A Final Post for Learning Journals

As we conclude our Learning Journal, it is important to provide reflection and insight into what we have learned over the course of the semester. Initially, our idea was to shed light on what companies were doing across the very dimensions we have been discussing in class including: motivation, trust, creativity, conflict, mentoring, and even ethics. In our first round of blog posts we went into heavy detail on the culture of various companies because we believe it to be the core of how well companies are able to perform in these dimensions. We have used this second round of blog posts to go into specific, class topics because we understand that culture has many different facets and it would be an injustice to speak strictly about the general feel of an environment. Later in our PDA, you will see that we go into even further depth in describing how Dreamworks stands out across some of these same areas.

A big take-a-way from this project is one that we experienced in our team dynamics. Other than our interactions in the classroom, our team essentially ran on the "virtual team" dynamic, planning all distribution of work via email. We learned quickly that the incongruousness in our first round of blogs was a result of unclear objectives/measurements of what the blogs should look like. On one hand, this granted much autonomy to each member to creatively design his or her own post, however, this left us with varying lengths and varying depth in the assignment. To improve ourselves, we discussed ways to make our blog posts longer and assigned specific class topics for each individual to cover with a pre-deadline of 24 hours in advance to give everyone the chance to review each other's posts. This is what OB is about: looking at the insides of an organization to see what improvements need to be made, pinpointing solutions, and instating change. With this, Scared of Clowns is pleased to present their findings in the posts below.