Empowering the Employees

Just like the directive vs. supportive leadership chart has suggested when the employees are well trained and as the leader become more and more confident in his employee’s skills he will give his employee more and more freedom. Empowering the employees will not only help in building a more cohesive working environment but will also help in keeping the enterprise efficient and lean.

One example my Buad306 professor gave me is that, at her sewing company there is one sewing machine that is customized to sew accessories for the final product. And one day, her sewing technician found out there was something wrong with that sewing machine and it needed to be fixed to keep on sewing. However, in order to get it fixed the technician will have to call the maintenance people and of course there will be a fee for that. It was noon time, knowing the professor would be teaching at UD at that time, the technician left her a voice message asking for permission to get the maintenance people. And because of the information lag, my professor did not check her voicemail and gave her technician permission until late in the afternoon, wasting a whole day’s labor hours. And my Buad professor said she learned from this experience that she could have empowered her technician and gave her the power to call for maintenance if necessary. And for controlling purposes she could simply give her technician a maintenance budget, and permission from her is needed if only the expense will be over the budget. By doing so, time will be saved if similar situation ever occurs again and her business will run without a lag.

The Importance of Training Employees

It is vital for a leader to train his employees to a degree where they can handle everyday business the way they are expected to and ideally utilize all the resources to the fullest to produce product or provide service. In this way the enterprise can be efficient in its operating process.

Getting back to the giant watermelon story we heard in class, when problem occurs (the giant watermelon in the field) if the leader (the traveler) simply comes in and solve the problem for the people who are actually supposed to be dealing with it (the villagers) then the employees remain unskilled and not able to solve similar problems. In that case, the leader is needed every time similar problem occurs and very often this is an inefficient way of problem solving, just like when the villagers saw another giant watermelon in the field the next year, they panicked and went out to seek help from the traveler again.

However, if the leader deals with the situation like the second traveler did, which is getting the villagers to understand that there is nothing to be afraid of and teaching them how to deal with the problem themselves. By doing so, when the giant watermelon occurred again the next year the villagers were able to deal with the problem themselves right away. In business occasions, this illustrates enabling employees to solve recurrent problems themselves, so that the enterprise can be efficient and lean.

I remember one time back in China, my friends and I went to a McDonald’s for lunch. And one of my friends has diabetes so we ordered three classic cokes and one diet coke for drink. When the people at the counter gave us our orders, the drinks were placed side by side with no mark on them to separate the diet coke from the others whatsoever. We could not figure out which one was the diet coke so we had to reorder one for my friend’s sake. This awkward and unpleasant experience could be easily avoided if the McDonald’s person had pushed down the diet button on the lid for us. In essence, if the manager at that McDonald’s had trained the counter people to acquire the habit of pushing down the button to segregate different drinks especially diets from the non-diets, things would have been different.

In all, in order to keep the enterprise efficient and lean, employee training is a key thing to look at.

Organizational Culture and Corprate Culture

Personal growth never stops, when a person get out of school and enter the society, he keeps on learning and developing as a person. As I mentioned in my last blog, I strongly believe that education is the key to better the human society, therefore, if we look at the society as a university then various organizations and enterprises in the society are like its subsidiary colleges and schools. When working full time an employee spends most of his day in a corporation, therefore the corporate culture is going to have a great impact on him. Hence, it is the leader or entrepreneur’s responsibility to carry the torch, build healthy organizational/corporate culture and to make sure it has a positive impact on the employees.

Having a good corporate culture is beneficial to both the corporation itself and the society. For example, when organizations are emphasizing on work ethics, they are not just educating their employees for their own good, they are also doing good for the society. And besides the moral and ethical aspect, it is also important to build a good corporate culture, such that the employees would learn something from everyday business operations, no matter it is business knowledge or spiritual knowledge.

I still remember one guest speaker who came in to my lead300 class last semester, during his speech he said things like “when I was in HP…” and “in HP we do…” multiple times. I could clearly tell how HP’s corporate culture has affected his way of thinking, working and beyond even when he had left HP for quite some time already. I believe what he learned in HP are going to be valuable to him for his whole life. This is an example of how powerful corporate culture can be, and why building good corporate culture is so important.

Recall the fish movie we saw in class, the fish shop’s unique corporate culture influenced their employee to live their life with passion and be positive all the time. And this corporate culture even extended and influenced the customers of the fish shop.

In all, I think corporate culture is one thing that makes one enterprise valuable other than its economic values. And for a leader/entrepreneur building unique and good corporate culture is a good way to make a difference.

Servant Leadership Guest Speaker Speech-- Education

I had a strong resonance with our guest speaker, because I can relate to a lot of stuffs that she talked about. She saw what was going on in her neighborhood and she did not like it, so she thought of change. For me I saw flawed social practices back in my homeland China, and I also want to make a change. And just like her, I sincerely believe that the solution is through education. Instill the sense of quality and moral practice to the now generation, and educate the younger and future generations. Relate to what our guest speaker said is that the goal is to change the climate of the community, on a larger scale—the society, and gradually change generations’ mindsets. And as she mentioned, I agree that one key of education is to raise awareness of responsibility and basic moral ethics; guide the younger generations to find their true meaning of life, so that they can live their live more positively.

