McDonald's -- I'm Lov'in It !

In these years, McDonald's learnt and changed a lot. McDonald's recognized that to be successful, it would have to be flexible and adapt to societal changes. These elements include the health consciousness of people, the demand of new technology on the business process, the environment and atmosphere inside the restaurant etc. As to take some action, the main goal and duty of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) of McDonald's is to improve the business process.

The change of McDonald's is obvious. By using the PDA system, customers can order food while they are queuing, the ordering process become systematic. Also, there appear the McCafe, offering customers more variety to choose other than the fast foods. The design of the restaurant changed too. The design become more luxury, energetic, and more comfortable. This is their dissemination and diffusion subsystem.

On the other hand, there is also the meaning anf Memory Subsystem. McDonald's emphasis the slogan "I'm lov'in it", which can easily be remembered by people.





The learning subsystem of McDonald's helps the growth of it very much. This even change people's value or belief in McDonald's, from being a fast food restaurant which is unhealthy and selling those junk foods, to now a restaurant which offer a place for people to relax or take a rest with variety of foods.

The seminar on OL & KM given by Ritter yesterday was really inspiring. In fact, it aroused my thinking on my study during the talk. In the seminar, she emphasized the importance of having workplace learning through both physical and learning spaces. She mentioned that the loyalty toward the company contribute to organizational learning. In the global business lecture, it mentioned the special Japanese work customs:

If loyalty really contributes a lot, I believe that OL and KM will be very successful in Japan. They are loyal to the company and are willing to share all they possess in order to enhance the organizational growth. Is it the real situation in Japan now? Is the KM & OL concept prevailing in Japan?

On the other hand in Hong Kong, we can always see the advertisement of career.com or monster.com, which encourage people to search for the better job. It is hard for HK people to be loyal to a company. In fact, they always hold onto a job as a substitute before you find a better one (in Chinese saying:騎牛搵馬).They are not willing to share with the company as they may believe that organizational growth is nothing of their business.

Here is the case. My dad set up a customer relationship management system for his sales team. Yet, the sales team afraid that the customer they found will be grabbed by others after posting on the CRM, so many of them are not willing to share. In fact, it is more difficult to encourage the sales person to share because of their job nature. Contradiction appears that the information provided by the sales team is so important to a company. Then what should a company do to encourage sharing and performance at the same time?

After listening to the introduction of the “Third Generation Mobilizing System” given by Hong Kong Fire Service Department, I’m really amazed by it. There are only about 10 operators working in the center, handling thousand cases each day. In each case, there are lots of routine procedures that are critical and cannot have any mistake.

How can those series of steps being held in their minds? In fact, the bloom’s taxonomy involved much in it. From the training, they may learn a list of things, included the setting of those electronic, such as the telephone systems, the control of air-conditioner, also the seating plan , the extension numbers of different units etc. They know TRC stands for “Traffic congestion”, AL3 stands for “No.3 Fire” etc. When they come into real practice, they recall the knowledge they gained. When the monitor displayed “RES”, they realize that the team is on the way. This is the knowledge.
For comprehension, when the operators need to call out to the fire stations, they can choose to have manual broadcasting, which they are able to report some special cases and situation to them.
For application, during composing the proposal, when there is the system any mistake, by using the accumulated experience of the operators, they become more conscious. They try to manually make a proposal which seems more appropriate.
They are then able to evaluate the appropriateness of the suggestion given by the mobilizing system. As told in the talk, they know there must be a mistake if the fire station recommended is far away from the incident place. They try to manually make a proposal which seems more appropriate.
Combining the above two points, the operators make a new proposal for the case which is more effective and efficient to attain their goal.
Finally, they are able to evaluate their own judgments by making reports and analyzing the statistic or data.

In the operators’ learning cycle, they can become more effective towards the goal by practicing. This is what practice by doing.

In the OL lesson, it mentioned that if individuals come together and act collectively, it helps achieving the common goal. This concept reminds me some of the OB knowledge learnt in the previous semester.

Let’s see the following points.
Increasing group cohesiveness:
1.Make the group smaller.
2.Encourage agreement with group goals.
3.Increase time members spend together.
4.Increase group status and admission difficultly.
5.Stimulate competition with other groups.
6.Give rewards to the group, not individuals.
7.Physically isolate the group.

The above points are similar with those we learnt in OL lesson. One of the points I find interesting and so would like to share with you all. That’s point no.7 -- Physically isolate the group (In OL: Set boundaries between the collectivity and the rest of the world). It is true that being in a group really facilitate the achievement towards the goal, yet, it may not be true that common goal in a group always lead to personal success.

Have you see a program in Pearl called “Survivor”?

In the game, all of the participant are having a common goal – Being the Sole Survivor and receives a cash prize of $1,000,000 (prior to taxes). Then, all the participants fall into two groups. Two groups need to achieve different challenges, such as endurance, problem solving, teamwork, and willpower.Group members need to collaborate and contribute to their group. Until now, a group can still help them to achieve their goals. Yet, after a few episodes, because of have a common goal, those team members may turn from friends to enemy. In order to be the sole winner, they have to foul others out. Then, the group cannot function anymore. In fact, it may be a stepping-stone only.

Then I wonder, is it so in a company? Staffs may want to have promotion chance; they try to work as group to enhance their performance. Yet, are they having mutual benefit? If the group is seen to be a stepping-stone only, will the relationship between staffs being hurt? So I think the underlying “common goal” in group may not be beneficial to an organization.

Theory of Action--Revolution of the Woman's Position

I would like to talk about the social action components in the Parson General Theory of Action in this passage. The components trigger my learning in Gender Issue. These components can illustrate the status of women in the past.

