A Dream Come True

I remembered reading about termites and how they organize themselves to complete a task.  The reading is called “Strategic Termites: The Power of Self Organization”.  Here is a passage from the reading…

 “The termites begin their work by moving earth in a random fashion. Gradually, distinct piles of earth begin to emerge. These then become the focus of sustained building activity, resulting in columns located in more or less random positions. These are built to a certain height, then construction stops. When columns emerge that are sufficiently close together, building resumes until they are joined at the top to form a rounded arch. In this way the termite nest evolves as an increasingly complex structure, with the arch as the basic unit. The approach eventually results in a kind of free-form architecture, comprised of interlocking caverns and tunnels that are ventilated, humidity-controlled and beautifully formed. African termite nests may rise twelve feet high and measure a hundred feet across. They can house millions of termites. In terms of scale, they’re equivalent to human beings creating a building over a mile high.”

I noticed some strange comparisons between our groups and termites.  Essentially, we were given one task to complete:  Perform a fundraiser for a local charity organization.  Immediately, ideas began to flow and we all worked randomly on different leads and different ideas, without really knowing exactly which direction we were going.  Furthermore, no one was telling us what to do, when to do it, or how to do it.  We were a group that consisted of individuals working randomly on tasks that would ultimately come together.

Along the way, there were moments when our progress, and essentially our work, stopped.  We ran into road blocks that caused us to stop and essentially rearrange what we were doing to overcome them.  Obviously this is not an extremely close relation but I think a lot can be drawn from this comparison.  Essentially, order emerged out of the chaos that the termites were in.  Both our group and our project were FULL of chaos in the beginning, and ultimately up until the last few weeks.  Eventually, however, everything began to just fall into place.

I think one lesson I took away from this is that mangers do not necessarily have to micromanage everything!  There are of course instances where managing minor details is important, but it is equally important in other instances to let your employees work and allow things to come together.  As the termites have proven, self-organization can result in tremendous accomplishments, but there are certain elements necessary.  The termites do not have direct orders or “complete plans”; they are free to do whatever they want to ultimately contribute.  They have “plans” but they are not constrained or limited by those plans.  This basically translates into the fact that they know they will encounter things that disrupt their plans and they will have to change.  Our group did just that.  We changed our event a few times because the system of our group allowed us to do so.  We did not have complete plans that we HAD to follow.  I think as a manager, I will understand better that certain tasks require some guidance, but not necessarily micro-management and “complete plans”.

Jimmy’s suggested to have Tom put up the comments about why we received the grade we did so we could learn and grow from this experience was a fantastic idea.  This concept immediately made me think of our project, and about the importance of evaluation and continuous improvement.  Throughout the project, the only real evaluations that we had were the few peer assessments along the way.  However, the peer assessments focused entirely on individuals within the group.  The comments were posted so that we could improve in the areas that needed it, and I think that really helped us grow as individuals

I started to think about what things might have been like if our group developed a weekly assessment system where we ultimately evaluated where our group currently is, and where we ultimately want to be.  I think we made a serious error by not evaluating ourselves (as a team) along the way.  By not doing this, we completely took the continuous improvement element out of the picture.  I think a lot of the things we are currently coming up with concerning what we learned or what we should have done differently, are all things that we could have discovered earlier by simply talking about our performance.

I think our group became so caught up with the external elements that we were dealing with that we forgot to analyze the internal.  When we did in fact find time to focus on the internal, it was directed towards focusing on the individual.  One of the things that we came up with that we decided we would have done differently was to have a set meeting schedule (i.e. Mondays and Wednesdays at 8:00).  We had trouble dealing with our schedules but if we had set a time that we ultimately managed the rest of our schedule around, then it would have been a lot easier.  This is something that Matt Marchant’s group recommended to the rest of the class, and is something we agreed was a great idea, but for whatever reason never decided to implement it.  In our weekly meetings, I think we could have taken 10-15 just to talk about how we are doing and set mutually agreed upon goals which we could strive to achieve.  At the next meeting, we would take out our goals and evaluate our performance based on those goals.  I think continuous improvement is something we focused on in class, but our group never really managed to incorporate it into our group.

