10/18 entry before 10/20 class session - SCHEIN text

10/18/09 my blog for 10/20 class

So as I continue to read more adult education material, and seek out more adult ed career opportunities, I keep seeing more and more related evidence in my daily routines. Much like when you decide to buy a car, you begin to see that very car you want everywhere. Its like a new job/career field idea is opening up in front of me. But then I have to do the hard stuff of finding more folks to talk with and putting myself out there to find a job opening.

The Dixon text was great – it helped me realize more theoretical framework around this field. The Schein text is helping me see application of that knowledge. In Chapter 5, I read the following statement on page 100 and realized another thing I could do would be to follow in his footsteps:
My consulting assignment was to help them do a cultural analysis to develop better measurements of the division’s performance.
How cool to be paid to interview a company and do a cultural analysis of them. I know I don’t want to be a consultant, or freelance, I want to work for a company and have structure and salary, but the idea of doing that type of work is fun. I need to keep finding other types of fun job ideas.

I had an information interview this week with someone from my company’s inhouse training group and she talked about how they typically use the ADDIE model for instructional design – and I knew what she meant! She also talked about the typical adult educational theories and referred to knowing the audience, engaging and working together. It was refreshing to feel comfortable with what she was describing. Its just something I find I feel more about than the typical business marketing work I’ve done thus far in my career. I need to keep talking more to folks in the adult education/ corporate training industry and one day I’ll find a role that will fit both my skill set and long term interests.

Back to this course. So, I’m just as fascinated by this organizational learning material as I was last semester with the strategies for teaching adults material. However I see the org learning as much more complex and challenging as I’m living through the org learning transfer/maintainence/storage issues in the three temporary roles I’ve held this year at my company. I continue to be surprised how difficult and challenging it is for companies to keep their knowledge catalogued and organized.

There are two challenges I find I keep thinking about related to this field and my current company. The first is something I keep remembering one of my class mirror reflectors wrote a while ago: "How do you change the mindset from training as a requirement and an inconvenience to training as a privilege and an opportunity?" Why am I always so excited about signing up for something when others see it as a bother? How can we affect those people? I don’t have an answer and don’t suppose we’re lucky enough to find one simple answer. I think that’s why there must exist the field of adult education – to try and encourage participation and interest. That’s why corporate training classes are not straight lecture. They’re (if they’re good) not boring. They’re engaging and full of diverse activities.

The second is the challenge of maintaining knowledge across a large organization and across time. We have an amazing amount of very intelligent workers in my company. And while they’re incentivized to succeed individually, typically by doing so its benefits the company. As a relatively new company less than 15 years old, they’re figuring things out as they go. But in my few 3 years there, I see how much knowledge/learning falls off the charts. It's strange its so difficult. Its just odd in a smart company, its so hard to have user friendly systems in place to share/maintain learnings. I compare it to the oddity i see in the fact that in this 21st century, us humans haven't found an easy way to control forest fires. We can walk on the moon, create electricity, and cell phones, and satalites, but we can't stop forest fires. Just like smart companies Schein and Dixon discuss, as is my own company, its a very difficult challenge. I want to work somehow in confronting that challenge.

9/28 thoughts before 9/29 Class

One thought.
I must offer complements where due. And I’m pleased to admit that my current company does a good job at intentionally setting forth learning opportunities for its associates – one of the many qualities of a developing learning organization:

• Have budget and staff devoted to structured learning models (i.e. curriculum tracks for different role categories)
• Executive Mgmt talks to share knowledge and connect the top with the bottom
• An official info retention policy – where approved documents must be logged and placed in specified storage sites on a shared server
• Encourage cross-pollenization of staffers to switch over from one department to another to learn more levels of the company

This is a good start. There is much to do to improve on these activities and bring about more – but it is a good start. I look forward to diving further into my company’s learning organization qualities for the class project further in the semester.

Another thought.
And as a training class junky, I sign up for anything I can get into. This past week I was one of about only 100 staffers who was fortunate enough to listen to a very talented, intelligent and entertaining executive present for 2.5 hours. He offered a rather simple banking 101 ideas, and then explained how they relate to the goals of the company. The most fascinating subject he touched on is cultural integration. He was adamant that integration is correct and assimilation is not when dealing with diverse company cultures.

