Degrees of Change: First Order & Second Order

Its normal for all the organization to have first order changes. We see people getting hired and fired every day. But my concern is that could this first order change with reference to the organization be a second order change for an individual? I would say yes of course. I have seen people going upside down because they lost their jobs or got laid off etc. But can companies avoid these first degree changes in the organizations to save employees from going through a second degree change? No, organizations are selfish when it comes to organizational interest. All what matter to the managers is the growth curve of the company or the dollars coming into the company's account. They don't care what goes in an employee's life but just to get more out of them, they are made feel like their existence counts for the company and if they would leave company wont remain the same etc. But once validated, they easily fire people and get rid of them. I just think its plain cruelty.

Change is Good?!?!?..

We have been hearing this phrase for a long time. But even in organizational terms most people support this claim. Bigger companies take huge decisions based on this fact and try to convince themselves and their customer to embrace this so that they can welcome upcoming product, changed services, or new styles to them. Has change always been good? Not really, few of us remember when Coca Cola came up with a sweeter version, resembling Pepsi. Did everyone like it? No. Most people wanted their own Coke back. There are many other examples of bringing change in the market. But then why really do organizations and everyone emphasize on change? Because without change we can never experience what we are already missing, and there are some good possibilities that if someone has already tested a changed product, service, or in that case anything new, and recommend that, then chances are that it might really be good. Hence at industry level, most of the time changes bring to us products or services that are new but are already being tested and most probably being favored by us. So in my opinion, yes, if brought after a certain consideration and research, Change is Good.

Conflict Styles: Compromise

Yes, I believe compromising has been the best options for me when it comes to conflict. I was working on this project where we had to migrate around one hundred reports from one version of software to another and we were having many issues in them. Some people were working towards coding, others worked on formatting and so on. Conflict came when we had to provide the final version of the reports and one team started to blame other that because of what they did reports were not coming out right. That was one tough situation. My approach was to just compromise with what this other team had said and agree to work together, showing them how I did what I did and make them changes in reports accordingly without messing the real outlook of the reports. I compromised with some of their approach and they did on some on mine, so that worked for both of us and problem got solved.

Stress, Burnout, and Support

I have been going through this a lot lately. Now a days when economy is going down, managers are announcing news of being laid off to people everyday. In this time of the year, when one is loaded with the work of three and still told that yes you are doing great and keep doing the good work; he does feel stressed. Why? Because in this situation people are showing him that they have expectations from him and he really needs to keep working this hard. This situation of working too hard to meet the expectations of higher people in the company is Burnout in my understanding. But if a worker is working real hard but still unable to make the managers happy, and when he hears that you can do better than this, then he really feels stressed. Carrying the huge load of tasks on his back, and still being unable to satisfy his managers.. This has been my case for past few weeks and when I got a little support from my peers that gave me some additional help, I felt kind of relaxed. Friends can always become a good holding hand..

Intergroup Conflict

Many times in the organizations conflicts occur among the people from the same group or team they work in. Why? Because as our textbook says that conflict occurs when many people try to reach a goal through different approaches. So now if my approach of attaining a given task is a bit different than my peer then we certainly are going to have a conflict. Usually in this case both of the parties feel that they are correct and their opinion should be given precedence and when one gets his or her opinion chosen, the other one feels not appreciated or in some situations degraded. This person might feel hurt and in other cases not even show interest in getting the job done to show others that the idea other person rose was not the best one and hence it failed in getting the job done. I have seen this many time in my life and a good lead usually try to keep his/her team members in sync without getting personal about any task and making everyone feel involved.

Resistance: Subtle Forms (Hidden Transcripts)

Many organizations when enforce rules against the will of employees face resistance. As mentioned in the book, resistance could be of many types, like strikes, walking out o meeting etc but what I find most interesting is the hidden resistance. One thing I have seen at many places is that people start stealing from the property of company, saying that company doesn't pay what they deserve and make them work a lot more than normal hours. I believe company owners should pay much importance to the matters when it comes to employee satisfaction. Of course, not to an extend that tilts the balance but to a level that is just enough for both employee and employer.

Organizational Control: Technical

As we all know that technology has provided us several new ways of organizational control and most of the job is done by high technology devices. But are the employees feeling comfortable in this environment? In my personal opinion, no. We all know that its natural not to be working every single second of your work. We all sometimes chat with colleagues, check our emails and even make a personal phone call to check on few things. But how would one feel knowing that his or her every move has been recorded? Of course not good at all. So in this case the employee will feel under pressure of being watched by the higher authorities and not be able to perform with ease and confidence. At my workplace most of the websites have been blocked as well to limit the people to use work related web-sites only. I think that is like telling the employees that we own you and in the time we pay you to work for us, you should be doing a single thing else.

For me personally it has been a cause of nervousness and stress so I can say that control should be there but to an appropriate level.

Power: Can it be misused?

