10 Skills have informed your philosophy of change.
Steps to complete:
Scenario: A local business leader is looking for ways to promote change around personal and professional growth and learning for all members of the community. They have asked you to present your philosophy of change to the community—through a recorded presentation (or live, if in the classroom) or through a podcast they will air this month—to help demonstrate the value of employable skills and opportunities for positive change. The goal is to use examples from your personal experience to help listeners understand how they could begin to think about their own philosophy of change and how they navigate change in different contexts.
STEP 1: Introduce yourself to the audience and identify the goal of your presentation or podcast in a clear, concise manner. Your goal should be centered around how some or all of the 10 Skills and a philosophy of change have helped you—and can help others—exercise their problem solving skill (approximately 1 minute or less).
STEP 2: Since your audience will be unfamiliar with the 10 Skills and your philosophy of change, you should provide an overview (approximately 1–3 minutes total) that addresses the following:
• What are the 10 Skills and why are they important in your personal and professional life? (Note: You do not need to list and define each skill, but you can speak of them broadly.)
• What is a philosophy of change and why is it important? How can it help you think about and solve problems in your life?
STEP 3: Discuss your experience with the 10 Skills and your personal philosophy of change (approximately 3–5 minutes). Note: You may choose to talk about all 10 Skills or to focus on only a few.
You can discuss any or all of the options below:
• How some or all of the 10 Skills have informed your philosophy of change.
• How some or all of the 10 Skills can support you living out your personal philosophy of change.
As discussed by Bottazzo (2005), a company’s employees are one of its main groups of potential stakeholders. As a result, the satisfaction of employees is considered equal to the satisfaction of customers and shareholders, becoming an important element of an organisation’s strategic mission. This has created a paradigm shift of internal communication from one-way informing of employees, to a two-way communication with the inclusion of training, education and motivation.
The goal of internal communication is to achieve employee-company advocacy, with workers buying into the missions and values of the organisation and reflect those to other potential stakeholders. Therefore it’s necessary for Recticel to maintain the use of different platforms for everyday communication, including email, telephone, webinars and Skype – which allows a range of users to ‘dial in’ to a meeting and share computer screens. For a multi-national company, well-rounded communication from management is crucial – to offer information, support and a sense of community for plants that cannot be supported through emails or phone calls alone (Pinsky, 2015).
Recticel address this through an internal intranet system, RICK (Recticel Intranet Centre of Knowledge). RICK contains all of the documents, training and support required by individual plants to help run their business successfully. In a manufacturing environment, changes can take place rapidly – this method of instantaneous communication will assist individual plants to sync their business activities.
RICK boosts the company’s efforts of ‘on boarding’ – the introduction of new employees to the company. In a company of this size, the automation of an on boarding programme streamlines talent management initiatives and improves productivity long term. A personalised level of access to the intranet system facilitates a steady flow of well-timed information to new employees (Friedmann, 2012). There are instances where automation in the ‘on boarding’ and communication processes have their disadvantages. In large manufacturing companies like Recticel, where most employees work the assembly line rather than at a desk, not all employees have the same access to information and training.