Reflection on MEGA Business Simulation - Research Paper Example

Table of Contents Heading Page No. Introduction 2 First critical incident: problem ment 4 Reflection 4 Second critical incident: problem ment 5 Reflection 6 Third critical incident: problem statement 7 Reflection 7 Conclusion 8 References 10 Reflection on Teamwork Introduction This is a reflective report about the MEGA business simulation that I undertook as part of a team from early October 2014 up to the end of December 2014. Before going into the details of reflection, it is customary to briefly share what the project was about and what was our group. There were four members in our group; Zen, Polka, Mack, and I. Zen was computer expert, Polka was competent in research, Mack had very good organization and presentation skills, and I was the all-rounder. The MEGA business simulation project comprised critical analysis and management of organizational and business complications of producing and selling a range of cars. Some of the prominent elements of the MEGA business simulation project included animation of organizational process diagrams meant to choose the most rational solution from a range of possible options; management of diverse scenarios of simulation directed at evaluation of the tendency of each scenario to lead to success; development and management of calendars so that work schedules could be coordinated with resource availability; assessment of the duration of each operation and the human, material, and equipment resources required to complete the operations within the planned duration; and calculation of indicators of performance in order to evaluate the possibility of success in a variety of scenarios. Reflection can be defined as a process in which an experience is reviewed with a view to describing, analysing, and learning about its elements and implications (Reid 1993). Reflective practice techniques can be very useful in analysing the MEGA team experience because they cause us to reflect back at our experiences, tell good experiences from the bad ones, analyse each experience in detail so that we can work out the factors that caused certain experiences to be good and others to be bad, work out ways in which we can enhance the good factors and eradicate the bad factors next time we are in a similar situation, and change our performances as group members for the better. There are a lot of lessons embedded in our daily life experiences but in order to learn them, it is imperative that we reflect upon those experiences. Without reflection, we tend to make the same mistakes over and over again and improve ourselves neither as human beings nor as professionals. In this report, I have reflected upon my experience as a group member in the MEGA business simulation project. The reflective theory that I have used to analyse my experiences is Kolb’s learning cycle. David Kolb is a very well-known name in the realm of reflective learning (Farrow 2011). Kolb proposed a structured approach to learning cycle as can be seen in Fig. 1: Fig. 1: Kolb’s learning cycle (Farrow 2011). According to Pedler, Burgoyne, and Boydell, Kolb’s learning cycle is excessively focused at an educator’s perspective, so they tried to improvise Kolb’s learning cycle so that its emphasis would shift more toward the perspective of a learner particularly with respect to emotional experience (Farrow 2011). The simplified version of Kolb’s learning cycle thus “replaces concrete experience with ‘something happens’; reflective observation with ‘what happened?’; abstract conceptualisation with ‘so what?’ and active experimentation as ‘now what?’” (Farrow 2011). The technique used to reflect in this report is critical incident technique. Critical incident technique is defined as “a set of procedures for collecting direct observations of human behaviour in such a way as to facilitate their potential usefulness in solving practical problems and developing broad psychological principles” (Flanagan 1954). The incidents have also been analysed with respect to the five-stage model. First critical incident: Problem statement The first challenge we faced as a team was the decision over which car to produce and sell through our company. Car is often a topic about which people can over-enthusiastic. Everybody has their own priorities and taste for a car. All four of us wanted to produce and sell four different cars. Choosing to produce Mercedes Benz took a lot of time which could have been used more productively had there not been so much hassle. Reflection This was the stage of ‘forming’. What happened was loss of time over taking a decision of no importance; our performance was not going to be evaluated on which car we produce, rather it was to be evaluated on how we lead and manage its production and sale. Why it happened was because we did not have our roles defined from the start. It took us all the hassle to finally realize we needed roles. Therefore, I was assigned the role of leader since I was the all-rounder while others had specialized skills in distinct areas so they became followers. When it took us two days to decide which car to produce, I was very upset. Looking at how limited time we had i.e. 30 days in total, and comparing our progress to that of other groups, I was very disappointed in my team. This negative thinking set off a bad start for our group. It would have been more useful had I interpreted the delay as something positive because it is wiser to prudently choose the product that is supposed to be made in the start rather than going a long way, and then realizing that a different product should have been chosen! This happened with other groups. They hastily chose a car and later repented not having taken time to carefully consider other alternatives because of the specific challenges raised by the production and sale of their specific cars. Besides, I should have known that the forming stage “can last for some time, as people start to work together, and as they make an effort to get to know their new colleagues” (Mind Tools, 2015). Next time, if it happens, the first thing I would do in a group is assign roles and responsibilities to each other and identify each other’s role. Second critical incident: Problem statement The next critical incident we faced was getting ourselves on track made difficult by our lack of competence in the simulation software. Three of the four members in the group, Polka, Mack, and I had received no prior training in the use of simulation software, and yet had been assigned the task of completing the project within a decided duration. Learning the basics about the simulation software took us the whole first week. We worked together day and night to learn the basics of the simulation software from Zen and tutorials available over the Internet. Reflection In the start, we were totally