Activity 4 – Marco

What PD happens in your workplace? What strategies does your organization have in place to encourage development, change and innovation?

My workplace is also an academic library. I worked in its system division which is responsible for maintaining the computer system of library.

In a certain extent, professional development is implemented in my workplace. Our supervisors encouraged staffs to speak up and discuss anything on the discussion broad. As I had mentioned in activity 1, we mainly discus the stuffs related to works. We can talk everytime and everywhere. It is beneficial for strengthening the relationship between supervisors and others and developing profession.

According to Shortland-Jones, Alderson, & Baker (2001), the table showed below is expressing the elements of helping change in an organization. In this week activity, I would discuss how my work organization develops change strategies with applying this model. 

The table indicated that change is consisted of 6 elements which are vision, skills, incentives, resources, action plan and collegiality. For vision, our library has a clear vision which is everything user-oriented. On the other word, it emphasizes that we are not only working for the library, but also serving our users. It is clear for us. Therefore, it avoids non necessary confusion. For skill, we can ask and discuss our problem related to work in the discussion broad. It allows us to share skill and knowledge in a platform. However, I think it is not enough for staffs learning the working skills. In my opinions, I think my organization should have some learning programs for staffs learning the related skills. It could help totally avoid their anxiety. For incentives, I think bonus system should be introduced to my organization. In fact, my organization has not this kind of system to increase the incentives of staffs. It would affect the incentives of staffs and even make resistance. Therefore, I think appropriate award is necessary for increasing their incentives. For example, money reward, annual leave and allowance can increase their motivation. For resources, I think the resources of my department are enough in a certain extent. HKU Libraries has enough funding in my department. As our department is responsible for maintaining the computer system of library, many computers needed to keep updated in order to ensure those computers are running smoothly. My department has kept their computer systems updated and it is beneficial for the department avoiding frustration. For the action plan, my department has an annual action plan which kept annual updated. It is complex and it indicates every plan of action clearly. The details of the plan are also included on the plan. It could help avoid treadmill. For collegiality, our department has annual dinner which could help strengthen the relationship between supervisors and others. Also, the discussion broad also helps it and it could enhance the relationship of each others.

Activity 1 - Marco

Report on your present or previous experiences in the workplace. How best would you describe how your organization learnt.  

As I am a full-time student and do not have full-time job experience before, therefore I am going to share my internship experience as my past working experience. I used to work in an academic library in Hong Kong for my internship. I worked in its system division and was responsible to follow up a project of library collection digitalization. My main duties were inputting and checking bibliographic records. The 5 disciplines would be adopted to describe the organization I am working in. 

1. Personal Mastery
The library created a platform, which is an online discussion forum, for staffs to exchange their suggestions and opinions. They could comment and give suggestions on others’ performances. It could help staffs improve their work in a certain extent. Other than commenting, staffs also can exchange their knowledge on work which can enhance and improve their work performance too. If staffs have any problems or difficulty on work, they could also ask here for help and solution. The forum is a good platform for staffs discussing everything of work. It is not only convenient staffs to exchange information, but also beneficial for building their understanding of each other.

2. Mental Models
As the platform mentioned above has been providing a communication platform for each other, staffs can easy to share their thinking, concern and receive others’ comments. It is beneficial for them reflecting their performances according to staffs’ comments. In a certain extent, it helps staffs understand themselves more and it is beneficial for their mental development in different areas. It is not only on work, but also on their characteristic. 

3. Shared Vision
The vision would be delivered and shared by different channel. It can be shared by face to face, staffs’ regular meeting and the online forum. The vision is always emphasized by the manager. It reminds us to strive for the best and provide quality services. In my opinion, it could help staffs build up a strong team spirit. 

4. Team Learning
Regularly, our supervisor would meet our together to discuss what needed to be learnt for improving the work. For example, the supervisor would introduce some new method for staffs’ communication. Online discussion board is an example which suggested by supervisor to enhance and improve the commutation between staffs. 

5. Systems Thinking

The online discussion forum is beneficial for building up systems thinking of staffs. Staffs can build it up systems thinking through asking question, reviewing questions, answering question and reflecting themselves. It is beneficial for training up staffs system thinking and long-term development of the staffs.

Acivity 5 - Alec

Applying an LO online survey in the workplace

This week, I use the online learning organization survey which is proposed by Edmondson A., Garvin D. and Gino F. to assess every learning block in my workplace. The following chart present my individual scores on three main learning building blocks.

Activity 1 - Martin

Report on your present or previous experiences in the workplace. How best would you describe how your organization learnt.

Currently I am working in a university library as an IT staff. It was established almosts 40 years and will keep on providing different kinds of services to our students and staff for their learning need.

