{"id":5887,"date":"2021-08-08T21:08:34","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T01:08:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/?p=5887"},"modified":"2021-08-08T21:08:34","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T01:08:34","slug":"reflection-5-solving-problems-improving-leadership-at-the-american-cancer-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/2021\/08\/08\/reflection-5-solving-problems-improving-leadership-at-the-american-cancer-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection #5 Solving Problems\/ Improving Leadership at the American Cancer Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have found the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) to be such a great place to work this summer. But there are definitely some things that I have identified that could be improved upon within the organization. The biggest thing that I believe should be worked on to improve the effectiveness of the organization is the lack of follow for things that are not urgent and top priorities, or that are recommendations for things that are already working but could be improved upon. What I mean by this is, there are things that need to be done every week and urgent things that come up that get the most priority. These things get done and they get done well. But things that don\u2019t have to be finished by a certain deadline or are considered less high priority seem to be pushed aside too often and get less priority and urgency than I believe they should. Additionally, we often talk about ways to improve our current ways of doing things, our current strategies and methods, but there is a lack of follow through with actually implementing these things because they often get pushed aside and seen as lower priority. It seems to me like there is a lot of time spent talking on ways we can do things better, but not nearly as much time spent on actually doing these things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While I have seen this across many groups and employees within the organization, I do think it definitely can be improved upon. I think the number one way to do this is to set tough deadlines for things that seem to be of less importance and by having multiple people commit certain hours of their week to work on the things that usually fall wayside. As an intern, I have seen how much can get pushed aside because I am the one who has picked up on these things. One example of this is social media tracking (tracking the engagement of social media posts).\u00a0This is something that they try to do regularly but when I was assigned to work on this in June, it had not been updated since February. Beyond setting strict deadlines and committing more time to things, I also think there needs to be a change in mindset when it comes to looking to improve current methods and approaches. I think the organization should only really take time to talk about things that need to be improved upon if they are going to take the time to work on it. Instead of talking about 10 areas where things can be improved upon. Use this time to talk about 3 things, and then focus just on these three things and actually do it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The second thing that I will discuss in this post is misuse of leadership. While I do think that organization gives a lot of responsibilities to everyone, even me as an intern, and a lot of trust to each person working there. It seems that everyone has gotten into a rhythm of doing much of the same thing and playing the same role constantly. I believe this is a misuse of leadership because it is an inability of those in leadership to delegate correctly. I think it is very important for growth of an organization and improvement of an organization for employees to be constantly learning and growing and for fresh eyes to be looking at different things. This is also a misuse of leadership because there is a lack of growth for many employees who seem stuck in a follower role but would benefit from being able to take on some roles of leadership. ACS CAN constantly talks about trying to diversify their volunteer base, especially by bringing in younger volunteers, yet it is the oldest employees that are running these projects, these employees who are experienced yes, but much more out of touch with younger generations. They look for new ideas from younger people, but ultimately fail to let these younger employees really take the lead. I think the risk of doing something like this would definitely be worth the reward of succeeding. The best way to solve this problem is simply to mix things up and move beyond what is most comfortable, delegate different things to different people, and give younger and less experienced employees more leadership opportunities. This would greatly benefit the organization. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have found the American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network (ACS CAN) to be such a great place to work<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5183,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[76627],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-solving-problems-improving-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5888,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5887\/revisions\/5888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/jepsoninternship2021\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}