People as a huge asset Essay Example for Free

People as a huge asset Essay 1.1INTRODUCTION Organisations are made up of people and people are a huge asset to any organization. To be more successful in achieving their goal and objectives; organisations needs to have an understanding about their human assets, their behavior, tendencies, best practice etc..† Leadership is the ability of one person to influence a group of persons toward the achievement of common goals† (Yukl, 1994). Influencing others means that leaders must have an understanding about their behavior, which can only happen when they themselves understand their values, assumptions, beliefs and expectations. Understanding oneself means one must carry out self-assessment/evaluation as this is very important for leaders today. I will be carrying out an assessment about the benefit of self -assessment/evaluation to leaders today and the importance of understanding human behavior in oraganisations. 1.2 DEFINITION OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR Human behavior is the way people behave and which can be influence by culture, emotions, attitudes, values, ethics, genetic etc.. Depending on the society and environment, human behavior can either be common, usual, acceptable or unacceptable. Human behavior can either be learnt as we relate to our environment; for example, tying your shoes is a learned behavior or it can be innate which can be inherited through genes. 1.3THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOR TO AN ORGANIZATION Organisations depend on the behavior of both individual and teams to achieve their goals and objectives; as such it is very critical for organisations to have thorough understanding of human behavior. Understanding human behavior is a  key to organisational success. Human behavior defines how people work together and relate with one another. Communication being the cornerstone of behavior can only be effective when people understand one another. Interpersonal conflict can be reduced in an organisation once there’s an understanding of human behavior. Behavior can influence negatively on the achievement of an organization’s goals and objectives if not manage well; will lead to poor output and failure. Organisations need to plan their training programme, understanding the behavior of its employees will inform the planning process, thereby ensuring that training needs are effectively met. An effective understanding of the diverse behavior of personnel is important. Evidence has shown that as people get to know one another, they became less concerned about differences if they see themselves as sharing more important characteristics, such as personality and values, that represent deep-level diversity† (Stephen P Robbins Timothy A Judge, Organizational Behavior -15th Editions) A co-operative team that knows how to work with one another can produce better result than those who have problems relating to one another. 1.4 THE IMPORTANCE OF UNDERSTANDING HUMAN BEHAVIOR BY LEADERS Organisations need strong leadership to achieve its goals and objectives. An organisation is only as successful as its leadership. Leadership is the ability to influence a group towards the achievement of a vision or set of goals. Individuals or group can only be influence when there’s an understanding of their behavior. Business necessity, enlightenment about differences and moral fortitude have combine to push organisations into hiring a diverse set of employees, as a result managing this diversity has proven to be a challenge to leaders†¦ Leaders can effectively manage this challenge through understanding this diversity. A leader who fails to understand his followers thereby focusing at a very superficial level by commanding others to do their will; is at the bottom of the leadership level. Deeper understanding provides more options, give one more potential tools, and frankly, makes one a powerful leader (Stephen P Robbins Timothy A Judge, Organizational Behavior -15t h Editions). This is a trait of level 5 leadership. â€Å"Understanding the behavior of followers will assist leaders in putting together teams to manage projects and it will also assist in  assigning task to employees in a way that will put to efficient use each member’s strength rather than their weakness â€Å" (www.employment-testing.com) Attempting to influencing individuals without understanding why they behave the way they do, might yield random or unpredictable effect and this will lead to leaders being unsuccessful as followers will be alienated; whereas understanding the personalities of subordinates and superiors informs leaders as to others expectations and provides insights into motivation, competitiveness and interpersonal relationships and communication. 1.5 LEADERSHIP SELF-EVALUATION/SELF-ASSESSMENT As leaders the ability to influence people has to be continuously improved; and the first step in achieving that will be by knowing yourself and gaining understanding of your leadership style, skills, traits, competencies, abilities, personality type and experience. According to Kevin Sharer of AMGEN CEO and president, â€Å"Leadership has many voices. You need to be who you are, not to emulate someone else.† An apt statement as leaders has the responsibility of influencing others in the achievement of goals and objectives; an achievement that will be almost impossible to attain when followers lacks faith in their leader. People normally have faith in authentic leaders as they are leaders who not only know what they believe in and value but also act on that values and beliefs candidly and openly. Most leaders are unaware of the effect their emotional intelligence has on their superiors and subordinates, many a time we blame negative outcome to those around us, all the time bei ng totally blind to the fact that our personality might have had effect on others action. â€Å"Those who use the emotional intelligence framework to guide their thoughts and actions may find it easier to create trust in relationship, harness energy under pressure, and sharpen their ability to make sound decisions-in other words, they increase their potential for success in the workplace†(Jones and Bartlett learning PTT) only by carrying out self-assessment/evaluation will you be able to understand your emotional intelligence and other traits. As leaders one should know what their strength and weaknesses as this will enable them build on their strength and march it to their leadership opportunities, it will also assist in the development of their weaknesses and allows for the  elimination of threats to leadership. 1.6 THE BENEFITS OF SELF- ASSESSMENT/SELF-EVALUATION TO LEADERS TODAY. Most of the benefits of self-assessment have already been discuss above, however some benefits are; A.Develop Emotional Intelligence When taking time to self-reflect you are looking inwards. Self-awareness gives you the ability the ability to understand your emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals, and recognize their impact on others you are leading. Being self-aware will aid you in controlling or redirecting your disruptive emotions and impulses and adapt to changing circumstances. Building these emotional intelligence components will improve your leadership. B. ASSISTS IN BECOMING EFFECTIVE LEADER Authentic leaders are clear on their core values, and this will help to strengthen leadership integrity and lead you to better decisions. Understanding your core values will build followers trust in you as a leader and this will make decision making easier as our integrity is often put to the test during stressful and difficult times. C. BUILD SELF-CONFIDENCE Confidence is crucial for leaders. It helps in effective communications, decision making, and influence building. People will see you as you see yourself, being aware of your strength as leader will build self-confidence and this will increase team effectiveness.