As he talked about the different wings of the company through merger/acquisitions – we’re a bit disjointed. No one would argue. No one was surprised to hear him say this. But what I found interesting was his stressing that assimilation is not the best way to achieve this. He defined assimilation as allowing each diverse group to maintain its ways – to assimilate into the new whole. Integration he defined as intelligently evaluating each group’s ways and deciding together which is the best, then having all groups adopt that way as the new way for all.

In the era of corporate mergers and acquisitions, the buying company wants to respect the staff of the acquired company and appropriately should work hard to maintain all the learning and knowledge of the acquired company. In doing so, its easy to fall into the idea that assimilation is the best option. If the buying company can find a way to open up the discussion, make the claim that one way must be established but that the decision for which path that is should be a group decision, I agree would be the best way.

And another thought.
As I listened to him discuss the challenges, multi-perspectives, and rewards that will follow a thorough cultural integration, I realized it would definitely be something that would interest me to help drive. As I’m sure tomorrow’s class discussion will surface, cultural integration must be a part of the intentional structures established by a true learning organization. I wouldn’t argue culture is as important as actual business knowledge, but I’d say its important and should be included.

ADLT 623 - Reflections from Class #3

I’m truly enjoying reading the Nancy Dixon text – The Organizational Learning Cycle (1999). Its surprising if I read an entire page without wanting to highlight or comment on something in the margins. As such, I thought I’d pull a few of these sections out and try to reflect upon them. Here goes:

Regarding external information collection – Dixon comments that “its not the difference itself but the resolution of differences through self-confrontation that is at the heart of learning” (p95). Then further down this same page, summarizes “Difference, as uncomfortable as it often makes us, leads to learning.” Then several instances later on, she spends time focusing on the idea that the dissonance that arises from confrontation in dialogue is where organizational learning occur.

I’m surprised at this idea. I’ve always known diversity is a good thing. But acknowledging that diversity of ideas/thoughts is something essential to organizational learning is an idea that seems foreign to me. Large organizations are institutions in my mind. They are slow to move. They need status quo. Or so I thought.

I like the idea that contempory research and philosophies are putting this forth. Now I acknowledge for quite a while, corporations have “officially” recruited diversity for the influx of different ideas. In my mind however, this was more a PR stunt than an acknowledgement that these different ideas are essential to helping that organization continue to move forward, to adapt, to grow, to learn.

I was very pleased to read Dixon’s example about the innovative hospital who pays its employees to visit other hospitals while on vacation. I’m hoping this type of benchmarking research at the ground level will catch on and become mainstream.

I wonder how I could work to help that evolve. Seems like a huge undertaking when thinking about some of the larger corporations I’ve come to know. But like in grassroots social causes, which I’d bank are more difficult to mold due to budget pressures, one step at a time. I need to think more about this. Maybe my paper investigating a corporate culture, I could position to some of the above.

ADLT 623 - Reflections from Class #2

I continue to be incredibly comfortable in this adult education class room discussion. While this is only my 2nd course, and my 2nd session of this Organizational Learning course, it just feels right. Still need to ponder what to do about it - how to turn this interest, curiosity of mine, into a type of paying job, but I figure learning more structurally and theory is a good continued way to go.

And not surprisingly, as the subject of the course is essentially discussion on how organizations can learn, can maintain knowledge, and the struggles it can take, I felt my irritation at 'Corporate America' rise in my head, and in my commentary. Even after 3 years in corporate america, and 10 years in an advertising agency (aka professional business work environment) I'm surprised at my consistent surprise at finding large businesses inefficient, absurd, un-nice, wasteful.

I greatly appreciated Dr Carter's comment to several of the students working in the business world - that if our environments are not as they should be, we would be served best to work to change them to the better or to leave. There are so many things wrong with Company X, but I don't want to have this course turn into a rationalization of that fact. Rather, I'd like to use it as a grindstone or wall perhaps to bounce ideas and possibilities for my making improvements.

While I know I don't feel helping a company make more money is a nobel profession and definitely not something than can give me value, I want to avoid becoming so negative at the business world that i fail to remember/appreciate the benefits it does for society/economy. I want to look at Company X as a opportunity ripe for improvements. See the half full side.

