Discussion Post

Please post at least three (3) issues which you have learned or are taking away from this course.

Culture, culture, culture. I have always believed that “fit” is critical. The coursework helped me to formulate more in-depth thoughts on this topic. Focusing on creating a “best-fit” scenario always has been and will continue to be a focus of mine. In all honesty, I am struggling with the juxtaposition of Simon Sinek’s idea that conveys the organization as a family where leadership is like parenting (Sinek, n.d.) vs. Reed Hastings view of an organization as a professional sports team (Hastings, 2009, p. 24). These are concepts I have been thinking about a lot, and I suspect it is something that I will continue to think about for a very long time. My thought after reviewing the Netflix culture deck in the context of parenting, is that Reed Hastings believes in tough love, he parents, but does it from a place of very high expectations.

Bolster and protect the culture with best-fit scenarios (Robbins & Judge, 2018 p. 81). Use scientific tools like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) or other personality-assessment instruments, as well as discussions with peers and management to assess prospective candidates and better the probability of a best-fit scenario.

Motivation. Understanding motivation is critical to creating high-performance cultures. I experienced a deep sense of personal enlightenment Herzberg’s Motivation-Hygiene (Two-Factor) Theory (Robbins & Judge, 2018, p. 102), I loved the correlation between influencers (hygiene factors) and sentiment. I am big on sentiment analysis, I love using big data and machine learning to determine sentiment so this really appealed to me.  I have quoted McClelland’s statement “that high achievers perform best when they perceive the probability of success to be 50/50”. (Robbins & Judge, 2018 p. 103) at least ten times already.

It should be no secret at this point that I love the “RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us” video and pretty much anything authored by Simon Sinek.

Communication. I related to the idea of an organization as communication. This concept made sense to me because I believe my ability to communicate and the ability for people to communicate with each other is what shapes an organization. The organization is just a manifestation of how we communicate with each other, how communication shapes the culture and how people perceive the organization. Our ability to effectively communicate will have a profound impact on our organization’s culture, successes, and failures.

References

Hastings, R. (2009, August 01). Culture. Retrieved March 18, 2018, from https://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664

Koschmann, M. (2012, May 08). What is Organizational Communication? Retrieved April 15, 2018, from https://youtu.be/e5oXygLGMuY

Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. (2018). Essentials of organizational behavior. New York, NY: Pearson.

RSA ANIMATE: Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us. (2010, April 01). Retrieved March 16, 2018, from https://youtu.be/u6XAPnuFjJc

Sinek, S. (n.d.). Why good leaders make you feel safe. Retrieved April 27, 2018, from https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_why_good_leaders_make_you_feel_safe