Designing Agile Organisations Essay -- Enterprise integration modellin

Abstract: We investigate the management system of the enterprise as an agent maintaining a system of objectives. We then analyse the organisation as a set of individual autonomous co-operating agents so that agenthood of the entire enterprise becomes an emergent property of the organisation. Important questions include: under what condition can agenthood emerge? how to create such an organisation?, and how to guarantee that change preserves agenthood?. Introduction It is increasingly important to devise faster and more reliable ways of designing purposeful, agile organisations (Bernus et al, 1997). We use the definition of the organisation as the human component of the enterprise, forming the human-organisational architecture (Williams, 1994). An enterprise can be thought of as consisting of an operational and a decisional system (Doumeingts et al, 1998), each implemented partly by humans and partly by machines (Bernus and Nemes, 1994). We borrow the definition of the 'planning agent' from artificial intelligence to describe the desired quality of the organisation. We demonstrate necessary conditions for the enterprise to behave as an agent, and also show the relationship of this view to concepts such as the fractal factory, holonic manufacturing, and others. The organisation as an agent Two crucial questions in organisational design are: 1) how to design the task structure of the enterprise to form a co-ordinated whole? and 2) what tasks allocation to humans (or groups) ensures that the enterprise will act to satisfy its objectives? The second question is typically not asked in business process engineering: it is assumed that the organisation will to what it is told to. An organisation should conduct a system of activities managed and controlled to satisfy a set of organisational objectives. This requires purposeful behaviour so that the organisation can be characterised as a planning agent. A planning agent determines a course of action to achieve its set of objectives. This course of action, or plan, is constrained by the agent's resources as well as the agent's own functional capabilities. The organisation follows, or appears to be following this plan while monitoring the effectiveness of the actions to actually satisfy the objectives for which the plan was made. If the plan fails in some way, then the plan or the objectives are m... ...319-332 Koestler,A.. (1989) The ghost in the machine. Arkana Books Tharumarajah, A., Wells,J., Nemes,L., (1996) Comparison of the bionic, fractal and holonic manufacturing systems concepts. Int. J. on Computer Integrated Manuf. (3) pp.217-226 Uppington,G., Bernus,P., Assessing the Necessity of Enterprise Change: Pre-feasibility and Feasibility Studies in Enterprise Integration. Int. J. of CIM, 1998 11(5) pp 430-447 Valckenaers,P., VanBrussel,H., Bongaerts,L., Wyns,J. (1997) IMS test case 5: holonic manufacturing systems. Journal of Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, 4(3), pp191-201. VanHouten,D.R. (1990) The political economy and technical control of work humanization in Sweden during the 1970s and 1980s. Work and Occupations, 14, pp483-513. Warnecke, H.J. (1993) The Fractal Company. Berlin: Springer. Williams,T.J., (1994) The Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture. Computers in Industry, 24 (2-3) pp141-158 Williams,T.J., Bernus,P., Brosvic,J., Chen,D., Doumeingts,G., Nemes,L., Nevins,J.L., Vallespir,B., Vlietstra,J., Zoetekouw,D., (1994) Architectures for integrating manufacturing activities and enterprises. Computers in Industry, 24(2-3) pp111-140

America Needs Its Nerds Essay

In the passage from â€Å"America Needs Its Nerds†, author Leonid Fridman dissect his argument by comparing and contrasting America’s on-going social beliefs and perceptions of the geek and the actual positive role taken on by the nerd and why the role that they play is so vital to our society. Friedman begins with, bringing to our attention, the type of terms our society uses to describe the â€Å"intellectually curious and academically serious. These types of derogatory terms aid in displaying Fridmans view point on the subject as he believes that the `use of these words to describe nerd and geeks are in fact an issue. Fridman uses diction that disgraces our society who casts out nerds because of their â€Å"intelligence and refusal to conform to societies anti-intellectual values. † Friedman applies the term ‘ostracized’ as a later follow up to the previous description of how it is common for the child who’d rather study or read books is looked down upon versus athletes who are falsely praised. In his essay, Friedman gives us insight on the negative connotation of the nerd and the failure to criticize the ones deserving of it. After this accumulation reaches a climax, Fridman establishes a turning point in his argument, utilizing one short and very straightforward sentence to display how exhausted he has become with the stereotype that the studious person is automatically given. Here, he begins to shift his tone from bitter and disgusted to motivational and inspiring. He even weaves patriotism into his argument, seemingly stating that the nerd population has become a national disaster zone in need of immediate attention from each individual citizen. Immediately following however, he turns and attacks our nation by giving a comparison between the US and Asia, claiming that they, our â€Å"rivals,† are doing a much better job of appreciating their own intelligence. As Fridman closes, he begins to place his argument into his reader’s hands by asking multiple and repetitive rhetorical questions. By over-generalizing America’s â€Å"typical† parent, he again motivates his reader to set himself apart from the cruel and stereotypical (most likely athletic) crowd and begin appreciating the â€Å"nerd† for himself. In this passage, Fridman makes a noteworthy effort to revolutionize an obviously shallow American standard. With a large dose of his own biased bitterness, and possibly a dash of his own â€Å"nerdy† revenge, he creates the solid argument that â€Å"America needs its nerds. â€Å"

