Collaboration - Session 12

During the Global Site Directors' Meeting, I saw first hand the potential for collaboration to greatly improve the success of a project within an organization. NYU is currently working to assess the academic quality of the programs at its global sites. To do this, NYU has established a working group led by a Provostial fellow and faculty representatives from NYU's departments and schools in New York. This New York formed group will be responsible for conducting global site evaluations. When this process was discussed at the Site Directors' meeting (the directors from each global site gather for one week every semester to plan and collaborate) many of the directors were clearly uncomfortable with the whole process. They felt that their sites were looked down upon by New York. Despite New York claims that the evaluations were meant as a tool for self improvement and were similar to departmental evaluations often conducted here in New York, the site directors were not enthusiastic. The meeting became a bit heated, and the issue was not resolved when they broke for lunch.

Over lunch, the Provostial fellow leading the evaluation effort had a casual conversation with the site director from NYU Florence. They discussed how the global sites and New York could collaborate on the evaluations. They came up with the idea of introducing some global site faculty on the evaluation committee, so that it would not be seen as simply a New York investigation of the global sites and also so that the committee could be strengthened by learning some of the challenges unique to educating study abroad students. This idea was then presented to the rest of the site directors after lunch and suddenly the entire tone of the conversation changed. The site directors became very accepting of the idea of site evaluations and agreed to work in support of these efforts.

What the Provost's office must now do is ensure that this committee is truly collaborative, and not merely a cover to accomplish the original objective. The global sites must not only be represented on the committee, they must truly have a voice in the decisions and recommendations that it makes. The Provost's office should also clearly present the non-negotiables of what education should look like at the global sites, so that the committee does not spend time debating issues and making recommendations that the university will not help implement. If the site evaluation process truly is collaborative, it will be far more successful than it would have been, had it just been a New York only venture.

Strategic Engagement - Session 11

I found the prisoner's dilemma exercise we did in class today very interesting. It was interesting because while I've certainly read about scenarios like this many times, I don't think I'd ever actually attempted to act one out.

It was frustrating to have a complete understanding of how the game works and know what you all could come out ahead if only you cooperated, but that there is simply no way to know what the other teams will do. The other thing I found interesting was playing the game with multiple teams and seeing how much that affected the odds. Typically, when you read about the prisoner's dilemma it is with just two people, and even then it is hard to reach a desirable outcome. With multiple teams, it becomes really difficult. I thought that this was a good proxy for the real world, since the more players you have the more difficult it is to achieve collaboration, especially because it is hard to predict how many people will act.

My group was the first group to break everyone's trust, by getting everyone to agree to choose Y and then choosing X instead. We did this because we interpreted the game's rules to mean earn as much money as you can, meaning our team. What is particularly interesting is that we then went back to choosing Y in the final round; and I'm not quite sure why we did it. Going into the final round I thought we should choose X for sure, since we would be better off that way with every scenario except every other team also choosing X which seemed very unlikely. So why did we choose Y? And more importantly why was I one of the people to advocate for choosing Y?

I think in the end we choose Y because we felt bad for deceiving everyone the first time around, and felt like the rest of the class was quite mad at us. The fact that emotions can prevent you from acting completely rationally in a little classroom game I think really says a lot about situations of strategic engagement and negotiation in the real world. If our emotions affected us and caused us to act unpredictably in this setting, it is clear that emotions can easily affect people and organizations in the real world. While you can always hope that people will act rationally, and make decisions based on their best interests, you should be careful never to assume you know how they will act!

Stakeholders - Session 10

Shortly after our session on strategic assessment of stakeholders I encountered a situation where the stakeholder strategizer tool could be used in my work at MCV.

Malawi Children's Village (MCV) is now in negotiations with its retiring executive director over leasing the land that he owns. In a recent conference call for MCV, a board member proposed the idea, that since the negotiations were difficult, MCV should simply relocate down the road, and reinvent the core village based component of the organization as a new organization. I disagreed with this idea, primarily because I think this proposed idea was in need of a careful stakeholder analysis. It is clear that moving and reinventing the organization could be beneficial for the board of the organization, since they could potentially find cheaper rent, and have a clean break with the retiring executive director, ensuring that he no longer has any involvement with the organization. Before such an option could be explored however, I think a stakeholder analysis would be essential.