As the semester is coming to an end, we all are involved in many different team projects.  I have had two other team projects that I just recently completed and it was almost comical to compare them to our team in this class.  As I have said before, I have never been on a team for a group project which requires so much collaboration, and so much interaction.  The same thing can be said in our class.  I have never been in a class when I knew every single persons name and actually cared about their performance in the class, not just my own.

One project in particular really made me think about the system that Providence College, and many other colleges have in place.  The group consisted of six people.  I can honestly say that I did not know the names of 3 of them people until we came to the end of our project.  Also, I think I had only interacted with 2 of them before in my whole career at Providence College, even though I have been in some classes with them.  However, when we look at our group, not only do I know all of them on a level much higher than what is required to complete the project, I think we are forming friendships through this whole project.  It is actually funny because I have been in a group with Shaun before, but the focus was simply on getting the work done, and it never required this type of interaction.  Yet when we came into this project, I really didn’t know that much about Shaun or about Sabrina.

I started to think about whose fault it is that I didn’t know the people in my group of 6 for the other class.  The first thing I thought was that it must be my fault.  Partly, it may be, because I could have taken more of an interest in the people I was working with.  However, mainly it was the system.  The system that the college uses, in general, does not allow for these relationships to exist.  Ultimately, as we learned before, we are working towards grades, not collaboration, networking, passion, etc.  On this project, our class and our group was working towards all of those things. 

What will it take for this to change?  In my opinion, experience is everything.  I don’t think that other students, and the administration, will truly understands how it feels to be on a team like this until they actually do it themselves.  However, I don’t know if this is very feasible, because so few members of the administration buy into this, and ultimately they are the ones making the decisions.  Hopefully some day, they realize the value that could be gained here, and eventually change…I guess we will have to wait and see.

I think this is something I can take away from this project for at least the last semester of my career here.  Even though I might be going against the system, I now realize the importance and the value of relationships in groups, and I am going to strive to create these relationships in whatever group projects I have left.  I think this is something I can take into the business world as well. As we learned before, sustainability is based on relationships. I think that if I could do something differently in other groups, it would be to focus on getting to know the other people before focusing only on the task at hand.  Ultimately, this extra time spent on this is not time that is wasted, but time that creates value. 

I started to look back at some of the readings we had earlier on in the semester and I came across the reading “Kerr, On the Folly of Rewarding A, While Hoping for B”. Kerr’s Reading talked a lot about how the system is designed to reward one thing, while the subjects within the system are actually striving for another.  I started thinking about our project and what we are actually being rewarded for.  The structure of the assignment is such that you are not rewarded based on how much money you make.  The project is designed so that the reward is the experience of networking, planning events, collaborating, and dealing with problems as they come up.  Essentially, the reward is based on how much we are able to take away and learn from the process.

However, I started to think about what reward I was actually seeking, and what reward I think our group was seeking.  Our group wanted to raise as much money as we possibly could and make a difference in these children’s lives.  The intrinsic reward would be knowing that we helped in the process of giving a child “room to dream” by raising additional funds for the organization.  In this case however, although we were striving to raise the most amount of money (which is not what our systematic reward is based on), we were also seeking the rewards of the system.  We all recognized how valuable this experience was and how much we have learned and grown through this experience.

            One important thing to realize about this project is the reward we were not in fact seeking was just a good grade.  In all other projects, and experiences at Providence College, although teachers may have wanted us to get something out of whatever experience we were involved with, our primary goal ultimately boiled down to getting a better grade than anyone else.  This is not the case here, and I think that is part of the reason why this was such a great experience.

Sabrina and I just met to discuss everything that needs to get done now that our event is over.  The first thing we did was start to put together our expense report of all of our expenses throughout the project.  We were a little confused about exactly how detailed this should be, so we still have some work to do on it but at least we got a good start.  We also sent out an email to Stefan and my dad thanking them again for everything they have done for us, as well as asking when they would like to get together for our debrief dinner (as Sabrina mentioned below).  This is extremely nice of them to do.  This will give us a great opportunity to not only talk about everything we did well and the overall success of the event, but it will also give us a great opportunity to talk about some things we might have been able to do better.  They understand, and we understand, that this was the first fundraising event we have ever put on.  As the readings demonstrated, there is always room for improvement, and bringing the external to judge the internal is a great way to generate more opinions on performance.