First, the subject-actor was the woman in the past, which was a collective entity. The situation they existed was the past society where woman were inferior to man. Those symbols such as there were no woman leader; women were not allowed to study and so forth. We can therefore interpret the inferior status of women. It was shown that people in the past environment may look down upon woman and may not give them much respect.

So, what did the woman did in the past? By using the Parson General Theory of Action, in order to solve the external problem through the ends, those woman association refuse to adapt to that unfair environment and so they chose to have goal attainment. Thus, they aimed to turn back the thinking that woman were inferior and eliminate the distinction between men and women. They started to mobilize and exert effort to overthrown that discrimination.

Finally, we can enjoy a gender-equal society and have a freedom to study like what we are doing now.

Cheers !!!! ; )






Further information for the position of woman in the Chinese history:
http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art29973.asp


Learn-Unlearn-Relearn -- Learn to Forego

For L-U-R, I think that it is most important for an organization to unlearn. In fact, I believe it is an old idea that unlearn is a good thing in Chinese. In the Chinese saying, “知錯能改，善莫大焉”, it shows that if we can learn from the mistake and correct it, we will be successful. It is surely the same for an organization.

From the KM lecture, we know that we have to evaluate our KM bases frequently as to keep update. If we don’t know how to unlearn, that wrong or useless knowledge will only burden an organization.

So, it is not the best for you to know how to learn most, but it is important for you to know when to forego. It is not easy as many of us believe that the more is the better, regardless of the usefulness or rightness.

So, this can be a motto for many of us – learn to forgo.

Personal reflection on Bloom's Taxonomy and VAK

Bloom’s taxonomy - "Life Time Learning; Life Time Bloom"

The last lecture revised the Bloom’s taxonomy again with more thorough explanation. Some of us may find difficult and confusing when the first time we study this taxonomy. Yet, the “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” reminded us that the Bloom’s taxonomy had been applied to us since we were in primary school. After a quick review of my learning throughout my whole life, I realize that the Bloom’s Taxonomy can be applied on us even since we were in kindergarten.

In the first few lessons in kindergarten, we have to learn and remember the letter A, B, C, D etc…At that time, we were so small that only know to recite but not to understand. This is the knowledge. After we learnt some vocabulary, we were able to translate the English letters into Chinese, and this is comprehension. Then, we tried to choose and use the vocabulary, constructing them into a complete sentence and communicate with others. This is the application. After that, we read a lot, learnt a lot, and became able to analyze the choosing of words and able to compare the good and bad passage. This is analysis. Combining our ideas, we were then able to write and construct a well-organized passage for other to read and appreciate. This is the synthesis level. (By the way, do you guy think that writing our blogs is at this level? And commenting others blogs is at evaluation level? Any idea? :D ) Afterward, we began to judge other, may be like doing those proof-readings. This is evaluation.

Now, I recognize that one bloom’s taxonomy can be applied on us throughout our whole life and in our whole life, there may be many many many bloom’s taxonomies!

VAK - "Today one little step, Tomorrow a big step"

The last lecture also talked about the VAK Learning styles. Although it is quite useful for us to evaluate which learning style suit us, can it be use to facilitate our learning in schools/colleges in these days? The learning environment constrains students a lot.

We all know that if we would like to get high grade in school, the prerequisite is we must get along with the syllabus, do what it wants us to do. For example, if I am a kinesthetic learner, can I study beyond the classroom? If yes, what should I do if I’m a visual learner? Go with them or stay behind? In fact, in our real life, we cannot choose.

We know there are different learning styles, but how can we or the educationist best utilize those knowledge? I suggest that the classes may be categorized according to different learning style with different unique syllabus correspondingly. I’m sure if the studying environment can be adjusted to different learning styles, the students in the future must be more brilliant and luminous.

Multi-Input Touch Screen

The changing and learning circle occurs every minute. Most of the things around us change. Simply, in our previous lecture, some of them has been pointed out, such as television, sunglasses etc. In this reflection, I would like to point out one common stuff that every of us own – mobile phone.

When we shop around these days, the windows no longer display the mobile phone with small monitor and large keypad, rather, the mobile phone with extremely large screen and without keypad glance in your eyes. This is called the shift.

Obviously, this shift is mainly caused by the invention of touch screen technology and the emerging of iPhone.
Jennifer Colegrove, analyst at the iSuppli Corporation said, “After the iPhone came out, a lot of mobile phone companies said ‘Oh, I can make that kind of touch-screen mobile phone, too.'
Truly, other competitors that want to share the market, they must being followers, such as Nokia, Blackberry, hTC, Samsung, LG etc. In fact, we may ask why iPhone can stand out from those competitors; the answer is that it’s Multi-Input Touch Screen. A standard touch screen allows one input at a time. This allows multiple people to use and input things.

Undeniably, we may think that Multi-Input Touch Screen is an amazing technology these days, yet, this technology has been developed a few years ago.
Let’s show you a great video demonstrating this technology in 2006. Enjoy ; )

Multi-input touch screen is revolutionary in the market. All of those manufacturers need to change. “Survival for the fittest”. Not only developing our own unique technology, we have to learn form the environment from time to time.


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Here are some related news:

Trend Alert: Touch Screen Cell Phones

http://www.iconocast.com/000000000000010/W3/News1.htm

Touch trend affects keypad crowd
http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/touch-trend-affects-keypad-crowd/2008-02-15

http://hk.ibtimes.com/articles/20081009/blackberry-touch-screen.htm