A520.5.3.RB_HallMike

After reading through the document “Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea” by Russ Forrester, my first thoughts were how well that article complemented the reading from the book.  While not necessarily in the exact order of the book and some ideas are stressed more than others, I’m not sure there are too many differences.  There are a couple of ideas that are not present in the text that will be discussed and in general Forrester tends to care a little more about the middle management that is surrendering some of their power, however there is no doubt the 2 are complimentary.  I think the easiest way to tackle this is to list the 6 ideas according to Forrester and then compare that idea to an idea from Whetten and Cameron so that is what I have done.

Forrester’s 6 ideas are: above all, enlarge power; be sure of what you want to do, differentiate among employees, support power sharers, building fitting systems, and focus on results (Forrester, 2000).  First, above all enlarge power.  What Forrester was saying here is that an organization should focus on increasing the power base that all employees have through increasing their knowledge/skills, access to resources, and opportunity to build new relationships (like with the customer for example) (Forrester 2000).  This is clearly in alignment with several ideas from Whetten and Cameron such as providing resources, providing information, connecting to outcomes, arouse positive emotions, provide support, and foster personal mastery experiences (Whetten & Cameron 2011).  Skipping a couple comes supporting the power sharers.  Here Forrester states that companies should not just give but grow power.  Additionally, there is a discussion that is almost identical to the personal mastery discussion from the book.  Both clearly state that you should start with small tasks to build confidence, distribute power from the top down (when actually distributing it), and to give employees the chance to flew their new muscles in a consequence free environment prior to setting them loose (Forrester 2000).  Next up is building fitting systems.  What this means is that the employers have to understand that most of the organization is interrelated so by changing the status of the power distribution you are going to set the entire organization off balance unless there is a healthy organization to support it.  While not necessarily discussed in the text, ideas from Table 1 in the article are definitely discussed.  These ideas include management culture (model successful behaviors), budget and resource allocation (provide resources), employee development (providing information, support, and personal mastery experiences), and performance management (connect to outcomes, articulate clear visions and goals) (Forrest 2000)(Whetten & Cameron 2011).  Finally, Forrester states that an organization should focus on results – a clear parallel to Whetten and Cameron’s statement of connecting to outcomes.

Two ideas aren’t really discussed in the text. The first idea is to be sure of what you want to do.  Here, Forrester is trying to say that too many managers and companies give lip service when talking about empowerment (Forrester 2000).  In order for it to be successful, managers must truly be willing to give employees more power.  If there is one that is not specifically discussed by Whetten, it would be this one – the only real point discussing the person giving up the power is that they should model successful behaviors.  Next up is to differentiate among employees.  According to Forrester, people are too different to share the power to everyone equally.  Instead, managers must treat everyone as separate individuals who receive power based on their individuality (Forrester 2000).  Again, there isn’t much comparison from the text.

In quick summary, Whetten and Cameron concentrate more on what immediate supervisors can do to support the empowerment of their personnel.  Forrester on the other hand seems to concentrate more on upper management who have to support both the employees gaining power and the management that is surrendering some.  With that being said, both complement each other and neither are contradictory of each other – both contain great ideas to keep in mind when attempting to delegate.

 

Forrester, R. (2000). Empowerment: Rejuvenating a potent idea. The Academy of Management Executive, 14(3), 67-80. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/4165660?uid=3739600&uid=2134&uid=370836281&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=3739256&uid=60&uid=370836271&sid=21102112182171

Whetten, D., & Cameron, K. (2011). Developing management skills. (Eighth ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.

A633.5.3.RB_HallMike

The video “Who Needs Leaders” is a pretty eye opening example of self-organization in a complex system.  In the video, Nick Obolensky instructs a group of 30 or so people to quickly select 2 people, unbeknownst to them, and maintain an equal distance from these two individuals without any sudden movements – an exercise from him Complex Adaptive Leadership book (Obolensky 2012).  After only 1 minute, the group stabilized after everyone had followed the instructions.  At the close of the video, the author asked how that exercise would have gone with a leader there to direct it.  Trying to place myself in that situation, I’m not sure how I would have handled trying to instruct these people how to move accordingly based on the complex interrelationships between the people (i.e. he needs to stay equidistance from these 2 but each of them needs to stay away from this guy and so on).  This would have been way too complicated to try and figure out if not impossible.  Clearly the lesson learned here is that a complex system will self-organize, that solutions to problems will naturally evolve from the system itself, and that often the best leadership is to just sit back and let things work itself out.

I’m not sure I could say this video changed my understanding of chaos theory except to say that it further solidified my take that it doesn’t take more than a few variables to make a system a complex one.  More so than the previous classes to date, this class has really had an impact on how I perceive day to day operations and how I should go about attempting to tackle problems.  However it definitely has an implication on strategy.  Clearly self-organization is a natural phenomenon which means that people should trust some of the other aspects of complex adaptive systems and complexity science.  For example, and speaking from experience, I would have an incredibly hard time not trying to interject my influence into a system when looking at a solution to a problem.  This is against the Taoist approach to complexity science which states “go with the flow”.  Many people have a hard time accepting that sometimes problems are outside of their control and that it might be better to just sit on your hands for a bit to see what happens (myself included).  This video has shown me that I really need to do just that if I am dealing with a complex system.  Interestingly enough, this is in alignment with the Cynefin network of problem solving for complex systems.  In this network, you probe the system to sense how it responds while looking for underlying solutions (Cynefin, 2013).  Once you have probed and gathered information, you take action based on the results of your probing.  The whole idea is to look for emergent solutions (the purpose of probing).

