MGMT 535 (Module 3) Reflection Blog: A Story of Organizational Culture
MGMT 535 (Module 3) Reflection Blog: A Story of Organizational Culture
During my last few years in the Air Force I was lucky enough to be selected to work in the Wing Inspector General office. Prior to moving into that position, I really only had a very basic understanding of what the IG did in both the inspections section as well as the complaints section. As one would expect, the IG is held to the higest standard when it comes to communication, appearance, and just setting an example for the Air Force core values in general. I took that part of the job very seriously. After sitting in the superintendent position for a few months, I began to see a few simple small changes we could make to support our "corporate culture". The first was our inbriefs and outbriefs to commanders and senior enlisted when we performed our inspections. We adjusted it so that we always had the IG, me as the Superintendent, our complaints specialist and the project officer of the inspection, at a minimum at each brief. This way the leadership of the unit we were inspecting could put faces to names, ask questions directly to these individuals and we could ensure that we were all on the same page throughout the inspection with expectations, etc. Another small change was to make it an internal policy to never write anything up that wasn't supported by documentation (Tech Data, Air Force Instruction, etc). This made it much easier when we did our outbriefs as it made 95% of our findings irrefutable.
There were many more small changes over the course of my two years in that office. Some were my ideas, some were the ideas of my subordinates, and others were collaborations based on observations. We always strived to think of better ways of gathering and delivering information and data to both squadron leadership as well as our boss, the Wing Commander. We had monthly meeting with Wing leadership as well as staff weekly staff meetings with all of the base leadership, and we supported a lot of tenant units. One of my personal goals was to try to simplifiy data delivery as much as possible without detracting from the meaning of the data. The job wasn't necessarily the most glamourous and you were inevitably telling a group of people what they were doing incorrectly (correctly too, but we as humans usually focus on the negative) and I wanted it to be as painless as possible while re-establishing the IG, not as "the enemy" like most had previously felt, but as a group of people who are genuinely there to help. By making all of these small changes and being aware of how were presented ourselves to Wing and base leadership, I feel like we were supporting the core values (corporate culture) of integrity, service and excellence.
During my last few years in the Air Force I was lucky enough to be selected to work in the Wing Inspector General office. Prior to moving into that position, I really only had a very basic understanding of what the IG did in both the inspections section as well as the complaints section. As one would expect, the IG is held to the higest standard when it comes to communication, appearance, and just setting an example for the Air Force core values in general. I took that part of the job very seriously. After sitting in the superintendent position for a few months, I began to see a few simple small changes we could make to support our "corporate culture". The first was our inbriefs and outbriefs to commanders and senior enlisted when we performed our inspections. We adjusted it so that we always had the IG, me as the Superintendent, our complaints specialist and the project officer of the inspection, at a minimum at each brief. This way the leadership of the unit we were inspecting could put faces to names, ask questions directly to these individuals and we could ensure that we were all on the same page throughout the inspection with expectations, etc. Another small change was to make it an internal policy to never write anything up that wasn't supported by documentation (Tech Data, Air Force Instruction, etc). This made it much easier when we did our outbriefs as it made 95% of our findings irrefutable.
There were many more small changes over the course of my two years in that office. Some were my ideas, some were the ideas of my subordinates, and others were collaborations based on observations. We always strived to think of better ways of gathering and delivering information and data to both squadron leadership as well as our boss, the Wing Commander. We had monthly meeting with Wing leadership as well as staff weekly staff meetings with all of the base leadership, and we supported a lot of tenant units. One of my personal goals was to try to simplifiy data delivery as much as possible without detracting from the meaning of the data. The job wasn't necessarily the most glamourous and you were inevitably telling a group of people what they were doing incorrectly (correctly too, but we as humans usually focus on the negative) and I wanted it to be as painless as possible while re-establishing the IG, not as "the enemy" like most had previously felt, but as a group of people who are genuinely there to help. By making all of these small changes and being aware of how were presented ourselves to Wing and base leadership, I feel like we were supporting the core values (corporate culture) of integrity, service and excellence.
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