Connecting the Dots
The ideas of organizational challenges and pressures are prevalent throughout all my blog posts. When writing about how my grandfather pushed back on organizational and external pressures to accept corruption, to how employees worked together during my venture capital internships under one boss, to my post on the ways in which these organizations underwent structural changes, the themes have flowed through. These themes are the ways in which organizations and the individuals within them act given different scenarios.
Opportunism, overcoming opportunism, and transaction costs are particular themes that stand out in my mind. I never thought about these things in organizations I have been exposed to before. The more I write and the more I observe them now, the more examples I see of these things in working life and my past.
I have worked on multiple deals, namely in real estate and venture capital, without ever thinking about some of the topics that we have discussed in class as the underlying reason. The topics in class paired with these blog posts have made me think about those more. Opportunism causes transaction costs and the pressure of opportunism on organizational behavior can cause a deal to fail or succeed. If I examined this more closely in my working life, I may have been able to be more successful in finding proper or creative solutions.
I did not, at first, work to bring in multiple connections in my mind. Now I look at a blog post and I try to think of the many different ways I can write about or "connect" it in my mind- I think this has been my progression. I also want to use the Excel homework to create parallels with the blog posts. I have not done this much up until this point. I think an exercise in going back to the Excel homework may help me out and I may be able to form some better connections. Another thing I really need to work on is continuing to make sure I am thinking about my past experience with respect to the class material. In my earlier blog post it was easy for me to continue rambling and get off topic from say, the topic's relation to transaction costs. Focused writing will be my goal from here onwards on my blog posts.
My process for writing these prompts has become more involved and more deep. I believe that I used your feedback on my first two blog posts to really try to conjure better examples in my posts.
For some of my blog posts, I need to stop after reading the prompt- and undertake a longer period of "pre-writing". I believe that if I do this I could delve more deeply, and address more fully, the prompt.
I would not change much for the future blog posts. I have gained a lot from this exercise in continuous and scheduled writing. Personally, I very much like and appreciate your prompts. The reason for this is because they cause me to think about my past experience in ways I have not before. I had to really think when you gave us the prompt in structural and organizational changes in organizations we have been in. I did all my internships, many months over my summers, without ever thinking about things like that. Organizational structure never came to mind- but when writing the blog post, I got to recollect and re-synthesize information to think about efficacy of groups in different ways. Had I not had that prompt, or written a more "comfortable" prompt for myself, I would not have been able to think outside of the box and see my past experience in a new light. I think it is important that future prompts are the same "open-ended" ones and do not tie us down to strictly discussing in class material.
Evidently, writing is something you like to do. You seem fluid in this post (and in prior posts). I would like to learn from you, however, why these prior reflections (before taking my course) didn't occur to you. Was it lack of a framework to consider your experiences? Or was it simply that it didn't occur to you that reflection might reveal some interesting commonality to your experience?
ReplyDeleteI do want to note that while I emphasized opportunism as the source of many transaction costs, there are other transaction costs related to coordination and motivation rather than to opportunism. In our class, I've struggled with the coordination part, given that class attendance is not required and that many students have opted to attend only occasionally, or not much at all. The course wasn't designed for that, so making sure all students are up to speed has been a challenge for me. In turn, some of the connections you talked about would be more apparent if everyone attended class regularly.
I have been encouraging other students to try writing to their own prompt. As a life skill, it is something to develop - directing your own inquiry. I'm glad you like my prompts, but you might ultimately get more out of it if you try posting on your own preferred topic, with the proviso that it must connect to course themes.
Thank you. Yes, I do believe that attending class more often will help me connect to some of the subtler topics. I believe your latter observation is correct- it simply did not occur to me that reflection would reveal such intricacies. For example, my previous way of thinking may have been that a leader is either good or bad- if they manage the team well, they are good, if the manage the team poorly, they are bad. It has become more evident to me that I need to think outside of the box- perhaps a good leader may have poor organizational skills and thus their team is not responding because of organization, and another setup under the same leader could be a lot more effective.
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