Author: Dan Desmarais

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Unit 1 assignment: Expanding the Canon (DAN)

“Bridging the generational gap in the workplace: How I learned to stop worrying and love working with the millennial generation” is an article written by Dr. Thanakorn Jiresevijinda at Cornell university. It was written for the Journal of communication in healthcare and published by Taylor & Francis group.

In Dr. Jiresevijinda’s 20 years of supervising medical students, he has received an unsettling and growing amount of complaints about the millennial generation. One could easily draw a conclusion that there exists a disconnect between Gen X and Gen Y.  This problem encouraged him to explore new ways to create a more integrated work force that understands and accepts each other regardless of age difference. The purpose of his article is to offer the methods that he found to be helpful through his exploration. He admits in the article that he too has experienced frustration while educating the students from the younger generation. By stating this he levels the playing field as he explains that he understands the discontent that his colleagues have with Gen Y. He then continues his article by citing a sentence in a piece written by the prominent figure Chelsea Clinton. Her statement suggested that millennials are often portrayed as disinterested and selfish individuals, though the millennials that she has worked with do not fit that stereotype. He included this quote as it attests to the fact that the Millennial generation tends to have a bad reputation. This also helps persuade the audience to be more accepting of his suggestions as he shares a similar perspective with an influential figure. The author also builds up his argument by sharing his own personal experiences. Dr. Jiresevijinda speaks from both his experiences at work and the conversations he has had with his coworkers. Some of their frustration with the millennial group stemmed from increased technology use; different communication preferences; the students craving for feedback; and their preferred work like balance, which can be misconstrued as students being disinterested in learning. He was then able to identify positive traits from Gen Y and craft methods to remedy these problems. The positive traits that he identified included their tech savviness, confidence, and their ability to work well in a team environment.

The first suggestion that Dr. Jiresevijinda made was to focus on inclusiveness. He understands that in a social media driven world, millennials need to feel that their voice is heard. This has led him to listen more closely to his students without judgement and help them by asking pointed questions. He also allows them to work in groups as they often thrive better through student collaboration. Pre-class quizzes are given to ensure that everyone is engaged and keeping up with the pace of the class as a whole.

His second suggestion is that we must leverage social consciousness. The millennial generation is one that truly values having a positive impact on the world. They tend to be more accepting of diversity and progressive change. This observation led him to see the importance of framing the knowledge he gives his students in such a way that they can see the importance it has on improving society. He keeps this importance in the minds of the students by having them sign up for community service. The students worked alongside the professors and another medical organization to offer a free clinic for refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

His last suggestion is to include more technology in the curriculum. One way he suggested doing this is by incorporating fun and engaging games such as jeopardy to keep his students involved. He also finds it useful to use a smartphone app that is an audience-response system. I found this interesting as the students must stay engaged in the class because the context of the class is literally on their phones on which they must participate.

I find this text to be an important contribution to expanding our canon as every single sustainable organization will always be multigenerational. Though it is not often the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the term diversity, people in different generations have vastly different life experiences and are indeed quite diverse. Rapidly accelerating technological advances; Unforeseen world events; and new global challenges are among the factors that affect the overall behavior of a generation significantly. This inevitably leads to differences in the way that people of a generation view the world and interact with one another. Though this may present its own challenges, it is paramount that we learn to come together to create a synergistic environment at work. This can only be done by valuing each other’s differences. I found Dr. Jiresevijinda’s work to contain the wisdom that is crucial to solving our intergenerational struggles. One final source of valuable information about generational diversity can be found in the video link below. Keevin O’Rourke conducts a TED talk of which he speaks on the issue of generational diversity at work. One may be able to draw multiple parallels between the video and Dr. Jiresevijinda’s article. I found it intriguing how they both had similar suggestions to their respective audience even though one of them is Gen X and one is Gen Y. This gives hope that in the future our organizations will reap the benefits of a more accepting workforce

 

Link to the article and citiation

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538068.2018.1485830

Thanakorn Jirasevijinda (2018) Bridging the generation gap in the workplace: how I learned to stop worrying and love working with the millennial generation, Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 11:2, 83-86, DOI: 10.1080/17538068.2018.1485830

Ted Talk to further explore intergenerational diversity in the workplace

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Dan Expanding canon draft

“Bridging the generational gap in the workplace: How I learned to stop worrying and love working with the millennial generation” is an article written by Dr. Thanakorn Jiresevijinda at Cornell university. It was written for the Journal of communication in healthcare and published by Taylor & Francis group.

In Dr. Thanakorn’s 20 years of supervising medical students, he has received an unsettling and growing amount of complaints about the millennial generation. One could easily draw a conclusion that there exists a disconnect between Gen X and Gen Y.  This problem encouraged him to explore new ways to create a more integrated work force that understands and accepts each other regardless of age difference. The purpose of his article is to offer the methods that he found to be helpful through his exploration.