The bottom line is that to deal with a complex system, you really need to be walking along the border between perceived chaos and control (again perceived).  On one hand, you want a controlled system so that you can make the system respond in the way you would like it to since that is how we have operated most of our lives (you are the master of your own fate).  On the other side, you have a system that appears completely out of control that responds to none of your inputs.  What you must understand/acknowledge is that even though a system may appear chaotic, it is just your inability to understand/see the complex inner working of the system and that it is just responding to its natural arrangement.  As a result, the recommended approach is to sit back and watch the system do its thing while looking for patterns to evolve and solutions to emerge from it – a definite tough sell to type a personalities but one they must buy into.  After all, patience is one of the 3 things taught by Lao Tzu who apparently did actually know a thing or two about complexity!

Obolensky, N. (Producer). (2008, April 12). Who Needs Leaders? [Web Video]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QKeKQ2O3E

Obolensky, N. (2012). Complex adaptive leadership, embracing paradox and uncertainty. Gower Publishing Company.

Cynefin. (2013, March 28). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin

A633.4.3.RB_HallMike

This week’s readings focused on the fact that contrary to popular belief, a significant amount of solutions to problems originate from the lower levels of the organization.   As a result, the fact that leaders pretend to have all of the answer is referred to the “leadership charade” (Obolensky 2012).  Part of the charade is also the fact that subordinates expect the management to have the answer to all problems even though they know that isn’t the case (Obolensky 2012).  The argument is thus why does leadership have a problem not accepting the fact they don’t have all the answers and why does the subordinates play along.  At the beginning of the chapter, the book asked the readers to estimate the number of solutions that are generated at the lower levels of the organization.  Being that I have seen both tactical and strategic decisions made in the DoD, I know darn well that almost all of the solutions come from the lower levels of command.  As a result, I would say the DoD doesn’t have this problem that many other companies have.

But why does this problem exist and what is causing it to slowly disappear?  I think the reason that people are starting to realize that leaders don’t have the answer is threefold.  As Obolensky discusses, leaders might have been able to know everything about something in the past when the world didn’t appear to be as complex that it is now thanks to increased communications.  Now, however, the world is incredibly complicated and organizations have so many different aspects to them it would simply be impossible for a leader to know everything.  The increase in complexity has also coincided with an increase in overall education and specialization of the workforce.  As a result, subordinates are in general much more knowledgeable about their jobs.  Secondly, the increased communication methods allows for these ideas to move upwards through the organization much easier than before (not to mention the fact that flatter organizational structures means fewer people in the phone chain which means more complete ideas getting to the necessary people).  Finally, the increased communication has also increased the transparency of organizations.  This results in 2 things: 1) subordinates have a better understanding of what problems the organization is facing and thus can generate an appropriate solution; and 2) subordinates are now seeing sides of the organization they weren’t privy to before, i.e. they see that management doesn’t have the solution much more often than in the past.  There clearly is a correlation between the amount of solutions being generated at lower levels of the organization and the flatter organizational structures (although this is not the case in the DoD for reasons explained last week).  Some of the reasons I can think follows.  A smart leader might not know the answer but he knows where to go to get the solution.  Why bother going through levels of bureaucracy and management when you can go straight to the horse’s mouth for the answer.  Another reason could be that flatter organizational structures leads to more interaction between the leaders and the subordinates.  This in turn means that there is a greater familiarity between the 2 groups which results in an easier information flow between them (i.e. it is easier to talk to someone you know than the big bad boss – by demystifying them you make it easier to go to them with answers).  Finally, a flatter organizational structure usually coincides with a greater emphasis on teamwork.  This sense of teamwork could possibly cause people to be more willing to put forth their ideas when they were less emotionally attached to the organization when it was highly structured.

Looking at the blog instructions, I’m not sure I follow what exactly is being asked in the final part of this assignment so I’m going to answer what I think is being asked.  Even though there is a correlation between flatter organizational structures and solutions coming from the lower portions of the organization, this is not the case with the DoD, even though most solutions come from mid-grade officers.  The decision making model in the DoD goes something like this: a problem presents itself that needs to be solved.  The problem is officially designed and then sent to the appropriate portion of the staff that handles that type of question.  From there, the problem is farmed out to teams of action officers who study the problem, generate multiple solutions, and then start routing the possible solutions back up the chain (known as the Course of Action Development).  Each person on the route back up to the deciding person reviews the solutions and possibly puts their own inputs into it (after reviewing their input with the action officer)(COA review).  By the time it gets back up to the decision maker, he has several fully developed potential solutions for him to choose from, and usually a recommendation on which one to go with (COA Comparison and Approval).  This process, while structured, is exactly what the book is saying organizations need to do.  Upper level leaders in the organization just do not have the expertise or the time to fully develop solutions, but they do have people below them that do.  While problems are still defined at the upper level of the DoD, their solutions are almost always generated at mid-grade officers (usually O4/O5).  There is no charade in this process as both levels understand the situation (solutions come from below).  Because of the fact that the DoD already has a very good decision making process and is not going to move towards a flatter organizational structure, I’m going to say that there is no effect on strategy or the dynamics within the organization.

Obolensky, N. (2012). Complex adaptive leadership, embracing paradox and uncertainty. Gower Publishing Company.

