Week 6

This past week, Nicole, Juan, Trey and I have come up with the idea of possible donating food from the Upper Deck or the Anchor to the Campus Cupboard or other food donation service as part of our next group project. After talking to my one manager at work at the Upper Deck, I was told to talk to Edward Nase, the Director of Dining Services to find out the different food restrictions and limitations in terms of donating it. I sent him an e-mail in hopes of a meeting, but unfortunately we didn't get an e-mail back from him, so today we went to the Dining Services office and talked to Gerry Shehan, the Associate director of Dining Services here at Millersville. He informed us that it might be difficult to donate food from the Upper Deck since it is a buffet-style dining area and there are limitations to food in terms of contamination issues, but the Anchor would be a better idea, and to look into that since it is more of a grab and go type place. We will most likely be in contact with him throughout the project.

Week 5: Theory U Ch. 6-9 Reflection

Chapter 6:

Chapter 6 highlighted more philosophical views of the "U." Two words that stuck out to me, mostly because I had no idea what they meant when first mentioned, were Ontological (being) and Epistemological (knowing). In the table that Sharmer made, these two are seen in the section related to the blind spot mentioned before in the book. A less confusing part of this chapter that I found to be the most interesting were the quotes about love given by Kitaro Nishida and David Hawkins.  Nishida said "Love is the deepest knowledge of things." Hawkins believes that we learn to access the deepest part of the "U" when we realize that love takes no position, and is "...unconditional, changing, and permanent." Love is the simplest form of understanding, but yet it is also the deepest form of understanding.

Chapter 7:

Chapter 7 once again brings up  the idea of the blind spot, as well as the different levels: individual, group, organizational, societal, social sciences, and meta levels). What really suck out to me was when it was mentioned that the only way to step through the threshold is to confront the source level of the situation, which is ourselves. I enjoyed the reference to a crack in the path that you come across. You can't help but attend to it, because its right in front of you and rather hard to ignore.

Chapter 8:

The next chapter focused on the field structure of downloading, and urged to not download because as long as our attention is guided by habitual patterns, the source of our attention will come from the center of our own minds. This can potentially hold back your organization from advancing and "learning from the future as it emerges." This is the first step in the U process that must be overcome in order to advance to the next step. The example of the failure of a fictional Global Health Company really shed some light on the different methods of different CEOs, each of which failed because of never properly following through with their missions to change. Each CEO exemplified the barriers to organizational learning and change, which are:

1. Not recognizing what you see
2. Not saying what you think
3. Not doing what you say
4. Not seeing what you do

Chapter 9:

Chapter 9 advanced to the next stage of the U, which is "seeing." After a person has overcome their habit of downloading, they can then shift over to actually seeing, which gives them the ability to clarify question and intent, move into contexts that matter, and most importantly suspend judgement and connect to wonder. The example of George's stay in India and attempting to give medical care to those in need, and then receiving help from an unexpected person showed that people are willing to help a good cause. This opened up the avenue of researching the type of patient-physician relationships. The results included the four levels of the patient-physician relationship, which I found to be very true, and should be utilized more. Those four levels were broken parts, behavior, thought, and self-transforming presence.

Week 5: Ch. 2-5 Reflection

Had this saved as a draft for about a week and forgot to publish...oops!

Chapter 2:
                                                                                                                                                                    Chapter 2 begins discussing the five levels of change, which is two more levels added from the previous section. The first is called presencing, which is, according to Scharmer, "seeing from our deepest source." The first thing that popped out at me though while reading this chapter was the interview with Brian Arthur from Xerox. He discussed the two levels of cognition, with the basic level being just working with your conscious mind. The second level is a much deeper form of cognition, which is knowing. This is basically coming from within yourself, and where you're coming from in your own experience. I took this as almost a realization. It may not come right away, but once it does, you must act upon it. This is illustrated in a three-step process, which is to observe, retreat and reflect, and act in an instant. Chapter 2 also elaborated more deeply on the processes of the U. I feel like upon reading about the five levels of change that this is where businesses sometimes fail because of the fact that they don't follow through, causing them to be stuck in a rut.


Chapter 3

Chapter 3 discusses learning and change on four levels. These include the first level reacting, or responding naturally by your normal habit. The second level is redesigning, which is to change the underlying structure and process. Level three is reframing, or changing the overall outlook, and level four is presencing, which was discussed in Chapter 2. The second two levels, I feel are the most difficult because companies will realize the problem and strive to redesign their structure, but fail to rethink the problem at hand in-depth. This ties into the difference between learning from the past, which is what is usually done given that its easier, and learning from the future, which can be difficult to do unless you rethink the situation.