There are several groups which would have the potential power to either make an MCV move a success or a failure. One group would be the Village Volunteers that currently monitor the orphans. If these volunteers were not willing to continue with a reinvented organization, the strategy would be a failure. Their commitment would have to be ensured before such a strategy was attempted. While it is difficult to know whether or not they would be interested in continuing their support, one major cause for concern is that there is no clearly identifiable benefit to them in the move/reinvention of the program.

Another stakeholder that would need to be addressed would be the local community and clients served by the program. The families and orphans currently served by the organization have likely gotten used to visiting the clinic and schools at the current central campus. More importantly they are proud of the success the organization has had in the community. If part of the organization were to split off and leave the central campus, there is no guarantee that the local community would still support the program and have faith in its services. Once again, it is difficult to see what gain the local community would see in the relocation/reinvention of the core MCV program.

Since I don't see a clear benefit for either of these important stakeholder groups, and I think that both have enough power to derail the strategy, I would not support going forward with the idea. If the idea were to go forward, I would insist that a detailed stakeholder analysis be done, so that we could identify clear incentives for these stakeholder groups (and others) to ensure that they support the strategy and would work to ensure its success.

Alignment of Values - Session 9

I found the values exercise we did in class to be very interesting. When we were first asked to select our most important values after simply rating all of the values as high, low or medium, I wound up with one set of values. Many of my most important values then changed after we were asked to give each value a score based on our answering of the specific questions about how having more or less of each value would affect our happiness.

I think that this personal experience is important to keep in mind when getting feedback from individuals in the future - whether this feedback is on values or anything else. Having guided questions which force you to think about an item or decision and weigh the pros and cons before answering seems crucial to generating more reliable feedback. This seems like it would be an especially good activity to do with employees or board members on a retreat before revising the mission statement, vision statement, or core values for an organization. I think, in the same way that the guided questions helped me refine my own most important values, the entire exercise may help individuals to refine how they feel about their work at an organization, and the values they think are essential for that organization to have. Learning what values drive each individual, and aligning these values with the organization to the greatest extent possible clearly enables employees to work better together towards a common mission. I think that the exercise can also be helpful, in that it reminds us all of the differences people have when it comes to which values are more important. This can help people work better together, since it reminds us there may be a valid reason for a colleague's differing opinion. Rather than just dismissing a colleague's opinion as ill informed, people can understand that a colleague's actions may be driven by a different set of values.

Anticipating & Minimizing Resistance - Session 8

While improving assessing & improving readiness can help reduce resistance, it is rare that change can be brought about without facing some resistance. In my work at NYU's Office of Global Programs (OGP), I have seen many examples of resistance to change. In many instances, I think this resistance can be attributed to the simple fact that all change involves the "loss of what was and a transition to what will be" (Spiro, 2011, Loc. 274). Many of NYU's study abroad centers have been around long before NYU's centralized OGP was created. For example, the NYU Paris program was founded by the French Department back in 1969. NYU Paris was later taken from the French Department by the OGP. Since the program was originally run by the French Department, the traditional leadership has often resisted changes made by the OGP.

Over the coming year, the OGP leadership hopes to ensure that all Global sites' academic calendars are meeting Middle States accreditation standards. Since the NYU Paris calendar is currently well short of the required 14 weeks of classes, their calendar will have to be changed. Even if proper steps are followed to maximize readiness, the OGP leadership should recognize that resistance from the traditional NYU Paris leadership in the French Department will be inevitable.

A couple of points from the chapter "Step 4 - Minimizing Resistance While Maximizing Your Tolerance for It" seem especially relevant for this situation. In particular, OGP leadership should take care not to assign blame for the current calendar, or focus on what is wrong with it. OGP should acknowledge that there were good reasons for the current calendar set up, but that closer scrutiny of the academic quality of the Global Network University makes it necessary to ensure all calendars meet certain standards.

