Sunday, September 30, 2012

Assignments Related to Teamwork - Part1: How to Make Teams Work Together Effectively



http://diamondbluesolutions.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/cy-teamwork.png
  • How would you characterize work teams that currently exist at the organization in study? Specifically, what makes them highly functional?

    • This is a quite large company and there different types of teams with different levels of authority, power and responsibilities. Generally speaking, this company is well known for its ability to deliver on high profile projects that by virtue involves teams- for great part of it, careful selection of team members (right configuration of experts and skills) and clarity about what they have committed to are among the reasons behind the high functionality of teams within this organization.
  • How have you dealt with dysfunctional teams at organization in study ?
    • First thing is to identify and understand the root cause for such dysfunctionality for instance,  stepping in when there are unresolved discussions and trying to show commitment toward certain common goal is one way , that I would follow, to deal with dysfunctional team.
  •  How do you keep teams focused and moving towards common goals?
    • Focusing on what we can do rather than what we cannot;
    • Allocated the right amounts of time to the important topics.
  • Does the organization in study have a strategy for having “Courageous conversations"? In other words, how does it facilitate employees’ abilities to broach difficult topics and talk about them within teams and how effective is it?
    • Most of the leaders in this organization are well coached on how to have non-emotional courageous conversation. Some people take it personally, but the common good of the Company is what matters actually. I think it is very effective way to handle the” elephant in the room”.
  • Respond to at least two of your team member's blog posts.
Refer to my comments on below blogs:

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Let’s Talk CSR .. Experimenting with Blogging for MSU AP&CC Program


I’m a public relations representative with BA degree in Translations in the Fields of English Language. Works for Saudi Aramco ( Oil & Gas industry).  This blog is actually my first attempt to get into the blogosphere (never browse one... let alone being a blogger!) To be frank about it – this is part of a certification program that I’m doing in Advance Public Relations & Communication by MSU. So, I’m kind of "forced" to do it in order to pass! On the other hand, I have tried to take more of a positive approach when crating this blog. Well,   SCR is my passion and PR is my profession and I have always found it interesting to try to identify similarities and differences between these two disciplines. So let’s all have a CSR talk where we share and discuss CSR topics and link them to PR & Communication, at least until I finish my MSU program in 16 weeks from now ;-) By the way, this task is supposed to provide me with a better understanding of different types of writing styles (writing for traditional media vs. social media) and hopefully will eventually help me in developing better corporate messaging and storytelling techniques.