While I know how the decision making process works in the DoD, a special thanks goes out to Wikipedia for giving me the exact terms used for the process:

Military decision making process. (2012, June 19). Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Decision_Making_Process

A520.4.3.RB_HallMike

This video this week was pretty interesting in that it really drove home for me the fact that money isn’t everything in this world.  Andy Mulholland shared his 3 things that he thinks is necessary for a motivated workforce.  These 3 things were ensure it is interesting work that expands the skill set of the employee and that you recognize the employee for their contributions (Mulholland, The Three Things We Work For).  The first 2 of these are interesting in that they are not necessarily described in the text and are not always controllable.  For example, making sure the job is interesting.  No matter how hard you try, there will always be someone stuck in some menial job that requires little thinking and is highly repetitious (for example working on an assembly line where all you do is put 2 bolts onto the gear moving past you).  While some might find that job rewarding, I don’t know how you could go about making it interesting. 

With that being said, these 3 factors are exactly why I enjoy being in the Navy as much as I do.  I’m not sure if there is much else that can motivate someone more than knowing that what you are going to do today will be interesting.  As tired as I got underway (or in port), I always knew that the day would bring new challenges and learning opportunities.   This fact was almost the sole motivation for me to get out of the rack at times – I didn’t want to miss out on something interesting happening without me being around to experience it.  The work being interesting also plays into building ones skill set.  From my experience, this was the only motivating factor for the nukes back aft in the engine room.  They knew that no matter how boring their job was underway, the skills that they were developing were going to be infinitely useful in the public sector due to the amount of training and hands on experience they were receiving.  I can also second this – while my job as an officer keeps things more interesting than the average enlisted guy, I can honestly say that the fact that the Navy has given me millions of dollars’ worth of training and experiences that will make me a highly marketable individual is another motivating factor for me.  Also, one of the common processes in the Navy is solely to increase your skill set.  People often complain about the fact that as soon as you get comfortable in your job, you are going to get shifted to a different one where the learning process starts over again.  This specifically happens to increase your overall knowledge of warfare area and to increase your ability to handle multiple different situations, i.e. it increases you skill set.  Finally, recognition is one of the few reward systems the Navy does have in place and clearly fits into the description of the rewards discussion from the text (Whetten & Cameron, 2011).  Whether it is through certificates of appreciation up to medals, receiving them is always motivating to all concerned.  While worth nothing monetarily, it is also as bragging rights for some individuals who get to walk around with a large ribbon rack displaying their accomplishments.  The recognition aspect might help explain the reason why the USS ALASKA has continued to be as successful as she has.  We first started to receive small accolades which increased our desire to earn more.  Next came the Battle “E” which meant that we were the best ship in the squadron and the best strategic asset in the Atlantic.  While happy with this, the crew wasn’t satisfied since there was still another goal to aim at – the Omaha Trophy (best strategic asset in the fleet).  This award was literally talked about quite often – everyone was motivated about trying to receive that award and pushed each other daily in pursuit of it.  Sure enough, the ship has now won the award 2 years in a row and is consistently recognized as the best ship in the fleet of FBMs.  The pride the sailors take with them is clearly evident.

While I agree that these 3 things are highly motivational and are ideas that I do use to get myself motivated, they are not the only things.  First, and as cheesy as it may sound, I am motivated by the fact that I am doing something that is of greater importance to someone other than myself.  I know I could step out into the public and make a decent amount more than what I make now, but for me I like the fact that I am contributing to the greater good of our country where greed isn’t the sole objective.  This drives me so much that I’m not sure how I will handle stepping out back into the public sector where making money is the primary focus of the organization I work for.  Additionally, the heritage of the Navy is another motivating factor.  The Navy isn’t some business that hit it big with some revolutionary technology 5 years ago; it is an organization that has been around for 238 years that is steeped in tradition and history.  Every time I put on the uniform I carry the heritage and tradition of those who have come before me, and ensuring I do my part to not smear that is highly motivating for me.  Finally, working with the people I get to work with motivates me almost daily.  In my job now as a NROTC instructor, I get to interact and train the best our country has to offer and the next generation of the Navy.  I get to see them change from 18 year old kids into naval officers that hopefully will leave the unit with a piece of me to carry into the fleet.  They are great kids that have volunteered to serve their country and are motivated by much of the same things that get me out of bed, and money isn’t one of them.  

Mulholland, A. (Performer). (2011). The Three Things We Work For (Money Isn [Web Video]. Retrieved from http://library.books24x7.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/VideoViewer.aspx?bkid=43753  

Whetten, D., & Cameron, K. (2011). Developing management skills. (Eighth ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.

A633.3.3.RB_HallMike

To say that this assignment is a tough one for me is an understatement.  Being that I work for the US Navy whose rigid hierarchal structure is about as firmly planted as it can be, it tough to even envision a branch of the armed services using a flatter organizational structure none-the-less a Complex Adaptive System (CAS).  Further, I’m not sure the military has the need to even switch to one.  While organizations in the public sector have problems with communication up and down the chain of command, the military has almost perfected this process.  The rigid structure makes it perfectly clear where the information needs to go and when.  This is incredibly important to know as any hesitation in communication flow can literally kill someone.  With that being said, hierarchal structures are often paralyzed with bureaucracy and the military is definitely a slave to it also.  Perhaps that is why our government is slipping more and more towards what Obolensky says will happen to all silo based structures, it will face death (Obolensky 2010).

