Managing
and Leading Paper
Instructor:
Managing and Leading Paper
Strategic planning within an organization requires the addressing of ethics and values that will become the foundation of the organizational culture. Many factors are included in the development and implementation of the corporate entity currently treated the same as an individual within the framework of law.
Person. I. A human
being (a "natural" person). 2. A corporation an artificial" person). Corporations are treated
as persons in many legal situations. Also, the word "person" includes
corporations in most definitions in this dictionary. 3. Any other
"being" entitled to sue as a legal entity (a government, an
association, a group of Trustees, etc.). 4. The plural of person is persons,
not people (see that word).—Oran '5 Dictionary of the Law, West Group 1999.
Best Practices of the Entity
As an entity responsible for carrying out appropriate measures that include the ethical and moral standards relating to the community it serves, several other factors come into play. Best practices concerning social responsibility cover a plethora of issues. These include poverty eradication, social integration, women and gender equality, homelessness and housing, economic development, community participation and urban governance, and crime prevention. Just how people address these issues is a function of the code of ethics and its implementation in the community. In this case – Spectrum Academy comprises its own community by design. This peer-based community design is to empower students, patrons, and staff as leaders within the Academy and to encourage the spillover into the community at large.
Peer-community
facilitators, as change agents, are rare in the development of alternative
solutions to this growing problem: disenfranchised youth. Spectrum Academy is a
potent answer to the current crisis facing our juvenile systems today. It is a
combination of a youth residential treatment center (RTC), charter school, and
community technology center (CTC). This
concept encompasses the value of education as emotional rips repair, because an
emotionally unavailable youth simply cannot learn effectively. The community technology
center promotes positive social interaction while facilitating the delivery of
inexpensive e-curriculum to its patrons and to the vast array of charter
schools that are struggling with the high costs of state-of-the-art education. Spectrum provides a needed service with
timely application of technology.
Organizational Structure of
There are some obvious differences in the
situational circumstances within Spectrum Academy. Staff as leaders must
necessarily use behavioral, charismatic, path-goal and situational leadership
in their day-to-day activities. Using the organizational model as an example
(Fig. 1), there appears to be a clear structure of management for the entity
concerning the structure of Spectrum Academy.
(Fig. 1)
Vision: Spectrum Academy, a proactive and progressive holistic educational environment, identifies and addresses the changing developmental and personal needs of challenged youths, empowering them in order to prepare their journey toward successful community awareness and participation.
Spectrum Academy’s strategic plan denotes three specific areas within the school’s management matrix. These areas include Education, Commerce, and Community. The Co-Directors create and hold the vision as charismatic and transformational leaders have an understanding and mastery of strategic planning, educational, personal, organizational development, business administration, and information systems integration across the spectrum (pun intended). “Transformational leaders are the brokers of dreams. They shape a strategic vision of a realistic and attractive future that bonds employees together and focuses their energy toward a superordinate organizational goal. Visions represent the substance of transformational leadership.” (OLCM, pg. 258)
The Education Group facilitator (charter school) shares the vision and has an in-depth understanding of educational systems, including effective school administration, exemplary exceptional student services, outstanding curricula and faculty development, rapport-building student promotion and retention, mastery of marketing school programs, and innovative information technology systems. The Commerce Group facilitator (CTC) also shares the vision and has an equally in-depth understanding of State and Federal laws and regulations, creating collaborative alliances, supply chain integration, sales and marketing, and information technology. The Community Group facilitator (RTC) shares the vision as well and has an in-depth understand of youth treatment centers, adult education programs, grant research and writing, after-school program development, and information technology.
Demarcation of Managing and Leading
The Co-Directors fit the charismatic leader description as defined in our text, “Charismatic leaders transform followers by creating changes in their goals, values, needs, beliefs, and aspirations. They accomplish this transformation by appealing to followers’ self-concepts – namely, their values and personal identity.” The Co-Directors, as change agents and transformational leaders, are leading a transformation toward empowering disenfranchised youth while developing an environment where everyone is encouraged to pursue organizational goals over self-interests. This methodology sets the example of the peer-community concept model for the youth.
