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By Erica, August 3, 2010 9:20 am

I’m curious how physical space, internal politics, co-worker relationships and the need for control in an office make up organizational culture. I am totally full of “it” so feel free to disagree, shake your head in disbelief, or offer your opinion!

My office suite is comprised of offices around the perimeter of the building and those offices have windows. The other offices are small and interior. We also have a few training rooms that ring the other portion of the building and those have some windows as they are along the wall of our horseshoe shape.

I sat in one of the interior offices when I first moved into the building and had the unfortunate luck of being directly under the air handler that shakes, rattles and rolls at varying levels of loud, really loud and I’m going to suffer a concussive brain bleed loud. Since I moved out of that space, it has been converted to storage.

The office I have now has two windows and is spacious enough for a round table and three chairs. This sounds like I’m important but I got the office because we laid-off a bunch of people and the space was available. I sit with my back to the windows. But I do turn around to look out the window, especially if some work item is vexing me or if I have people in my office—both things happen frequently.

Perhaps at one time the assignment of space was based on seniority, a person’s level in the hierarchy or some other set of standards, but if those standards still exist, I’m not sure that anyone cares about them. Only recently did our director get a large office (she’d been in a cramped interior office), but she shares the space with a conference table and community book cases. She has another office in our building on campus and it’s one of the nicer rooms in the building there. When she’s at either location, she typically leaves her door open and encourages us to stop in to see her. I wouldn’t go into her office to chat about her weekend, but I don’t hesitate to stop and ask about something work-related.

My office is located between the director and someone else in my unit (my unit is involved in training development). This person was originally with the organization for years, was laid off and was employed elsewhere for about two years, and then re-joined us about a year ago. She was part of the original unit and contributed to the feeling of superiority that I explored when I analyzed my organization’s culture for a class back in the fall of 2008. This person frequently shuts her door. Everyone else in the unit leaves their doors open unless on a conference call or in a meeting.

Keeping her door closed cuts this person off from the rest of us. And, I wonder about the reasons behind the door closure. We’re fortunate that, even with training in full swing, our hallway is pretty quiet. So, I don’t think she’s closing the door so that distractions are minimized. The rest of us manage to write and research courses with our doors open. I think she keeps her door closed for the control it gives her over who interrupts her. By closing her door, she makes us all essentially ask permission to engage her in conversation. My leap to this conclusion is not too far off-base because this co-worker exhibits other aspects of this need for control. You’ll just have to trust your narrator on this.

Even when her door is open, people don’t tend to stop to talk to her. I assume that’s because they’ve learned that she doesn’t want to engage with them. It’s peculiar because this person is quick to tell us how connected she is to people in the community, in politics and with our client. But, she’s not well-connected here, among her own people. As a case in point, a person connected with training delivery just walked past my co-worker’s open door to ask me a question that either of us could have answered.

I suppose my co-worker has espoused values of being connected and an important player, but when it comes down to it what she really has is an underlying belief that is a contradiction to what she says. Which leads to me to spend too much time wondering about such things but being unable to directly ask as that’s definitely something that’s frowned upon in my unit.

To wrap this up, what actions go on in your office that make you wonder about the culture and the relationships between co-workers? I’m especially interested in this when offices are cube farms. How do workers exert control over their space when there is no sense of privacy?

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By Erica, July 28, 2010 4:28 pm

The first new textbook has arrived:

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By Erica, July 2, 2010 10:07 am

Well, it’s been awhile.

I was working on some administrative stuff surrounding a series of courses I’m responsible for and got a chuckle out of what should be really boring stuff.

In most of my courses, I use scenarios either for learning or for testing. The character, “Henry Rest”, shows up frequently in those scenarios. In fact, if there’s a male character in my scenarios, his name is probably Henry Rest. I really should go back and look to see if he’s been in all of my elearning courses.

You may be wondering why the name. I’m sure everyone has a song that has lyrics that you mishear (my favorite is Suicide Blonde by INXS–I swear “suicide blonde” sounds like “soup and salad bar”). I believe these are called mondegreens. Actually, that would be a good character name, “Monde Green”.

