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.
When we were in class Tuesday night and Dr. Carter asked us to find a statement in the Preface that we really liked I had quite a few, but this quote from chapter one struck a chord with me…..”Learning is the process that underlies and gives birth to change. Change is the child of learning.” WOW! I read this and just sat and thought about it for a good five minutes. At first read this is just a statement about learning but upon further inspection I started applying it to my own experiences. One good example of this comes to mind at VCU Health System. The hospital has started a “Safety First, Everyday” initiative and all employees of the health system have to go to a 4 hour class that teaches different techniques to everyone like STAR (Stop Think Act Review). The classes also teach communication techniques, having a questioning attitude and accountability. They are really great classes. But that’s all they are is classes and if that is all the health system is doing to reinforce this idea then I don’t think the ideas would go farther than the classroom but there is more to the initiative than the classes. For example they started a safety star program to highlight individuals who went above and beyond the norm for safety. There are a lot of outside the classroom programs the hospital is doing to help the organization learn and those things are quite visible. I think it is invaluable for my learning process that I work for a company where I can apply what I have learned but also can see examples of what I am learning.
Something else I wanted to talk about from the reading was from chapter 1 where Dixon talks about how management has changed since the Knowledge Age began. I agree with her ideas that the roles of employees and managers have changed. But what really struck me about this section was her statement that “Learning creates equals, not subordinates, and thus work is increasingly conceived as a team effort.” I agree that learning is a team effort but I think a lot of the tension that surrounds organizations today stems from the learning creates equals assumptions. On the surface I agree with this notion, but think about it. If I work for “Bob” and Bob and I work as a team and learn and change the organization as a team and sometimes I even feel like I bring more to the table than Bob then why does Bob make twice what I make. I know there are varying situations and problems with this very basic example but I think it illustrates my point which it that in today’s organization where employees are required to not just follow a set of steps for 8 hours and go home, but are to problem solve and trouble shoot and analyze why is there still such a hierarchy in many organizations? I think this is cause for organizational tensions and I can definitely see examples of it in my own organization. We as blood bankers are required to make tough and quick decisions sometimes and then the very next day are made to feel as though we are just employees and are incapable of making those types of decisions. I have specific examples, but won’t get into here.
One last thing I wanted to reflect on come from class and the mind map discussion. The statement, all of our experiences, from birth influence our individual mind map. I loved thinking about that in class and wanted to share my thoughts here. My daughter is 15 months old now and she is walking and running and all that, but the most amazing thing she is now doing is trying to communicate verbally. I can see her trying to figure things out and essentially build her mind map. It is amazing. I know all of you parents out there are probably like “yeah yeah just wait til she won’t stop talking” but for me this is so cool. The example I was thinking about in class was one of Jolee’s new words which is hot. She used to want whatever I was drinking and I would give her some of my water but if I was drinking a cup of coffee in the morning I would tell her “no no it’s hot” and I would put her hand gently on the outside of the cup and show her what hot was. Well it took her a few days but she now knows what hot is and now everything is hot. She sees me blowing on the bits of food before I put them on her tray and dinner time and she picks them up and says “hot?” I put her in the car and if it hot in the car she says “hot?” And I hear her trying to use it more and more and discover how to use it. The best was when I was folding clothes from the dryer the other day and I had just stopped it. She came around the corner and put her hands in the dryer to help me pull the clothes out and said stopped, looked at me and said “HOT!” Way to build that mind map baby!
It there is one thing I have learned from all of the teaching demos, including my own it is what engages the audience and what doesn’t. I am really glad I picked humor as my instructional strategy. I had a really good time researching it and learned a lot about how to use it appropriately. I think that too often we as teachers feel too self conscience to use humor because of the risk we run of looking foolish. Looking foolish every now and then makes life interesting and it sure does make class interesting. Another thing I have learned from the teaching demos is that making your learners feel comfortable is also very important. The demos I have felt most engaged in are the ones where the facilitator was relaxed and put the learners at ease.
Although I wasn’t in class on this night I wanted to share some insights about my day. The reason I wasn’t in class was that I was in a training seminar in DC. The training session was my first step to becoming a blood bank assessor. In order for blood banks to gain and maintain accreditation the blood bank has to submit to an assessment or inspection once every two years. I am on my way to becoming one of the assessors. Needless to say the training session left something to be desired. We sat in a room in the Westin Tysons Corner for 8 hours listening the a woman talk and watch a power point. The only active learning activity came at the end and because the teacher had not managed her time wisely we didn’t have enough time to finish the activity. I found myself the entire seminar thinking of ways to make the presentation more learner centered.
I really liked Adam’s math problem teaching demo. I can see why he is an effective GED teacher. The practices he employed while teaching us the math problem are ones I try to employ when teaching in my profession. Often times in classrooms we don’t have the time to spend involving the class in the path the the answer. I think this is really important to do. Sometimes traveling the path is the only way to ensure that the learner gets to the destination. So many times instruction ends up being wham bam thank you ma’am and the learner suffers for this. We are often so caught up with what we have to teach we fail to show the learner how to understand the concept.
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