Sep 27 2009
Reflections for My Mirror, Organizational Learning: #3
This past week passed over me quite quickly. I was there, but it seemed like things were happening around me at a different pace and I couldn’t catch up. I felt off. The latter end of the week I was busy with a potential candidate visiting VCU for a second time. This candidate, if chosen, will be my new boss. I have mixed emotions about the many things that will change with this new person.
First, my most selfish reason, is how will this person affect my position and place within the department? I have been at my job now for almost 2 years and have formed a great bond with my supervisor. He is well aware of my first priority, aka school, and is 100% supportive of my education. When it comes down to it, we work well together, and it’s come to the point where I don’t have to ask him a hundred questions a day. Second, I’m anxious to see how a new Director works with the existing people, not only within my department, but within the school. Everyone seems to be impressed now, but how much can you really learn from someone in less than a weeks worth of time total. Third, I know my department needs change. I know that the other faculty and staff see it as well, but it’s still a scary thing bringing someone new into a “family” even when everyone is blatantly aware of these needed changes.
During my adventures of taking this candidate between both campus’s Thursday and Friday, I started thinking about the learning that will have to take place in within my department, the school, and the candidate. They all will have to learn many things, both individually and collectively. How will my organization (my department, my school) learn? Will it be difficult or easy for this new Director to learn about the make-up of the department? How long will it take him to learn those underlying aspects of the department? Will they all be able to truly embrace learning from each other?
All these questions went through my head as I heard this candidate being interviewed over 2 days. It helped me pull together different concepts of organizational learning, and how it really boils down to the individuals. We are learning so much of this from the case studies we are working on, and are realizing that the people within those organizations are the ones behind the changes. One person can’t – or shouldn’t – be able change everything, so I’ve realized that this one new candidate will not completely change my department. Improve is a better word. I hope that he can improve on the attitudes and ideas that are already ingrained, but also add a touch of something new. I suppose time will tell…
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I am totally in the same boat as you regarding new people, only I am a little farther upstream. We recently hired a new technical supervisor. The position stayed open for many years because it is an extremely specialized position. We finally filled it a few years ago with, in my opionion the perfect candidate. She was awesome and I learned a ton from her. Unfortunately she was not from Virginia originally and decided to take another job closer to her family. So again the position went unfilled for a little while and then we got a perspective candidate. On paper he was what we were looking for. The interviews went well and he was hired. He is still in training right now but I can’t help but wonder where our technical or reference area are heading. I do not think he is as strong a candidate as our woman previously but I am sure he has things to teach me. He is very weak technology wise and I and the previous person are very strong so I am hoping we can work together and learn from each other. My biggest apprehension is that I think a lot of our staff has already made up their mind about him, negatively. Is one thing we are going to have to learn as an organization open-mindness and how do we do that?
10/18 /09 comments for Jenn’s 9/27 entry:
I never responded to this earlier blog so am doing so a few weeks late. Interesting how our class discussions on culture since your 9/27 entry shaped my perspective.
My initial response upon reading your first paragraph is how great it is that you as a worker were able to meet and greet a potential new boss. That’s considerate and I’m hoping that the hiring managers reached out to you for your perspective on the candidate.
As you blog wondering how the new Director will adapt, will learn from the team and will teach the team new things, the changes that will occur – I realize you’re talking about the culture of your existing department. You’re describing its culture without using that language as we hadn’t yet begun discussing organizational culture and its strength/powers in class when you wrote this blog.
So far we’ve really only discussed the fact that a culture exists, is born through leaders, evolves, and when success occurs the strategies that led to it will be adapted and become shared experiences and the groups culture. We’ve touched on the difficulties in intentionally changing culture, but I suspect we’ll dive much more into that.
As we discussed in our last class 10/13, when new leadership enters of course the culture will be challenged, and eventually adjusted somewhat to that new leader’s flavor.
I’m curious to hear about when your new Director dives in how slowly/quickly things change. I hope our class discussions continue to include the cultural changes @ VCU with its new President – one of a very different perspective than our former. As you mentioned in the close of your blog, one person can’t and shouldn’t be able to change everything, but inform and influence for change. After reading April’s mirror entry, hoping her new leader can turn things around, and definitely hoping whichever new Director your team brings in, hoping they get off to a good start as I fear from April’s blog, its difficult to recover from a bad start out of the gate as a new leader.
I’m hoping you can share in class how the new director is assimilating into your existing culture and where/when you see him/her trying to make changes.