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PROMPT AND INSTRUCTIONS: Review BRITTANY’S post and provide…
PROMPT AND INSTRUCTIONS:
Review BRITTANY’S post and provide feedback. Address the following points:
1 .Review the posts by your peers about Ekvall’s ten dimensions and provide your feedback by answering the following questions:
1A. Do you agree or disagree with the need for additional dimensions?
Were you surprised that Ekvall included only one dimension that is negatively correlated? What conclusions can you draw from that fact?
1B. Do you agree or disagree with the post about the dimension that is the most difficult to assess?
2. Review the creative climate assessments posted by your peers and provide your feedback by answering the following questions:
2A. Based on the notes, did you disagree with any of the ten ratings in the assessments?
2B. Do you think it would be more beneficial for organizations to try to strengthen the aspects of their creative climate that are the strongest or to improve the aspects that are the weakest?
2C. What recommendations would you make to the organization to improve its creative climate? For example, think about how established organizations with existing structures designed for efficient and effective use of resources can relax some of their restrictions to allow playfulness, freedom, and risk-taking without losing control of the things that allow it to be currently successful.
BRITTANY’S POST:
Well, first I would like to make the announcement that after this evaluation I have concluded I need to find a new job.
Were you surprised by the inclusion of any of Ekvall’s ten dimensions? Are there any additional dimensions that you think should have been included?
I would not say that I was surprised at all about the inclusion of the ten dimensions. When you actually look at each dimension and think about how your company does things, it makes you think. For instance, I knew that my company was going for a very systematic approach to the business, but when evaluating the ten dimensions I really saw how much they are trying to turn us into robots, and how much they are micromanaging us to just produce and not innovate. They want to change the wheel but at the expense of their employees.
Which dimension of creative climate was the hardest to evaluate?
The hardest one for me to evaluate is the debate. The reason I say this is because I do not know what goes on when it comes to the corporate level. I just feel like they do not take into consideration all of the employees when making decisions. They make their decisions based solely on the business needs, which I understand from a business point of view, but not from an employee perspective. They say that they want our opinions and send surveys but nobody listens.
Share any insights or thoughts about the creative climate for the organization you evaluated. Discuss the one to two dimensions that received the highest and lowest scores.
I feel like my company is shutting down any chance for us to be creative. When I first started for big sales weekends they wanted us to decorate the stores with balloons and streamers to drive urgency with the guest. They will not even let us do that now even if it is with our own money. That little thing brought so much joy to my job. We were able to wear any business clothes before now we have uniforms. They are making us all cookie-cutter employees instead of driving our personalities. Everything scored pretty low for me, but freedom was the lowest along with trust. The company no longer trusts us to do our job and requires we send pictures that tasks are complete or answer questions that get submitted to corporate. There is no freedom to take risks or try new things. We have a script as far as a sales pitch that we are supposed to make our own, which we all do but it is all the same thing as what the company wants. They even show us videos on how to properly say certain things to guests, so it really brings down the ability to be creative. The veteran employees still have their own style but all the new employees that have been trained with this script sound like robots.
Use this scale for your ratings:
0 (Not at all applicable)
1 (Applicable to some extent)
2 (Fairly applicable)
3 (Applicable to a high degree)
Dimension
Notes
Rating
Challenge
There is no challenge for lower level employees. We work off of a script and told exactly what is to be done and micromanaged.
0
Dynamism and Liveliness
The company tries to make working here fun. They do contests and reward high performers. This is not consistent enough
2
Playfulness and Humor
This all depends on management and if you have a group of like minded individuals. We spend a lot of time alone at work but have meetings where we can get together and have fun
1
Freedom
There is no freedom in this job anymore. There are tasks that need to get done, and now upper management requires us to take pictures to prove the job is complete instead of trusting the employees.
0
Risk Taking
Upper management never listens to anything that we say. If we come up with an idea nothing is done to implement such an idea even if it does make our jobs easier
1
Idea Time
We have a lot of down time in our job so we can have time to come up with new ideas and thoughts.
3
Idea Support
These ideas that we come up with never get implemented, and its frustrating and makes us not want to come up with new ideas.
1
Trust and Openness
I trust my manager to always do what is best for us as well as the company. Any other management does not trust us to do our job because we have to now send proof that the task is complete instead of them trusting that it is done and that the manager is checking it.
1
Debate
There is no option in this company you have to conform or get out.
0
Conflict (negatively correlated)
There are a lot of issues with corporate employees vs. sales employees. Corporate employees are the ones that make the rules that impact the sales employees but do not take their thoughts into consideration.
3