In the day-to-day function of the Academy, there will be obvious needs for management of tasks, academic and social, for staff and students. Administering the various functions flows from the leadership of the Education, Commerce, and Community facilitators through their respective groups. In addition, these facilitators will also develop and inspire the long-term view of the successful transformation of the youth. These facilitators will ask what can be done, and done better, challenging past patterns of behavior and rote action, empowering the choice of change toward positive functional patterns. While in this process, students and staff alike manage to maintain clear focus, control their behavior and emotions in a short-term view of the immediate desired outcome, asking how and when to engage skills of discipline and order to initiate change. In this case the leader/manager challenges the status quo (old patterns) by doing the right things in order to do things right.
Development of Leaders
The entire foundational fabric of Spectrum Academy empowers the development of leaders, within the organization, the student body, and interacting with the community. The transformation of disenfranchised youth spills over into the entire environment of the Academy. The Co-Directors, examples of charismatic and transformative leaders, instill the need for achievement through progressive opportunities for the youth to do and be more than in their past living habits. This gratifies the need for personal power in the progress toward meeting goals and objectives while increasing cognitive ability, interpersonal skills, self-confidence and changes in ethics. Although the staff and peers display some managerial behaviors in this process, such as interpersonal, informational, and decisional roles, the collective leadership methodology and philosophy of the organization achieve the results.
Holistic education means that the organization itself has to be aware and functional within the realms of mind, body, and spirit. On a pragmatic level, this means that we consider the ‘total system’ of a human being in process of development. Gardner found that there are multiple intelligences at work in the learning system of a student. Goleman brought emotional intelligences to our awareness.
Others, like Steiner and Montessori, have attempted to address these intelligences in their own ways, whether acknowledging them outright or just by knowing there is a ‘better’ way to prepare youth for the journey of life. Csikszentmihalyi, Covey, Drucker, DeBono, Peters, and Senge are all pointing toward personal and organizational transformation through understanding the connectedness of people and process. Systems-thinking is a core competency of that kind of organization. The ‘systems’ approach here is to identify and nurture the natural skill sets of the individual in order for them to find their natural order and place within the collective, evidencing and exampling a holistic lifestyle that affects positive change.
Traditional structure found in both business and education is hedging the idea of initiative and innovation through understanding the need for collaborative alliances – cooperation instead of competition. In essence, there is no ego without ‘wego’ as Spectrum evolves. Edward DeBono clearly addresses this concept below:
“At any moment our thinking is shaped by a number of factors. Sometimes we are aware of these factors and sometimes they are so much in the background that they exert their powerful influence in a hidden way. We can challenge these shaping factors just as we challenge existing methods, concepts, or ideas. But in this case we are not challenging something that already exists. We are challenging the factors and pressures that lead us to think in a certain way.” (Serious Creativity, 1992)
Points along the Continuum
Presented with many opportunities across a wide variety of industries, leadership styles and traits have been vast. Observations of these leaders have met with mixed reviews. A recent charter school experience initially indicated the leader was charismatic, yet time revealed a passive-defensive/avoidance pattern that was self-defeating. A large event company seemed to hold the constructive-affiliative culture, yet the leadership only did what was necessary to ‘get by’ with minimal efforts to satisfy patron and vendor needs. In an aerospace environment the culture created by the leadership was more passive-defensive which created the dependence of ‘doing what you are told’ even when it was obvious the results were incongruent with the ‘mission’ of the company. Common sense would seem to dictate that optimal team management determined the greatest amount of satisfaction among employees, management, and customers. A micro-lending organization currently engaged seems to demonstrate the latter, and the success of the patrons rough the leadership, which is a combination of situational and transformational.
Conclusion
Preference of the writer, and natural style, leans toward the charismatic and transformation leadership, mixed with occasional behavioral, path-goal, and situational needs of the particular goals and objectives of an organization. Following the essence of the transformational style has brought us, as a budding organization, to the preparation of the Spectrum Academy plan. Our desires are to create something much larger yet. Still, the process simply takes time and through our ‘jobarchy’ philosophy (the job is the boss and everyone wins), the complete submission to ‘whatever it takes’ definitely calls for patience and perseverance.
Personal Leadership Development