Personal and Professional Development - Self-Managed Erudition - Assignment Example

Introduction Self managed erudition is a technique people and individuals acquire new forms of approaching new knowledge. This could be through thesociety work and other environments. Self-learning skill is all about setting new targets to achieve in a given period, modes to achieve them and evaluating the progress of the learning. Individuals learn new things through various examples that present themselves during interactions to the cultures surrounding them, perspectives, personalities and many other modes. People learn things from newspapers, friends, environments, which means class is not the epitome of development. Personal development equips people with their own strategy in getting new knowledge. Sometimes people tend to take long in learning new things. However, some take a short time to learn new things that assist them in completing projects or passing examinations. The world today demands long term knowledge owing to the continuous knowledge accumulation in technology and diversification of the existing knowledge for the betterment of their professional and personal lives. Below are approaches of self managed learning. In relation to the inexperience I have had in the past years, people can pick up different things from the workplace, institutions of learning and the environments they are located. I have been able to gain more professional expertise in the place I work since I keep a keen eye on the happenings in the work place. By using my friendship network and interaction I get to gain more insight in the way certain things work with others while others cannot. In general my approach to self managed erudition is based on the workshops and seminars sponsored by IKEA, interactions with friends, observation of the people I work with and classes. Reading is one of the most beneficial self erudition techniques which have enabled me to make good judgement decisions from the knowledge learned from in books, blogs, reading books articles, and participation in online events getting new perspectives from other experts. In my opinion learning is basically a constant interaction and debating, sharing new perspectives and inmate opinions in workshops, workplace, social media and any other places where the constructs of interest are in abundance. Benefits to the organisation Self learning bring interesting perspective to the firm as it continues to transform the individual in mane aspects as pertaining to the direction of company goals. Decision making skills are heightened through various learning experiences like conflict between difficult customers and the company. Due to the conflict that happened, one gets to accumulate tactics on dealing with such a customer if another instance occurs in future. Decision making skills are improved in the wake of the previous event. When learning individually, one accumulates the ethics in moral judgement prom both personal experience, observation of the workplace ethics from a colleague hence making one act in a professional manner. The organisation stands to benefit since the organisation will be run according to goals and objectives of the company. These are put first which makes it easy to control the continuous development in light of the constantly changing demographics in business. Flexibility in the company is enhanced as employees seek to better their working capacities in line with efficiency for the company. This way the company stands to benefit in terms of costs for sponsoring erudition of the employees and operational costs. Self erudition creates a better environment of working in the company because employees will effectively with other resulting in low staff turnover. By educating themselves in line with organisational objective the firm stands to gain increased job performance making the company more productive and profitable. The organisation also benefits in terms of focus the employees giving the company an easy time to fulfil its timeline goals. In the aspect of meeting employee needs the use of SDL is a good way to complement the traditional ways of learning. This by far, is one of the most cost effective ways to make the organisation better at a limited expenditure ratio. An audit of my competency Communication Communication is one of my strengths. I am conversant with the ability to express self well in writing essays, reports personal statements posters for forthcoming events, presentation and email contacts for any of the preceding skills. Verbally, I can connect with people easily making friends and contacts, gathering information for instance while on holiday or to solve a problem at work in person over the telephone. For formality purposes, I can clearly present my issues to a group concisely. I am a good listener and attend actively in order to make sure there is complete understanding of what is going on. Body language techniques are in place to since I have the ability to match body language appropriately when a person is communicating verbally. Working with colleagues I can easily work with others since I am natural with effective cooperation within the team. My leadership skills are utterly at the top with me managing, and coordinating campaigns that need to boost the company. Application of number I can work well with numbers and make the work I am assigned easy to understand in presentations. I interpret inferential statistics like confidence intervals statistical significance effect size easily. I have the ability to interpret descriptive statistics. Problem solving Creativity and generation of new ideas comes easy since I find fresh approaches to achieving goals stipulated by the company. I have good research capability in making systematic facts tick in the company. I have analytical skills that make the company more lucrative. I dig into concepts for better awareness for the company. I am initiative oriented since I take time to act resourcefully. I do undertake productive tasks before without waiting for the order to do so. By creating targets and pursuing self development I gain the ability to reflect and critique my own progress in the company as I keep active career development. SWOT Skills audit is rather what talks about my present attainments contrasting the skills I need in the future which brings a considerable role in my occupation. This audit soughs to determine my preset skill set and identify what I require to achieve my tasks which will help me plan more effectively and multiply my skills and knowledge in order to excel in future. Presently, I am a student pursuing my degree program. In doing this course I will have more chances to learning the progress aspect. Consequently, motivation theory is a good concept that helps me develop and motivate the urge to be better at what I am good at. It is a better opportunity to increase my skill set. Individual development plan When considering the personal and professional development plan, I based my needs on what is strongly needed in the work place. The needs will help me demonstrate and reflect my training on the development needs. This would give me easy time when doing an appraisal of my skills. Some of the competencies I feel obligated to develop as a new manager in IKEA are execution, delegation, and management. The competency entails decision making and other responsibilities that entail targets, employee’s capability when delegating among others. My developmental goal is to increase efficiency and knowledge on the departmental team in order to make accurate deliverables which facilitate effective project management. For this to happen I will need one on one meeting with team members in order to discus roles in the department. The resources needed for this developmental goal are staff, strength finder, and staff files. To measure the progress in the department and my initiation skills I will have several deadlines for one on one reports, appraise my ability to identify and describe every