Week 6: Storytelling

Fan Jiajun, Clovis

One day, a high school student, together with her parents, came to our IELTS training institution and had a conversation with our receptionist They said that they came from a less-developed city in China, where there was no formal IELTS training institution like our company. But the girl dreamt of going to a British university next year to pursue her bachelor and master’s degrees. The parents of the girl were told that some of the teachers in our institution are the top trainers in the field of IELTS, so they wanted their daughter to study IELTS here to get a high score. The problem was that the girl had to continue learning in the high school in her hometown and had no time to attend classes in our institution. Besides the girl, many other students from different cities often called our centre to ask whether there were any courses for them. The receptionist told her manager the story.

Having been told the story, the management realized the huge potential of the market in less-developed cities. After several times of comprehensive market research, the centre decided to open up three more branches in different cities in China and later provided online courses to student who could not come to the centre for class. This story made the management discover the urge demand of IELTS learners and expand our business successfully. An incident can lead an organization to a big change.

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Week 6: Storytelling- Lisa

Liu Meng, Lisa


It is a story about compliance. Last summer, at the begining of my internship experience in HSBC, I took the training class on the topic of compliance. The tutor told us a story.

One day a information analyst left his desk to get a cup of water without locking his computer screen, and the information displayed on the screen was the detailed profile of some big customers, which was very confidential.  His collegue accidently noticed it and copied such information secretly. It didn't take much time that this collegue jumped to one of the rival banks. Ultimately, the confidential data were divulged and the big customers were no longer satisfied with HSBC. The company went through an unexpected economic loss and the information analyst was therefore fired.

To prevent divulgence of confidential information in the future, I was told to strictly obey the regulations in organization. Later on , I acknowledged that such training classes were indispensable for new comers in each department of HSBC all over the world. Until the end of my internship, other interns and I didn's make any mistakes in this aspect, all of us regarded the training class on compliance very important and impressive.

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Storytelling- Cindy

A  story from my company- Dai Xiaoxiao, Cindy

During my internship in HSBC, another intern didn't know we couldn't use our USB drive in the computers in the office. One day, she wanted to print some materials from her USB drive, so she plugged in the USB. This behavior led to a system crash of all the computers during the whole afternoon.

I think a systemic training is needed for the newcomers. Although the online courses cover a lot of aspects, there is something that being not included. Storytelling could be very useful in many cases.

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Week 5: Comparison of Harvard Survey Results

Ben's comment

Use the Harvard Review Survey results of your institution to help analyze the extent of LO in your workplace
The above table shows that my organization can score a high mark for “Education and Training”, in which employees can learn both practical skills and knowledge through our training programs and be able to have a professional development at work. Other than that, my organization can also obtain a mark with the third quartile in “Time for Reflection” as enough time was provided to our colleagues in digesting new knowledge. However, relatively low marks were granted for the remaining. Like “Openness to New ideas” and “Appreciation of Differences” categories, I think it can reflect the general situation in Hong Kong business organizations that the management does not want to have a change while they are focusing on making more money. The lower marks at “Experimentation” as well as “Information Collection” show that we have to spend some more time on learning from mistakes and comparing our current situations with our competitors in order to become a Learning Organization.

Review group workplace cases: compare similarities and differences and develop a table evidencing this
When comparing the similarities with other organizations, we can see that all of our organizations are not focusing on the part of “Learning Processes Composite” as neither one of our organizations can get a high mark in this category. However, the table shows that all the organizations provided good education and training to their employees, and it can be concluded that although the platform of training is enough, a company still have to pay more attention on the follow-up activities and build up a healthy education atmosphere within the organization.
Regarding the differences of scores among different organizations, “Experimentation” is the most extreme one - Clovis’s company obtains a high mark of 85.7 while mine only got 50; there are 35.7 marks of differences. Other companies like HSBC from Cindy and Lisa also got 64 and 78 respectively. I think this might be due to the differences of organizations’ structure and focuses, where organizations like schools might have more activities on experimentation than others.

What can be learnt from this comparison to help complete Assignment Task One
I think this is an interesting survey which can let us understand more about the current learning situation of the organizations.  The survey quantifies the comparison by setting relevant questions for various categories in relation to the encouragement development, change and innovation.  Such an approach can provide an objective comparison among organizations and can also give a simple but clear picture of organizations’ achievement in different areas.  And of course it’s more meaningful for us to see what others have done while comparing our organizations with each other.






Dai Xiaoxiao, Cindy


Use the Harvard Review Survey results to help analyze the extent of LO in your workplace.