Secrets of the Dead The Lost Gardens of Babylon

The latest video from the PBS series Secrets of the Dead visits the fairly controversial theory of Stephanie Dalley, an Assyriologist at Oxford University, who for last twenty years or so, has argued the Greek historian Diodorus had it wrong: the seventh ancient Wonder of the World shouldnt be called the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, because it wasnt in Babylon, it was in the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. Where are the Hanging Gardens? Archaeological remnants of all of the remaining ancient seven wonders--the colossus of Rhodes, the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicamassus, the statue of Zeus at Olympia and the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus--have been discovered over the centuries: but not the Gardens at Babylon. Dalley points out that neither Nebuchadnezzar nor Semiramis, the two Babylonian rulers often credited with building the Hanging Gardens, were known for gardens: Nebuchadnezzar in particularly left hundreds of cuneiform documents, full of descriptions of his architectural works but not a word about gardens. No physical evidence to date has been found in Babylon at all, leading some scholars to wonder if the garden ever existed. Not so, says Dalley, there is documentary evidence for the Hanging Gardens--and some archaeological evidence as well--for them, but in Nineveh, 300 miles north of Babylon. Sennacherib of Nineveh Dalleys research points to Sennacherib, the son of Sargon the Great, who ruled Assyria between 705-681 BC. He was one of ​several Assyrian leaders who ​were known for engineering feats around water control: and he left many cuneiform documents in which he described his construction projects. One is the Taylor prism, an octagonal fired clay object that one of three known such objects in the world. It was discovered in the walls of the elevated palace of Kuyunjik, at Nineveh, and it describes an extravagant garden with orchards of fruit trees and cotton plants, watered daily. Further information comes from the decorative panels that were on the palace walls when it was excavated, now stored in the Assyrian Room of the British Museum, which illustrate a lush garden. Archaeological Evidence The Hanging Gardens of Babylon includes the research of Jason Ur, who has used satellite imagery and detailed spy maps made of the Iraqi countryside back in the 1970s and are now declassified, to trace Sennacheribs amazing canal system. It included one of the earliest known aqueducts, the Aqueduct at Jerwan, part of a 95 kilometer (~59 mile) long canal system that led from the Zagros Mountains to Nineveh. One of the bas-reliefs from Lachish now at the British Museum contains images of a vast garden, with arches of similar construction of those used at Jerwan. More archaeological evidence is hard to come by: the ruins of Nineveh are in Mosul, about as dangerous a place on the planet today as you can get to. Nevertheless, some local guards from Mosul were able to get to the site for Dalley and take video of the remnants of Sennacheribs palace and the place where Dalley believes they might find evidence of the garden. Archimedes Screw A fascinating part of this film discusses Dalleys theory about how Sennacherib got water into his elevated garden. No doubt, there are canals that would have brought water into Nineveh, and there was a lagoon as well. Scholars have thought he might ​have  used a shadoof, a wooden lever contraption that was used by ancient Egyptians to lift buckets of water out of the Nile and onto their fields. Shadoofs are slow and cumbersome, and Dalley suggests that some version of a water screw was used. The water screw is thought to have been invented by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, some 400 years later, but, as Dalley describes in this video, there is a strong possibility that it had been known for centuries before Archimedes described it. And might indeed have been used at Nineveh. Bottom Line The Secrets of the Dead The Lost Gardens of Babylon is a terrific example of the entertaining glimpses into the ancient past, covering controversial ideas where history and science collide, and a great addition to the Secrets of the Dead collection.   Video Details Secrets of the Dead: The Lost Gardens of Babylon. 2014. Featuring Stephanie Dalley (Oxford); Paul Collins (Ashmolean Museum); Jason Ur (Harvard). Narrated by Jay O. Sanders; writer and director by Nick Green; director of photography, Paul Jenkins, director of production Olwyn Silvester. Executive producer for Bedlam Productions, Simon Eagan. Executive in charge for WNET, Stephen Segaller. Executive producer for WNET, Steve Burns. Coordinating producer for WNET, Stephanie Carter. Bedlam Production for Channel 4 in association with ARTE, THIRTEEN Productions LLC for WNET and SBS Australia. Check local listings. Disclosure: A review copy (link to a screener) was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.