take punishment from consumers on a daily basis. One prime example of this are service counter reps at airports. It isn't their fault that a plane is delayed... but passengers don't care. They'll yell, whine, curse, etc. as if that rep. was personally responsible for their inconvenience.

I feel that culture is important in this situation, but lines communication are paramount. Having clear channels for front-line workers to report back to the internal organization allows them to feel like they're helping solve the problem while providing the internal operations with tangible information. Without these channels of communication, the front line feel that they are being left to fend for themselves... and instead of being the face of the company, are acting as the scapegoat of the company.

WP4 - Effective Leadership in Organizations and Cultures

This web poster focused a bit on the differences between transformational and transactional leadership. This is an important concept that we've visited in this class and in other classes as well. Transformational leaders are those who take leadership as a motivational role, trying to get the best out of their subordinates. Transactional leaders take more of a supervisor role, trying to manage and control specific behaviors.

This is similar to the concepts of effective change management. Transactional leadership is based on rewards and punishments, but these only change short term behaviors. For effective change to take place, there must be an unfreezing phase... which necessitates transforming of fundamentals. Once these changes have been in place, rewards may be put in place to positively reinforce these behaviors and "refreeze" the change. So basically, transformational leadership is necessary to generate sustainable change.

WP3 - Cross-cultural Communication Issues in USA and India Organizations

Kartik's web poster brings up a very prevalent set of issues in today's global workplace. Inter-cultural communication unknowingly leads to many mis-communications and/or mis-understandings. Working with global teams, I find I must be careful to speak clearly and not use slang terminology or colloquialisms.

My first officemate ever had recently come to the U.S. from Hong Kong. While he spoke English fluently, he was determined to REALLY fit in... so he bought a huge book of colloquialisms. I cringed every time he would call something we were doing "groovy" or "that's so phat!" Flipping through the book, they had slang terms that I've never even heard of! Eventually I got tired of correcting him all the time (he asked me to point out any mis-use). I told him that he was trying to hard and stood out even more as a result.

Another personal anecdote - a cople years ago I went abroad on a business trip. I had trouble communicating with the language barrier, so I resorted to hand gestures and facial expressions. It was after a night of drinking and an almost fight that I was informed... signing "thumbs up" ... meant "F* You" in their culture! Ooops!

WP2 - Communicating Change Effectively

This web poster touches on a very central problem for many businesses. Change management is typically conducted in a very hierarchical fashion. Management dictates changes and encounter a deal of resistance. Companies typically have inertia, meaning that employees typically favor stability over change.

Even more resistance is encountered when strategic decisions from up above oppose common sense operational practicalities. As an employee, there have been many change decisions that I've shook my head and wondered why in the world they would do that. More disconcerting was the fact that there was no communication about rationale and/or avenues to provide feedback to the decision maker. As this web poster mentions:
Employees may have a better and more accurate assessment of the results of change compared to the manager, if heard they can protect the organization (Waddell & Sohal, 1998).

Change success may be drastically increased by involving employees in the decision making process. This not only helps add an operational perspective to decisions, but also increases employee buy-in. Both will typically increase a company's chance of successful change implementation.

WP1 - An Analysis of Global Virtual Teams: Conflict & Leadership

The first web poster I read was PinkLady's... because I received a million update change update notifications for her pbwiki through gmail. With all those changes, I figured it had to be a good web poster. ;)

The topic immediately interested me because of 2 main factors:
1) I've been a part of several virtual teams (with varying degrees of success).
2) I was interested in how she got information prior to 2003.

This web poster was well organized and informational.

While I agree with the advantages and disadvantages listed in table 2.1 and figure 2.1, the most prevalent one in my experience was absent. I am admittedly an over-friendly person at time and while many people like to keep work and home life separate, I've always been social with my co-workers. This means the occasional after-work beers or BBQ. When working on virtual teams, there was friendly banter... but never the same depth of interaction and communication. The "personal touch" was definitely lacking in virtual teams.

I know that virtual teams will grow increasingly popular and the "personal touch" will decrease in importance as virtual communications become the norm... I am slightly saddened to think about that future workplace. :(

11.5 - Instant Messaging

The spread of information throughout organizations has increased dramatically over the last decade. One particular tool of interest to me is the Instant Messenger. While some refuse to use it, IM's have been invaluable to me. The greatest business attributes to me are responsiveness and speed. There are many people that I simply would not talk to on a regular basis without IMs. Through frequent conversations, even in busy times, I've forged deeper understanding and solid business relationships. We've established a mini-network of people we can talk to across the organization on a moment's notice. This brings me to the 2nd point - speed. It's nice to know at any given point in time, just by scrolling through your contacts list, that you can get someone to answer an important question or direct you to someone that can. Short of working in a conference room with 50 other employees... I've found that kind of responsiveness impressive.

While many companies are trying to capture the power and speed of IM'ing, there is admittedly a fair amount of abuse. I admit, I am a part of that abuse. :D Regardless, I feel the current and potential benefits for IMing are great!

11.4 - The squirrel technique...

When I first started working, I had some important projects and thought I was on the fast track to success. Putting everything into learning about wireless networking, I became our department's technical lead for that technology. Fearing that my position may be toppled, I did the worst possible thing... I squirreled the information away. I reasoned that if I was the only one that knew the technical info, I would be invaluable to the department. I was wrong.

One Christmas I went back home for the holidays. While on vacation, my plan backfired. One of our main routers crashed and the backup never took over. My department scrambled to find documentation in our workroom... but there was none. They asked around to see who could fix it... but no one could. This is the situation I was hoping for - I would be recognized as the "expert" who could fix everything. Instead, my manager absolutely chewed my butt out. They couldn't get a hold of me for 3 days and in this time, our client was furious. I almost lost my job over this...

In the end, I learned that sharing information is good. Teaching others was the best way to improve the department while showing commitment and leadership!