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Response to Organization and Systems Thinking from Kamal Badesha<\/strong><\/p>\n Thank you, Kamal, for giving me a glimpse into your work and what it means to work in health.<\/p>\n Before going into the questions you pose at the end, I would like to highlight some comments you made in your post. Having a shared vision and making sure co-workers own this common vision, I believe, is always a challenge. More so for big institutions. Lepsinger (2010) mentions in the first chapter of his book of the troubling gap between vision and strategy. He goes on to share that one crucial element is to make sure that the employees feel like they exist, they need to feel respected and feel that their viewpoint matter (p.14). If my staff feels they are essential for the institutions, they will also be more willing to own the vision. Another observation Lepsinger (2010) makes is that the leader and the employees should not have two sets of values (p.17). As a principal, I need to make sure that I do not give myself certain freedoms that I would not allow my employees to do. Employees need to feel that they are just as important as their leader.<\/p>\n You also mentioned the challenge to communicate. I believe that improving communication has been a goal of mine every year since I started. We never communicate enough. Culturally communication in Paraguay is difficult. People do not always trust, and people think that it is better not to tell everyone what is going on. One has to fight against culture as well. Although we have worked at establishing protocols in how, when, and where to communicate, my secretaries occasionally still forget to inform everyone what has happened and what is going on in our school.<\/p>\n Regarding one of your questions about being heard. I remember when I was a teacher that we would complain and say that the principal did not listen to us and we felt distant from the administration. Although I related well to administrators, I did not think they took the time to listen to teachers. Now, as a principal, I wonder if my staff would say the same thing. I want to hear them. I have also attended different teacher roundtable discussions to make sure that people realize that I care. This year I have interviewed every single staff member mid-year to hear them. Is this enough? Probably I can still apply other strategies as well.<\/p>\n Recognizing staff members is probably the most challenging topic in our school. I acknowledge staff individually as I talk to them and we mention something publicly when they receive a prize or an award. Since we are a non-profit Christian school, I cannot recognize staff members with an increase in pay. There is always a lot of cultural mistrust, and it would also be very difficult to explain our reasoning why someone gets paid more than others. I would agree when Galbraith (2014) who says that the recognition system is probably underused and should be used more frequently than is the actual practice (p.51). I still need to work in finding creative ways to reward people who are doing excellent work.<\/p>\n Blessings,<\/p>\n Reference<\/strong>:<\/p>\n Galbraith, J. R. (2014) Designing Organizations: strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels<\/em>. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.<\/p>\n Lepsinger\u00a0 R. (2010) Closing the Execution Gap<\/em>. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Response to Organization and Systems Thinking from Kamal Badesha Thank you, Kamal, for giving me a glimpse into your work and what it means to work in health. Before going into the questions you pose at the end, I would like to highlight some comments you made in your post. Having a shared vision and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":971,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,96,101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-education","category-ldrs501","category-post-3-1","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/971"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":347,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/marcelowarkentin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}