more signs of a failing organisation

Here are some more signs of a failing organisation

There is inequality of opportunity, which means the full potential of both current and prospective employees is not fully exploited.

When attacked – for instance in the press – little or no effort is made in defence. In addition, proactive positive publicity is rare.

When things go very wrong, senior management feel no-one is to blame, perhaps even stressing their inability to influence key events and issues.

There is a culture of ‘acceptable under-performance’ – where ‘that’s good enough’ is the norm, with too little effort made to do things as well as they can be done.

Restructuring takes place too frequently, creating confusion and chaos, and meaning key functions or personnel are not settled for long enough to be effective.

There are too many or too few support staff backing up operational employees.
The absence of an individual, or a small number of people means that key decisions or activities just don’t happen.

Those in a position to look after themselves at the expense of others, and at the expense of what is good for the organisation in the medium term…forget the long term, that’s never considered.

Grudges are felt and linger – sometimes providing an opportunity to settle old scores – often to the detriment of efficiency and effectiveness.

Succession planning is non-existent - few people if any, are being prepared for key positions in the future. At its worst, this may be for fear of creating rivals, or making fragile senior people look less than perfect.

[tags] customer service, business audit, management [/tags]

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50 signs of a failing organisation

We found this on our of our PCs without note as to where it had come from. No intention of copyright theft was intended but we thought it useful to share. The 50 signs of a failing organization is a useful yardstick. Acknowledgements to the author.

The organisation behaves in ways disproportionate to its size. This means small organisations take on the worst traits of big ones, and big organisations think and act in a way that makes the most of their size.

People, despite well-publicised declarations to the contrary, are seen as expendable short-term costs

Reports and investigations are commissioned but recommendations are ‘yes, but..’ed, so little changes for the better.

More managerial tiers exist than are necessary.

Scapegoats are sought to blame for things that go wrong – inhibiting creativity and learning.

Past glories are revelled in, at collective or individual levels – ‘when I was at x I achieved all this’, and ‘we can’t be in trouble, because we have been this good…in the past’

Advertised posts attract few if any applicants. Key posts have to be re-advertised.

The capable people that other organisations want have gone, and there now exists a significant and harmful ’sediment’ of disgruntled people.

More next week

[tags] customer service, business audit, management [/tags]

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Training cash lost in admin black hole

Read the full story here

[tags] training budget, waste [/tags]

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Learning Theory Fundamentals

There are three schools of thought when it comes to designing educational curriculum:
Behaviourist, cognitivism, and constructivism.
All three are relevant.
Behaviourist
Behaviourist is based on the presumption that human behaviour is predictable.
An example of structured learning is found in most “structured (or programmed) curriculum”.
Structured learning has preset objectives about what is to be learned, as well as predetermined reinforcer’s when objectives are met.
The end-goal is defined up front, and each step necessary to achieve the goal is given to the student. Once the student achieves the desired end-result, s/he is reinforced by getting a good grade.

Behaviourist approaches:
Relies on overt behaviour,
Are outcome based, and
Relies on frequent reinforcement of responses.

Cognitivism
Cognitive theory says that learning is a process that is dictated by the students previous experiences, and how the information is presented to the student.
Cognitivists are more concerned with the way information is represented in memory, schemata, and mental models.

The cognitive school of thought says that we all organize knowledge and meaning by modifying mental representations. We select information from the environment and store it in our short-term memory. At that point, we decide to either forget it or process it and store it into long-term memory. Cognitivists believe we learn by association.

Cognitive approaches:
Rely on the student’s schema’s, attitudes, and experiences.
Believe the new information has to fit into what currently exists.

Constructivism
An example of “Constructivist” teaching.
Constructivism dominates the environmental design of education. Constructivists believe the environment needs to be highly adaptive to the student. A constructivist designer might provide all information necessary for learning but allow the student to learn materials and information in the most comfortable way for them.

One way of thinking about constructivism is by thinking a teacher asking students to build a house. The instructor would provide a basic picture of a house. Tools would be available, and the teacher would be available for help when needed, but for the most part the students are on their own as to how they want to go about building the house.

Constructivist approach:
Relies heavily on the students initiative
Allow students to learn at their own speed

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The Affect of Multimedia on the Learning Process

IS THERE A DIFFERENCE IN THE LEARNING PROCESS WHEN MULTIMEDIA IS INVOLVED?
At the University of Maribor in Slovenia, electrical equipment was used to monitor brain activity when people were exposed to different media.

The subjects included 38 student-teachers enrolled on a psychology course. 19 (6 men and 13 women) were gifted students (IQ range 130-140). The other 19 (10 men and 9 women) were average reporting no special talent (IQ range 90-110).

Each student was seated in front of a computer. The media types were presented in different combinations of: text, sound, picture, and video. The order of presentation was randomly determined for each person.

The presentations were as follows:

1. The text presentation was about the planet Mars and was written on a piece of paper. It instructed individuals to mentally visualize data provided in the text.

2. The picture presentation consisted of text delivered orally and on a computer monitor. The data was accompanied by music and a picture showing the structure of the planet Mars.

3. The video presentation was the same as above, except instead of a picture, a video clip was used to show an animated flight over the planet’s surface.

Findings:

1.The text presentation in comparison with the picture and video produced higher mental activity.

2. An opposite effect was observed in the occipital and temporal locations. This showed a failure by the students to visualize data provided by text alone.

3. The video and picture presentations showed no significant difference in mental activity from each other.

These results are expected from what is known about the function of these areas. One of the basic functions of the temporal cortex is the processing of auditory input (hearing), while vision is processed in the occipital lobes

Recommendations:

The results show that students find it difficult to form mental models from text alone. Multimedia presentations trigger visualization strategies such as mental imagery, which is crucial to many kinds of problem solving.

References:

Gerlic, I. & Jausovec, N. (1999). Multimedia: Differences in Cognotive Processes Observed with EEG. Educational Technology Research and Development, Vol. 47, No. 3, pp. 5-14

[tags] multimedia and learning, research into learning, learning with multimedia [/tags]

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