Looking into all of the organizations that are listed in the book that feature CAS, they all have one thing in common (other than the fact that they are a CAS system) is that their employees are all heavily involved with all aspects of the organization at all levels.  Clearly this will work in the business world as some companies are already making waves in the market using CAS for their organizational structure, however I am not sure it would work in an organization where people are not as heavily invested in the organization like the military.  No matter how hard you work, your pay will be identical to every other O3 (or whatever rank) in the service.  Sure you might get an Early Promote on your FITREP, but all that means is that you are slightly more selectable to move to the next rank once you have spent the mandatory time required in that rank.  Within the government, there is little benefit to working harder for the organization except for pride whereas in the business sector (and especially with CAS structures), every employee has a vested interest in how the company performs and thus is willing to go the extra mile because they can see more clearly that it affects them directly (notice how I said they can see this effect – every employee makes a mark on an organization regardless of where they are at in the system, however if you don’t give them a reason to take note of that fact, a decent number will not).

So where does the Navy go from here?  I think in some respects it could move towards a matrix type organization, especially since in some respects it already is.  For example, in the other services, each portion of the organizational structure above the company level has its own support staff.  As you move, each command over that also has a staff and so on up to the top of the structure.  This is very similar to a matrix organization since each individual matrix in the organization has its own support functions (Obolensky 2010).  Additionally, reporting and processes are efficient and centralized in HQ cells (up all the way to DC) (Obolensky 2010).  Here, however, the similarities stop.  There is nothing slimmed down about the upper echelons of any branch in the service.  For example, the Navy today has roughly 334 flag officers of various ranks or flag selects ("Navy.mil leadership biographies" ).  That is more than 1 flag officer for every one ship in the fleet.  We are hugely top heavy as an organization and I question the need for it.  So, my first order of business in stepping towards a more Zen like organizational structure would be to trim some of the fat at the top of the Navy.  Looking at other aspects of a matrix organization, I simply do not think that a military force can operate when there is tension between who has control over the unit (i.e. there can’t be 2 different people in charge of you).  The Navy takes great strides to prevent such things from occurring due to the fact that the confusion could be deadly, so much so that a large portion of some operating manuals are dedicated on how to correctly chop from one chain of command to another when sailing into different fleet areas. 

So, in summary, I think that reducing some of the bureaucracy at the higher levels of the organization would be a step in the right direction.  With that being said, I just don’t see how the DoD could operate away from a silo type organization except for the small transitions that have occurred already.  Being that I have yet to interview the ADM Greenhart, Chief of Naval Operations or VADM Morgan, N3/N5, I do not have any insight into what their plans are for the future organizational structure of the Navy, however moving to a CAS type structure is probably not one of them.  I would be interested in investigating if there have been any military units that have experimented with this type of structure however.  Perhaps part of my problem with this blog is that I am just too indoctrinated into the organization and am applying ample amounts of group think.  While I’d like to think this isn’t the case, like I said, I’d love for someone to prove me otherwise.  

Obolensky, N. (2012). Complex adaptive leadership, embracing paradox and uncertainty. Gower Publishing Company.

Navy.mil leadership biographies. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.navy.mil/navydata/bios/bio_list.asp

A520.3.5.RB_HallMike

As I have discussed several times this week on the discussion boards, supportive communication at my job is both good in some areas and bad in others.  While I would describe interaction amongst my peers as highly supportive, I will fully admit that I am no expert at it and have only been accidentally communicating in a supportive manner without knowing it.  Luckily I have a large group of people to practice my supportive communication skills with – midshipmen.  We have to do a counseling session at least twice a semester so this provides an excellent opportunity to specifically practice it in preparation for having to deal with communication at the higher levels of the organization where supportive communication isn’t the strong point.

Supportive communication is an outstanding way to move people towards behavior that is either more efficient or more correct than what they are doing now.  From Whetten and Cameron, supportive communication is congruent (meaning your verbal and non-verbal cues match what you are actually thinking), is descriptive of problems, is problem vice person oriented, validates individuals (i.e. provides positive feedback), and is specific vice global (247-253).  In other words, it provides an easily understood, factual, objective, non-personal feedback to another individual in order to change behavior.  While it sounds easy, it is something that must be practiced and consciously thought about to ensure you do it properly.  From a working with midshipmen standpoint, this means that I will use supportive communication in order to coach them towards better performance or counsel them when their performance is substandard (either militarily or academically).  When reviewing the behavioral guidelines, I think I already do a pretty good job using them with the exception of maybe one – owning statements.  When talking over things with students, I often refer to the standards as being the Navy standards; what I should be saying is that they are not meeting what standards I have set for them.  While these standards will be directly in line with the Navy, it makes me own the comment and the standard.  Hopefully this will add a personal effect to the conversation and allow the midshipman to more fully understand both the problem and the solution.  Ironically enough, I think owning the standards is exactly why my CO on the ALASKA was so effective.  Rather than holding us to Navy standards, he held us to his standards, and when you didn’t meet them, he would let you know he was disappointed but that we will correct the problem and get better.  I am 100% positive that hearing that he was disappointed was worse than any yelling or dressing down that he could have done – I don’t think it would have been near as effective if it was the Navy standards we weren’t meeting.  This idea is exactly what I am going to try to work with my MIDN on.

Moving on to dealing with the upper chain of command, I think one thing is very important to understand – just because you are subordinate to someone doesn’t mean that your opportunity to lead them diminishes.  In fact, this can be one of the most challenging but rewarding aspects of being a leader (Beaman).  This process known as upward leadership is something that I should definitely work on in my current situation.  Specifically, I need to help my supervisor using supportive communication.  How I am going to do this without specifically calling him out on it, I’m not sure; but I do know that I will repeatedly use supportive communication explicitly when communicating with him in the future.  While I don’t think I have necessarily ever not followed supportive communication, as with the MIDN I will definitely keep it in mind when discussing things with him when I think he could have done things differently.  Hopefully this will lead to better communication coming from him down to us and also result in a little less tension in the office as most of us are on edge with what he is going to do next.  While I’m not going to hold my breath, any increase in the communication methods from him will be seen as a win across the office.