distressed about how we would learn the software. Since Zen was expert in software, we started seeing him as our savior. So for the first three days, we did not make much effort to learn the software and were busy doing other research. This must have agitated Zen because all four of us had to learn the software in order to be able to do our tasks on it. Zen thus had an outburst on the fourth day and he shouted as us. I thought that he was being arrogant, so I shouted in return. Conflict begins with minor annoyances and irritations (Forsyth 2009, p. 418). This was our first group-fight in which Polka sided with me whereas Mack sided with Zen. It was a complete waste of energy fighting for three hours, though Polka and I ended up realizing that we were wrong and that we needed to make the effort to learn the software. One thing I could have done differently was understand the importance of learning simulation and welcome any opportunity to learn it rather than rely completely on Zen. Next time I am in similar situation, I am going to step up and take responsibility from the start for my work. This incident comprised the stages of ‘norming’ and ‘performing’. In the norming stage, group members step back and assist each other in taking responsibility for the work, which we did by mutually helping each other learn the software. Particularly, Zen played a very important role in team-building at this stage. One indication of norming stage is solidification of the group structure (Robbins 2009, p. 220) that had happened by then. In the performing stage, tasks and projects are assigned to the group members in detail and members start accepting each other (Hellriegel and Slocum 2010, p. 355). It was only after we were done learning the software that we had a very clear picture of how to achieve our goal, and we were able to distribute our responsibilities accordingly. Third critical incident: Problem statement Once the original differences were sorted and we had learnt the software, then it did not take us much time to complete the project. The first group-fight set the dynamics of relationships between the group members so beautifully that we had a very smooth sailing thereafter. Three days before completing the project, we compiled our work and cheered up on how far we had come. We had a group hug which raised our morale even more. By the time, we realized we had become more than a team. Originally, we were just class-mates who were hardly interested in knowing each other. Now, we had become very good friends. We were highly motivated to complete the project as soon as possible, and we succeeded at it! We were the first group to complete the project. Reflection One of the most popular theories of motivation is Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory. Abraham Maslow proposed a theory of motivation in which he categorized all basic needs of human beings into five categories and arranged them one on top of the other in the form of a pyramid, with the needs at the base being the most basic and essential and those at the top being the most opportunistic (Montana and Charnov 2008, p. 238). Maslow proposed that as human beings, every individual has a set of needs to satisfy and he/she cannot think of satisfying a higher level need unless all lower level needs in the pyramid have been satisfied. The five categories he identified include physiological needs, safety needs, love and belongingness needs, self-esteem needs, and the need to self-actualize. Physiological needs include air and water without which, sustenance is not possible. After the physiological needs have been met, every human being looks for safety. After both these needs have been met, the third priority of every human being is attainment of love and belongingness. Accordingly, the fourth and the fifth need come successively in the prescribed order. Therefore, when seen from the lens of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, if a group member did not display self-esteem in the work, possibility is that one of his lower levels needs had not been met. Most probably, he was lacking love and belongingness because there was no scarcity or problem of physiological needs or safety in our group project. In our case, all four of us had high self-esteem and were eager to do our best. Certainly, all four basic needs including physiological, safety, love and belongingness, and self-esteem were met. There was no question about physiological and safety needs as they were anyway met. As we had become very good friends, we had a feeling of love and belongingness with each other. We respected each other as group-mates which built self-esteem in us. We were thus highly motivated to self-actualize and deliver our best individually and collectively. Self-actualization is a “process by which man grows from the potential to the actual” (Kvalsund 2003, p. 2). This was the stage of ‘adjourning’ which is essentially when group members celebrate their success. We had the ‘adjourning anxiety’ (Priest and Gass 2005, p. 68) but it only helped. Conclusion This was a great learning experience as a team. We developed transferable group-skills; not only we learnt the simulation software, but we also learnt a great deal about group dynamics. We learnt the right way to form and set off as a group on the journey of achieving our goal. This experience will certainly help all four of us in any future group-work. The first critical incident related to the ‘forming’ stage, the second critical incident encompassed the ‘norming’ and performing’ stages whereas the third critical incident reflected the ‘adjourning’ stage. References Farrow, R 2011, Theories of Reflective Learning, [Online] Available at http://www.open.ac.uk/blogs/openminded/?p=318 [accessed: 18 February 2015]. Flanagan, J 1954, The Critical Incident Technique, Psychological Bulletin, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 327-358. Forsyth, D 2009, Group Dynamics, Cengage Learning. Hellriegel, D, and Slocum, J 2010, Organizational Behavior, Cengage Learning. Kvalsund, R 2003, Growth As Self-Actualization: A Critical Approach to the Organismic Metaphor in Carl Rogers Counseling Theory, Tapir Academic Press. Mind Tools 2015, Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing, [Online] Available at http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_86.htm [accessed: 18 February 2015]. Montana, PJ, and Charnov, BH 2008, Management, Barron’s Educational Series. Priest, S, and Gass, MA 2005, Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming, Human Kinetics. Reid, B 1993, “But we’re doing it already” Exploring a response to the concept of reflective practice in order to improve its facilitation, Nurse Education Today, vol. 13, pp. 305-309. Robbins, SP 2009, organisational behaviour in Southern Africa, 2nd edition, Pearson South Africa. Read More