Tag: “unit1

Discussions/Homework Week of 6/28

Response #1

The style of Margaret Heffernan’s TED Talk, The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World, was quite compelling. Ms. Heffernan, an entrepreneur, CEO, writer and keynote speaker, immediately grabbed our attention by sharing case studies that presented examples of things the audience likely would predict had happened, then surprised us by showing that we were wrong.

Heffernan led us through the telling of multiple stories with unexpected endings primarily because every case involved humans versus technology. Our presenter’s voice possessed a cadence that kept her audience’s attention and she engaged us by asking a question then answering it. She used descriptive words like “robust”, “inefficient” and “preparedness” repeatedly to drive home her point. Heffernan was able to captivate her audience by discussing things that mattered to them, like the value of humans over algorithms.

Once she drew in her audience, Heffernan shared some philosophies that are important to her like how outsourcing to machines displaces people in low-income jobs or how technology leads us to not connect with people different from ourselves and have less compassion for others. In the end, she proved to us that humans are uniquely cut out for unpredictability and all its wonder.

Response #3

Margaret Heffernan, entrepreneur, CEO, writer and keynote speaker, is an innovator. She started out by looking at what made women-owned businesses different from others. Now she examines the intersection of business, technology, society and family.

During her TED Talk, “The Human Skills We Need in an Unpredictable World” we find that Heffernan’s views align quite well with many of the issues we’ve been studying in class. She understands that nothing is in a vacuum and that all things are connected. Ms. Heffernan spends a lot of time examining how the impact of one action can have a domino effect on multiple, seemingly unrelated, things. This is an important point as shown in “Key D&I Concepts” where Kaplan and Donovan illustrate how executive Kim unknowingly causes negative impacts on several of her employees through seemingly innocent acts. Similar to Austin and Pisano’s Neurodiversity as a Competitive Advantage, Heffernan’s TED Talk also speaks to the problematic nature of algorithms resulting in disconnection from and dispassion for others unlike ourselves. In an attempt to be efficient in hiring by using algorithms, many companies miss out on surprisingly beneficial relationships with atypical job candidates. As Ms. Heffernan put it, “We are attempting to force-fit a standardized model of a predictable reality onto a world that is infinitely surprising”. While we delve deeper into our work on Diversity and Inclusion, I hope we learn to do away with force-fitting standardized models on people and embrace everyone’s differences.

E.C unit 1 Draft

Neurodiversity Studies: A New Critical Paradigm written by Hanna Bertilsdotter an associate professor in sociology ,Nick Chown a book indexer who researches and documents his findings on Autism , and Anna Stenning a welcome trust research fellow in humanities and social sciences, explore the world of Neurodiverse people and the challenges they face in the workplace. Through their extensive research the authors have been able to maintain their stance of supporting the “Neurodiverse movement”. They reiterate throughout their writing that neurodiverse people, no matter how qualified they may be, face many obstacles when searching for employment. There has been evidence from the PARC, an organization which collects research on autistic people ,that has shown that even when a person with autism holds a doctorates, they are rarely able progress to further research and lecturing contracts. The writers attribute this to the invalidation of “impaired bodies” making neurodiverse people constantly struggle to establish credibility due to the ableist viewpoint prevalent in society today. It was also mentioned that when a study was conducted, many neurodiverse employees have admitted that they have been in situations in the workplace where in order for them to fit in they felt that it was necessary that they mask any characteristics that might indicate to others that there were different. The writers contend that in order for this to be rectified, there must be an emphasis on inclusion in these spaces so these employees can feel safe and work their best.

This article was written with the intention of educating readers about neurological differences and how they don’t limit people from functioning and completing the same tasks as everyone else. Since people cannot seem to look over neurodiversity and appreciate what these people are able to contribute, oftentimes they are treated as if they are beneath everyone else and are not able to showcase their capabilities. It was mentioned in the Austin and Pissano article that since many neurodiverse people do not exhibit the standard “good employee” behavior through characteristics such as “solid communication skills, being a team player, …” they are unfairly screened out and excluded from job opportunities. This article has educated me on methods of including neurodiverse people rather than excluding them. Many people with autism especially have trouble adjusting their vocal tone and pace to match the conversations they partaking in so we can learn to realize the differences in our communication skills so that we don’t misinterpret vocal/motor traits as aggression. We can also make changes in the workplace environment to make neurodiverse people more comfortable in their space such as holding shorter meetings or regulating noise levels. Small changes over time can have everlasting impacts so it is important to take action now and implement more inclusive environments.