Whetten, D., & Cameron, K. (2011). Developing management skills. (Eighth ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.

Beaman, L. (n.d.). Upward leadership: Lead up to your leader. Retrieved from http://lisabeaman.hubpages.com/hub/Upward-Leadership-Leading-Up-to-Your-Leader

A520.3.1.RB_HallMike

Within the first 45s of the video (link to the video provided below), you are given 6 words that summarize your decision making style.  For me, these words were cautious, logical, self-motivated, rational, active, and assertive.  I would also like to clarify that I don’t think these words apply to me in every situation as some situations require different aspects of decision making styles, but on any given decision, I’d agree with how I was labeled.  If given the option, I am definitely a more cautious than risk taking.  I tend to take more risks in my personal life but I am definitely cautious at work, mainly because people’s lives and billions of dollars’ worth of government property is in my hands on the job.  I will take a more logical approach most of the time if time is permitting.  In general I like to make my own decisions hence I am self-motivated.  I am a very rational thinker so it would only be suitable that I am rational with my decision making.  Finally, I am active in pursuing a decision and assertive – I want to be the guy making them.

The opposite of the words that described me aren’t necessarily words that I wouldn’t use under the right circumstance.  For example, there will be situations where timing of the decision is critical.  As a result, I might have to make a decision based on my gut feeling due to lack of information.  In this situation, I am ok with making a decision using my intuition only and will gladly kick logic to the curb as needed.  Looking at the other 5 words, I think the same can be said for them also for at least 2 out of the 5.  As I mentioned already, I am much more of a risk taker in my personal life than at work.  I am absolutely open to getting other people’s inputs into the problem before making a decision so I have no problem with receiving influence from other people.  That leaves rational, active, and assertive.  The opposite of these words (respectively) are emotional/feeling, passive, and quiet.  These 3 words are probably words I would not use to describe me.  I use rational thinking most of the time, so much so that my wife sometimes says she wishes I would not think so coldly at times but separately acknowledges that it can be pretty handy at times.  I’m not a very passive or quiet person when it comes to leadership.  I’ll give someone the opportunity to go about it their way, but if things start to head south, I’ll have no problem stepping in and resuming my active assertive role.

The final part of this blog is supposed to discuss the benefits of using an opposite or combined approach.  I think one can see that I already do so.  As I described above, I cater my decision making style based upon the situation that I am in.  If it warrants an assertive time critical response, I’ll go with an intuition based decision vice the logical one I would have made had I had the time.  I think this has to be the approach that everyone takes when it comes to decision making.  Different situations require different skill sets in order to successfully overcome them.  If you do not allow your decision making skill to adapt to meet the needs of the individual problem, you might find yourself not making the best of decisions.  Conversely, if you pick and choose what style you want to use based on the circumstance, I think in general you are going to be much happier with both the process and the final decision that was made.

http://digital.films.com.ezproxy.libproxy.db.erau.edu/play/7A2UTV#

A520.2.6.RB_HallMike

From our text, effective time management requires several things.  First, you spend your time on important matters and not just urgent ones.  Secondly, you are able to clearly distinguish between important vice urgent tasks.  Thirdly, your results that you obtain are more important than the manner in which you going about time management.  Finally, you must not feel guilty about saying no when it comes to additional tasks (Whetten & Cameron, 2011).

Keeping that in mind and looking at my time management skills, I would say that I have both good and bad traits.  First off, I do a good job of breaking up my day and planning how my day should go down.  From experience, I have learned to never pack your day without any breaks.  While breaks are important, it is more importantly dead time that allows for some flex in your schedule.  I am also very punctual in order to stick with my schedule and am pretty good at prioritizing items in my schedule – I have no problem identifying urgent vice important tasks.

For some things I do not do well, I often underestimate the amount of time required to do a project.  As a result, I often feel very rushed while working on them – this would be easily rectified if I would just add a 25% fudge factor to my time estimates.  I also completely agree with the book when it says that people often fall victim to feeling like they are getting left behind (Whetten & Cameron, 2011).  With respect to prioritizing, while I am good about scheduling the more important things first, I find myself sometimes working on lesser important items to break up the monotony of working on the same thing for hours on end.  As a result of this, I occasionally lose momentum on big projects and fall slightly behind, resulting in me needing to put forth more effort to bring the project back on pace.  All these things aside, I do have a major problem with saying no.  I have a very high pain tolerance and can handle lots of things simultaneously, but also on occasion I have found myself overextended and needing help to reign in some of my tasks. The end result of my time management skill with respect to time stress I’d say is neutral – I neither help nor hurt my time management.  What I do wish is that the Navy would work more towards reducing time stressors since it seems like nothing is done at a normal pace – everything is break neck, “it must get done right now because this is the most important thing known to man right now”.  I’m positive that if the Navy would take a stance like SAS towards time stressors, they probably would have less turnover and a lot lower rate of unhappy sailors.

I don’t think my average time management skills play a part of my locus of control.  I am strongly internally centered as I think that my destiny is in my own hands.  While I know that some things are going to happen outside of my control, I do know that how I respond to these situations is entirely on me.  I can get upset about them and waste time complaining about it or I can accept it and move forward towards finding a resolution and getting on with my life.

