Norm, I appreciated your blog on activity 3. In his post, Norm talks about the Gino and Staats article, Developing Employees Who Think for Themselves. He points out that the article focuses on three things employers can do to help employees use critical thinking: process, identity and time (Gino & Staats, 2015).

I especially appreciated what was written about Process and found it really helpful. Gino and Staats (2015) state “managers punish their subordinates for failing to follow instructions” but then “complain that employees don’t think for themselves.”

I see this as a reason why my organization is struggling to embrace Adaptive Change, the leaders are encouraging us to think for ourselves and lead in change, but for so many years the staff have been taught to “follow instructions.” So the staff and leaders in my organization need to grow in embracing the shift of ownership and in the capacity to think for themselves. Also the leadership over us needs to give leaders and staff proper space and training to develop these skills.

I agree with what Norm points out at the end of his post that in today’s world the only way companies will thrive is to get employees to really think for themselves and not just follow procedure. One potential issue I see is when employee maturity is low giving that much ownership to how employees perform their job, act in their job and manage time is a potential danger. Low maturity can lead to low job performance or even going completely off-track from the company’s direction.

Any thoughts on how to apply these developmental principles to employees with low maturity?

Monica

 

References

Gino, F. & Staats, B. (2015, June). Developing Employees Who Think for Themselves. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2015/06/developing-employees-who-think-for-themselves