In my library, one of the method that we used to make our working place keep on learning is as follow:

1. Personal Mastery
We are holding a sharing program which named as "Staff Awareness Program". The aims of this program is to build up our staff performance and as a result to enhance the whole organisation quality. This program involves all professional grade librarians. In this program we will share, introduce and explain different interesting topic to other attendee include operational supervisors. It aims to enhance the knowledge within library staff and provide a platform to share different queries from every party. This program held every 4 to 6 weeks and librarians will follow the roster and choose the topic they are interested to share.

2. Mental Models
This program has provide a good communication platform between librarian and other grading staff to share their opinion and concern. This enhances the understanding and team spirit between our staff within different level.

3. Shared Vision
Once the communication has been build up, the vision can be more easy to share. Staff Awareness Program has different topic in each time. Several staff has shared their vision when they have pay the same interest within same topic.

4. Team Learning
We encourage raising questions from attendee and feel free to discuss during program. Also we will distribute the materials to all attendee after the program for team learning.

5. Systems Thinking
In my opinion, I think this program is success because it build up the cooperate atmosphere between us, we can know more each other through the discussion in different topics, pay more respect and personal care among our teammate.

Activity 2 - Martin

Identify a model of change to help explain change within an organisation you have experienced

I would like to use our Institutional Repository (IR) project in my working place as example to apply diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers, 1965) to see the behaviour within different kinds of people.

In around 2009, some of our staff see the need on creating a electronic database to store all our academic authors' scholary output and provide searching function for user through online access. They act as an 'Innovator' to bring out the reason why we need this, why it should be implement and maintain by our library, etc.

Some library staff agree and understand the necessary of working this project. They form a new team to implement this IR database. It is not easy on the starting stage because no one has related experience on that. They spent time to learn from other academic library which has Institutional Repository database, and cooperate with IT department for implementing their requirment. They are the 'Early adopter' in this project.

At first most of the professor do not want to contribute their publication to this online database. They afraid ther work will be stoken by others through web access. Our IR team staff paid a lot of work to make phone calls and email to them to try clarity their worries. They innovate by the 'Early adopter' and believe this project can finally be done if working hard. They are all good 'Early majority' in IR.

As mention before, many professors has worries on putting their hard work in this online database. After our IR staff working hard to explain to them one by one, many of them begin to believe it is worth to putting their works in IR and think it is one of the platrform which can help others to know them more. They act like the 'Late majority'.

This project is still need time to grow up and I believe the 'Laggard' will become lesser in the future.

Activity 3 - Martin

Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organisation of your choice

This week I will try to apply the Fullan (2001) model in an academic library which I am working in.

Moral Purpose
Our library senior management have a kind of concept that want our organisation can become more customer oriented and can keep on improve our service provided. This concept has actually influenced the others and I think it make our staff more actively think on what they can improve when they work. This 'customer oriented' culture not like our organisation vision but it really keep on driven our staff towards one goal.


Understanding Change
As the material has a trend to move on from physicl material to electronic version, our library usage has keep up decrease in some area. Most of our staff can realize we definity need to change and attract more clients.


Relationship Building, Knowledge Creation and Sharing
As I had mention in Week one, our library has a program named Staff Awareness Program". This porgram will let our staff which is coming from different session, working level and specialist to share different topics. It is a good platform to let us know each other like what they are doing, what problem they are facing, how difficult their work is, etc. It is a very good chance to build up our relationship as well.


Coherence Making
In my working place, senior management always focus on staff outcome, attritute and not focus on their grading. I amd very appreciate this working atmosphere cause it is very effective on motivate us to keep on improve our work and ability.

Activity 4 - Tammy

What PD happens in your workplace?

According to Fullan, professional development refers to activities to enhance professional career growth.  In my organization, employees are encouraged to take part in the continuing personal/professional development scheme.  The school provides financial sponsorship to the staff who attendance the courses, workshops, training and the like which are related to our work.

Besides, in order to encourage the staff to continuous learning and development, school offers a 50% course fee discount for some selected programmes.

For continuous evaluate our performance, there is a performance management scheme every year.  Programme manager will meet with the staff to evaluate his/her performance in the past year.  In the meeting, programme manager will ask the difficulties the staff faces in their work and will report to the schools.  Also, manager will suggest some training courses for the staff to join.

Apart from this, to evaluate the quality of our lecturers, students have to fill in a learning experience survey at the end of the last lecture.  There is a quality assurance team to in charge the collected survey.  After gathering the results, a report will send to the programme team.  If the marks are below the standard, the lecturer has to meet with the programme manager to explain the reason why receiving the low marks.  In many cases, the lecturer will be stopped to teach the programme.

Activity 1 - Tammy

Report on your present or previous experiences in the workplace. How best would you describe how your organization learnt.