After studying time management skills in this exercise, I would say that there are a few areas I can improve on.  First off, knowing that I chronically underestimate time requirements, I should at the very least add 25% to the estimate to ensure the project gets done in the allotted time.  Secondly, I have got to learn to say no before I get over tasked instead of waiting until I am in over my head.  Thirdly, I need to lose my propensity of procrastination of things (I don’t procrastinate important things but often wait until the last minute on small tasks).  In order to accomplish these goals, I plan on thoroughly understanding and applying several of the rules listed on pages 125 through 128 of the book – there are a ton of good thoughts in there that I plan on using over the coming weeks to gauge how I react to using them.  To do this (gauge how they work), I’m lucky enough to have a backlog of old daily schedules where I have the original plan and the revised plan at the end of the day that reflects how the day actually played out.  By keeping track of my time management, I can compare how efficiently I have used my time applying the rules from the book to how I faired without them several weeks ago.

A633.2.3.RB_HallMike

I have got to be honest when I say that this past week’s reading was quite possibly the most interesting reading I have done in the curriculum to date.  I have heard about some of the topics discussed through my engineering but never really looked into any of the topics, except for maybe quantum mechanics.  I thoroughly enjoyed reading about complexity theory and chaos mathematics – I will definitely do more reading on the subjects once I get done with this curriculum. 

                What I find the most interesting about complexity science is that while I have never been taught anything about them, I have witnessed them constantly without knowing it.  Complexity fundamentals like inter-relatedness, emergence, and adaptability are things that I have personally experienced in the Navy.  One of the things that the fellow junior officers will stress to new ones first reporting aboard is that they should spread out and meet the crew as fast as possible.  While some of the reasoning behind this is to start the process of building trust in the crew and vice versa, it also helps build your network of knowledge for future use.  Building this network means that you can find the solution to a question by going to the correct person without having to waste time looking for the right person that has the answer.  As with other things, it also means that the crew knows when they can go to you for information also.  The type of inter-relatedness is exactly what complexity science is describing.  Going beyond the boat, as people transfer off, your network of knowledge spreads to other ports and boats for future use.  I think this is one of the reasons the submarine community is so close – you do not need 7 degrees of separation to get from 1 person to any other person in the fleet, often all you need is one, maybe two links.  As a result, you can pretty much access any person in the fleet and their wealth of knowledge pretty quickly and going back to my previous blog, knowledge is power.

                Going back to finding the right person with the answer, JOs are often tasked with finding out solutions to problems by superiors.  The JO should formulate the answer before verifying, but the bottom line is that solutions are usually conjured up at the lower levels of the organization, thus they emerge to the higher ups.  This emergence is another defining factor of a complex system.  While the strict hierarchal structure of the Navy means that I haven’t necessarily witnessed self-organization first hand, considering I have seen the other 3, I can only assume that the other exists, but I can think of an example I have been exposed to.  My study of high performance teams leads me to say that they are just the product of self-organization in a complex system due to the fact that leaders often emerge from the team vice being specifically appointed. 

                The butterfly effect is another incredible observation to show both how complex the world really is and how little we truly understand about it.  Thinking back to large impacts I have witnessed that were magnitudes larger than the change that started them, one pretty quickly comes to mind.  Coming out of the yards, my ship was running into trouble with procedural compliance.  While the current CO stressed using the books, he didn’t really do much about it.  When the new CO came in, he also said we were going back to the basics and the books, but this time he actually did something about it – he got the other officers and chiefs on board with the message.  While not necessarily a ground breaking change, the realignment in the way we thought filtered through to almost every aspect of how we operated the ship.  Because of 2 words – procedural compliance – we went from being an almost dysfunctional crew to the best strategic asset in the fleet in only 2 years.  Again, this wasn’t a ground breaking program or even a new idea, it was a realignment in the fundamental way we did business that had profound effects on the boat’s ability.  Other than that, I can’t really think of any small changes that had large impacts.

                With respect to complexity theory and its impact on an organization’s resources, I think one important thing to keep in mind is that while we think we understand supply and demand; that system is incredibly complex and we might not know as much as we think.  There are complex equations and statistics to attempt to model how supply and demand are effected by one another, but way too often the economists are wrong and the system responds differently than predicted.    Manpower is another resource for organizations.  Humans are exactly what make an organization a complex one – by embracing the complex nature of them, you can reap the benefits of it (i.e. if you encourage the things that make an system complex like self-organization, inter-relatedness, emergence, and adaptability, you will create a better organization due to the benefits associated with each like a more knowledgeable and networked staff that solves problems at their level). 

