For the first three weeks of my internship, I had difficulty distinguishing levels of seniority among the employees. The power dynamics are not outright obvious, but rather it seems there are often blurred lines between positions. I gained clarity of the hierarchy once I had a training on staffing (how people are assigned to projects). One slide displayed a list of all the employees in the office, categorized by employee level. This furthered the hierarchy even more than I expected. Not only were there distinctions by job title, but there were sub-distinctions within each title. As soon as I saw this, I felt the various rankings in the company appear more evident.<\/p>\n
I think it took me so long to notice the power dynamics because the workforce is constructed by teams. Being included in team discussions and email chains gave me a glimpse into what each team was like and how it operated. To me, it seemed that everyone contributed a fair amount, and everyone\u2019s ideas and suggestions were appreciated. However, once I sat in on team meetings, it was clear who was running the meetings. After my staffing training, I started to realize that the complexity of tasks assigned to each team member corresponded with their employee level. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of trust within each team, as well as respect for both the \u201cleaders\u201d and \u201cfollowers\u201d.<\/p>\n
From what I\u2019ve experienced and heard from other employees, there are hardly any instances of micro-management. The general attitude at KCIC can be wrapped up in the following sentence: \u201cI don\u2019t care how you do it as long as you get it done.\u201d This isn\u2019t relatable in the intimidating \u201cJust get it done, whatever it takes\u201d way. It\u2019s more relevant to the concept that leaders at KCIC trust members to complete their assignments.<\/p>\n
I mentioned in a previous post that I am working on a problem-solving training for new hires. This is a brand-new training, of which is underway mainly to relay to new hires that KCIC allows its employees to accomplish tasks in whatever fashion they deem appropriate. The training should let new hires know that there is more than one way to solve a problem, and KCIC does not practice one standard procedure to do so. Everybody works differently, and KCIC believes that allowing everyone to embrace their talents and work on their strengths makes the company stronger. These beliefs, of course, can only be practiced if leaders and followers trust each other, and work together. Often you\u2019ll find team members working independently on a project and send it off to a leader for quality checking. At the same time, you\u2019ll even find leaders sending their work to the rest of the team for their input. Though the leader-follower disparity is more evident in certain scenarios, active teamwork among groups is what makes the contrast nuanced.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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