Discussion: Challenging Your Status Quo - Assignment Example

CHALLENGING YOUR STATUS QUO School: Lecturer: CHALLENGING YOUR STATUS QUO My current organization has a well defined status quo that determines how things are done and how people go about their daily work. Generally, the status quo may be seen from two perspectives, the first of which has to do with the macro-organizational status quo, referring to the overall approach to doing things. The second is the micro-organizational status quo which refers to the existing state of affairs for individual employees.

At the macro-organizational level, the following questions are seen t challenge the status quo.1. What kind of training is needed for all employees?2. How can the company be innovative in its creative ventures?3. What factors pose threat to the organization’s competitive advantage?4. In what ways does the organizational culture affect output of work here?5. What is the relationship between customer satisfaction score and productivity?6. How has the organization’s approach to recruitment hindered innovation?7. In what ways can the organization embrace new changes in the global market?8. Will the company suffer negatively if it changed its current culture?9. How have individual members of the organization contributed to the existing status quo?10. Does the employee base find the current status quo convenient?

Of the questions identified above, the one that I find as posing barrier to innovation is the question, “how has the organization’s approach to recruitment hindered innovation?” The selection of this question is based on the observation made by Nodeson and Beleya (2012), noting that at the point of recruitment, companies have the option of choosing between refined innovation and one that needs to be nurtured from the beginning. This means that in order to critically challenge the status quo and push forward into innovation, it is important for the company to give credence to the recruitment of employees who already show some level of innovative and creative talents rather than focusing solely on academic credentials and qualifications.

This is because Amabile and Khaire (2008) compared the contribution that a new employee who has some level of innovative talents can make to an organization, and noted that such employees come into the organization as a challenge in itself to the status quo on the need for the status quo to be pegged higher in order to make room of such new employees. At the time of recruiting, the best discovery skill that can be used among the options given by Dyer, et al. (2009) is the skill of questioning.

This is because at the time of recruiting, the organization may not have much chance to involve the candidate to most of the other skills such as experimenting and networking. But through conditional questioning, it will be possible to identify if the incoming employees have what it takes to match up the standards that has been set for the organization (Grivas and Puccio, 2012). Currently, the organization has an innovative growth status quo set, which depends very much on the inputs that employees make to the organization to ensure its survival.

It is for this reason that the questioning skill must be used at the point of recruiting to identify who the candidate is made of and what that candidate has to offer within the organization.ReferencesAmabile, T. M., & Khaire, M. (2008). Creativity and the role of the leader. Harvard Business Review, 86(10), 100–109.Dyer, J. H., Gregersen, H. B., & Christensen, C. M. (2009). The innovators DNA. Harvard Business Review, 87(12), 60–67.Grivas, C., & Puccio, G. J. (2012). The innovative team: Unleashing creative potential for breakthrough results.

Retrieved from http://www.vitalsource.comNodeson, S., & Beleya, P. (2012) Leadership role in handling employees resistance: Implementation of innovation. Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business. 4(1). 466–477.