A520.2.3.RB_HallMike

Conflict is something that occurs in all walks of life on all scales.  Conflict can be 2 countries going at each other or it could be 2 co-workers fighting over who are right in a given situation.  While I have experienced conflict often during my career, the most recent example of conflict in the workplace occurred several weeks ago as we were looking to alter our new ascension guidelines.  In quick summary, we have a relatively open door policy with very little screening taking place.  This type of system would work if there was a more thorough screening process occurring at ERAU, however very little screening occurs at the university level therefor we were getting candidates that had no real reason to be in the program.  While things clearly had to change, the powers that be were incredibly temperamental when discussing doing so.  As such, I entered into the conflict in the subordinate role while my CO took the role of the supervisor.  While others in the office wanted a much more strict set of guidelines than what we ended up with, I knew that the decision maker wouldn’t buy off on a drastic change (group think is not a problem in my office…).  As a result, I went about this conflict resolution with a deep sense of compromising in mind.  In fact, if you look at table 7.2 from the book, there was no other option but to collaborate as none of the other methods of solving conflict would result in a better program (unless he accommodated me, which I knew wasn’t going to happen).  The conflict started off as negations normally do – I started high and right and he started on the other side of the spectrum.  After explaining my side of the situation with some supporting facts, he was willing to accept that a change needed to occur.  At this point I listened to what he had to say about the topic which was essentially he was only going to implement the most basic of screening situations (which I had anticipated and was ready for a proposal).  At this point I directly engaged him with what were the criteria he wanted to use to screen.  He stated some ideas that were still a little low compared to my supporting documentation.  After presenting him with the document, he agreed that this was in the realm of possibility.  Following this revelation, we proceeded to hammer out the details of the new screening criteria and then I was sent out to implement the plan.  This whole process took about 1 hour in his office but required many more hours for preparation and for production of the finalized recruiting plan.  I knew exactly where he would go with the discussion and had done the background studying to know what was legit and not.  As a result, I was able to make him think that he came up with a bunch of the ideas (even though they were really strait from the manual) while keeping his superfluous ideas out of the final agreement.  This resulted in a cut and dry screening process with objective criteria that few can argue with.

I’m not sure that this conflict could have gone any better from my side of the fence.  I got a better screening process that captured most of my ideas and definitely all of them that were based on supporting documentation.  The actual argument remained cordial and professional at all times which was crucial considering our somewhat strained working relationship.  Looking at the selection factors outlined in the book, I had my personal preferences on how the problem should be solved but walked in with flexibility in where I wanted the decision to go (Whetten & Cameron, 2011).  Looking at the situational considerations, it was an important decision in a critical relationship with a high relative level of power but with low time constraints (Whetten & Cameron, 2011).  If you compare this situation with table 7.4, compromising was the way to go (Whetten & Cameron, 2011).  To note, the time factor was going to be my ace of spades – had he not given in on some of his ideas, I was going to break contact with him and reengage a couple of weeks (if not months) later to see if I could break the deadlock.  As I scan through the rest of the book, I would say that most of the methods could be used to describe at least some of this conflict resolution.

Going back to the discussion board, one of the cool things about NROTC is the fact that each community from the Navy is generally represented in a single unit.  As a result, we have a vast background of knowledge to draw from with completely different experiences to compare situations to.  My experience as a submarine JO is in no way similar to that of a pilot.  This leads to a variety of different viewpoints any time we have a problem that needs to be solved.  Very rarely is there solution that everyone agrees on because each of us is drawing from our own unique backgrounds to create it.  Due to this I’d say that our decision making ability as a group is better than that of my submarine’s wardroom where everyone was the product of the same training and command style – we each only had 1 pool of knowledge to draw from since most of our experiences were similar.  My experience with the unit and learning from this curriculum has definitely given me a new found appreciation for diversity in the workplace.

Whetten, D., & Cameron, K. (2011). Developing management skills. (Eighth ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.

A520.1.6.RB_HallMike

If there is anything I learn as I get older, it is that information is power.  One famous book specifically addresses this fact: Freakonomics.  Within it is example after example of how he who has the most knowledge wields the power.  One only needs to look at leaders within different countries to see how true this is.  For example, compare what the President can get away with here to what Kim Jung Un gets away with in North Korea.  We have a society full of (relatively) well informed people that won’t allow their leader to abuse either them or their rights.  Over on the Korean peninsula, Kim has absolute control over the country because he controls all of the information the people receive – with essentially no internet or privatized news organizations, they only source of knowledge North Koreans have is what Kim gives to them.  This allows him to have complete dominance over them.  Going 1 country to the north, you see have information can erode at the power base of oligarchies.  In China, the internet has allowed for information to be spread to the masses that is outside of the control of the government.  As a result, China has gone from a hardcore communist state to a much more liberal country over the past 20 years (yes there is still a long way to go there but they are moving away from communism).  While this might seem like it is irrelevant to self-awareness, I would say it is directly related.  Your level of self-awareness is nothing more than knowledge that you have about yourself.  Since knowledge is power, being self-aware immediately increases the amount of power you can wield when required.

                A quick look at the 5 areas of Self Awareness will show this.  Take for example core self-evaluation.  The underlying aspect of this area is that you are able to identify your own personality attributes (Whetten & Cameron, 2011).  The rhetorical question that follows is how can you better yourself if you are unable to identify your weaknesses?  Knowing your strengths and weaknesses will provide you with the ability to maximize on your strong points while minimizing your vulnerabilities in any given situation.  Values are another area of self-awareness.  In today’s world of instant communications, a leader must walk the ethical path unless he wants to find himself out of a job.  Having the ability to identify where your ethical code needs help will help prevent this outcome.  Another aspect of today’s world is the constant state of change.  Modern times have seen an exponential increase in the rate at which technology is changing.  Obolensky astutely pointed out that man went from being flightless to landing on the moon in 60 years after spending millennia walking the earth (Obolensky, 2012).  As such, a leader must be completely comfortable with change, especially considering that the rate will only continue to increase.  Again, being able to identify your weaknesses with respect to change will allow you to learn how to cope with it for future situations.  Speaking of learning, knowing your learning style can greatly increase your effectiveness and time management when it comes to learning.  For example, if you know you can memorize a book using flash cards in only a couple of hours, why waste the time reading it over and over again?  Finally, being able to identify and control your own emotions is vital when dealing with other people.  Given how important communication and networking is in the modern business environment, it would be who of a leader to know when his emotions are getting the best of him so that he can prevent a boil over.  The key point is that without knowing where you could improve, there will come a point where accidental improvement will stop and a focused effort at bettering yourself will be the only way to continue improving yourself – if that stops you just became an observer vice a player in the game of life.

