Mindful Enterprise
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Running head: A MINDFUL ORGANIZATION AND UNDERSTANDING ITS PEOPLE
“The realities of understanding people in an organization and thus managing them, it is often believed, ran into conflict with prevailing organizational expectations.”
Suggest ways on how such situations can be blended as to structure towards a more
mindful enterprise.
Yee Meng Yew, Joe
Student ID: 6030
SCIC-PATH
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Introduction
As the topic in discussion covers from the singularity of an organization to the individualistic aspect of an employee within an organization, I have approached the topic from the top down approach starting from the external environment stimuli (market forces), to an organization behaviour and finally microscopically, the individual.
The Changing Environment – Information Age
Human existence has witnessed the evolution of societies. No one has describe it better than Alvin Toffler (1984) in his book, The Third Wave, who defines our era as the Third Wave, a post-industrial society are characterized, where diversification of lifestyles (“sub-cults”) are created, the formation of fluid organizations with the ability to adapt to change are the one left that will survive, and information would be the raw material for workers instead of physical materials, and the gap between producer and consumer is bridged by Technology. The Third Wave was written in 1984 where the internet was more of a concept and terms like “intranet ” was not even conceptualised yet, however Toffler (1984) has accurately predicted the birth of the knowledge worker (information being the raw material for workers), B2C business model (gap between producer and consumer bridged by Technology) and the evolution of the modern enterprise, being a living dynamic entity.
With the entire environment changing ever so rapidly, would the need for constant adaptive behaviour change organizations expectations, demands and management of its employees, stakeholders? What management methodology would a successful organization adopt to remain dynamic and buoyant? What does organization need to know about managing their employees so that the organizations objective of adaptability remains feasible?
Modern management experts identified the likes of such companies and call it – Learning Organization.
Evolution of job requirement and design
In the information age, tasks and duties are constantly evolving, and so do the skills that are required to perform them. (Muchinsky, 2006, p.16)
In a post-industrial society, (Toffler, 1984) we witness an increasing growth in the service sector as opposed to manufacturing industry, leading to a majority of those employed, are not directly involved in the production of tangible goods. Secondly, an accelerated dosage of information technology is injected into the production of goods; thus defining information, knowledge and creativity the raw material of our modern economy.
In the past, as a sure recipe for success (Muchinsky, 2006, p 83), the two pure ingredients inserted into a career are job skills and personal ambition. However, in the modern job, skills and attitude are no longer sufficient, what else would be expected?
Technology has injected the word “Globalisation” into every aspects of business organization today. With globalisation, organizations customers, resources (human or non human related raw materials) are not constrained to just one country, one language, one culture, or one time zone. There is an increasing need and necessity to communicate with people around the world, be it customers or even colleagues within our organization.
Global resources availability has even given rise to the segregation of customers to internal customers and external customers in the model of Business Process Outsourcing (external customers) and insourcing (internal customers).
Two new elements of success appeared in the 21st century career (Muchinsky, 2006, p 83). Besides valued skills and hard working, quick adaptability to rapidly changing conditions (learning) with good interpersonal skills (empathy and awareness) formulates the new traits that organization seeks in their employment criterion.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change” Charles Darwin (1809-1882).
Recognizing that employees must learn
The key to adapting to change whether as an individual or an organization is the ability to learn and to create. External changes will happen whether you like it or not. Senge (1990) defines learning organizations are “organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together”
The power of creation was even further mentioned in Conversation with God (Walsch, 1997) in his tongue-in-cheek approach on explaining that sons of Adam and daughters of Eve are bestowed the gift of choice and the power of