Improved, Significantly, My Ability to Understand How

¶ … improved, significantly, my ability to understand how the different components of an organization come together to produce outputs, both positive and negative. From the perspective of the manager, it is critical to understand what the components of an organization are, how they work, and how they can be changed to change the organization's outputs to something more desirable. Gaining exposure to the wide range of organizational diagnostic tools, and methodologies for understanding both the internal and external environments, will help immensely going forward in my education, and in my career as well.

I have always felt that I could manage at a front line level, but this course gave me the ability to see the organization from the CEO's perspective, not in terms of base actions but in terms of broad strategies. Knowing how executives place emphasis on specific elements of the organization to achieve their intended results is something I had never really excelled in before. I feel that this course has allowed me to excel in this type of higher-level thinking about organizational dynamics. When I look at my own organization today, I begin to see not only the functional-level changes I would want to make, but also the strategic changes at the organizational level. Better still, I feel that this course has allowed me to understand the linkages between activities at various levels of the organization, and this in turn I feel will help me to understand the changes -- at all levels -- that I can make to improve the way the organization works.

I felt that my understanding of the organizational diagnostic models was strong, and that I did a good job in the way that I applied them to Skype. For me, the critical issue was understanding the different linkages, and another issue was understanding which models are valuable and when. We were presented with a number of organizational diagnostic models, and while we focused on Nadler-Tushman, I think that some of the other models also had merit. Knowing when to apply which model and when is something that I would have wanted to come away with a better sense of.

My work, overall, I think was strong. In the first module, I studied the current strategic position of Skype, including its competitive environment, current strategic goals and I conducted a SWOT analysis. Looking back, I see that at that early stage of the course my analysis might have been a bit thin, but I also know that there is a process at work where I start at that level and by the end of the course I am simply at vastly superior level in terms of my ability to understand the organization. In the second module, I studied the different organizational diagnostic models. In this model, I feel that I truly achieved the objectives, since I was able to understand each model clearly. I saw how there was a progression from the earliest models to the later ones in terms of sophistication and complexity of thought. I also feel that I was able to progress myself in terms of understanding the models.

The third module saw me focus on the Nadler-Tushman Congruence Model, and how Skype applies this to its business. This model proved effective in formulating a diagnosis of the company, and I think I did well for my first time using such a model. In reflection, I might make some changes to my assessment of the company using the Nadler-Tushman framework, but overall I found that I was able to use the model to understand why Skype is successful in some areas but unsuccessful in others. In the fourth module, I put the findings from Nadler-Tushman together with the other environmental analysis to gain real insight into the workings of Skype. I found that I could understand the Skype business and come up with ways to make improvements. That is something I wanted to achieve as part of the course objectives.