Sabrina and I also made a checklist of some other things that need to get done:

1.      Send Thank You notes to everyone who helped us:

·        Bob

·        Joanne

·        Kris

·        Dean Gemma

·        Formal thank you to Bill and Stefan

2.      Give out the rest of the raffle prizes to the winners

3.      We also need to talk to Stefan and my dad about exactly what to do with the money!

That’s all for now…more to come soon!

I apologize for not being able to post in a couple of days.  Unfortunately, I put off a lot of things I needed to do in order to make room for our event, which means I have been very busy that last couple of days trying to keep up everything!  On top of that, I am studying for the LSATS which is less than 2 weeks away! (very busy).

However, I finally have some time to sit down and reflect on our event.  Sabrina did a great job recapping everything that went on before and during our event, so I will try not to be too repetitive but offer my perspective on the event.

First of all, I would like to say that I believe our event was a great success!  We ended up with just under 60 people and raised a total of $1600.00.  We were a little disappointed with the turnout of the event because we had originally expected to have at least 100 people.  However, we also originally hoped to raise at least $1,000.00, which is a goal we were able to succeed.

Hopefully all of you got a chance to read our “behind the scenes” look at our event.  Luckily, we were able to get a wireless signal at the bowling alley, and we were able to sneak away for a couple of minutes to give some updates!  The few days leading up to the event, and the day of the event itself were extremely hectic.  There were a lot of last minute things that needed to get done, and we could all feel the urgency!

The beginning of the night was extremely stressful and disappointing.  Our event was supposed to start around 8:15, but unfortunately it did not end up starting until closer to 9.  At 8:15, there were only about 10 or 15 people there, which we did not feel was enough for the speaker.  At one point, we were all standing at the door looking back and forth between each other and the door just HOPING that someone (anyone!) would show up for our event.  It felt like you were having a big birthday party and no one wanted to come.  We really were afraid that we would insult Kris by not having a lot of people there, but she is really so down to Earth that she was not worried about this at all.  We decided we would wait for some more people to show up and we ended up having about 25-30 people there to listen to Kris. 

Kris was such an amazing speaker.  Listening to everything she has been through, and everything her daughter has been through, really puts life into perspective and makes you not only admire people like her, but reflect on things in your life.  Not only that, it makes you want to make more of a difference.  After hearing her speak, I could feel the passion I have for the foundation beginning to rise once again.  Senge talked about the word inspiration, and how it comes from “inspire” which translates to mean, “to breathe life into”.  Kris inspired me, and breathed life into me that night.  I could finally see where the money we would raise would go.  It would be going to amazing people like Kris and Kris’ family, and it would be going to all of the children in the video that left me breathless. 

One girl in the video really touched my heart.  She was talking about her room and how much she liked what the foundation had done for her, and she said, “I just love it so much; I wish I could hug my whole room!!”.  This one sentence summarizes what this foundation is all about, and what this project was all about.  It’s about more than just raising money; it’s about making a difference.  You could see the excitement and the energy in this child’s voice.  She did not look chronically ill, or as if she had been through some horrible things in her lives, but she looked like a beautiful young girl who just had one of her biggest dreams come true.

After the speech and the video, everyone headed downstairs from the function room to the bowling alley and the tournament began.  The bowling alley held its word that our lanes would be open and ready for us when we needed them, and they were.  There were no problems inputting the teams into the computer either.  The bowling event was a lot of fun and we got some great video footage and pictures!  We announced the raffle winners and the tournament winners at the end. 

I can safely say that this will not be my last encounter with the Room to Dream foundation.  I made a personal commitment to make a difference through this event for our project.  On Wednesday night, while I was watching the video and listening to Kris speak, I made a new personal commitment to of continuous involvement in this charity.   I am attending another RTD fundraiser in December, and I am already on a wait list to participate in the next room makeover.  This relates back to one of the themes of the readings for this week.  Senge talked about the idea of having a vision of the future rather than just reacting to problems and having short term visions/solutions.  I could easily just be happy with the fact that I made a difference in the 2 months I worked with the Room to Dream foundation.  However, I know I can do more, and I know that I want to do more. 