Because of the great population, the Chinese society is an extremely competitive environment. Along with that is a distorted unhealthy social structure, with humongous working class population, and a huge upper class group, there are almost no clearly defined middle class. With the sandglass like social structure, there is a tremendous gap between the rich and the poor, and as society moves forward, it is getting harder and harder for the people at the “bottom” to climb up the ladders. As a consequence, this ill society structure fostered efforts with false purpose/ initiative put forth by people living under it. When people are working just for money, aiming just to live luxurious life and worshiping hedonism, they are losing the purpose of life. Again I believe the cure is up mentioned education and caring hearts.

About caring, one thing I found really interesting was that she said a lot of the kids in trouble just need somebody to talk to. And by just talking with them you can change their life forever. Also as she mentioned when you are listening, you have to move your ego out of the way and purely listen to what a person says. Because with your ego in place you cannot help from judging whatever you may hear.

At last, another thing I found interesting is the concept of leading the group behind the group. Instead of stand in front of the group and lead, she said she consider her leadership more of a standing behind the group and pushing the group forward kind of role. I call it “herding leadership”, and I believe this herding leadership is extremely applicable and fitted for education. Overall, our guest speaker taught me a valuable lesson in what I wanted to do in life.

My day as a leader-- self audit

Back to the paper airplane construction activity, I think I did pretty well on organizing the company to produce products that meet our customers requirements. But when competing with my competitors that is when presenting our products and introducing our company to the customers, I felt that I did not do enough work to make our company most appealing to the customer. I noticed that many leader of the other companies did well on making the extra effort to make their products and their companies look good. Namely, naming their products, and basically ways to promote their products and companies. Honestly, I did not thought about all these and I felt that I really should have. As the leader of the company I should do everything possible to make our company more competitive. I have always been a passive person, I used to think that if I just keep on doing what I do, some body would see what I'm doing and appreciate what I do. I think this is also a reflection of my introvert personality. Recently, more and more I learned that I should be proactive, seize the initiative, and express myself out, learn how to promote myself. This ability would be beneficial in job interviews and various business occasions.

My day as a leader-- employee development

In the paper airplane construction activity, I was assigned to be the leader of a group. Given the problem that the market expects products of quality, quantity, precision, and uniqueness. And given the nature of employees that I have in my company, 2 veterans with high competence and low commitment, a new employee with 6 months experience who has little competence and high commitment, and a employee with 1 year experience who has average competence and commitment.
Based on the market expectations and resourced that I had, I decided to have my veterans to be my research and development people. First I asked them to build prototypes for my mass production people to mass produce. And then I gave them freedom to utilize their skills and creativity to design new models, adding modifications to the existing models, and develop new ways of making paper airplane. I applied supportive leadership to my veterans giving them encouragement, freedom, and avoid making them do mechanical and tedious work, to utilize their skills(strength), and tried to build up their commitment(weakness).
And then I had my 6-month-experience employee to be my mass production person. Because during the process of mass produce, our newbie will be able to master the basic paper airplane making skills. Also, the newbie is the number one passionate about folding paper airplane in my company, so he is the best fit for mass production. Although, tedious work might wear down his passion for folding paper airplane a bit, it is still worth it to make him mass produce airplanes for the benefit of the company(quantity) as well as his own good-- building competence.
Eventually, my 1-year experience employee. I let her to participate in every process of the company's operation. She was teaching my newbie the folding skills, while consolidating her own competence. She was an apprentice in the research and development department with my veterans, seeing the company's future, exercise her creativity and hopefully boost up her commitment even more.
In all, I believe the key to employee development is seeing employee's potential and also know their strengths and weaknesses. And by assigning them to different positions, also by applying different leadership upon them, try to utilize their strengths and better their weaknesses.

Mayers-Briggs evaluation and self-audit

Today we did a short version of Mayers-Briggs test, and I thought about the importance of self-audit in working environment and in life. The Mayers-Briggs test says something about a person's disposition, habit and propensity according to the person's dispositions. I believe is it vital for an individual to understand his/her dispositions and know what they are tend to do in certain situations. I think some situations are neutral in nature meaning they do not have bias toward any disposition, and therefore people with various dispositions all have equal opportunity of succeeding in those situations. However, some situations have characteristics that are advantageous to certain dispositions. For example, when socializing, introverts are less likely to be heard by people and get people's attention than extroverts. Some people would say that introverts have their own ways of getting people to know them and getting people to be on their side, and I agree with that. But I believe since one can understand hiss own dispositions and propensity of actions in situations and realize that some time the propensity is disadvantageous to himself, he should rationally modify his behavior in situations to turn things around. Same situation, in a socializing environment, and introvert could force himself to seize the initiative to talk to people and speak up. It is hard to get out of one's comfort zone but it is worth of the pain. Maybe it is nearly impossible for one to alter his/her innate disposition, but I believe actions of people with certain disposition in certain situations can be learned. And that is when self-audit comes in to play. By self-auditing one can see that what has worked for him and what has not. And by analyzing things that have not gone right for him, he can think of what should work in those situations, memorize it and try to act that way if ever get into similar situations again. Gradually, one can form a "conditioned reflex" so that he would automatically respond to situations in a way that he had trained himself to respond. And in that way actions of dispositions "can be learned".