The typologies section of the reading this week really got me thinking about my organization and how I am going to go about writing this paper. Schein talks about Etzioni’s 3 types of organizations, coercive, utilitarian and normative. I know Schein says that in some organizations you may see all three of these in operation in some form or another, but I guess I am wondering if I do see all three should I try and caputure those differences when I choose who to interview. I was going to do three different levels and longevities of employee, one new employee who is hired as a supervisor, our manager who has been here about 10 years but not all as manager and one general employee who has been here for 40 years. With those three I don’t think I am going to get a feel for the different typologies evidenced in the lab and its administration. There are only a few people in the organization that fit into the coercive typology and I really only notice it since the downturn in the economy. These are employees who want to leave but can not due to an inability to find a comparable position elsewhere. Quite a few of our employees fit into the Utilitarian typology; they are here to do a job and get a paycheck. One woman I work with even goes so far as to say that she is a worker bee and only wants to be a worker bee, she doesn’t want any extra responsiblities and does not want to advance in the department. We do have several employees that fit into the normative typology and I feel that I belong in this typology, but when writing my paper I am afraid that my bias will show through. So I was thinking that I should interview others who I feel fit into the 3 typologies but then I worried that I was showing bias by putting them in those categories. I don’t know, I am still chewing on that problem.
I think it would be neat to talk to the employee who has been here 40 years and see if he thinks the organizational typology has changed since he has been here or if his view of the typology has changed would probably be the case. I definitely think a person view of the organization’s typology can change depending on the internal and external circumstances. I think I want to follow this line of thought in my paper and see how it has influenced the overall culture throughout the years.
I am also having a hard time figuring out where we are in relation to our maturity. If I go by how long the hospital has been around then it out dates blood banking technology. Blood banking came about slowly and little bits at a time as discoveries were made and discoveries are still being made so how do I handle this question?
I want to end my blog post talking about a quote that really hit home for me. “By itself “raw experience” does not make sense, but our own cultural upbringing has taught us how to make sense of it through conceptual categories that are embedded in our language.” Schein
This reminded me of the first time I really understood how people learn differently depending on their experiences. I remember sitting in class when I was still in the Master’s program for Secondary Education and the professor gave us the example of a child sitting in science class. The teacher was camparing the structure of DNA to a spiral staircase and the child did not understand because he was from a rural area and had never seen a spiral staircase before. This was such an ah ha moment for me and I never forgot the lesson it taught me.
Sorry this is kinda late, I usually post my entry before now but H1N1 is a nasty little bug. I am feeling better but for days I couldn’t even get out of bed, much less type! Anyway on to the post.
As always, I try to relate what I am reading to my organization, strictly to my department and Schein has given me a lot to think about. Recently we were asked to do a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities for Improvement and Threats) analysis. The senior techs and supervisors were told they had to do one and the staff was asked to do one. Two people turned in the staff one, myself and another dayshifter. No one from other shifts turned one in. Right after the forms were turned in I was informed I was getting a promotion and would now be a senior tech (yeah for me!!). So my SWOT was counted with the senior/supervisors and that left one lonely SWOT from the staff. We were split into groups to analyze the SWOT. I am in the strengths group. We have to group the answers and then come up with action plans to help our strengths remain strengths. This was not too bad but I read the weaknesses entries and thought, I am glad I didn’t get that team because I wouldn’t know where to begin. The main point, especially from the to staff members was lack of effective leadership. The lack of leadership was not directed at our manager directly, but at our supervisors and seniors. Most our supervisors. The supervisors for all three shifts are not doing a very good job at leading the staff. The dayshift supervisor is a pushover, does not keep up with the technical side so he is not a resource for staff and doesn’t communicate with staff. He has been with the department for over 30 years and has not evolved with the changing times, he can barely use the computer. The evening shift supervisor is apathetic and is so close to retirement that she lets her staff do whatever they want and behave however they want. The night supervisor is new and her staff pretty much runs all over her. She sets her own schedule and does not follow up on things. Each shift has its own culture but all shifts must work together for patient care. I don’t think our manager knows what to do with the three of them and everything he tries seems to fail. On top of that there are other personality issues and competencies issues that compound the problem. My initial question was how do we change the culture of our environment, but after reading Schein, I know see that we may not necessarily be able to change to the culture but we have to change the way we look at the culture. Unfortunately, I still don’t know how to do that. I don’t know where to start. My fellow senior Natalie has a good start but I don’t think it is broad reaching enough. She gave a leadership presentation about practicing what you preach and setting a good example and I have seen minor differences. She changed the way she did some things and in suit so did I and I have seen some notice taken but where do we go from here?