He admits in the article that he too has experienced frustration while educating the students from the younger generation. By stating this he levels the playing field as he explains that he understands the discontent that his colleagues have with Gen Y. He then continues his article by citing a sentence in a piece written by the prominent figure Chelsea Clinton. Her statement suggested that millennials are often portrayed as disinterested and selfish individuals, though the millennials that she has worked with do not fit that stereotype. He included this quote as it attests to the fact that the Millennial generation tends to have a bad reputation. This also helps persuade the audience to be more accepting of his suggestions as he shares a similar perspective with an influential figure. The author also builds up his argument by sharing his own personal experiences. Dr. Thanakorn speaks from both his experiences at work and the conversations he has had with his coworkers. Some of their frustration with the millennial group stemmed from increased technology use; different communication preferences; the students craving for feedback; and their preferred work like balance, which can be misconstrued as students being disinterested in learning. He was then able to identify positive traits from Gen Y and craft methods to remedy these problems.

One of the suggestions was to focus on inclusiveness. He understands that in a social media driven world, millennials need to feel that their voice is heard. This has led him to listen more closely to his students without judgement and help them by asking pointed questions. He also allows them to work in groups as they often thrive better through student collaboration. Pre-class quizzes are given to ensure that everyone is engaged and keeping up with the pace of the class as a whole. His second suggestion is that we must leverage social consciousness. The millennial generation is one that truly values having a positive impact on the world. They tend to be more accepting of diversity and progressive change. This observation led him to see the importance of framing the knowledge he gives his students in such a way that they can see the importance it has on improving society. He keeps this importance in the minds of the students by having them sign up for community service. The students worked alongside the professors and another medical organization to offer a free clinic for refugees seeking asylum in the United States. His last suggestion is to include more technology in the curriculum. One way he suggested doing this is by incorporating fun and engaging games such as jeopardy to keep his students involved. He also finds it useful to use a smartphone app that is an audience-response system. I found this interesting as the students must stay engaged in the class because the context of the class is literally on their phones on which they must participate.

I find this text to be an important contribution to expanding our canon as every single sustainable organization will always be multigenerational. Though this is not often the first thing that comes to mind when we hear the term diversity, people in different generations have vastly different life experiences and are indeed quite diverse. Rapidly accelerating technological advances; Unforeseen world events; and new global challenges are among the most impactful factors that affect the overall behavior of a generation. It is paramount that we learn to come together to create a synergistic environment at work. This can only be done by valuing each other’s differences. I found Dr. Thanakorns work to contain the wisdom that is crucial to solving our intergenerational struggles.

 

Link to the article

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17538068.2018.1485830

Ted Talk to further explore intergenerational diversity in the workplace

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Dan discussion week of 6/8

  1. The Presentation “Why work doesn’t happen at work” by Jason Fried incorporates many good argument techniques. The main purpose of his talk was to speak about how companies are hindering employee productivity by involuntarily creating a distracting workplace. He starts off by discussing a question that he has posed to many people over the years. The Question is “Where do you go when you need to get something done?” This is a powerful question as it forces the audience to think about their own answer. He then makes his point that almost nobody’s answer to the question is “the office”. Jason uses light humor to get the audience laughing through choosing examples that they can relate to. An example of this is his statement that true distractions are the M&M’s (Meetings and Managers) and not often social media. During one part of the presentation, he made the connection that work is like sleep as it happens in phases. He states that just like sleep, people need long hours of uninterrupted time to get meaningful work done. He then engages the audience directly by asking them to raise their hands if they have had 8 hours of uninterrupted time at the office (which of course they have not). The very last thing that Jason did in this 15 minute presentation was make three suggestions to remedy these productivity problems. He placed what he says in the final three minutes of the video. This is the last thing that his audience will remember, and his suggestions will be strong as the audience was very engaged in the discussion at this point.
  2. I noticed the presenter in the TED Talk “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world” used a few very strong techniques in persuading her audience. Margaret Hefferman initiates her speech by telling a story of a company that attempted to increase efficiency by automatically allocating tasks down to the minute. The point of her story was that this resulted in an inefficient process as the technology could not account for needy customers and other unexpected occurrences. Starting off with an example made it clear for her audience to understand the problem she is addressing. She then made some examples of important “inefficient” company processes such as a vaccine company who is developing many vaccines that could possibly be useful in case of a global pandemic. (Apparently there is not enough of these companies). Another example she provided was how banks are now holding more capital than they have in the past in case of market crashes. Though it is inefficient to hold too much cash, she explains that it is robust and a good safety net in case of economic emergencies. She then leads her audience by posing a question of how do we change our company models of efficiency? She uses examples of how this has been done such as in hospitals in Netherlands where nurses have more responsibility to tend to the needs of the individual patients. After a few more examples she adds in her point that we need to become less dependent on technology that is focusing on efficiency and become more interdependent with each-other. She also makes the powerful point that if we continue to let machines think for us, we will lose our ability to think for ourselves at all.
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Dan Summary of article