To my mirror classmates reading this first shared post - please forgive my stream of consiousness thougths above. This reflection thing was new to me last semester and I'm still learning the difference between journaling and intelligent reflection. Would appreciate any suggestions/advice at perspective you can provde. Also apologize for my tardiness in posting this until Monday afternoon - I had planned to write & post Friday afternoon once I arrived at my weekend in the mountains, but realized to late that I wouldn't have internet service. If you don't have time to comment before class Tuesday, its completely my responsibility. THanks anyways and see you tomorrow afternoon!

Amanda

Starting a new Fall '09 blog for my Organizational Learning class ADLT 623 @ VCU - my 2nd of 3 MBA electives helping me focus my MBA on corporate training/education.

Need to figure out how to send this blog to someone else - so will try that now.

4/16 class & my demonstration

4/16 class and my teaching demonstration experience

I believe I’ve finally passed the threshold of understanding the purpose of the blogging assignment. While writing my reflection paper on my teaching demonstration, I found myself commenting on the MBA 8-hour sample that was posted for the class to review.

I had so many thoughts on this that I began a different document that, once finished after about 8 minutes, I turned into a blog entry. I’m doing that again right now. Use a word document to write/think/revise and then post a blog. If my blog were worthy, and one day I might have one I believe is indeed worthy, and I could post my individual thoughts out there for anyone in the world to react to, is amazing. No one might see it, but someone may and that person and I could start a conversation. How very cool. I’ve been struggling all semester considering the blog as a diary (or journal if you will) and never felt as if I was doing the reflection thing “right.”

My thinking “out loud” (via this very keyboard that is) about what I’m observing, what I’m reading, and experiencing directly can be a learning tool all in itself. The idea that teachers should be reflective and self-critical – not in a negative way, but in a self-improvement way is genius.

I’m glad to know that the School of Ed master’s program at VCU encourages blogging. And not just for adult education teachers, but for all teachers.

Another insight I’ve developed from this course is the idea of andragogy and the other pedagogy word… There are some who feel adult education requires substantially different skills than K-12 teaching. I agree there are definite differences and distinct strategies and theories must be targeted to both groups. But the idea of teaching not automatically equaling learning or knowing, the importance of active learning, and Vella’s learner-centered focus to instructional design – these concepts/theories I believe should be universal for teaching/training. Not just adult education.

Reaction to the sample MBA 8-hour Seminar Design

For many reasons, I was enthralled by this 30-page story. For one, because I’m in the MBA program and know first hand some of the issues. For another, I’m just beginning my awareness into training and adult education theories. And another, because I’ve worked in marketing for fifteen years and see this effort as a process enhancement tool to improve the product being sold. Good for them.

I expect academic institutions are beefing up their marketing budgets as they need to compete for students. Even thought the product being sold here is a 2-year masters degree, academia does not forgo its responsibility to deliver a valued product to a target audience that wants it.

Seeing this type of self-correction / evaluation in an MBA program to me is evidence of the more recent evolution from push to pull marketing. As consumers are being more and more diversified, and their power to seek and ask for what precisely they want, businesses have more pressure to deliver wanted products. The days of Ford saying they’ll only sell black cars are well over. To stay in the game, Ford needs to design cars that consumers want. They have to pull consumers in by offering products consumers want.

The same goes for academia. Its why the past few years I’ve noticed many billboards around town advertising the VCU MBA programs (regular and executive). Early on I thought this was silly, that a college needn’t advertise. But of course they should. They’re selling a product and need to get the word out that it’s a good product. They also need to constantly evaluate the product to determine what improvements can be made.

I applaud the department for acknowledging that several professors, maybe those very well respected, are very proud and confident that their teaching style of straight PowerPoint lecture is well received. And retained. It’s crazy.

While I was in college and had a few friends getting education degrees. When it was time for them to do their student teaching semesters, I remember asking my father the professor about where he had done his and what he thought about it. His response surprised me then, and I recall my surprise even to this day. He told me that to teach K-12 teachers are required to take education courses. To teach college and beyond, none are required. I asked him, “well how did you learn how to teach?” His response, “I just started doing it and learned on the fly.” It must have worked out for him as he’s retiring at the end of this month after 40 years of teaching across 4 different colleges and one large university. But I’m sure if he took ADLT 603, there would be one or two nuggets that he’d find helpful.