Within the semester, our team has been proactive in tackling several assignments within the goal of scoring optimal points. Group assignments are often complex because each member of the group has a different writing style and flow of ideas. Despite these differences, sharing a common goal makes the group experience interesting. In the group assignment, I was tasked with the responsibility of doing research on the aspect of Organization Culture in designing the research poster. In order to draw a narrow and convincing content, I had to do a lot of secondary research on the organization culture to the general perception in the practical work environment. I then proceeded to review the common perceptions on the culture within the dynamic information technology career. I then narrowed down my research to four steps that every manager needs to follow in managing organization culture in order to make the presentation more focused and constructive. The four steps I discussed were Teach It, Live It, Measure It, and Reward It (Rosso, Dekas, & Wrzesniewski, 2010). In discussing these steps, I discovered that the core values of organization culture in information technology career are reliability, professionalism, confidentiality, and team work.
This assignment required explanation of an issue through an evidence based research. Before commencing this report, I had to draw a research timeline and literature review. I divided the research paper into four parts to cover each step. I had to define these steps in a rough draft and review the chronological pattern of how each step works for my paper to make sense and embrace the basics of a well written paper. Upon finishing the rough draft which consisted of over eight paragraphs, I decided to narrow down these steps in a second draft and introduce the aspect of flow and sentence connectivity. The second draft was fair enough, but had several sections which did not flow with my initial writing style. I had to edit the second draft to match my skills with the effort-performance (E-P) expectancy theoretical model (Rosso et al., 2010).
Since a properly written paper requires creative ingenuity, I had to write the final copy which was better arranged and nicely presented. Despite the constraint of time, I was in a position to create a good paper as was confirmed by other members of the group. I realized that the main challenge towards writing a quality paper on ordinary topic is conflicting thoughts since the entire information is out of personal creation. I was very confident and interested since the sub topic on organization culture was related to my career interests. Since I had done a comprehensive research before the group presentation, I was very certain in the responses to different questions raised by the team. The certainty was also as a result of past training in the art of public speaking besides personal mastery of the subject of discussion (Yaffe, 2010).
Despite the confidence and deep interest, I realised that I needed to improve on my intra and inter communication skills since I noticed that some of the members, especially the secretary was finding it difficult to keep up with my presentation. The disagreement was whether I carried out the four-step research from a single source or many sources. I made a lot of assumptions that other members were conversant with the steps I was presenting. In order to improve as a team in the meetings, it was necessary for the members to understand personal motivation and self targets, the need for aggressiveness in discussion, and development of proper personal etiquette (Yaffe, 2010).
Besides, it was essential for the team to limit the scope of activities to contain only relevant discussions since some members were involved in irrelevant discussions about personal issues. During the first meeting, I noticed that uncontrolled discussion might limit the seriousness and professionalism in constructing and presenting individual views to a team. For instance, our team became a victim unregulated discussion and had to spend a lot of time on irrelevant issues. In order to prevent problems that might arise, it was essential for the team to embrace teamwork, personal discipline, and need for proactive contributions. Besides, each member was made to feel appreciated and instrumental in the discussions.
The most difficult part in the compilation of the work done in a group was the editing and selection of information to include in the final copy. There was a lot of information which had to be summarized in my allocated space. At the same time, the presentation was supposed to be as short and interesting as possible to ensure that the target audience does not lose concentration. Since this was a group assignment, I must admit that the research process was restrictive because each member was limited to doing a portion of the paper. In the end, we presented a well researched and carefully written paper. Unlike other groups, the clarity of our presentation was apparent because the other groups did not have questions or negative observations on our project. This was the best project for me since I benefited from the team spirit in the group.
I must admit that there were series of challenges along the way as my assignments required research and creativity in compilation. I was generally intimidated by the complexity of the research topic and the analytical approach that I had to use to gather enough content about organization culture (Rosso et al., 2010). Being a scientific research, I had to further my understanding of doing this form of research by referring to the class notes and the library. The challenges involved in collecting the relevant information alone made writing this assignment a gruel some experience. However, I was able to arrange the major and minor premises to create a sensible report. Besides, being the creative and flexible person I am, I was able to improve my writing skills and minimize the research challenges. In fact, I can authoritatively describe my section in the assignment as a mature piece of literature consisting of well researched, properly written and clean paper.
References
Rosso, B.D., Dekas, K.H., & Wrzesniewski, A. (2010). On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review. Research in Organizational Behaviour, 30(5), 91-127.
Yaffe, P. (2010). Techniques of persuasive Communication. Web.