One other thing I would like to touch upon is the fact that we could not have had as successful of an event that we had without the help of so many people.  One thing that Senge pointed out is that it is advantageous, not burdensome, to simply ask for help.  In the early stages of the project, many of our teams did not reach out and ask for help.  This may have been for a couple of reasons, one is that they may have been afraid of being rejected, or they may have tried to put it on their own shoulders to figure everything out.  I think that is exactly what happened to our group.  I think we began to feel like this is our project, our problem, and it was our responsibility to solve it.  Due to the systems we have grown up in this seems perfectly reasonable.  Teams have never been encouraged to help one another, and our groups have rarely been encouraged to build networks with people.  As we began to realize the value in asking for help and creating a vision (rather that just react to what was in front of us) things really began to take off.  I can specifically remember Sabrina and I having a conversation about how exciting it was to be “in the room” with passionate people whose creative energy was contagious.  I wish we had realized all of this in the early stages of our projects because I feel like it would have really helped us.

Hey everyone!

For those of you that DO NOT know….our event is in 3 ½ hours!!!!  I’m sure many of you are wondering why I am sitting here blogging when I should be doing some last minute preparations, but that is actually exactly what we are doing!  Shaun, Sabrina, and I are all at Sabrina’s house making posters and some other miscellaneous things, and we are leaving in about an hour or so.  We absolutely feel a sense of urgency.  I think we can now say (to some extent) what the people in the reading about feeding the homeless felt like! We are anxious yet really excited.

Our plan is to try to give you a “behind the scenes look” at what is going on at our event.  We will have a computer there so if we can find a few minutes we will quickly give everyone (at least those who could not attend) a quick update of how everything is going….wish us luck!!!!!

Sabrina and I met last night to discuss some last minute logistical things. We had always had an idea of how we wanted the event to go, but we really wanted to try to set times for each segment of the event so we had a schedule that we could follow (or at least try!). We have the lanes reserved from 8:00p.m. to 10:30p.m., so he is what we cam up with:

8:00 – 8:15 –Get everyone organized

8:15 – 8:30 –Opening words (with Stefan saying a quick little something)

8:30 – 10:00 –BOWL!

10:00 – 10:30ish –Guest speaker, and Stefan to speak, as well as the drawing of the raffle to conclude the event!

We also wanted to have a plan for where what we are going to do with our volunteers. Thankfully, we have 9 people (including ourselves and 6 volunteers) to help the event run smoothly! Since we are going to have a table set up throughout the entire event to sell raffle tickets and collect money, we want at least 2 people at the table at all times. We were thinking that 1 or 2 of them could help us with the camera as well. Obviously we will be filming too, but if we get too busy it will be nice to have someone to help out. We were also thinking that it would be good to have 2 people walking around making sure the tournament is running smoothly and also have them be there if we have any miscellaneous tasks.

I think it is fantastic that so many people volunteered for our event. I was pleasantly surprised that people from our class volunteered as well. I think this just shows that the relationships we have built in this class have really transformed themselves into something more than just a fellow student. I would have never guessed in the beginning of the year, that people from this class would volunteer their time to help us out. I think many of the weak ties that existed earlier, have now become strong, and we are now seeing the benefits. As I talked about in my last posting assignment, I wish all of my classes had been like this. I wish they all focused on networks and building relationships because that is real stuff. That is something that we will be able to put in our tool box, so to speak, to help us when we enter the real world.

Yesterday was a very busy day! Our group was originally scheduled to meet with Bob (from Ronald McDonald), however unfortunately he was confused about what time we were meeting, and could no longer meet in the afternoon like we had said. Even though we did not get the chance to sit down with him, he said that we should feel free to call him with ANY questions that we have. He said that at this point there probably isn’t much more talking that we can do, but just action, which is right!!

