I chose to take this class because I know that it will be applicable to my career—both as a student and a professional. A group of 37 students and I are working on a project to improve the interviewing skills in the College of Business. Although much of the difficulty does come from the types of resources that we would like to make available to students, another thought to consider is how we get students to take advantage of the resources. We can “design” and contribute a significant amount of effort to the “design” of our project, but when it comes down to it, there is an external environment (students and their behavior) that we cannot account for. We cannot predict how students will react. Another aspect of change is that it takes time. As a group, we understand that it may be years after we have graduated before the significance of our work is seen. Change is not immediate. As a nation, we are seeing this in the struggle to fix the American Health Care system as well as the economy.
I also think that this will apply to my professional career. I think that professional responsibility is a major aspect of the business world. At the beginning of a career, it can be very difficult to speak up to your superiors if you suspect something unethical. It can be easy to fall into the trap that “this is the way it is done, and I just don’t know what is going on because I’m new”. While respecting your superiors is essential, I do think that there are aspects of professional responsibility (including ethics) that cannot be suspended. By believing in change, just as Yunus did, one person could actually affect millions. In the business example, I think it is difficult to draw the line on when to “whistle blow”. However, something to take away from this class is that the status quo is not always the right way.
The title of the course is “Designing for Effective Change”; but, how can one know when change will actually be effective? I feel as if much of the essence of life is not being able to predict what will happen. Change occurs as a learning process, and develops as the “designer” gets feedback. Much of the triumphant change in the world is effective because the designer was able to proactively and successfully respond to negative consequences and criticism. Thus, I am hopeful and confident that the class will not only be helpful in the design and creative thoughts behind change, but also in the execution and response stages. Sometimes I wonder if the most significant developments in the world occur because of the idea behind them or the execution and publicity of them. In recent years, we have witnessed the phenomena of YouTube, Google, and Apple, among others. YouTube may have been the first large video-sharing site to appear on the web, but I would think that the idea has been considered by computer engineers in the past. It just took that special person to believe in it, and act on it. Reading the books and articles from this class will help us to understand that phenomena and change happen, but only if you believe in it yourself.
I personally believe that one of the most winning personalities includes the ability to respond to criticism, to crave feedback—whether it is positive or negative. This is something that I have been working on as I have gotten older. I believe the blog-reflections in this class will help to facilitate this type of person.
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That sounds like an interesting project. I take it that you mean job interviewing skills. It may take a quite a while for this to take effect, but the entire curriculum is beginning to be redesigned, starting with the new course BUS 101. That could have a positive effect in setting an appropriate tone. Yet I continue to be concerned whether students do enough non-course reading and if Business students, in particular, get enough exposure to the type of reading that might be expected of them, e.g., the Wall Street Journal and Business Week.
ReplyDeleteOn the ethical issues that you mention, I really like the movie a Few Good Men because it makes clear that a good deal of the responsibiltiy resides with senior leadership, but not all. The soldiers who issues the Code Red deservedly got a dishonorable discharge.
For a lot of ideas, they are right in a certain time and place, but not otherwise. The particular companies you mentioned also have benefited greatly from what economists class "Network Effects," referring to when a product looks hot, everyone else wants to get on the bandwagon just for that reason. Facebook is another example.
Perhaps you can bring up these ideas again when we get to talk about The Tipping Point near the end of the course.
I think Business 101 is a great start to a student's career in business. I know some TAs for that course, and it sounds like it has been developing even just from last year to this year. I remember last year there was a proposal in the Illinois Student Senate ballot to putting hard copies of newspapers around campus and readily available to students. Wall Street Journal was not included in the proposal, but I think that having available copies would increase exposure.
ReplyDeleteI have been told to watch a Few Good Men before, so I will definitely look into doing that this semester. I think the Tipping Point will be an interesting book to discuss, especially in the technology era that we are living through.