In this ted-talk, Tashi Baiguerra a 21 who has been diagnosed with autism mentioned something that stood out to me a lot. Tashi said “Most autistic people don’t actually suffer from our autism. We suffer from the way the world sees and treats our autism. To the world my brain is broken…But my brain is not broken.”. Neurodiversity should be recognized as another thing that makes people different but does not make them any less capable than others. It Is hard for many people to accept all the things that make us different however until we learn, we won’t be able to progress and become the society we have the potential to become.

Discussion Questions Week 4

Response 1

Heffernan, a former CEO, attempts to explain the need for human qualities, as forecasting with technology cannot be solely relied on in the future. In the TED talk, Heffernan first attempts to connect with her audience by using a joke,  in which coconuts are used in the reference as an example. I thought it was well done by Heffernan, as it got her audience interested in hearing more about what she had to say. After using examples of things that AI cannot forecast, such as when a group of high schoolers will need to buy coconuts, Heffernan uses “we” a significant amount. Heffernan is most likely referring to the human population due to how much she references human nature and the qualities that humans have, unlike technology. Along with using “we”, Heffernan does a fantastic job at blending in everyday real-world examples of why human qualities are essential. Heffernan does this by speaking about a hospital that had a strict schedule for each patient, which was changed to a more relaxed schedule based on what the nurse believed was necessary. A nurse who is sitting in the audience might be interested in hearing more about this topic. She uses other topics of individuals in the business world, thereby making other people within that field interested. By referencing a wide range of different industries, Heffernan can appeal to a variety of people in different areas, yet all have one thing in common. Efficiency does not always mean effectiveness, as numbers are not 100%, and cannot predict the future. She also used a personal anecdote where she said she spoke to some rising CEOs, asking who their friends were at work. The CEOs stated that they had no time for that,  in turn not being able to create lasting connections with other meaningful people in the business world.

The most critical part about her speech though is that she spoke more in a conversational tone. She did not bring up any relevant statistical evidence in her examples, rather she spoke through the reasoning. Technology, on the other hand, would solely rely on numbers, not human intuition. For this speech, Heffernan only relies on human interaction and appeals to the audience as “we” to illustrate the need for human interaction and emotions to be involved in organizations.

Response 2

Heffernan chooses to work with evidence in the exact opposite way that AI would work to form an opinion. Instead of using numerical data to back up her findings, Heffernan relies almost only on anecdotes in different organizations to prove her point. To make her points more effective, Heffernan develops her ideas by initially stating what she believes to be true, which is that we must not rely on technology completely, as humans are useful due to their ability to form connections and have emotions. After doing so, Heffernan chooses to use a real-world example to illustrate this point. For example, Heffernan states that having an efficient well-laid schedule may not be effective. Nurses discovered this after following a strict schedule only allocating a small amount of time for each patient and then turning to a schedule where they were able to spend as much time as they would like to with any given patient. After switching schedules, the cost went down while patient recovery times also improved.

Heffernan throughout the speech keeps us on our toes, as she speaks on the fact that no one knows when the economy is going to tank, or when the next epidemic is going to happen. Although this talk happened in 2019, I think it is really interesting. No one ever could have imagined that the COVID pandemic would happen in 2020, as we really could not predict it. Being able to look back on this video two years later is fascinating to me because it solidifies her point that forecasting and technology cannot predict everything in life, especially because ”Efficiency works well when you can predict exactly what you are going to need. But when the anomalous comes along… efficiency is no longer your friend.”  She speaks about how there are organizations that help research vaccines and variations of sicknesses or diseases. If we did not already have research on other diseases such as SARS, then we would not have been able to develop a vaccine as quickly. However, due to some amazing researchers who continued to research SARS a vaccine was developed fast. Some may not have thought that it was efficient to be studying something that was not impacting our society at that present moment. However, it became effective in the long run and helped develop a vaccine.

