First daffodil came out today

My daffodil came out today!  The brilliant yellow and deep green are a pleasant contrast to the overcast, grey day. The jonquils have been doing their thing for a while (and they are beautiful) but this happy yellow made me want to celebrate.

The Crocodile River Story

After reading the story, rank the five characters in the story beginning with the one you would least like to work with and end with the one whom you would most like to work with. That is, the character who seems the most reprehensible should be entered first in the list. Very briefly note your reasons for ranking them in the order that you do.

There lived a woman named Abigail who was in love with a man named Gregory. Gregory lived on the shore of a river. Abigail lived on the opposite side of the same river. The river that separated the two lovers was teeming with dangerous crocodiles. Abigail wanted to cross the river to be with Gregory. Unfortunately, a heavy flood has washed out the bridge the previous week. So she asked Sinbad, a river captain, to take her across. He said he would be glad to if she would consent to go to bed with him prior to the voyage. She promptly refused and went to a friend named Ivan to explain her plight. Ivan did not want to get involved at all in the situation. Abigail felt her only alternative was to accept Sinbad's terms. Sinbad fulfilled his promise to Abigail and delivered her into the arms of Gregory.

When Abigail told Gregory about her amorous escapade in order to cross the river, Gregory cast her aside with disdain. Heartsick and rejected, Abigail turned to Slug with her tale of woe. Slug, feeling compassionate for Abigail, sought out Gregory and beat him brutally. Abigail was overjoyed at the sight of Gregory getting his due. As the sun set on the horizon, people heard Abigail laughing at Gregory.

Rank them!

Organisational Behaviour #1 - Introduction

We’re still in introduction-land, some people didn’t register the venue change and turned up at the wrong place. Part of the seminar was house-keeping like agreeing to bringing communal snacks in order to survive the 6-9pm time slot.

So OB: the art of understanding, predicting and influencing organisational behaviour. I’m all for that. The introduction felt a lot like a soft science working very hard to establish itself as a ‘science’ – I remember this from my aborted psychology days! We briefly skimmed over globalisation and workplace diversity (more women in the workplace is a ‘trend’ and we’re ‘not going to touch *delicate shudder* sexual orientation’). There was a somewhat incongruous slide slagging off Gen Y and some talk about methodology, models, motivation and role perceptions. One interesting thing that stood out for me was talking about motivation and how you can provide all the situational triggers you want (money, attractive work environment, interesting work, praise etc.) but the motivation to be there and work has to come from the individual.

We talked about values and how organisations use values as hooks to align members with their goals/tasks then formed groups of seven and did a group activity called Crocodile River (reproduced in a separate post if you want to do the exercise, don’t look below the cut until you have). The stated goals of the exercise were to:

1. Introduce you to the field of organisational behaviour
2. To help you realise the different perceptions, values and attitudes that people have on common, everyday happenings.
3. To give you an opportunity to compare your values with those of the other MBA students in your class.

( Skip this if you want to do the Crocodile River exercise without my views clouding your judgement )

The other notable event was 46 people trying to leave the building and having our swipe cards not work on any of the exits. A *cough* representative of the group eventually hit the ‘break glass to escape’ panel with a water bottle – effective but I’m feeling for the security guard who presumably turned up to deal with the aftermath and I am wondering why the need arose in the first place.

Next week: Personality, stereotyping and the Johari Window!