The title of the article that I chose was “Bridging the gap in the workplace: How I learned to stop worrying and love working with the millennial generation.” This was written by Dr. Thanakorn Jiresevijinda at Weill medical College through Cornell University. The purpose of the article was to explain to the reader how to create a more connected work environment through acceptance of the millennial generation.

Dr. Thanakorn uses examples from his own personal experience to elucidate the frustrations that many folks of Generation X have with the millennial group on-the-job. Some of the frustrations included their use of technology and different preferences of communication. Another topic he discusses is the craving for the feedback that Gen Y desires. He poses the problem of how their desire for feedback may be misconstrued as the students caring more about their grade than their education and ability to help the patients in need. Dr. Thanakorn then explains how even though he could relate with the frustrations, he was able to identify a multitude of positive traits that this new generation possesses. He was then able to leverage these positive characteristics to create a workplace of synergy between multiple generations.

Articles like these are important as they strive to improve the interpersonal relationships between generations in our organizations. This will inevitably become more important as a new generation enters the workplace. Generation Z, Millennials, and Gen X will have to continue to find ways to accept the abilities and differences of each other to succeed in a rapidly changing world

 

http://web.b.ebscohost.com.libezproxy2.syr.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=0&sid=3f573b22-f813-4df1-92b5-75c0702fe802%40pdc-v-sessmgr06

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Dan discussion week of 6/1

  1. The articles “Understanding Key D&I concepts” and “Neurodiversity as a competitive advantage” both identify many significant problems that we face in our modern-day workplace. The former article describes a fictional workplace that is the epitome of most work cultures. The manager is struggling in the chaos of too many urgent tasks and is falling into the common behaviors of many ineffective managers. Those that are not in the inside group of upper management get little attention from her although she intends to do right by them. The latter article discusses how neurodiversity can play a great role in increasing the profitability of our businesses. Austin and Pisano provided multiple examples proving the success certain companies obtained by including neurodiversity people. Though if we intend to reap the benefits of our neurodiversity friends like those few companies, we must make organizational changes to provide a safe environment for them to thrive in. The workplace culture described by Kaplan and Donovan would not be suitable for this community of people. We will have to change at the individual level as well as the our organizations and the marketplace as a whole.
  2.  I started my research for something to contribute to our cannon by exploring one of the tools I know about from work. Dale Carnegie training is something that many people are familiar with. I was curious to see if there were any whitepapers about D&I. This led to me finding a company called the center for generational kinetics. This looked promising to me; however, the company mainly focuses on delivering keynote presentations to deliver their information about generational diversity. Unfortunately, this means the information they do provide often includes many cliffhangers instead of fully formed ideas and examples. Though I will not be using this article, it helped me discover the topic that I will be researching which is generations collaborating in the workplace. I have since been using the Syracuse University library to find articles pertaining to this subject.
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Dan K&D summary week of 6/1

The Inclusion Dividend article was written by Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan. This article focused on the common issue of organizations struggling to implement positive change to diversity and inclusion. The authors made their argument by telling a relatable story of a woman in an upper management position at her firm. It is clear to see from the story that Kim is a very hard worker and is dedicated to her career. As foreshadowed early in the story regarding her having no recollection of her morning commute, she spent the rest of her day on autopilot. A main task for her was to complete her employee evaluation forms. Unfortunately, her positive intentions to complete them earnestly had faltered as she was treading water in her urgent tasks. She may have also unintentionally belittled two of her subordinates when they asked for her attention and she neglected. The authors strongly assert that good intentions are not enough. A slight change in her words can have a much more positive affect on her coworkers. The authors also warned of our inevitable biases in the workplace. At one point in the story Kim seemed to make time for a male executive that she had previously mentored. This happened directly after she had dismissed a south Korean woman of whom she was supposed to be mentoring. This could be or could be perceived to be bias and negatively impact the woman she was supposed to mentor. This is both an example of possible unconscious bias and of the insider-outsider groups that exist in all organizations. The Authors proceeded to explore how this dynamic is present in all levels of organization. The authors then Include a few tips on how to help create more inclusive work environments.