My husband misheard the lyrics in Love Shack by the B52s as “Henry Rest” instead of “tin roof rusted”. And, now Henry shows up in my courses.

For your Friday pleasure:

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By Erica, June 4, 2010 11:16 am

Yesterday a couple of colleagues and I were in the drive-thru of our local Greek Festival waiting to place our orders for lunch. It was taking quite awhile for the folks working the drive-thru to get their groove on and so conversation had waned a bit in the car.

That’s when I noticed three workers talking to the vehicle just ahead of us. I observed to the others in the car that we were watching training take place and we’d get to see the immediate transfer of skills.

Sure enough, that’s exactly what was happening. An experienced worker was showing two newly arrived workers how to take an order, deal with the payment and fulfill the order. The experienced worker went away and the two learners moved on to the next vehicle. Then they divided up and by the time someone reached our vehicle to take our order there were three workers moving through the line of cars.

The two lines of cars began moving a bit more rapidly through the drive-thru. If I were evaluating that training, I’d say it was successful.

Jokingly, we decided we could tell our director, who was back at the office awaiting a gyro, that we’d been working as we waited in line for food since observing training is one of our job-related duties.

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By Erica, April 13, 2010 12:43 pm

Accomplishment:
A course that I first wrote for the classroom, five years ago, has finally been published as an online course. I wanted that from the beginning and now it’s finally out there. If I were more dramatic, I’d say my work here is done (with my hands on my hips and cape flapping in the breeze).

Disappointment:
I zipped up the course files for the newly published course and realized I have no more eLearning courses for the remainder of the year (ends on June 30th). Which also means that whatever I do between now and year’s end is “pick-up” work. My work plan is finished for the year so now I’ll be looking for those things that need to be picked up because we haven’t had time to deal with them up until now, or things that my co-workers can’t get to because they are either behind in their work or overwhelmed with things due by year’s end.

Boredom:
Pick-up work is not my favorite. It is nice to feel a sense of accomplishment as I whip through work but this work is not something that I’m remotely invested in. It’s like cleaning out your closet. Necessary, but not rewarding.

Frustration:
I was told today not to spend too much time cleaning up one of those pick-up work courses because there may not be much need for it in the coming year. So, on one hand I’m encouraged to clean up the pick-up work, but I shouldn’t work too hard on it.

Accomplishment:
Hey, that course was published. Way to go!

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By Erica, April 8, 2010 7:41 am

I found this interesting especially since I was digging in the garden yesterday after work and I made a presentation a couple of weeks ago that included some of these ideas:

Behold, the 5 tips for Knowledge Gardeners.

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By Erica, April 6, 2010 9:34 am

We received an email the other day from our client who had just spoken with someone in the field about three courses. Two of the courses were my organization’s and one of those was “mine”. The client was passing along a high-five to all of us because the person in the field had done a rare thing–called to praise instead of complain.

The person in the field thought our courses were hitting the mark and providing valuable information for her employees.

In the twelve years (ep!) that I’ve worked with this client, I’ve received two emails telling me Good Job. I kept the first one for years until it was lost in an email system change. I’ll be keeping this recent email for quite awhile too.

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By Erica, March 12, 2010 11:19 am

I’m actively working on an online course that consists of existing content from an instructor-led course (that I also developed). This is something I’ve done plenty of times. In the past, this development was primarily based on courses that were out of date and trained only sporadically or not at all due to old age. When those course conversions were completed, we made the online courses available and there was much rejoicing.

The current course has taken a turn into politics. I was asked, by our client, to email pilot participants to get their feelings on whether or not the online course can replace the instructor-led course. I’m sure these pilot participants are going to find this an odd request as we’ve never asked for this permission before and many of them have already indicated this in the pilot documentation. Whatever happened to the client SME saying, “good work, let’s publish”?

When my supervisor told me to go ahead and ask for this permission, I laughed and talked about jumping through unnecessary hoops. The course is on our work plan. The work plan is constructed by our client. So, if the client said yes to this course at the beginning of the fiscal year, why is there hesitation as we near the end of the fiscal year?