I am now working in HKU SPACE as an executive assistant. All the administrative work related to the programme is done by us. From the very beginning of receiving the enrolment form to the announcement of their final grade. I will use the 5 disciplines to describe the organization I am working in.

Personal Mastery: Since the programme is in charged by one admin staff only, the successful of the programme is determined by how effective and the efficient of the admin staff to organize the work flow, for example, decide the application procedure. The decision of the admin staff plays an important role to the programme.

Shared Vision: Every one of us share the common vision is to provide a lifelong learning opportunity for the community. In order to achieve our vision, a regular meeting will be launched by the HR Team to promote how we are going to express our vision in the coming year and how to maintain the services to our clients. For example, we are launching a scheme especially for third age learners (aged 50+) to enjoy a 20% fee discount for courses to encourage lifelong learning.

Mental Models: Every one of us will have a meeting with our manager every year to share our points of view towards our current work, position and our goals. Through this meeting, our manager may understand the difficulties we encounter and try to cooperate with us to improve the situation.

Team Learning: Before the enrolment period, the programme team will meet together to decide the promotion period as well as the promotion plan such as launch some booth in the exhibition, using newspaper to promote the programme and so on. Besides, the team may meet together to gather different ideas so as to launch new programme to catch up the current needs of the market.

Systems thinking: Since last summer, all programme of us use the new system called “HCM” to generate the appointment letter to our part-time teacher instead of using our own programme’s database. One of the advantages is to storage the appointments in the school’s database and avoids any loss of one’s database. This may prevent a huge loss that we cannot predict in the future.

Activity 2 - Tammy

Identify a model of change to help explain change within an organisation which you have experienced

When I enter into this school in 2010, the school starts to launch a project to generate all the student transcripts using a system set in the intranet instead of using our own programme database. However, until now, this project is still not yet launching to use. And I am going to use the models of change to explain why this project cannot be implemented.

In this case, Innovators would be the team of launching this project.
Early Adopters would be the admin staff chosen for the pilot.
Laggards would be the admin staff who have already been working in this school for many years and refuse for accepting changes.

Failure of the Change

INVOLVE PEOPLE & HOW PEOPLE THINK AND BEHAVE
Because this project involve many admin staff who have already been working in this school for many years. They have their own way to generate the transcript by using their own template and database such as Access. Since they use their method to generate transcripts for many years and they don’t think there is an urgent need to use the new system.

FACTS AND SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
Second, the team cannot provide very persuasive evidence why change is needed. When launching this project, we have been told that the school wants to implement this project for many years and would like to unify the transcripts using the school system.

KEEP PEOPLE WELL INFORMED
Some of the admin staff has been chosen for the pilot, the feedback from them towards the project are as below:
The instruction is not clear.
The system is so complicated and time consuming.
The workload will be increased by using this system.
These comments will damage the performance and make change more difficult to implement.

This innovation decision may be belong to COLLECTIVE where a decision is reached by consensus among the members of a system (Admin staff).
This project can be implemented if the innovation decision change to AUTHORITY-BASED where the head of the school impose the pressure to implement the project.

Activity 3 - Tammy

Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organization of your choice.

I am going to use the five components of Fullan to describe the leading change in my organization.

Moral Purpose

Moral Purpose is established through a mutual respect inside the organization by feeling of a community, sense of belonging.  A moral purpose contributes to employee morale, fosters innovation, counters risk-aversion and it provides a unifying strategic theme.  Also, Fullan suggests moral purpose should equate with commitment.  In my organization, programme manager always encourages programme team to contribute their ideas to the project.  Most of the time, manager will give positive advice and feedback to the programme team and encourage them to take action towards the plan in a way giving a space for the programme team to adopt new ideas and changes to the project and feeling a strong sense of belonging of the team.  When launching a change in an organization, leader would encourage the team to take part in and share the result such as the profits.

Understanding Change

Fullan suggests change can be referred to "reculturing" by transforming the culture of an organisation and changing the way things are done.  The new approaches of doing new things need to be in line with the moral purpose and collaborate with the building and testing of knowledge.  In addition, he also implies understanding change and reaching decisions should not be quick.   On the contrary, we have to pay more patient and less deliberate on making sense of complexity.  In my organization, when launching new strategies, school always gives us a long period of time to adopt the new approaches.  Besides, they will organize some workshops to teach staff to use the new system.  What’s more, we are welcome to raise our concern and difficulties towards the new system by reaching them through email.

