Assignment Week # 5&6 — The Systems Perspective
Oceans Eleven:
First of all, I want to mention that Oceans Eleven is an awesome movie and I am glad it is part of this blog and course because I had fun watching it again for the Nth time. Anyways, this movie depicts Karl Weick’s sense-making model, including the three parts of organizing: enactment, selection, and retention. Enactment is displayed in this movie at various times; Danny Ocean meets Rusty Ryan and gets his hands on the blue print of the casinos and how they are connected. They discuss the plan and play out the way they plan to rob the vault. At another point, once Danny has made his team of 11 members, they sit at Reuben’s home and go through the entire plan, which is enacted via a presentation from Danny. The entire plan can be pictured while Danny is speaking and showing his presentation. These discussions were great representations of enactment in the movie. Second is selection. In this movie, Danny and Rusty decide to make a team of 11 members by a selection process. The members are selected by their specialties, a person who is good with computers and hacking, a circus acrobat, another who would finance the entire plan, etc. This selection is done to hire the best of the best at what they do to execute the plan successfully without any hiccups. Third is retention which is interpreted by the fact that Danny off the bat tells each member that the job will yield them over $10 million each, which immediately opens the door of greed for each member. Another tactic of retention comes by informing the member of revenge. Lastly, the telling of the plan in a confident method is also a great way of retention. In these ways, the team is also able to make sense of what they are getting into and what the heist is.
Peter Senge’s Learning Organization:
There are five features to Peter Senges’ Learning Organization. These include Systems thinking, Personal mastery, Flexible mental models, A shared vision, and Team learning. Systems’ thinking simply says that in order for one individual to succeed, the team as a whole or all the members of an organization must succeed. Personal mastery suggests that learning and self-reflection is a personal commitment which is shared by all members. Flexible mental model engages members of the organization to self-reflect, which would help them first understand which leads them to change the mental models that tend to guide their thinking. A shared vision is where all the members of the organization work together to achieve the big goal since they all share the same vision and understand how their work helps to achieve the big picture. Lastly, in team learning, members of the group work together to and communicate with each other in order to make intelligent decisions.
Family Portrait above: I can look at my family as an organization and say that there is a owner/CEO (father) who makes the ultimate decisions. These decisions directly impact the family (organization) as a whole and are also discussed among the family members (employees). The job of the parents is to ensure that the family has enough to survive on a day to day basis and also thinks long term. There is also an older sister and a younger sister. The younger looks up to the older and wants to do the same. This can represent a new employee to the company who models themselves to somebody who has been working for a long time. One of the things to notice and compare between the images is that everybody has a different perspective. Most of them convey the same message but shown in completely different methods with different figures used. Some use companies and others have used family members to give the message.
What Would You Do? — Locavores, Sustainability, and Systems:
The terms locavores and carbon footprint have a great impact to one’s life if they believe in the cause. With these terms in mind, you eat healthier which in return has a positive and long-term impact to your life. These terms also help support the local food industry and farmers in the community. One can definitely tell where the food is produced which they are consuming. Sometimes the food itself will have the production location on it; at other times, there are several websites out there which can help with finding out the location where the food was produced. One example is: www.nature.org/greenliving/carboncalculator
The good question to ask myself and to all the readers is: Which independent organizations were involved in bringing the food on your table? I have never thought about this. These could involve local grocery stores, farmers, etc. But I leave this question to the reader to give suggestions and thoughts of what they think?
