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StaffingRecent blog entries tagged with Staffing.
When Pay Ruins EverythingCreated by Neil LaChapelle (The Cooperators General Insurance Company) on June 29, 2007
Getting paid to do something you love can totally ruin the experience. Odd, eh? I am vaguely aware that there are many ways of understanding this phenomenon. Many investigators think we have more than one motivational system, and these systems compete - activating one can knock out the other. One study I've found focuses precisely on this phenomenon. It's called Effort for Payment: A Tale of Two Markets by James Heyman and Dan Ariely, in Psychological Science (Vol15—Num11: 787-793). They were studying "homo economicus", and they wanted to see if adding compensation to a task would affect how much effort people put into a task. If humans are rational self-maximizers, they argued, then the more you pay them, the better they will perform. This is not borne out empirically. In their words: Taking the RiskCreated by Susan Miltenberger (Maryland Institute College of Art) on April 16, 2007
As the technology department of a higher education institution, it is our responsibility to lead and set examples of how technology can help all areas of the college do business better. And this no longer is just about new hardware and software – it’s now about how we work together.
And sometimes this is about how we don't work together. We are constantly challenged to determine where the line is drawn regarding tools and policy. The email policy has changed: does Technology deliver the message or does Academics? Our notion of training has changed (with help from our trainer who accepted a two year job with the Peace Corps in Africa --- go Rick!): do we fill jobs because they are vacant; or stop to determine if the jobs we define meet our needs? Do we dare to take the time to discuss whether the needs are legitimate or hold-overs from a different point in time? In short do the risks we take pay off? How do we help our community understand that change is a good thing? And how do we help our technology staff understand that being challenged is one of the most thrilling aspects of A Pattern Language for TechnologyCreated by Susan Miltenberger (Maryland Institute College of Art) on January 30, 2007
In 2007, I’m determined to put the finishing touches on the fixer upper house that I bought ten years ago. The good part about never actually finishing the work (like replacing the missing molding around a bathroom window) is that I have a more flexibility to make improvements that match my current needs. I’m no longer attached to my original notion of restoring the 1926 row home to as close-to-original as possible. Instead, I’m all about demolition – for starters breaking down the wall between the kitchen and dining room. Sure a 7x15 galley kitchen might have been all the rage in 1926; but once you add a fridge, sink and range to a space this size you’re virtually out of counter space…and I really like counter space. This past Fall a friend lent me a copy of “A Pattern Language” (Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa and Murray Silverstein) to help inspire my upcoming renovations. The book blew me away and as I continue to re-read it, I’ve been percolating on ideas about “a pattern language of technology”. Some really smart people have written about pattern languages in design and in software development and I did start reading “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software” but didn’t get too far as it did not rank very high on my readability scale. There is such a shift happening in technology right now – particularly how it weaves into our physical lives and intermingles with (and replaces) our social interactions; and this shift has inspired me to come up with a new language and new models for how we manage technology at MICA. I'm looking for new patterns for how we evaluate solutions and design our technology presence across the institution. Each day departments across campus (including mine) are finding that the old standards and methods that we used for providing services don’t work very well. A few years ago facing challenges like this would get lumped under the heading of “business process redesign” and we would try to bring in some talented experts who could help tell us about better business models. But we need new patterns and new designs for facing these challenges today. Something that is not specific to coding but that takes on the whole big thing – staffing, systems management, procurement, services, training, etc. And a significant challenge beyond articulating this pattern language is making it timeless – particularly when it comes to technology. How do we construct a pattern language that embodies the interconnectedness of technology, society and business but that also recognizes the distinctions between good code and productive workspaces? One of the less-abstract applications for Christopher Alexander’s work and projects at MICA is the issue of space design. As we rev up for 18 months of PeopleSoft/Oracle upgrades, we’ll be bringing on some project help and we have absolutely no space for them to work. We had an epic meeting yesterday that started off with the review of our organizational chart. The entire time that I’ve been creating the org charts, I’ve been bumping up against the logical grouping of staff based on function vs. the hierarchical reporting structure. In thinking about ways to create space for staff and constantly improve services it is so obvious that we simply cannot move forward if we continue to hang on to our old notions about private offices for everyone and keeping separations between staff based on reporting structure. Ted “master of the whiteboard” Simpson drew a great diagram that has helped to open up the discussion to one where we’re now thinking about communities within our department based on functions and services. [An article on the pattern language website captures some of the concepts Ryan, Ted and I have been trying to shape into our staffing model.] This new approach will certainly require plenty of demolition (not just the walls in our offices, but the old concepts about how we work together). Good thing I have a sledgehammer and safety glasses.
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