Another key things OGP leadership should consider is to not try changing too many things at once. If they would like to change NYU Paris's calendar for future semesters, it should not try to initiate other changes at this time. There will definitely be resistance to changing the calendar, but it can be minimized if it is not accompanied by other changes, which would make the NYU Paris leadership feel that their successful program is being completely changed for no reason.

Lastly, OGP leadership needs to assess their tolerance for resistance before embarking on this effort. I think that without a doubt their will be resistance to this change. OGP leadership should anticipate this resistance, and be prepared to work hard to overcome this resistance if they wish to accomplish change.

Revisiting Readiness for Every New Action - Session 7

As the Academic Support Coordinator in NYU's Office of Global Programs, I help our leadership develop and expand the curriculum at our Global Academic Centers. In order to introduce a new course abroad, we need to work with departments here on the Washington Square campus who ultimately "own" their department's courses. I have seen our office fail to win a department's support in the past due to inadequately assessing and improving a department's readiness.

Our Vice Provost recently wanted to add chemistry and biology courses to the curriculum at NYU Tel Aviv. The departments were reluctant in supporting this effort however, and as a result, we still have not added these courses to the curriculum. The departments have not completely fought against adding these courses, but they have dragged their feet, and slowed the process down significantly. It is clear to me, that our office could have had much more success with this project, if we had focused on improving readiness beforehand.

We currently offer Biology, Chemistry, and Physics at NYU London. The departments here in NY that sponsor these courses are currently worried about the quality of these courses offered abroad. While it is not completely clear whether these concerns are justified, nothing has been done to thoroughly evaluate whether or not there are problems with these courses, and to address these problems should they indeed exist. Our office recognized that these concerns should be addressed, but wanted to first push forward with adding these courses to the curriculum in Tel Aviv. I think this was a major mistake, as we should have recognized, readiness is essential for each new action. If the departments were not ready to support a study abroad initiative, the initiative cannot succeed. We need to first address any concerns the department may have about NYU London, and ensure that they are ready to support efforts at NYU Tel Aviv. Only then, with full readiness, can we hope to achieve success.

Early Win - Session 6

I was really drawn to the idea of an "early win" in this week's reading/class. It was something I hadn't really thought about before, but made immediate sense. Part of the reason it makes so much sense to me is that I think it can be a useful strategy to use in one's personal life. I sometimes have difficultly dealing with stress in my life, especially the kind that comes from having too much work to do. When faced with too much work to do or a particularly difficult task, I've occasionally had the bad habit of shutting down and simply putting off the work. This of course only makes my stress worse and leaves me less time to do the work. To combat this tendency, I've tried to concentrate on giving myself an early win. If I have a variety of tasks to complete, some of which are easier than others - which is normally the case - I try to tackle the easier less time consuming tasks first. Completing one task boosts my confidence and decreases my stress enabling me to move onto the next task.

When thinking about creating a strategic plan for organizational change, it seems obvious that securing an early win is even more important. Organizations are made up of people, and can be helped by the momentum created from an early win just like people. When I've thought about getting Malawi Children's Village to create and implement a strategic plan, the task definitely seems daunting. I think of so many things that would need to be considered, and major changes that would need to happen in order for the organization to succeed. I now realize that whatever strategy the organization seeks to use, we should make sure that it includes an early win. I'm not quite sure what that would be at this point. I'm also a little confused with how an early win would match with a divestment/retrenchment strategy. One of the things I think MCV might decide to do would be to close down its clinic and form a partnership with the clinic down the road. It's hard to think of this as an early win however. Won't people be disappointed to see a long standing program shut down? Perhaps it could be turned into an early win by having some sort of signing ceremony with the partnering organization? As I said, I'm not really sure what the early win would be at this point, but I'm glad I now know to keep this in mind if we go forward with a strategic plan.