!!!!!!! ONLY FOR EXCEPTIONAL PROFF!!!!!!!!

FIRST ASSIGNMENT DUE!!!!!!

PowerPoint Presentation – Communication That Needs Attention (CoTNA)

Develop a brief leadership training session that distills the essence of your Practical Application Essay. Create a PowerPoint presentation (minimum 15 slides) of your organizational analysis and focus the presentation on the two (2) communication challenges you discovered that needs attention. Upload your PowerPoint presentation no later than February 17, 2017. Students will present their PowerPoint presentation to the class during the Week 7 (February 19, 2017) webinar. Presentations shall be no shorter than ten (10) minutes in length.

Presentation Format: Envision yourself presenting your workplace organizational communication findings to a team of senior leaders who have been charged to improve your organization. Develop an informative and convincing set of PowerPoint slides that would enable the leaders to critically understand the current communication challenges, the need and urgency to act, realistic ways to address the CoTNA, and an action plan.

DUE FEB 16TH, 2017 BY MIDNIGHT EST TIME!!!!

SECOND ASSIGNMENT DUE!!!!!

Practical Application Essay: Workplace Organizational Communication Model Analysis (APA format, 12 pages)

Step I: Pre-Essay Activity: Workplace Observation

From January 16, 2017 through January 29, 2017, observe your organization workplace and operations, critically reflecting upon and analyzing how it has organized itself, communicates, and functions. As needed, professionally speak to colleagues to gain their insights.

During this pre-essay activity, you will observe organizational events that will ultimately develop your finding(s) and recommendation(s) for this assignment. This process may present objective challenges as mental models influence how we see and perceive the world around us. Be mindful of mental models while observing your organization’s culture, people, communication structures, and functions and strive for objective clarity.

Organizational Structure and Culture: Examine how your organization:

 _Has structured itself to achieve its goals and perform its daily tasks;

 _Utilizes its organizational vision, beliefs, values, leadership, policies, processes, etc. to “enculturate” its employees into what is acceptable, how work is accomplished in the organization, and how information and knowledge is shared;

 _Creates organizational processes for leaders to engage with employees and for peers to interact with each other, including functioning as effective teams;

 _Understands and distributes organizational power and decision making.

Organizational Workplace Environment and Communication: Examine how your organization:

 _Forms and utilizes workplace relationships including management practices, meetings, work groups, teams, project groups or teams, mentor partnership, etc.;

 _Creates channels of communication, including information storage and sharing, dissemination of important or new ideas, processes, etc., and gathers feedback;

 _Develops and utilizes social networking to accomplish tasks;

 _Develops and maintains working relationships and partnerships with external individuals, groups and businesses, including civic communities;

 _Communicates with customers and/or clients.

Organizational Information Flow, Knowledge Sharing, and Decision Making: Examine how your organization:

 _Accesses, manages, and disseminates its institutional knowledge and practical wisdom, including how it utilizes written policies, workplace partnerships, various types of electronic communication practices and systems, storage and report generating systems, knowledge management systems, etc.;

 _Develops and utilizes various forms of technology to get work done;

 _Gathers information, distills out and makes available knowledge from projects, events, etc., makes and implements decisions, and gains and applies feedback. Page 5 of 10

DUE FEB 24TH, 2017 BY MIDNIGHT!!!

Organizational Learning and Development: Examine how your organization:

 _Enables organizational learning, including the use of training opportunities, mentor relationships, communities of practice, etc.;

 _Structures avenues for learning from projects, successes and failures, etc. and disseminating or making accessible the knowledge gained;

 _Fosters on-going employee learning, innovative thinking, etc.;

 _Fosters on-going organizational innovation and implements change.

Also, while identifying the form that organizational communication takes in your workplace, think about what is missing and what is not working very effectively. Explore why there may be gaps in the organizational communication systems. Discern how your workplace organizational communication could be improved.

As you did for your Conceptual Application Essay, note and write down any interesting discoveries, insightful conclusions, questions, and areas of needed improvement that emerge. Weave these into your final Practical Application Essay.

The discoveries, insightfulness, questions, and areas of needed communication improvement that you develop during this observation activity will be presented orally (10 minutes) to the class during our Week 5 (February 5, 2017) webinar.

Part I: Developing an Organizational Workplace Profile (7 pages)

Now, drawing upon the information developed in the Workplace Observation Activity, compose Part I of your essay. In this section describe how organizational communication has taken shape in your workplace. Use the insights gained from your observation activity to develop your workplace organizational communication profile. The above bullet points can help you structure your profile.

Part II: Organizational Analysis (3 pages)

Next, write Part II of your essay, a discussion of the pros and cons of your workplace’s organizational communication in light of your organizational communication perspective and knowledge of management and social networking principles.

Part III: Organizational Development (2 pages)

Now, after exploring the strengths and limitations of your workplace, write the final section of your essay. Make specific recommendations to improve your workplace’s organizational communication.

Outline the core critical changes that you would make to enable your organization to communicate, share and apply knowledge and collaboratively function more effectively. Illustrate your recommendations with examples and support your position with rationale and data.

Show how two (2) of your recommendations could be practically implemented. Discuss organizational barriers to implementing your ideas and how they could be addressed. As needed, include a discussion of human and financial resources to implement your recommendation.

The student must use, at minimum, four (4) sources with eight (8) citations.