Task 3 – Monitor and improve thinking practices
Task summary and instructions
What is this assessment task about? This task builds on Task 2.
You have been engaged as a consultant by MMI Professional Education to support the development of critical thinking skills in departmental managers.
You are required to:
⦁ Analyze and evaluate critical and creative thinking in the organization
⦁ Establish an environment that encourages critical and creative thinking in the organization
⦁ Monitor and improve thinking practices
Task 3 focuses on point 3.
This task comprises of the following assessment methods:
⦁ Product-based
⦁ Direct observation of Role-Play
⦁ Case Study
⦁ Other (specify)
It has been designed to evaluate your ability to/competency in:
⦁ Collect and analyze feedback from individuals and teams on critical and creative thinking opportunities
⦁ Identify additional support required for teams and individuals
⦁ Develop recommendations for improvements in future learning arrangements according to relevant legislation and organization policies
You are required to address the following:
⦁ Task 3.1 Monitor and improve thinking practices
⦁ Analyze, evaluate and provide recommendations about the scenarios provided
What do I need to do to complete this task satisfactorily? ⦁ submit the completed assessment tasks, according to instructions,
⦁ complete the tasks with sufficient detail and present them in a professional manner,
⦁ use your own words and reference sources appropriately,
⦁ meet the word count where required,
⦁ use the scenario provided,
⦁ use the templates provided where required,
⦁ for your performance to be deemed satisfactory in this assessment task you must satisfactorily address all of the assessment criteria,
⦁ if part of this task is not satisfactorily completed you will be asked to complete further assessment to demonstrate satisfactory performance.
Specifications You must deliver/participate in:
⦁ NA
You must submit to GOALS
⦁ Report
Resources and equipment ⦁ Computer with Internet access
⦁ Access to Microsoft Office suites or similar software
⦁ Learning material
⦁ Scenario for assessment as provided
⦁ Appendices as provided
⦁ Relevant policies and procedures as provided
⦁ Templates as provided
Re-submission opportunities You will be provided feedback on your performance by the Assessor. The feedback will indicate if you have satisfactorily addressed the requirements of each part of this task. If any parts of the task are not satisfactorily completed, the assessor will explain why, and provide you written feedback along with guidance on what you must undertake to demonstrate satisfactory performance. Re-assessment attempt(s) will be arranged at a later time and date. You have the right to appeal the outcome of assessment decisions if you feel that you have been dealt with unfairly or have other appropriate grounds for an appeal. You are encouraged to consult with the assessor prior to attempting this task if you do not understand any part of this task or if you have any learning issues or needs that may hinder you when attempting any part of the assessment.
Complete the following activities:
Task 3.1 Monitor and improve thinking practices
Assume that you are now three months into implementing initiatives to develop critical and creative thinking skills in the management team.
The following scenarios occurred:
SCENARIO A
The CEO informs you that the Marketing Manager submitted an issue report about a seminar for education agents that his team is organizing. The CEO is disappointed by how the Marketing Manager is handling the issue because he is not proposing any innovative solution: ‘He is simply not going to use the show bags. What are we going to do with 500 show bags made specifically for this event?’ he says.
See the report filed by the Marketing Manager below:
Issue Report
Date April 23 20XX
Department Marketing
Issue Delay – show bags delivery for the Education Agent Seminar on Sunday, May 16, 20XX
Issue Register I3520XX
Issue reported by Mark Lawson – Marketing Manager
Issue description The show bags for the event will arrive two weeks late and be delivered on the Saturday before the event.
The event set-up is scheduled for Friday at the event venue. There is no budget allocated to pay staff to work after hours on Saturday to fill the show bags with the merchandise and information material.
Recommendation – remedial actions Use plain paper bags.
Do not use the show bags.
Decision Maker CEO
Approval CEO
Approval date
Signature for approval
Issue resolution responsibility, timelines and allocated budget as identified by the Program Sponsor
Closure date
You have received the following feedback about the Marketing Manager:
⦁ Works long hours and starts working again very early in the morning
⦁ Low productivity
⦁ His team does not feel supported
⦁ He does not consider process improvement a priority
⦁ The marketing team is not involved in the decision-making
⦁ The Marketing Manager is jovial and engaged when working with the other departmental manager
SCENARIO B
You have followed the organizational policy and procedures and introduced the departmental managers and their teams to the training programs listed below
You collected the following feedback:
⦁ 1- Online induction for newly appointed team members
Feedback: The online induction is well structured; however, it is generic. It does not address the specific needs of the individual teams.
⦁ 2- Engaged guest speakers to meet with the teams every two months to address different topics such as:
⦁ Design Thinking
⦁ Decision-Making
⦁ Communicate effectively
⦁ Active listening
Feedback: Participation in these events is low (45%) because teams prefer to stay back and work on their daily tasks.
⦁ 3- Monthly ‘Think Tank’ meeting with the departmental managers, CEO, and the CFO to discuss issues and improvements.
Feedback: The initiative has been successful; however, it runs for too long (3 hours rather than 2 hours).
⦁ 4- Established a reward program with a budget of $1,000/months to reward the best team (criteria: adherence to policies and procedures, the achievement of monthly milestones, meet budget, have the lowest number of issues reported).