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 started out explaining the three different types of complexities. The first was dynamic complexity, which is the most well known, and is when there is a systematic distance or delay between cause and effect in space or time. I particularly enjoyed the example of global warming that Sharmer included, being that our emissions of carbon dioxide may not have much of a noticable impact now, but could possibly have a long-term impact, possibly over thousands to millions of years. The second, social complexity, seems to have its focus more on the different interests and worldviews among everyone. This is where personal beliefs and interests get in the way of finding a universal way of pleasing everyone, which can be virtually impossible, depending on the situation. The third and final complexity- emerging- has a similar reference to the phrase enveloping the entire book: "Learning from the future as it emerges."

Chapter 5:

Chapter 5 was probably the most confusing to me, but the point that stuck out to me the most was the fact that people create organizations and such, but then face the risk of ultimately failing because they get trapped within their own rules. I feel like the touchy subject of religion can fit into this, back to when you were shunned or killed for not following the bible or the guidelines of the religion, to this day in age with the struggle of equality for all people, specifically those of the LGBT community.

Week 5: Poster Project Statement

We came up with a poster that would allow observers to interact with the poster by filling out what their peace is, along with a Peace Campaign. We also held an event that allowed people to fill out their own banner piece which was to be strung up like a Tibetan peace banner. Just the amount of anonymous, personal answers given on the banner pieces shows that the Peace Campaign was a success. It gives a new way of looking at peace by seeing what others value that you might take for granted.

Week 4: Final Overview of project

Over the course of the past few days, we got multiple participants to fill out our banner pieces through a small event that was held in the lobby of Breidenstein, as well as the posters we hung up in the stairwell of this building.

We also strung up all of the banner pieces and hung them in the design lab to be displayed, and plan on hopefully hanging it up in the lobby if Breidenstein for everyone who enters the building to see, and pick out the piece that they filled out. We were excited to receive so many honest responses, and decided to not promote the hashtag feature so much, because people are more honest and serious in their answers if they are kept anonymous.

Overall we had a great time with this project, and hope to further promote our Peace Campaign beyond Millersville University.

Week 4: 9/14

This week, Emily and I worked on further refining our poster after receiving the feedback from the last class critique, which included changing the color of the flags at the bottom to resemble the Tibetan peace flag, and adding more tags to the poster. Other than that, we kept everything else the same.

We also created our Facebook event and put up posters in Breidenstein, McComsey, and Shenks Hall advertising the event here in Breidenstein on Wednesday. Emily is going to be at the event to pass out the individual pieces to people for them to fill out, and I will try to get people to fill them out who are in our other classes or work. We are hoping to have all 48 filled out, plus the ones on the poster as well.

Week 3: 9/9

Over the weekend we worked on further refining our poster. We have both decided after discussion that a Facebook event would work well to promote our campaign. We would like to go to the Student Memorial Center and hand out the triangles for people to fill out and hang on a line to be hung up. This campaign would strictly be campus-wide, because it ideally it wouldn't work as a nationwide-type event.

For next class we will work on creating the facebook event, making some adjustments content-wise on the poster, and print it out.














I also worked on a potential banner that would be put as a cover photo for the Facebook event. Some changes will most likely be made to better describe the event since it is not allowed to have a profile picture.

Week 2- Survey Results

Below you will find the results from the survey that Emily and I created on Survey Monkey. We asked general questions to get an idea of how we should carry out the poster, such as people's personal preferences of image sharing, viewing posters, and promoting social change. In just a 24 hour period, we managed to collect 24 participants for the survey.

Most of the participants in the survey were students from Millersville except for 4, and most often see posters or look for them in the Memorial Center, Academic Buildings, and Dining Halls. Other places outside of campus included Bus Stations, Supermarkets, Telephone poles, and Coffee Shops.




























I was not surprised to see that Facebook was the most popular social media source for sharing photos. I was a bit surprised though that texting came out in second over other sources. In terms of what type of content people are more likely to share, those results came out fairly even, with comedic coming in first.





























To help figure out the overall placement and design of the poster, we asked the question of which aspect catches a person's eye the most. The most popular answer was Color, and content came out last, which was not too surprising, because the first thing a person's eye will catch while walking past a poster is the color and placement of the poster (not in a cluttered mess of other posters).

Week 2: Poster Ideation

As you saw in the previous post, I came up with a few different ideas, but sadly they weren't exactly meant for this project in terms of how broad they are. After combining our research, Emily and I decided to try another topic. Today, we brainstormed during class and came up with the idea of education, and how it impacts our future. unfortunately, we had to throw those ideas out as well, and instead thought of the general meaning of peace, and brainstormed the idea of an interactive poster that encourages others to think bout what gives them peace. At the bottom of the poster, there would be perforated tabs to rip off, almost like a phone number for a job ad or lost puppy flyer. They would then write down what gives them peace, and post it up somewhere for all to see.