This was the first of three consecutive day when I will be involved this program which was held by Australian School of Business (ASB) for its postgraduate students. This was the first time the program was run and it cost only AUD50. There were about 50 students joined this program and we were arranged to 10 different groups. It was started on Friday, 21 August 2009. This day the program was about ADVANCEMENT.
ACE Opening Function
It was held at 8:00 AM in Marriott Hotel, Circular Quay. We were asked to wear business attire which I think refer to a black suit.
We were provided self-service breakfast by Marriott Hotel since 7:30 AM. I tried a chocolate croissant, two donut (one with strawberry jam inside and one with caramel topping), a cup of tea (Pickwick Refresh Green Tea and Lemon), and a glass of apple juice. The cakes were good, but the drinks were just usual.
Prof. Chris Adam gave speech and declared opening of the program. At 9:20 AM two bus took us form there to ASB.
Leadership Advancement Workshop
After we reached ASB, we were directed to Room 115. The workshop was facilitated by Denise Weinreis. It was meant to equip us with knowledge about teamwork and get us ready for tomorrow's competition. We got a break from 12:00 AM - 1:00 PM and a voucher worth AUD10 for foods and drinks in Quad.
We assessed ourselves by using Belbin questionnaire, then there was an activity called Zin. Some teams of about 9 people were formed and we competed each others. My team was managed to be the first to solve the problem correctly. Other team that came second held a grudge against us and our time difference is not more than 1.5 minute. I evaluated myself and found that we actually could submit the problem earlier, but some of us might not in the same page. I mean that some people like me did not think to win, I just wanted to answer it correctly. If all of us were intended to win the activity, we might submit it earlier.
I remembered that last week I was introduced to group development model (Tuckman, 1965) in a lecture. It is consisted of five stages that are Forming-Norming-Storming-Performing. This day I was told that it was not entirely correct and she showed us a model that she developed with her partner based on a research. This is the model:
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I was disappointed with my lecturer. I remembered that several months ago I listened to a speech that said that if somebody told us something, be suspicious! The activity was continued until about 4:00 PM, then we were briefed about tomorrow's program.
What is the problem that you needed to solve?
ReplyDelete@yuku:
ReplyDeletethe "zin" problem.. it was very interesting, i want to play one more time, if i had a chance..
it is simple problem based on algebra actually, but the variables are presented in a short story about one village that had built a temple, the variables are the material used, how many labor working on it, size of the temple, by knowing all the variables, it's not that hard to solve.
this village is so remote and dont have relation to other culture, so we should not apply our culture/custom as an assumption to solve this problem, i.e., how many days in a week, it doesnt even called a week, because they might not using the sun for time measurement, another measurement for the dimension of temple, etc..
the *hardest* part is this story, that contains all the variable needed and not needed (to confuse the reader), is split up between sentences and written on many cards (50 cards).. so that everyone in person have 7-10 cards. we need to communicate verbally with each other, without showing our card to our teammates. but we do allowed to take note while listening to others.
it was hard at first because, people are telling each other only segments of the information, not as a whole, with some sentences which were not related to the problem. everyone have to listen to everyone else to get insight about the problem as a whole. one of my teammate was coming up late, and was actually left about 15 minutes without discussing, because she doesn't understand the situation and no one tell her how to begin with. this gave us significant time problem, because we didnt get the all variables to solve the problem. we even made assumption that was not supposed to be made, if we know the information from her.
so the problem's intention to tell us that, in team problem solving, it is important to always play everyone's capabilities to the maximum.