Feedback: Teams welcomed the initiative; however, they think that the criteria do not reward teams that succeeded against challenging circumstances by applying critical and creative thinking skills.
Develop a report (Template 1) in the form of personal notes to evaluate the two scenarios, determine lessons learned and provide recommendations for improvement.
(150-200 words in total)
Template 1 -Report
Report
SCENARIO A
⦁ What support does the Marketing Manager require?
⦁ What solution would you propose for the issue described in the issue report in Scenario A?
⦁ What advice would you give the Marketing Manager to improve his critical and creative skills?
⦁ What advice would you give the Marketing Manager to improve his work relationship with the team?
⦁ How could the Marketing Manager better support his team?
⦁ What learning arrangements would you organize for the Marketing Manager?
⦁ What lessons can be learned from this scenario?
⦁ Marketing manager is unable to think critically and innovative so he need require some brainstorming sessions and also mentor for the proper thinking. As a marketing manager, he needs to think creatively and innovatively so that the marketing objective of the organization will achieve its goals.
⦁ The solution for the issue report is that there will be a need of thinking creatively and innovatively as there is the issue of the delivery of show bags and also there is the problem of the budget as there is no extra payment procedure for the workers so, for the education seminar there is need of show bags which will be delivered 2 days earlier and this will create a problem in the presentation of the education seminar (Amazia, et al., 2017).
⦁ For the marketing manager, it is advised to take responsibility for marketing seriously and try to develop a hypothesis before any decision making and also have the problem-solving behavior so that there will be proper communication.
⦁ To improve his work relationship with the team marketing manager needs to consider some important points that he should involve the team in the decision-making process so that there will be proper consideration of thoughts from the team members (Duran, et al., 2016).
⦁ For the better support to his team marketing manager need to gain the trust of team member and also always let them express their views on the particular topic so that team member can think that they are also an important part of the marketing program and always appreciate their views so they feel confident.
⦁ The learning arrangement for the marketing manager there will be proper brainstorming sessions and also he needs to think about creating questions and making an imagination about the outcome of every decision before implementing it.
⦁ The lesson learned from this scenario is that there is regular brainstorming session required in the organisation and this will help in the critical and innovative thinking to compete with the world and without critical and creative thinking skills this will affect the individual performance very negatively and also this negatively impact the whole organization way. The importance of decision-making is that it can lead your team and make your team feel confident about you and the leader can trust the team member so, involvement in decision-making is also important (Ardianti, et al., 2020).
SCENARIO B
⦁ What would you improve in each initiative?
⦁ What lessons can be learned from this scenario?
⦁ What recommendations would you give for improvements in future learning arrangements according to relevant legislation and organisation policies?
⦁ To improve each initiative taken by the organisation for the training of departmental managers. For the induction programme, there is the feedback that it does not include the needs of the individual program so for the solution, there will be the inclusion of the specific needs according to the individual team.
For the guest speaker, there is a feedback that the participation is low in this task so there is a need for the motivation in the team members needed and also when guest speaker session there is no task given to the team members so that they can concentrate on the training only without thinking too much about their tasks (Duran, et al., 2016).
For the think tank meeting, there is the feedback that these are lengthy sessions of the 3hours so for this solution there will be sessions of 2 hours only in 3 months with the departmental managers, CEO and CFO.
The reward program has some issues about the criteria on which they need to give is critical and creative thinking in the teams rather than about the performance and achieving the targets because achieving target can affect the quality of the team and also there may be conflicts among the team members.
⦁ The lesson from this is that there is always some improvement needed in the policies either they are best but always need improvement. Before implementing any policy in the organisation there is always a need of getting feedback from the organisation members so that if there are any faults then these faults can be improved accordingly. Suggestions and involvement are an important part of policies and procedures because this will help to implement the policies in an effective way and also efficiently (Anazifa, et al., 2017).
⦁ The recommendation that is needed for the future learning is that there will be an environment for the critical thinking skills and the policies will be framed in such a way that there is the inclusion of the programmes which help in the boosting the thinking skills of the organisation these thinking skills will help to grow the company in a positive way and also help to achieve the goals effectively and efficiently. Critical and creative thinking skills are important for the working of the team in a proper manner and also help boost the morale of each department when they see the benefits and improvement in their work (Ardianti, et al., 2020).
References
Please include your references below:
Warsah, I., Morganna, R., Uyun, M., & Afandi, M. (2021). The Impact of Collaborative Learning on Learners’ Critical Thinking Skills. International Journal of Instruction, 14(2), 443-460.
Ardianti, S., Sulisworo, D., Pramudya, Y., & Raharjo, W. (2020). The impact of the use of STEM education approach on the blended learning to improve student’s critical thinking skills. Universal Journal of Educational Research, 8(3B), 24-32.
Duran, M., & Dökme, I. (2016). The effect of the inquiry-based learning approach on student’s critical-thinking skills. Eurasia Journal of Mathematics Science and Technology Education, 12(12).
Anazifa, R. D., & Djukri, D. (2017). Project-based learning and problem-based learning: Are they effective to improve student’s thinking skills?. Jurnal Pendidikan IPA Indonesia, 6(2), 346-355.