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Discussion post – week of 5/25 (Dan)

1)           According to the findings of the Gundermir article, Organizations should strive to create diversity policies focusing on multiculturalism and value-in-individuals. Gundemir defined the former as policies that explicitly acknowledge the positive characteristic of diverse social groups. The latter is defined as a policy that acknowledges each individual for their characteristics without explicitly addressing ethnic groups. Though I agree that our society must focus on developing company mission statements that vocalize inclusion, I believe that there may be more effective ways to increase the morale of all employees and create an open-minded environment without focusing most of our attention on mission statements.

Using the writing technique of framing what “They say” first has certainly helped me organize my thoughts and formulate my argument in a way that has set me up for further explanation. I agree that writing in this manner will help me stay on track and keep me from straying away on tangents.

 

 

2)           My reading of the Gundemir et al article and the article on neurodiversity has been very thought provoking for me. I understand that our society needs to strive for continuous improvement in inclusion to become more accepting of everyone’s differences. This, I agree, will be beneficial to our society on many levels. I also acknowledge that there is still much work to be done as certain groups may be underrepresented in leadership roles in companies. Though I found it interesting, for example, that the Gundemir article states that African Americans hold around 10 percent of board seats in fortune 100 companies. This doesn’t seem to be drastically far off from the percentage of African American population in the United States of around 13 percent. On the other hand, the article on neurodiversity possesses a fact that is truly startling to me. That is that the unemployment rate for these individuals runs as high as 80 percent! At my company I work with and am good friends with people from many different parts of the world. But I can say that I do not know a single person that I work with who would be classified as non-neurotypical. I know that my company often addresses the importance of ethnical inclusion, though they have never once discussed the issue of minimal representation of the nuerodiverse community in any level of the business. I would be very interested to further explore this topic as I have some close ties with this. I have a great relationship with my fiancées cognitively impaired brother. He struggles to understand how to interact with others in certain situations and he does learn at a slower pace. Though I know that he could make positive contributions to organizations if more of them will adopt the practices at SAP, HPE, Microsoft and others included in Austin and Pisanos article.

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Unit 1 week of 5/18 (Dan)

  1.             I found the study conducted in the article “Why Diversity Matters” to be particularly intriguing for me. I Immediately noticed their sample size of 366 companies across four different regions and various industries. A sample of this sort should be sufficient to provide accurate data of which logical inferences can be made. I also noticed that they compared the financial metrics with the respective industries of each company. Therefore, it was very eye-opening for me to see such a drastic increase in financial performance which I assume to be due to increased ethnic and gender diversity.

The goal of a company is to make money. With that said, I believe that regardless of gender or race, the greatest candidates should be chosen for positions in those companies. If we judge people on their appearances or beliefs rather than their skills and abilities, we are doomed to miss out on the positive impact they would have contributed.

I would be interested to explore further which industries were most positively affected by the increased diversity. I would also be curious to see where the companies were located and what the census was in the areas around the companies studied. It may be possible that rather than particular companies shunning increased diversity, they simply did not have many different candidates to choose from.

 

  1.              In the very first paragraph of the article “What is organizational culture and why we should care?” the author states “There is little consensus on what organizational culture actually is”. He then continues to state that this is problematic, because if you cannot truly define an issue there is no clear path to solving it. I thought that was a very gripping claim in this article.

I found many of the definitions of these individuals to have some truth. For example, one individual stated that culture is in large part a product of compensation. I do agree that compensation has a strong affect on the overall culture of a workplace. Though I think that appreciation, and a feeling of importance may have just as strong of an affect. I believe that if employees do not feel fulfilled with their responsibilities in the organization, they will always leave with a pit in their stomach while feeling like something is missing. I understand this on a personal level as when I have a productive day at work and my mentors and managers recognize me, I leave work with a smile on my face and carry positive energy throughout the day.

I also agree with another definition in this article. It that states that it is an oversimplification to assume that there is only one culture in a given organization. I found this to be true as well as I have recognized many different departments at my place of work of which employee satisfaction is positive or negative to various degrees

If I had to give a definition myself of what organizational culture is, I would define it as the aggregate feeling and repeated behavior of individuals in a workplace. I would continue to clarify that there may be many facets of culture in an organization and that it is affected by many factors including the decisions and behavior of those in leadership roles.

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Dan’s intro ( Week of 5/18)

Hello all,
My name is Dan Desmarais and I am in my junior year studying Mechanical Engineering here at SU. I am a part-time student and work full time as an Engineering technician at TTM technologies in East Syracuse.
I have a 4 year old little girl named lily with my Fiancée Crystal.

I have had a few experiences taking classes that are fully online. Some of the classes went well, though I struggled in others. My advice for those who are not used to this format of learning is to make a schedule for yourself and stick to it. I have found that it’s very easy to get behind in an online class and very challenging to catch back up.
With that said I am excited to spend the summer learning with all of you. I am looking forward to improving my ability to conduct quality research and construct more impactful arguments in my writings.