In my organization it is somewhat difficult to
instill a small change that comes out with large results. To really reflect on
it, I would like to share my first example within my organization would have to
be in my current law enforcement field as a probation officer. I was recently
assigned to the Training and Staff team to help establish a plan for our
island’s biggest art festival in reference to security for the event. We were tasked
to watch the main event stadium in our island, however four days prior to the
event everything we planned for was changed and we were now in charge of the
satellite venues.
The small change comes from our team bringing our
heads together not to change the plan but the venue, teams, and incentives
instead. Morieux (2011) stated that “To reconcile their many conflicting goals,
managers redesign the organization's structure, performance measures, and
incentives, trying to align employees' behavior with shifting external
challenges.” (p. 78) however to soften up those hard changes that our
organization was going through, I recommended to my management team that all we
had to do was transfer our plan for the main venue and apply it to our
satellite venues. The team agreed and my management staff even added incentives
to our hard work such as hazardous, night differential, and holiday pay (as we
were working 14 days straight with no days off). The small changes brought a
team together with no complaints to the change, we executed our duties to
fullest potential, and we were recognized as a team for all our hard work. To
me that was enough to produce large results.
The second example would be in my Army organization
shifting our evaluation reports to an electronic data base. Gone are the days
of written evaluations with a small shift of doing everything online. Markowitz
(2015) states that, “Not only do outdated technology solutions stifle
effectiveness, they also miss one of the single greatest policy advances in the
21st century--the ability to collect, aggregate, and analyze large volumes of
data in real time.” Our evaluations are written in a data base in real time
that our big army brothers and sisters will track any mistakes that a rater,
senior rater will write for their subordinates. It keeps the rater and senior
rater in check by only allowing to give so many (what we call in the army as
“top block”) to their subordinates giving fairness across the board for other
subordinates to have the opportunity to produce “top block” results. This small
change and shift gives others the opportunity to shine in a very competitive
organization for promotion and does not allow “favoritism” (at least in my
organization) to exist. You get what you put in, as Oblensky (2010) described
in the butterfly effect as “the effort you put in will the dictate the result
you get out.” (p.66)
Both organizations that I work for are continuing
to grow to the potentials that they see themselves, however, there are those
few employees that only give it a setback. The four complex systems that
Oblensky (2010) discusses of self-organization, inter-relatedness, adaptive
nature, and emergence is a concept that I know my organizations should follow
and use this as a guide to drive those improvements needed.
References:
Markowitz, T. (2015). Small moves yield big results: Federal
policy change presages a momentous innovation opportunity. Policy &
Practice, 73(3), 34
Morieux, Y. (2011). Smart Rules: Six Ways to Get People to
Solve Problems Without You (Links to an external site.). Harvard Business
Review, 89(9), 78-86
Obolensky, N. (2010). Complex adaptive leadership. (20nd
edition.). London, UK: Gower/Ashgate
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