Relationship Building

According to Fullan, change is a learning process and a collective experience based on exchange and collaboration in real-life, pertinent situations.  Besides, it is a constructivist approach.  In addition, relationship building is as a response to complexity and should make things move in the right direction.  In my organization, when launching new things, leader always give a talk to us base on what we have already know, and base on this knowledge, leader will introduce the new knowledge to us.  In this way, we can understand the relationship between the new knowledge and the knowledge we know.  By understand the different, we can implement the new things in the right direction.  Besides, regular meeting with the leader can make sure we are implementing the new things in a right way.

Knowledge Creation and Sharing

In order to keep changes with the latest market, leader has to keep themselves catch up with the times inside and outside the organization.  Besides, knowledge can be created through exchange and collaboration.  It also builds on employee morale and the relationship between the leader and member.  In my organization, we are always persuaded to express new ideas and new approaches since different ideas can be generated by different culture and background among members.

Coherence Making

According to Fullan, Coherence Making involves seeking a balance between letting go and even encouraging “disturbance” on the one hand and building coherence, sense and direction on the other.  Change is always a threat when organization is designed to foster stability and coherence with specific goals.  An organization should seek to encourage change while providing a sense of direction that diminishes anxiety and stress (pg. 108).  In my organization, when change is launched, a regular meeting will be hold so as to teach the member to handle and adopt with the new change as well as provide an opportunity for members to look for assistance.

Activity 4 - Alec

What PD happens in your workplace? What strategies does your organization have in place to encourage development, change and innovation?

My workplace is a learning centre for university students. It provides various art and cultural education programes to help students re-discover their innate drive to learn.

Professional Development is not important at my workplace. For staff's personal development, the director encourages administrative staff  to self-directed their personal development, such as study academic or non-academic courses provided by tertiary institutions. Moreover, staff can participate the centre's own activities like seminar and workshops. However,  the director seldom provides direction and systemic training of the centre.

Activity 3 – Marco

Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organisation of your choice

Michael Fullan(2001)'s framework of leading in a culture of change will be adopted at this week's activity. The framework is consisted of 5 elements which are moral purpose, understanding change, relationship, knowledge building and coherence making. 

Moral purpose

In my working place, the academic library, it also emphasized users-oriented. Library would hold annual survey for asking users’ opinions of the library services. After collecting the data, it would change its services according users’ opinions. It also affected us to think based on our users. The concept had been changed from “We work for the organization” to “We work for our customers”. 

Understanding change

The change is mentioned at activity 2 which is the trade of e-resources instead in-print materials. As the library had identified the trade, it decided a plan for it which mentioned at activity 2 in order to retain the users and provide new services.  

Relationship, Knowledge building and Sharing

Our leader encouraged staffs to ask question and give opinions for their works. As I mentioned at activity 1, our department had a discussion broad for staffs giving comments and asking questions. It is beneficial for our team member building up a good relationship. Everyone could share their opinions to others. It could not only help strong their relationship, but also help build up their knowledge related to works. The reason is that they would ask questions, such as solutions to some difficulty, which could help knowledge exchanged.  

Coherence making

As Fullan mentioned that “Effective leadership can guide staff through the differences and move the organization forward”, our leader also emphasized that. He not only encouraged staffs to give comment for him, but also to lead by personal example. For example, he was willing to show help when we were suffering in difficulty. Still, he also liked talking with us when we got problems. It is beneficial for coherence making.

Activity 2 – Marco

Identify a model of change to help explain change within an organisation you have experienced

In this activity 2, a simple Change Model would be adopted to discuss the change in my working place. It is clear to indicate the stages of change step by step. This model is divided into 5 stages which are Need, Belief, Willingness, Readiness and Action.

Activity 3

Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organisation of your choice

Activity 3 - Alec

Activity 3 - Develop and articulate ideas for describing leading change in an organization of your choice.

Michael Fullan(2001)'s framework of leading in a culture of change will be applied at this week's activity. According to Fullan, five components are consists in this framework: moral purpose, understanding change, relationship, knowledge building and coherence making.

Activity 2 - Alec

Activity 2 - Identify a model of change to help explain change within an organisation you have experienced

I am going to use Kotter's 8-step change model to explain change at what rate spread through cultures.

Few years age, my working place (Student learning centre) would like to launch a new website, use e-platform for teaching and database to manage  student's classwork, academic documents and assessments' data.

The 8-Step Process for leading change will help organizations succeed in an ever-changing world.

Activity 1 - Alec

Activity 1 : Report on your present or previous experiences in the workplace. How best would you describe how your organization learns?

My previous workplace was a learning centre for university students. This centre conducts several activities for university students, such as seminars (historical, cultural, economy), workshops (arts, drama, filming) and service-learning programs in Hong Kong and overseas.

The director have establish the vision, mission and strategic directions for the learning centre. The programme manager, instructors and administrative staff  are responsible to organize and conduct learning activities for university students.

Activity 2

Identify a model of change to help explain change within an organisation which you have experienced