I can only assume it’s because we’re under such scrutiny right now because of funding. It’s not that we are wasteful. We aren’t. Our staff was cut by 40% three years ago and we run a lean organization with everyone mindful of spending. But, there’s a chance of another 50% cut to the budget and our client is also listening a little too hard to a similar organization to ours which operates in another state. We’re finding that we can’t be prophets in our own land. That’s a little distressing as we run our organization very much like the other organization and, in fact, have a working relationship with that other organization easily stretching back to the early 1990s.

This isn’t the only course that’s getting the run-around. We have two other courses that are either just completed or are in the pilot draft phase that are also under the microscope. These courses are in support of a major initiative our client is rolling out. We’re delivering products that are exactly as requested with lots of best practices and solid information, delivered by professional trainers. The level of scrutiny is starting to take a toll on us as we’re spending way too much energy wondering what in the world our client is thinking. We’re beginning to feel like training is entering a trap (think being led into a canyon in old westerns) to act as the scapegoat if the initiative roll-out fails or hits speed bumps along the way.

As of this morning, I’ve resolved to handle my thoughts on this political dust-up in a better way. I know I’m doing my best. I know my colleagues are doing their best. I know my organization is focused on delivering the best training. Beginning today, I will just take a deep breath when asked to do things that seem like hoop-jumping and remember that we’re a good organization doing great things under extraordinary circumstances. Our client will eventually remember this.

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By Erica, February 5, 2010 4:57 pm

Yesterday afternoon I joined two other alumni to talk to the current Capstone class. There are only 7 of them this go around and they’ll be in two sets this semester.

It was comfortable walking back in the School of Ed building and I got winded on the stairs as usual. I always forget that it’s like climbing a mountain to get to the fourth floor. I think somewhere around the second floor the building slides a couple extra flights in there just to be funny.

It was great to hear the stories of the other two alumni and how they worked through their projects…when you are experiencing the project and the class you tend to say the appropriate things. When you’ve been out for one or two years as we were, you are a little more candid. No matter the struggles we experienced we were overwhelmingly positive about the learning experience.

The Capstone class was one of the most difficult because it wasn’t just about the school work. It was about working as a team, working with a client and producing a product and presentation all in 15 weeks. The class pushes you. It’s the perfect wrap-up for the program. It’s like the last lap in a foot race. You think you are going to blow out your knee and your lungs are on fire, but then you cross the finish line and you kind of want to start all over again.

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By Erica, January 29, 2010 4:02 pm

A course I’ve been working on for months was published on Tuesday. I received five pages of comments/suggestions today from a very reliable source. The SME has yet to acknowledge the announcement that the course was published, much less that I’ve received these five pages of changes. She’s checked-out. My supervisor and I decided to review the comments. I have to admit nearly all of them are excellent points and I wish I’d received feedback of this quality months ago. It would have made such a difference.

As it stands, I am making corrections to a course that is three days old. I’ve had to stop the trainer certification process. It’s kind of embarrassing. I suppose I can chalk one up in the Pro column that at least the course wasn’t trained without these comments. I’m not sure which column this falls into, but the SME is not involved in this process at all. My supervisor and I decided she’s no longer helpful and this is the last straw with her inability to be “open” with us. I feel like this is a learning opportunity for her, but it’s also a management issue that our client will have to handle. The person who handed us the comments is in the position to take care of the issue as he works for the client, is in charge of training and is our liaison.

I’m sure nothing will be said to the SME because the important thing is for the course to be the best it can be and there’s a serious time issue related to this course. It must go out NOW! because it is a vital piece in a larger initiative our client is unveiling. I know there are other SMEs that I would call to personally work through this. I would try harder to work on our relationship because they try harder. But, I’m going to let this issue go and not contact the SME. It’s probably not the best call, but it’s the right thing to do with this already politically-charged situation. I’m not sure what I could do to change the way the SME thinks about her involvement with my organization and training in general. She may not be taking advantage of this learning opportunity, but I am. Sometimes I just have to let things go.