                Answering the original question of how has my self-awareness changed since entering the program can be answered in a classic Navy answer: it depends.  On one hand, after spending 3 years in college and 2 years in a nuclear training pipeline, I could already tell you how I learned the most effectively.  I also had a broad understanding of all of the other areas of self-awareness.  With that being said, raw information is completely useless without the wisdom of where and when to apply it and this is exactly where the program has helped me.  This program has turned my rather dull blade of knowledge about myself and leadership into a sharpened sword – the material was there just not useful yet.  Something I have learned to appreciate with this curriculum is that military officers really do get an incredible amount of experience when it comes to leadership.  This knowledge though isn’t necessarily useful.  For example, people always knew that gravity existed since things fell to the ground when dropped; it wasn’t until Newton came along and actually studied and clearly defined gravity that it became useful.  The same was true for me and leadership and my self-awareness.  I had all sorts of notions and experience about it but couldn’t really tell you anything about it; I just knew that some things worked while others didn’t.  This program has shown me why things work and why others do not thus turning my knowledge into a useful object.  The same can be said with my self-awareness.  I’ve known for quite some time where my strengths and weakness with my personality, learning styles, values, etc. are; however it wasn’t until I actually studied them through this program that I have learned to both capitalize and minimize them.  Thus far it has been an incredible experience and I look forward to continuing to learn about both myself and leadership over these last several months of the program.

 

Whetten, D., & Cameron, K. (2011). Developing management skills. (Eighth ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education Inc.

Obolensky, N. (2012). Complex adaptive leadership, embracing paradox and uncertainty. Gower Publishing Company.

A520.1.2.RB_HallMike

Being that this is the 8^th of 9 core classes I must take as part of the leadership curriculum before the capstone, this is not my first go round with self-awareness surveys.  As such, I can honestly say that most of the questions and results were somewhat expected and of no surprise.  After my experiences in the Navy and through this curriculum, I would say that I have a decent understanding of what it means to be a leader, what it takes, and where I can improve.  As a result, I scored very well on the self-awareness portion, the emotional intelligence portion, the tolerance of ambiguity portion, and the core self-evaluation portion.  With the self-awareness, I understand my strengths and weakness as a leader and a communicator.  I often need to be careful with my tone of delivery when talking with someone since for whatever reason my tone of voice portrays emotion in things that I really have no emotional investment in.  Something else I have learned is that I often do not do a good job of coaxing right answers out of people while counseling them for a wrong action.  I could name quite a few more but needless to say, I have a grasp on myself as a leader.  With the emotional intelligence, I think I am very in tune with appropriate use of emotions  – I try to keep emotion out of things that it shouldn’t be in while also allowing emotions to flow when it is desired.  One surprising thing to come out of that section is that I apparently do hot have good emotional balance based on the scoring.  In fact, I only received 10 out of a possible 30 points in that section.  Part of the reason for this is that I have always been taught to praise in public while counseling in private and one of the questions discussed essentially calling someone out in public who is trying to take the credit for something I did.  The book suggested the correct response was that you should praise his contributions to the solution but shoulder the majority of the success – I almost completely disagree with the answer.  First off, calling someone out in public like that is humiliating to that person and will only breed discontent – if he wants to be “that guy”, let him do so then discuss it with him later in private.  Secondly, as a leader you should be ok with subordinates getting most of the praise.  After all, they are the ones that executed the plan.  Thirdly, humility is a powerful trait to have, especially in leadership – calling that guy out would appear that you want the praise for your ego. 

Moving on with the test, I smoked the tolerance of ambiguity section.  Ambiguity is a factor in my job almost all of the time.  After all, driving a submarine is literally like being blind: all you have is sound but that can only get you so far – there will always be a certain level of ambiguity in the problem since sound strength is not necessarily only based on distance.  Before I go off on a tangent, I’ll just say that I am comfortable making decisions where some of the information is missing because I did that exact thing for 3 years on the sub.  For the core self-evaluation, I again scored very well.  I think this is again due mainly to the confidence I have in myself and my abilities yet I also understand that I have imperfections and shortcomings.

The biggest surprise for me with the test was the Locus of Control scale – this was the only test that I was in the bottom half of the distributions scale.  With that being said, after reading about what the score meant, it doesn’t really surprise me.  While I do believe in fate to some extent, especially in situations like indirect fire (mortars/rockets where any place is as fortunate or unfortunate as the rest), I strongly believe that I build my own destiny and my score reflected that I am strongly internally focused.  While I may not have control over where I go next within the military, I do have the control to do my best regardless if I like it or not, make the best of the situation, and grow from the experience.  All of these things are things that I control even though it was the result of something out of my control. 

As far as what can be taken away from this exercise, anytime you have the opportunity to learn more about yourself should not be taken lightly.  In this case, I learned that I am strongly internally focused which is good in some situations and bad in others – I need to bring my focus to a more centralized situation where I can also harness the power of being externally focused.  As with most other things in life, it is not good to be strongly biased in one direction or the other – taking a moderate stance will equip you with more tools to deal with the possibilities that might present themselves to you.  Also, I learned that I need to work on my emotional balance more.  I look forward to seeing how my leadership skills continue to develop through this class and the leadership curriculum in general.