Another reason why Heffernan is so successful at conveying her thoughts is because of the way that she addresses her audience. She addresses the audience as “we” because both she and the audience have emotions and are people. One of the main points that she tries to illustrate is that the thing that makes an organization successful is the people within it. I believe that her speech was less of an argument and more so went through a step-by-step process of her ideas, which were laid out through logical reasoning and stories.

By using both imaginary and real-world anecdotes to convey her point, Heffernan does a fantastic job at conveying her point about why technology cannot be fully relied on. I enjoyed listening to this TED talk especially because it aligned with many topics covered in my management classes last semester.

Response 6/14

  1. In their recent work, Gundemir et al offered harsh critiques of organizations lack diversity for higher level positions. The disproportionate number of White people vs BIPOC in positions like CEOs is disturbing and hard to understand given the stated researched benefits that increased diversity has on the workplace. Because of this discrepancy, the researchers of this article conducted two studies that investigate how a change in diversity mission statements/initiatives can impact the self-perceptions and goals minority groups.

I found the templates very useful. I am not sure if I picked this best one or accomplished what the prompt asked me to do but it was interesting to trial and error a bunch of them. I think templates are a great tool to model writing and help with beginning a writing piece. For me, that is where I struggle the most. I am curious to see the other prompts throughout the book.

3. Both articles discuss how the benefits that come from different forms of diversity in organizations. The ripple effect that can come from these articles is a deeper understanding of diversity that can improve current disparities. These articles have important results and examples that other companies can read and implement. As stated in the Gundemir article, having a diverse workforce has “positive outcomes such as increasing the quality of decision making, stimulating creativity, and enhancing performance”. Even though there is an increased awareness for workplace diversity and the benefits have been found through research, there still is a disconnect. How and when will there be real changes? Are these studies and ideas feasible for every company to implement? What are the barriers? These are all questions I had. Diversity clearly matters and is important, so I still am struggling to understand why people are so opposed to differences.

I had my brothers high school graduation yesterday! It was so nice to reconnect with family I have not seen since before the beginning of the pandemic.

Discussion 6/12

  1. I thought the different definitions of organizational culture from individuals on LinkedIn showed how complex and interconnected it is to understand this concept (and to make meaning of it). This article touched upon the importance of having a general understanding of organizational culture to change, preserve, or analyze it. This reading made me wonder if the “approach”  to understanding organizational culture needs to be a standard definition OR if we can identify key elements to it (with a ranking of importance depending on how that organization functions). When I was reading all of the different perspectives on what organizational truly is, I saw how they all fit in and were important in some way. I do not think it is just one of these things. By looking at the purpose, mission, and goals of an organization, the approach to understanding the organizational culture can be through all the definitions mentioned in the reading. I am interested to look at a specific organization and apply these definitions. Then see how they are interconnected and the power each one holds.

In the reading “Why diversity matters”, I became interested in other forms of diversity and how they promote or detract growth. The author mentioned that age, sexual orientation, and experience also can “bring some level of competitive advantage”, but I am wondering if socioeconomic plays a role in diversity in a company. Does a person with a different socioeconomic background bring different and useful perspectives to the table? Is this even a valid category of “diversity”?

3.

“Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals which serve as ‘glue’ to integrate the members of the organization.” — Richard Perrin

This definition sparked some questions for me. Almost all organizations have some values and beliefs that are publicized and promoted. To have an organizational culture that is diverse, wouldn’t it be normal to not abide by the same belief systems or values? I think in some cases conflict is good and can lead to a progressive change. Also, why would a culture of likeminded people be encouraged when statistics show that diversity leads to greater production. I understand values that embrace respect, but what about deeper values or rituals? I also  want to know what extent these values and  rituals have on an individual’s membership into a specific culture. Do individuals only carry these values at work or are they expected to maintain them in all parts of their life? What happens if someone disagrees or breaks these values? Additionally,  who decides these values? I think these elements to organizational culture can be meaningless and I do not think it is the most important thing to “glue” people together.