Week 4: Solving Problems at Guidepoint

While at Guidepoint I had several observations that they could improve on. These include insights into teamwork and collaboration that could positively impact the environment and also an observation about underuse of those in leadership positions. Ways that teamwork and collaboration could be improved would be to have more team based relationship building activities. As a leadership studies major I have learned what a positive difference building relationships with those you need to work with toward a common goal. Especially since working on my team remotely I think there was a strong need to get to know eachother better before working together. Knowing and understanding the personality of your coworkers can highly increase communication and motivation when working together toward a common goal. Having a few opportunities for colleagues to get together and bond outside of work could really make everyone feel more productive and communicate more effectively. 

One observation of underuse of leadership was the cancellation of our end of the summer internship project. Usually each class of interns gets divided into groups and they work on a project to improve some organizational aspect of Guidepoint. The CEO this year decided not to do the project and I think this is a key way for Guidepoint to utilize and implement creative ideas to improve their business, whether it be benefits for employees or ideas to improve technological support. Having spoken with friends who did the intern project in the past at Guidepoint and at other similar organizations I definitely think this decision was shortsighted. Many of the intern projects could have provided new cutting edge ideas and ways to grow the business and it does not take many resources to have us as interns come up with an idea to present to higher ups at the company. 

That being said I think every company has room for improvement and growth and Guidepoint has done a fairly good job of managing remote work in their teams as well as a successful remote internship. As an intern I definitely would have loved to participate in an intern project and participate in more relationship building activities as an intern and think they could really help the business and the team as a whole.