Knowledge Base - Glossary
- The Client WithinSM: An ALOC Group workshop focused on exploring and understanding the importance of knowing your "professional footprint."
- Coaching: To personally mentor and instruct an individual in pursuit of professional or personal goals. Coaching can involve analysis of where an individual stands at present, development of strategic career and life objectives, and guidance along the path to success.
- Community: Social Belonging (See: Social Motivations).
- Economic Motivation: These are motivations that center around the "bottom line." Economic motivations involve attempting to accomplish as much as possible using as little resources as possible. Many organizations have a clearly established economic agenda but often different groups within the organization will be competing for limited resources, creating internally conflicting agendas. Over emphasis on Economic Motivations leads to an organization where people feel detached and unimportant, just cogs in the machine. Under emphasis on Economic Motivations leads to low or no focused productivity (See: Efficiency).
- Effectiveness: Doing the Right Things (See: Political Motivations).
- Efficiency: Doing things right (See: Economic Motivations).
- Experiential Learning: Experiential learning is the process of learning through reflecting on doing. Participants are guided through the experiential learning cycle of Action, Observation, Generalization, and Transfer (David Kolb. PhD). See: Effective Learning Is All About the Experience
- Facilitation: to make easier or less difficult - an objective, qualified third-party representative expedites discussions, negotiations, or activities within a group of two or more people - this facilitator can keep progress moving according to an established agenda, smooth the pathway through conflict, and open the door for implementation of change.
- Full Purpose FunSM: Use of fun games and initiatives during a Team Building engagement which are specifically designed and sequenced to elicit normal group behaviors and conflicts in a safe and guided way.
- Gen - Y: Generation Y, sometimes referred to as "Millennials" or "Net Generation",
who were born between approximately 1978 and 2001 (different sources
give different start and stop years but all are generally in this
range). The 2008 Gen Y Perceptions Study,
conducted by the Cal State Fullerton Career Center and Spectrum
Knowledge, measured how Gen Y views themselves in the workplace in
comparison to how the Boomers and Gen X view Gen Y. Some key findings
include the following:
- Gen Y Wants Instant Gratification: Managers and employers often complain that Gen Y “wants instant gratification” and it seems like Gen Y itself recognizes this, too. 89% of Gen X and Boomers agreed that Gen Y “wants instant gratification,” while 73% of Gen Y agreed with the statement as well.
- Casual and Professional Can Co-Exist: Though almost three-quarters of all survey respondents agreed that Gen Y dresses and behaves casually, the generations agree that professionalism may not necessarily be a “casualty of casual.” Out of all 22 perceptions regarding Gen Y that we provided on our survey, Gen X and Boomer respondents disagreed with the statement that Gen Y “lacks professionalism” the most. Of course, this may not mean that Gen Y is viewed as professional, but the majority disagree with the view that they’re unprofessional.
- Even Many Gen Y Think They Feel Entitled: Two-thirds of Gen X and Boomer respondents agreed that Gen Y feels entitled. Surprisingly, however, almost half of Gen Y respondents also agreed that their generation “feels entitled to job benefits they’ve not yet earned.”
- Willing to Pay Their Dues?: Our study found that almost twice as many Gen X and Boomers agreed with the statement that “Gen Y lacks willingness to pay their dues” compared to how Gen Y participants rated their own generation. In fact, Gen Y was 17 times as likely to strongly disagree with the statement that the generation lacks willingness to pay their dues.
- Masters of Multitasking or Misperception?: We often hear anecdotally that Gen Y is great at multitasking, working in team environments and self-directed learning. Though Gen Y agree that these are some of their strengths, their Gen X and Boomer managers and supervisors don’t agree that they excel at these working styles.
- Human Capital: The combined skills and knowledge embodied in the people working in and for an organization which are able to affect the organizations goals.
- Human Capital Management (Human Resource Management): The strategic and coherent approach to the management of an organization's most valued assets - the people working there who individually and collectively contribute to the achievement of the objectives of the business. The terms "human resource management" and "human resources" (HR) have largely replaced the term "personnel management" as a description of the processes involved in managing people in organizations (wikipedia).
- Leadership: A process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal (Northouse, 2007).
- Manage:
- 1: to handle or direct with a degree of skill: as
- a: to make and keep compliant <can't manage their child>
- b: to treat with care : <he managed his resources carefully>
- c: to exercise executive, administrative, and supervisory direction of <manage a business> <manage a bond issue> <manage a baseball team>
- 2: to work upon or try to alter for a purpose <manage the press> <manage stress>
- 3: to succeed in accomplishing : contrive <managed to escape from prison>
- 4: to direct the professional career of <an agency that manages entertainers>intransitive verb1 a: to direct or carry on business or affairs ; also : to direct a baseball team b: to admit of being carried on2: to achieve one's purpose.