Sabrina and I decided that since we had made room in our schedules to meet with Bob during that time, we should use that time anyways to do a few things for our event. We took a trip over to Thayer St. to try to get a few more gift certificates for the first block of our raffle prizes. We went to a bunch of places and unfortunately were only able to walk away with one gift certificate from Antonio’s. Sabrina and I thought it was quite strange that almost every place we went to said their manager was at the bank!! (there must have been quite a party over at the bank). We did leave our information for when the manager “gets back” so hopefully we will be hearing from them soon, if not, we will go back and see them again.

Later on, we decided we needed to get over to the bowling alley and really look at some logistical stuff. This is something that Bob suggested we do, and it was extremely helpful to us. We talked with Anthony, who is one of the managers at the alley about some particulars of our event. He told us things like where we can set up a table, which side of the bowling alley we would have, what time we should leave by, etc. There were 2 especially great things that came out of this. One thing he offered is that we do not have to pay for bowling shoes!! We were worried that this cost would add up very quickly. Instead, he said that as long as people wear sneakers, they will not be responsible for wearing bowling shoes. That really made us feel better. The second thing he did was take us upstairs to this huge function room that will be perfect for our event. When we had originally decided to hold our event their, we had no idea we would be showing a video and having a guest speaker, so we were worried there would not be enough room there, but there is plenty!

Last update for now (I promise)….a couple of days ago I contacted the Providence Bruins. The main goal in contacting them was to try to see if any of the players were available to come and attend our event, and possibly sign some autographs if they were willing to. I spoke with Kevin Boryczki who told me that unfortunately no one was available, but they were willing to offer us Four Flex Tickets a Providence Bruins game! I am planning on picking them up today or tomorrow. This is great news because we can add this to our second block of the raffle (the $10 raffle that includes the Doug Flutie pictures).

I really enjoyed our class yesterday. I thought it was a fantastic idea to bring all of the groups together and form groups that consisted of one member from each team project. This allowed us all to share our ideas and resources and to basically help each other out as we are all coming down to crunch time of our projects. As I was talking with the group I was in, it reminded me that we are all ultimately in this together. We are all simply trying to make a difference in someone’s life, whether it is a chronically ill child as it is in our group, or a homeless individual, or spreading awareness about drunk driving. We are not competing against one another. I think in the beginning many of us were hesitant to talk to each other about our projects because we were not only afraid of sharing our resources, but also afraid that their project would be better than ours. We soon realized that that is not what it’s all about. We were missing the point.

I started to think about how great it would be if our corporate world saw things like this. Granted, there are some progressive organizations that do see the power in collaboration, but ultimately it comes down to competition and limited resources. I think what a lot of companies fail to realize is that by helping another organization or group of people, you can ultimately benefit. The reason you can ultimately benefit is because when you share information, you start to form relationships. Since relationships are vital to sustainability, this will ultimately take your organization one step closer to being a sustainable.

It is very important to bring the external environment into your organization, which goes hand in hand with sharing information and resources and ultimately creating relationships. An individual or an organization can only go so far by itself. Eventually, you will hit a wall where you can no longer progress, or can no longer see where you NEED to progress. That is where the relationships you have built with external individuals and organizations come into play. They can help you to continually evolve and adapt to changes, and ultimately help create a sustainable organization.

As Sabrina pointed out in an earlier post, unfortunately not all people see things this way. A perfect example is that Sabrina was told by someone that it would be “bad business practice” to share information and resources to us. Well, hopefully there is room in Tom’s Org Theory class for that person next semester, because I think he needs to break out of that bubble and realize that he is missing the point. Of course it makes sense at some level. Why would you want to give away all of your resources? Why do you want to help other people when you have to worry about yourself? These are all questions that are asked inside of the bubble.

So how do you get all of these people to change? Furthermore, how can you get a nation to change on not only these issues, but deeper issues such as the economy, or environmental problems? As we have noticed in our class, one thing that is absolutely vital is passion. You can’t get people to change if they don’t WANT to change. This made me think about the United States right now. Does the U.S. want to change? Well, I think a potentially good indicator of this is the fact that the next president (Obama) is rooted in change. Not only will he be the first African-American president, but his whole campaign was about change, change, and more change. Change is very scary to some, but it seems like the majority of the country (who voted for him) saw that maybe it IS TIME to change. I think it will be interesting because as these changes begin to happen, people will naturally try to resist that change. Hopefully Obama can break us all out of our bubble and get us through those changes.

