Self Reflection Michelle

Individual Blog Reflection 

With the fast development if IT technology, people communicate with less barrier. An effect is that many virtual teams or organizations emerge for common benefits. As a student of organizational change and management, we experienced the collaboration via virtual team this semester. Through the corporation between our team (Team the Tie) and the other team (Team Harmony), we successfully established a virtual collaboration towards the same goal—monitor effective rescue when a natural disaster happens.

We, the Tie, are the Rescue.org which is a website processing real-time information collected from social media and social network. After information collection, selection and analysis through our professional dashboard, we publish the latest information to the public. Moreover, with the precise information we are able to allocate rescue resources reasonably to reach the highest effectiveness and avoid wastes.

Team Harmony collaborates with us virtually. In the rescue process, they are responsible for in-front rescue activities based on the information we published. Their activities include logistics and executions of rescue supplies. We corporate through the virtual community we built, which is supported by technology, innovation and creativity. 

Through efforts of all team members within the two teams, we finished the project successfully. It is a significant experience since it is a green zone for me to work virtually. After the project, when I think over the whole collaboration process, I would like to reflect on several points which I learned through the project.

The Significance of Rescue

Every year there are natural disasters more than once. Yet I never involved in any disasters luckily, so that I always felt those disasters far from me. Since I was young I have watched rescue for saving people all around the world on screens. I understand there is much significance to save human lives, no matter how much the cost is. However, I have no personal experience on rescue activities and could not really touch the significance, until I joint this project.

While carrying the project forward, I found out that rescue is much more than what I watched on screens. It is a race with time to save people! The rescues are conducted by highly professional people covering all kinds of skills, so as to save more lives effectively. Thus, we have to perform with professions while operating Rescue.org. 

Besides saving people’s lives, we tried our best to provide more added-value to the whole society with innovation and creativity. For example, we creatively combine the high effective IT communication with the information collection. The information comes from social media like Facebook and twitter, and will be organized and published through YouTube and our official website. It is a massive social interaction, which all parties—individuals, organizations, governments are involved.

Apart from the current added-value we discovered already, we are trying to create more for the benefit of rescue fields around the world. For example, for our rescue experience such as technology adoption and activities arrangement skills, we would like to share them with colleagues around the world, through open seminars or discussion meetings with colleagues. The external communication could apply IT communication and be virtual as well. As a conclusion, this project expanded my horizon and I finally have personal experience on helping others through rescues. The longer I working for it, the deeper I feel the project is meaningful.

The Power of Technology and Innovation

Growing with a dramatically changing time, I am familiar with the existence of Information Technology. However, I never realized the power of technology precisely. In our project, a professional dashboard is developed to provide efficient information. The objective of innovation might be process time reduction, which will also support low-cost strategies. [1] Our dashboard, which is a product of technology innovation, precisely demonstrates analyzed data, as the basis of the rescue actions. As all parties can check the latest information on the dashboard, they are able to arrange their activities based on the fact and avoid waste, in order to save more people.

We also applied IT to the virtual communication with the team Harmony. During the communication process there was unexpected turns, however, both parties put their effort to go through problems and promote collaboration. The main software we used for meeting is named Visimeet, which is a similar product with Skype and MSN. To make the virtual communication effective, we also tried other technologies, such as Whatsapp, WeChat and Email. The fact proved that for virtual communications, it would be more effective when participants meeting face to face. Whatsapp is a popular application on smart phones. People communicate on Whatsapp mainly by texting message. The benefit is that conversation records are saved on phones. However, the responding time might be long. It is especially ineffective when multiple participants join the meeting. The conversation is hard to be organized when many people texting. Email is also a supportive communication tool. We mainly inform meeting minutes and send files through Email rather than use it for real-time communication. 

Through the virtual communication process, I realize that it is vital to have good technical supports to ensure effective communication. With the technical problems every meeting we spent more time than needed. I also understand the significance of technical maintenance staff in organizations. They are essential to ensure the high performance of the whole organization.

Theoretical Knowledge Applications

In the process of project planning, I studied carefully about the KM (knowledge management) skills as well as problem-solving skills. The KM was totally a green zone for me. Soon I found that it was an interesting topic and decided to continuously study on this topic after the project finished. Besides, I practiced to apply the problem-solving skills learned from Leadership program before to our project. It led to my deeper understanding on problem-solving skills.

Knowledge management becomes more and more popular topic these days. With knowledge management, Rescue.org can effectively process information, provide accurate information to team Harmony and the public, and we can also share our meaningful experience with worldwide rescue colleagues.

[2]

When I researched about knowledge management, I learned much about how knowledge got created. The spiral of knowledge creation developed by Nonaka & Takeuchi inspired me a lot on how to manage the knowledge for Rescue.org. In addition, I could apply the knowledge management theory into other learning process and daily life. It is a really practical theory. 

The problem-solving skill is another theoretical knowledge I got practiced through this project. Our goal is to arrange rescue activities effectively applying with high technology so as to save more people with the lowest costs. However, we have very limited previous successful experience to learn from. To solve the problem of combining the latest technology, especially the powerful social media, with the rescue activities to reach high effectiveness, we decided to apply the problem-solving cycle developed by Bransford & Stein (1993), which indicated a systematic process for problem solvers.

[3]

Through the application, we established the commanding system for the whole operation for our two teams. The virtual community built with Information technology combines with actual operational activities ideally. Even though I have applied parts of problem-solving skills in many other cases, this is the first time that I learned and practiced problem-skills systematically into a project. 

Brainstorming and Creativity

It is very difficult to define creativity, as it varies according to different situations. No matter what the situation is exactly, creativity must be positive ideas which can make progress on the situation. Since our team established we started to think creatively. We were struggle for several days brainstorming with our team name. After talking about several names related with collaboration, finally we turned our minds towards a very original sign—Ties, which have been existed for a long time, representing the cohesion among people. It is a good name and logo, for the reason that it reminds us all the time that we are a tight team, and we think together and work together like a Tie.

Since the collaboration with the team Harmony began, we started to brainstorming about the project with them. The project contents were proposed by the team Harmony, and we agreed very fast, as we thought it was a creative idea. When Julie from team Harmony raised this creative idea, I deeply felt that people need experience and knowledge to become creative. The sources of our idea were technology, like social media and network; and social events, like rescues. The noble purpose for our project makes it more attractive for us to contribute.

During the project accomplishment, we regard creativity as novelty and useful ideas which can improve effectiveness for rescue processes. Need to be mentioned again, our commanding system and the professional dashboard, were both created through the collaboration this time. They were created based on the theoretical foundations and past successful experiences.

As a Conclusion

The collaboration is an interesting practice for me, since I had very little working experience. Within the process I learned both practical knowledge and social skills such as communication as well. It is a good chance for me to learn from my team members. From our team, I learned the consistence, conscientiousness, and high professions, while from team Harmony I learned how to think creatively. For many works and my personal life in the future, the staff I learned will play an important part.

Reference 

[1] T. H. Davenport, (1993), Process innovation: reengineering work through information technology, United States: Harvard Business Press

[2] Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. 1995. The knowledge-creating company; how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation. New York: Oxford University Press

[3] Azizi Bin Yahya, (NA), Problem Solving, Malaysia: Faculty of Education, University Technology Malaysia, Accessed on 05/05/2013, available at http://eprints.utm.my/6084/1/aziziyahcognitivepsy.pdf