Sometimes given too much power and control to an employee doesnt turn out to be the most productive option. It has been reported that many employees when left on their own slacked a lot in their work and tend to waste time and didnt even showed up to work. So in this case what can we tell to the people supporting the concept of employee power? But at the same time taking away all the power from them and pushing them to the tasks can make them less productive as well. I like to be given some room and authority to work on my tasks, so that I feel at ease and confident. So in my opinion, giving power to the employees could be both beneficial and if in access, harmful for the organization.

Teamwork: Why Doesnt It Always Succeed?!?!

I have been working for many organization for the past 3-4 years. In this time I have observed that even though the concept of teamwork is very good, i.e. to get a task done as a group but it doesn't always succeed. And the same job, if done individually, could have been very successful. There are different reasons I observed in this regard. One thing was the jealousy among different team members and specially among team leader and the group members. Usually other members of the team feel that they were the better option for being a team lead but this other person got lucky and became his/her team lead. Due to this very factor team members try to put others down in some cases. Also its very common that once given authority, team lead tries to take advantage of it and instead of he/she himself doing his/her work, put it on the team members. This also leads to a bad team work and project sinks. So I believe that even though there are many benefits of teamwork but it also has some drawbacks attached. So a manager should give much importance to the matter before assigning it to the team, that does this task really needs a teamwork or it can be done individually.

Democracy: Good or Bad?

First of all lets discuss if all (or most) of the organizations now a days have a democratic structure or not. I believe, even though companies make us feel like it, they actually dont. Most of the companies these days go by their own rules and regulations and they leave very little to the employees to decide or choose from. But they try to give them as much power that they feel like their voices are heard and they do count. How can we say that? VP of our company doesn't always make rules after asking us. Most of the time things happen and later its announced to us that company is taking such and such steps towards such and such thing. Recently our health insurance policy has been changed to a high premium policy without even asking us and all we know is that its there now. But at the same time, is it ok to leave all they decisions to the people of the company? Would company be benefiting from this decision and after so many demands of the employees and so many suggestions it can close down. So I believe in some cases democracy is good and in some bad.

Importance Of Leadership

Being a leader puts great responsibility on one person but to be a true leader one needs to have a few qualities.What exactly does a good leader do? The first thing that a leader has to do is know how to communicate with his followers. A true leader asks what and why rather than how and when. The right questions always get the right responses and so a leader should know what to ask and when. A person who is good at communicating with the people he is leading makes the people connect with each other, as well as, with the task at hand. The result is that people put in a lot more effort in what they are doing because they feel that the task is their task. Another thing is to know how to delegate a specific task to the person who knows how to do it.

Communication Networks

It was the Orientation for our MBA Program at SJSU. Dean of our Department started by explaining us the importance of building social networks while being in MBA Program. So much so that I had to admit that without having a strong social network we wont be able to go up in our career.

Social and business networks provide us point of contacts to broaden our sources of information. In corporate world its extremely critical to stay aware of new opportunities and technologies. Even if one is looking for a job, he must be aware of industry's requirements to trim himself according to the industry's needs. People who stays out of touch with working professionals and ongoing industry information find it extremely hard to find jobs. Because the standards and requirements keep changing in the market. Even if you were a successful engineer 7 years ago does not promise you a good job this year unless you work hard to acquire additional skill by inquiring other people in the industry.

So in my opinion, having a strong social network is extremely necessary to survive in the corporate world.

Superior-Subordinate Relation

"My manager is such a freak. I wonder why our CEO thinks he is a talented person. I believe I could have handled things in a better way than him". You may hear such things from your friends working in different companies and you might tell them: " My manager is such an awesome person, always treats me with respect and appreciate what I do for him".

Now what makes these two managers different from each other and makes their subordinates speak about them this way. Textbook explains about Upward and downward communication flows on p 150. The difference is found in the way superiors deliver these 5 categories of messages to the subordinates. A manager can deliver all what that is needed to explain a task to the subordinate and still make him feel valued whereas a different manager makes his subordinate hate him for even communicating with him. Smart managers realized this phenomenon and try to give the best working environment for their subordinates so that they can feel valued and hence try their best to provide best possible outcomes for company.

Work and Home..

If we look back twenty or thirty years ago, we see that the general lifestyle of people of that era was a lot different from what we have now. People were more family oriented and they used to work just to get food on the table. Workplace behavior and interactions were pretty formal and home/friends environment was very open, warm and friendly. Now all that is gone and something else has taken its place. Now a days technology has become so wide spread that human need to do physical labor has become nominal. People have to compete so much to stay hired and being able to earn for their families. So for this purpose people are working long hours at work and almost have neglected families. Formal workplace behavior has been replaced by the informal behavior because workplace has become the place where one spends most of his time. At one hand this is good for companies as they are paying people less for more work and they can keep them work longer hours, but at the same time next generation has been totally lost because of not having their parents with them when they are needed. Even the moms are working full time to get the best education and dresses for their children but they have abandoned them when it comes to their personal and moral training.

So even though the way people communicate in organizations has changed, people are becoming more friendly and interactive, I believe they should not leave their family behind and should give their kids an appropriate time that they need.