- (Webster's Dictionary)
- 1: to handle or direct with a degree of skill: as
- Management:
-
1 : the act or art of managing : the conducting or supervising of something (as a business)
-
2 : judicious use of means to accomplish an end
-
3 : the collective body of those who manage or direct an enterprise
- (See: Manage)
- (Webster's Dictionary)
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- Mental Models: The concept of mental models goes back to antiquity, but the phrase (to our knowledge) was coined by Scottish psychologist Kenneth Craik in the 1940s. It has been used by cognitive scientists (notably Marvin Minsky and Seymour Papert of MIT), and gradually by managers. In cognition, the term refers to both the semipermanent tacit "maps" of the world which people hold in their long-term memory, and the short-term perceptions which people build up as part of their everyday reasoning processes. According to some cognitive theorists, changes in short-term everyday mental models, accumulating over time, will gradually be reflected in changes in long-term deep-seated beliefs (Art Kleiner).
- Organization: a social arrangement which pursues collective goals, which controls
its own performance, and which has a boundary separating it from its
environment. The word itself is derived from the Greek word ὄργανον (organon) meaning tool. The term is used in both daily and scientific English in multiple ways.
- Organization – process-related: an entity is being (re-)organized (organization as task or action).
- Organization – functional: organization as a function of how entities like businesses or state authorities are used (organization as a permanent structure).
- Organization – institutional: an entity is an organization (organization as an actual purposeful structure within a social context)
- (wikipedia)
- Organizational Balance: Effective coordination of social, economic, and political motivations within a group or corporation. Successful organizations achieving this balance will be best equipped to perform at the highest level.
- Organizational Development: As defined by Richard Beckhard, "Organization development" (OD) is a planned, top-down, organization-wide effort to increase the organization's effectiveness and health. OD is achieved through interventions in the organization's "processes," using behavioural science knowledge. According to Warren Bennis, OD is a complex strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, and structure of organizations so that they can better adapt to new technologies, markets, and challenges. Warner Burke emphasizes that OD is not just "anything done to better an organization"; it is a particular kind of change process designed to bring about a particular kind of end result. OD involves organizational reflection, system improvement, planning, and self-analysis (wikipedia).
- Peer Group: a group of people with approximately the same demographics - age, socio-economic standing, interests, etc (can also be project related). Within an organization, multiple peer groups may exist on one or more teams. Sometimes individuals experience confusion or insecurity in establishing how they fit in with the group. In such situations, effective team building exercises, group facilitation, and personal or group coaching can resolve these issues and lead to maximum performance of each peer group member. A higher-performing group is the result.
- Political Motivation: Political motivations involve attempting to influence others to "rally" around a particular viewpoint or opinion. Organizations may publicly establish the intended direction (see: vision statement and mission statement). Conflicting political motivations can lead to power struggles and dissension. Over emphasis on Political Motivations can lead to endless debate or "paralysis by analysis" where everyone is heard but no path is chosen. Under emphasis on Political Motivations can lead to an organizational culture with a low feeling of direction or purpose where employees leave because they do not feel they are going anywhere (See: Effectiveness).
- Professional Footprint: The multiple variables each individual "brings to the table" in terms of personal demographics and, as it relates to careers, the demographic details of our employer. These variables can include such things as Dress, Affect, Mannerisms, Accent, Presentation, Listening Skills, Mental Models, etc.
- Social Motivation: Motivations based on the culture and community of an organization. While the organization's leadership may establish and publish the intended culture (see: vision statement and values), there is often no set list of goals for a corporation's culture. Different individuals and groups within the organization may, intentionally or otherwise, establish their own social circles and it can directly affect their actions and performance. Over emphasis on Social Motivations leads to an organization where everyone loves each other but nothing gets done for fear of making someone feel bad. Under emphasis on Social Motivations leads to an organization where no one cares and therefore does the least possible required to "make it through" (See: Community).
- Symptoms of an Imbalance: Excessive attention or lack of attention towards one of the three motivations. Symptoms of an imbalance in motivations manifest themselves in a variety of organizational problems, including:
- Chronic leadership turnover
- Outdated methods
- Apathy
- Lack of trust
- Generation gaps
- Toxic culture/leadership
- Teamwork importance not emphasized
- Effective teamwork practices not taught
- People in wrong organizational roles
- Conflict not managed or resolved
- Low productivity
- Systems Thinking: At its broadest level, systems thinking encompasses a large and
fairly amorphous body of methods, tools, and principles, all oriented
to looking at the interrelatedness of forces, and seeing them as part
of a common process. The field includes cybernetics and chaos theory;
gestalt therapy; the work of Gregory Bateson, Russell Ackoff, Eric
Trist, Ludwig von Bertallanfy, and the Santa Fe Institute; and the
dozen or so practical techniques for "process mapping" flows of
activity at work. All of these diverse approaches have one guiding idea
in common: that the behavior of all systems follows certain common
principles, the nature of which are being discovered and articulated.
But one form of systems thinking has become particularly valuable as a language for describing how to achieve fruitful change in organizations. This form, called "system dynamics," has been developed by Professor Jay Forrester and his colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology over the past forty years. "Links and loops," archetypes, and stock-and-flow modeling-- all have their roots in the system dynamics understanding of how complex feedback processes can generate problematic patterns of behavior within organizations and large-scale human systems (Peter Senge and Art Kleiner).
- Team Building: Instruction and activities designed to demonstrate the dynamics of teamwork and promote the development of successful teams. Team building activities guide the members through exploration of personal and group objectives, teach effective communication skills between team members, and establish a pathway to group success.