So everyone remembers me talking about the hospitals huge initiative for safety from class a few weeks ago. How concept were being drilled into our head, concepts that directed us to pause and think before doing any procedure. Well….we have just had our first real failure of that system and it is kinda big. I am not going to go into details in a public forum like this, but this event that took place brought to mind this class. The powers that be are trying to change the mindset of its members and how we approach the very serious tasks that we do. I think the end goal of the program was hopefully to have no patient related errors in a year. I am wondering now will the organization look at this as a failure or a learning opportunity. Will they go back and review the event and figure out a way to learn from it. We talked about the 4th quadrant last week, ‘measure results to capture lessons learned’ I hope the organization treats this as a results and captures the lesson rather than see it as a failure and just say don’t let it happen again.
The second thing on my mind this week also deals with the hospital but in a different way. When we were talking last week in class about the 3rd quadrant and autonomy I was trying to apply this to my department and the hospital as a whole. I am curious to how Dixon or some of the entities like FutureSearch would implement this in a hospital setting. We talked about making decisions on the “line” and having the autonomy to do so. In my lab this is something we struggle with all the time. For example, there are procedures in our laboratory that are strict and for good reason, but as in everything emergent we have to make decisions sometimes in the heat of the moment that could save a patients life. It may be three in the morning and we don’t have time to wake residents and supervisors up to get permission to give certain products, you just have to make a decision. The problem with this is that if you are never allowed to participate in the decision making process in non-emergent times then how are you supposed to be able to make the best possible decision in a moment of crisis. How does one implement antonomy in a hospital? Nurses can’t make patient decisions but are there going to be times when tough choices are going to have to made? The answer is yes.
The last thing I wanted to touch on this week’s post is the concept map. For some reason I have been having a hard time wrapping my mind around the connectors and concept and I think I figured what was giving me the trouble. I think it is that the concept map question itself has a connector in it and it was throwing me off. I am going to go play with it and see if I can wrap my head around it a little more.
Torn is exactly what I feel a lot of the time here lately. I am torn about how much time I spend at work, school and on school work instead of with my daughter. I am torn about how much more work I seem to do at work than even those above me. And I am also torn about my feelings toward my organization in regards to organizational learning.
As I assume most people in the class are doing I am trying to compare what I am learning in this class to my own organization. Not just in VCUHS as a whole but mostly trying to apply what I am learning to what we do in the blood bank. There are some things I read and we talk about that I feel we are doing right, but there are others that we are not doing at all. For example, I think my manager has made pretty good strides at providing and promoting “hallways.” We have EPIC (Employee-Led performance improvement comittee) which any employee can meet and discuss things they would like to see done differently (no senior, supervisor, or manager can be a part of the meetings unless asked to). It has been stressed that these meetings are not just gripe sessions, but real problem solving sesssions. You can’t bring up a problem to management unless the group has come up with a solution for the problem. Another way my manger has created hallways is to move the staff meetings out of the lab and away form all the distractions. The problem that I have with these strategies is that neither one bring together EVERYONE. I see the idea of hallways as bringing all levels of the organization together to share ideas. Our committees still are separated from the different levels.
So I guess the biggest reason I am torn is that as I am reading I am thinking ahead to the culture assignment and trying to relate Dixon’s lessons to my organization. On one page I read and think we do a good job of that and then she may give an example or I think about how the WHO handled the same thing and I think we could do so much more and we could dowhat we do so much better. I know we all come in to a class with a set of experiences that shape what and how we learn the material and thus how we build our concept map. I feel that my concept map right now would look an incoherent mess!
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