member of my team and how they bring value to the department. The discussions make responsibilities in the department clear and the untapped potential is ignited to the benefit of the company. My people skills need to be strengthened since I deal with many employees every particular day. I will need to make sure my listening skills are in check, friendly nature, commitment, collaboration, and teamwork. Another competency is presentation skills in the work place. Currently, I am not very comfortable giving presentations since I fidget a lot and have twitchy hands. I need presentation skill course and the developmental goal is to make me more confident while presenting. I need to earn the respect and attention of the listeners. One of the measures I will seek to place is through feedback after presentations. I will ensure a friend is in the presentations to assist in giving me a feedback on the wrong things I did during the presentation. By identifying a list of distractions I was never aware of makes me have a roadmap to confidence since I will practice while avoiding the mistakes. That will assist me in making a difference. Lastly, I will need to monitor customer satisfaction in the company in order to develop better customer relation strategies for the coming fiscal year. In doing that, I will have better timelines and a satisfied customer base that appreciates the company efforts. This aspect is set to improve my negotiation skills which I turn enhance my service agreements with customers. The resource needed in this competency is keen observations and studying negotiation books. At the same time getting insight from a good negotiator will assist in making my competency fulfilled. My ultimate goal is to achieve the stipulated developments and develop transferable skills for the rest of the employees to appraise their growth. Implementation The key processes of implementing the plan will focus on the reflective approach. While essential development approaches are viable in implementing the plan reflective approach gives me a good point to monitor and evaluate the work in progress. In reflective approach the use of observations, synthesizing of data, formulating preliminary hypothesis and refining the approaches to development of my plan. Since there has been the need to make sure the reflection and effective practice over time is in order, building systematic indication of progress is fundamental in the plan. The use of videos as reference point will be part of my implementation practice in order to scrutinize the areas that I went wrong during the process. Observation of the instructions will be part of the implementation which will assist in thinking through situations and develop alternative solutions to problems posed in my development. Action plan Set objectives Like stipulated above objectives decided on the action plan is development of communication, presentation, working with others, problem solving and general managerial skills. Since the goals are S.M.A.R.T they can easily be achieved via these format. Specification of the goals needed and the action to take will be my first action in the implementation of the plan. The goals are measurable to attain tangible indications that have accomplished the goal. Usually the perfect measures for the professional development are small measurements built into the goal. The goals must be achievable hence I decided to strengthen my available expertise while looking into better ways to make them tick in terms of the direction of the company. Lastly I made the objectives set results focused by reflective approach on the progress. I made sure the goals should measure outcomes and not activities. Identifying and pinpointing individual responsibility for the actions and what is needed to be done As stated in my development plan, identification of realistic actions, which are achievable within the resources available, will facilitate in attaining a perfect development plan. This will include identification of the resources needed in the journey to SDL. The appropriateness of the resources also ensures that the target dates are attained on time. The target dates are objectively framed in order to incorporate the work while developing my professional side. Another aspect of my action plan is the definition of my criteria before decisions on completion are made. After identifying the gap the question that always remains is how to get to the point needed. Therefore I split the tasks I need to achieve into pieces I could achieve. This will assist in the effective planning of the development sketch without losing direction. More over it assists in completion of the plan as small achievements give tremendous motivation in completion of the tasks and the final goal. This will be formulated through making of short, long, and medium term objectives. To ensure the progress is evident review of the objectives will be done on a daily basis and continually look into the progress reports. An Investigate and analysis on one work-based problem in your work environment at IKEA and suggest/recommend solutions using appropriate communication methods and styles at different level. IKEA is a multinational that deals with readymade furniture, kitchen equipment, and bedroom and in general appliances and home accessories. The company has a complex corporate structure that controls the organization from several foundations in Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Netherlands. It has a product catalogue of 12,000 products. Procurement in such a company is a constant problem since there are 470 million visitors every year and product distribution is at a constant demand pressure. With the company having cost effective prices, procurement of products might be hard due to the processes to reduce the fraudulent claims. This creates a communication problem, long lead times, incorrect and unclear responsibility splits within and between departments, and too many employees fulfill different functions from requirements, planning and payments management. With a vast company like IKEA procurement is an issue that always gives problems to the management. IKEA serves both companies and individuals and recently a series of emails from the customers expressing their unhappy thoughts on the time it takes to receive their orders. In addition to this, the guests felt the service provided was generally unsatisfactory. Particularly, one of the companies did assert to the fact that they had waited for their order for a period of one month before the order was delivered. During the time the company was doing a restructuring procedure. It was creating new catalogues and the attendants dealing with the customers were in a constant errand making them multitask while dealing with the new changes that the company was dealing with. Another issue was the fact that one customer noticed one of the staff members having a hard time processing the payments via the credit cards. The most prominent issue she identified was that she was afraid she would be double charged in the process. During my investigation I noticed the front desk was under staffed at the time and the procurement process was delayed by the new systems change. Memo to the procurement manager To: The procurement manager/ front desk employees From: Clinton Thomas, CEO Date: 4/12/2014 Subject: New Time Management Strategy It has come to my attention that the levels of efficacy in procurement procedures and project completion have hit a snag as compared to the previous quarter. Effective time management is essential to the projects the company provides to the customers. Investigate the issues and deliver and detailed report on the issues raised. Memo 2 To: the customer care department From: procurement manager Please be informed that the currently email raised grievances on the time issues on orders need appropriate response on the matter. Please, write back to the customers and inform them the company is apologetic for the issue and it would never be Read More