Sabrina and I met a really inspiring and knowledgeable person this morning.  We had coffee at Starbucks with Bob Rothenberg of the Ronald McDonald Foundation.  He was extremely nice and more than willing to help in any way possible.  Bob has organized a very large variety of fundraising events and was able to give us some really great ideas on how to better our event.

The meeting that we had with Bob was a perfect example of a beneficial partnership that does not revolve around money.  We were not looking for any type of donation or anything from Bob, and really did not know what to expect from him.  The main thing we were looking for was some advice for our project, and he gave us much more than that.  I think Bob also benefited from the meeting because we are giving him the opportunity to do what he does best, and what he loves to do, which is make a difference.  You could truly tell by the look on his face and the way he was talking about fundraisers, that this was something he absolutely loved to do.  He was extremely passionate about helping others, and that passion was almost contagious.  This relates back to what we read about how it’s important to find people that share a passion for what you are doing, and get those people “in the same room” and hear what they have to say.  That is exactly what we were able to do.

Bob started off by asking about the background of the project, and what we were ultimately trying to accomplish.  He was very attentive to every detail ranging from why we were doing this project, to exactly where in the bowling alley we would set up a table for the raffle!  He gave us advice on pricing, who our target audience should be, raffle ideas, other potential sponsors, and most importantly, logistical things we need to keep in mind.  In terms of logistics, that is something Sabrina and I realized we had thought nothing about!  Here we are trying to get all of these sponsors and meet with different people and get advice on what to do, but we had not even really though about who is going to do what on the night of the event!

Bob said that we should first of all think about how to get the people that are participating in the event to the bowling alley.  He said organizing a mass carpool is a great idea because it not only makes people feel more comfortable about finding the place, but also gets them excited about the event.  He suggested that along with the raffle we are going to have, it is not a bad idea to have some donation boxes located around the bowling alley where people can (if they want to) donate more money to the foundation.  He talked about getting volunteers to work the event, and set a plan of exactly who will do what during the night.  He asked questions like whether or not we would have food at the event, or if the bowling alley would let us use their PA system to announce the raffle.

It seemed like good ideas were just flowing from his mind and he was getting more and more interested in it as he went on!  Bob not only took the time to meet with us for an hour out of his own busy schedule, but he also made it a point to set up a meeting with us for next week to follow up and see how things are going.  We are planning on meeting him again next Wednesday.

This great meeting with Bob comes after a fantastic night Sabrina and I had at the CBS Scene Restaurant at Gillette Stadium, where we finally had the pleasure of sitting down with Stefan and my dad to throw around some ideas for our event.  Sabrina’s post below did a fantastic job of outlining everything that happened that night.

I am very glad we had the chance to sit down with the both of them.  There were two things that really stood out from the very beginning of our dinner.  First of all, they are both extremely passionate about their involvement in the foundation.  This was especially clear when they were talking about seeing the looks of the child’s face after they have made-over their room.  They both admittedly said they have shed many happy tears during those moments, and that it really does inspire them to do what they do.  Secondly, the two of them make a fantastic team!  You can tell that the relationship they have built through this shared passion is sustainable, and is ultimately helping them to achieve their goal which is to help these wonderful children.  This relates back to our readings about teams and how to form an effective team for change.  One of the main components is that there needs to be a shared passion, and this is clearly the backbone of their relationship.

Our conversation seemed to flow from one aspect of the event to another, and we were all getting really excited about it!  As Sabrina mentioned, this is exactly what our group needed.  It was great to hear fresh ideas from two extremely successful and admirable people.  I will say that I must agree with Sabrina about Stefan…by far the best multi-tasker I have ever met!  However, I guess you just have to be if you are going to be a father, a lawyer, and the founder of a charity organization!  I can’t stress enough how thankful our group is to have the opportunity to hear from my dad and Stefan.  They have given our project a new breath of life, and have inspired us to make our event even better!