In this survey, in terms of learning environment composite, HSBC is in the second place with the score of 70.4, when it comes to learning process composite, it does not reach the average score, because I think HSBC should also provide the interns with systemic training besides online e-learning course. In terms of leadership that reinforces learning, HSBC ranks the first, as I mentioned previously, the branch manager arranged two meetings everyday, I think it is quite nice to encourage employees to share their opinions everyday.





FAN Jiajun, Clovis


1. Use the Harvard Review Survey results of your institution to help analyse the extent of LO in your workplace.

This survey provides a useful assessment tool for organizations to evaluate the level of LO they have achieved and to identify areas of excellence and opportunities for improvement in LO. According to the survey results of my institution, this IELTS training centre has achieved a relatively high level in becoming a learning organization.

In terms of the learning environment, the centre offers enough time for reflection, which allows us to review our teaching effect and draw on previous successful experience. But my organization needs much improvement in areas like providing employees with psychological safety and becoming more open to new ideas, which can facilitate the innovative process. Regarding the learning processes and practices, generally speaking, my centre obtains high scores in all of the five areas, which means that this centre has a comprehensive and systematic set of methods to utilize its information and knowledge for learning purpose. And the leadership of my institution is quite strong in reinforcing organizational learning.

To summarise, my IELTS training centre has paid much attention in establishing a learning environment, facilitating learning processes and practices, as well as cultivating leadership that reinforces learning. It will be a typical learning organization in the future, where all employees take an active part in learning and sharing knowledge.

2. Review group workplace cases: compare similarities and differences and develop a table evidencing this.

From the table we can see that there exist both similarities and differences in the areas of LO in our five organizations.

Regarding the similarities, we are all given much time for reflection and review while we all lack certain level of psychological safety, appreciation of differences and openness to new ideas, which indicates that all of our companies should strive to build a supportive environment for organizational learning. Also, all of the five organizations obtain high scores in the area of education and training, demonstrating that currently most, if not all, companies have realised the great significance of training both new and existing employees.

As to differences, our organisations are now in different levels in the areas of experimenting new ideas or products, collecting information from both inside and outside organisation, analysing and discussing, information transfer, as well as leadership. This is due to the fact that our organisations belong to different industries and have different focuses and leadership styles, and even different branches of HSBC, which are the target organisations of two group members, achieve different levels of LO. Each of our companies has strengths and weaknesses in areas of LO. So we can exchange our ideas and draw on the strengths of other organizations to help our own company to develop into a learning organization.

3. What can be learnt from this comparison to help complete Assignment Task One?

This comparison offers me a guideline to assess whether my organisation has become a real learning organisation and the survey provides me with a set of criteria to see whether the strategies my company has utilised have a positive impact on learning organisation. The three blocks----learning environment, learning processes, and leadership that reinforces learning, help me relate the corporate strategies to organisational learning and learning organisation, which can be used in the Assignment Task One.




Liu Meng - Lisa


According to the Harvard Review Survey Results, it is apparently that all of our workplaces are similar in most of the aspects. To be more specific, all of the five organizations perform very well in the following two areas: time for reflection; education and training, which means that they attach great importance on organizational learning opportunities and efficiency. However, survey results range from the bottom quartile to the highest level in experimentation, information transfer and leadership.

A conclusion can be easily drawn that all of our workplaces provide fairly good supportive learning environment and can enhance the education and training opportunities to a large extent, while slightly differences also exist in learning processes and leadership due to the different job functions and features.

Yang Lujia -Sophie

Use the Harvard Review Survey results of your institution to help analyze the extent of LO in your workplace

As is displayed in the table, my organization is doing best in “education and training”, which refers that the new employees could usually receive good training in the company.  However, it worst in “opening to new ideas” and “attention to difference”, which indicate that the organizations do not values individuals much, neither their different ideas. Thus, it could be seen that the staff in my company is not very motivated only if my company starts to encourage creativity and participation. Part of the reasons contribute could be that EVENTS industry has many existing rules on how to managing people and facilitates, thus the companies better chose to follow rather than come up with new ones. However, besides that, companies should still try to encourage new ideas and explore the human asset

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Week 5: Organisation of my choice- Lisa

Lisa's choice- HSBC(The company which I did my internship there). HSBC is a British multinational banking and financial services company headquartered in London, United Kingdom.

HSBC was founded in London in 1991 by The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation to act as a new group holding company and to enable the acquisition of UK-based Midland Bank. The origins of the bank lie in Hong Kong and Shanghai, where branches were first opened in 1865. Today, HSBC remains the largest bank in Hong Kong, and recent expansion in mainland China, where it is now the largest international bank.

Generally, HSBC organises its customer-facing activities within four business groups: Commercial Banking; Global Banking and Markets (investment banking); Personal Financial Services (retail banking and consumer finance); and Global Private Banking. (wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSBC

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