Customer Relations

Having a close relationship with customer, their needs and desires, and providing them what they might find interesting has been a major Goal of big organizations on the world. And why wouldnt it be? This is what makes these big companies "Big Companies". For the same purpose companies have come up with sales people trainings before sending them out to the clients. One thing that most of you have noticed is that majority of Sales people are noticeably good looking and handsome. Is it a co-incidence? Not really. If you enter any Express outlet in a mall, or a Diamond Jewelry store, you would certainly see a beautiful female and a very handsome male representatives. And manager as well would be a nicely dressed young male or female person. So even though we think of these things as co-incidences but in reality companies are working hard to attract customers to buy their products by putting attractive, friendly looking representative. And of course this technique has been very successful for them and bringing great business for the company.

Corporate Culture

Most organizations have some traits specific to them. Most of the time they are good but sometime they can be bad as well. Some are directed towards the internal people of the organization and some to the environment external to the organization. We classify these special traits as Corporate culture. Corporate culture usually gives an organization a feel of uniqueness that exists in it. Google, for instance, provides its employees with a lot of fascilities at work that they otherwise would be paying a lot for outside. Laundry service, gym, food, entertainment etc etc. This way employees of Google feel specially treated and feel rewarded for what they do. In return they try to work hard to stay up to the standards of Google. Even because of the same reason, people from all over the world dream to join Google.

So such culture encourages employees to work even harder and at the same time gives them a feel of being rewarded and specially treated.

Challenges to Organizational Identity

Struggle to be heard:

I really find it fascinating the way organizations advertise their products. This is one of the biggest challenges as well that organizations face after manufacturing a product. For instance, Apple-when it came out- wasnt too much in demand, its truggled its way up to the point where it is right now. Now if another company manufactures a product like Apple, they first have to announce it to the world that they exist, secondly they have to convince them that their product is better or equivlent to apple and/or lesser in price. Even then, people dont always go for new things which they have tried before. So this company will certainly have to spend a huge amount of money to advertise their product and stay in market.

Different companies use different tactics in the process of getting themselves heard. Alcohol/Beer companies usually show some beach in their ads plus beautiful girls to give an impression that this is kind of feeling you get if you use our product.

Making long story short, organizations face much difficulty in getting themselves heard and they pay a lot of money just to overcome this problem.

Socialization: A Learning Factor

Every time we join a new organization or change our jobs we go through a similar process every time. Going to work the first day, being a bit nervous about the new environment, looking for a friendly face to start communicating with; all these things happen with almost all of us. The process is known as Socialization. A learning process that helps us blend into a new organization and helps us become a part of working environment. Once we are part of the organization we feel more confident in doing our job and taking even more bold decisions.

Big companies have realized the importance of socialization and hence try to give their employees a very friendly environment so that employees can work to the best of their abilities.

Language and Narratives

While watching a British TV channel or may be an African wildlife documentary , we realize that even though the people are speaking the same language i.e. English, but there is something more to it. Sometimes we are unable to understand what a Program host is saying, and even if sometimes we do understand the meaning of words said, we are still not able to understand why person is saying a word in a specific way. Most of the times when a word is said differently or in a different pitch it can be concluded into many different meanings. For instance take the word "Healthy", now if someone in India is saying this word for someone, he probably means that this other person is too fat, why? because in their culture people don't get enough food to survive, and in this case someone is getting sufficient food for their bodies, they will be considered healthy. Africa and poor countries would fall in the same category.

Now if we look at people from US, we would realize that people who don't have much fats on their body is considered healthy, why? Because the standard of being healthy are different here.

So the point comes down to that it all depends how the languages are understood in different regions of the countries.

And to make things easier and consistent Companies are using standardizes languages like English, Spanish etc.

A New Culture and Me!!!

We usually dont realize the uniqueness of one culture or the core beliefs a culture is based on unless we look from the outside. I, when came to United States, went through a great deal of realization of such differences between my own culture and the one I saw here.

For me I had never seen my mother, sister or even other women from all around the country showing their bodies to stranger men. This idea was like when a woman shows her body out to a stranger, or in this case, a bunch of men, she is seducing them to come closer to her, so that later she can capture them in her sweet talks and make them take her a life partner, so that she has someone to take care of her both financially and physically. For my culture a woman inviting men to her like this is considered a woman without much honor, who lacks the good qualities that she has to get the attention of other men by showing her body, who has gone down to a very low level to attract men towards her. Modest and honorable women would only let people approach them through their parents or guardians, just so that they know if this man is approaching her through a proper channel, he is making it public, he will take the responsibility of providing for her for life, will do justice with her as people are witnessing their marriage and its known that only this man will be the protector, provider and care taker of this woman.


Saying all this, I had a very hard time communicating with fellow students and even colleagues at work. It was too hard for me to accept that how can a woman not know that men are staring at her chest or behind. And if she knows that, why doesn't she cover herself and show her beauty only to her spouse? Bulging out breasts and tight clothing was a major distracting for me in talking to females in United States.


So I believe in my case, the mindset I had and my belief made me act in a certain way in a community and caused communication gap between myself and other member of the society. Regardless of who is right and who is wrong, the main purpose, that was studies at college level, and job related work in case of my organization was affected.

So in my experience culture differences are one of the major factors affecting communication in societies.