Assignment

Individual Reflection: Blueprint for Professional and Personal Growth

Reflect on the process of creating goals, and your ideas on becoming a more effective leader, for the BPPG in the previous courses of this program.

As in previous courses, you will now add to your Blueprint for Professional and Personal Growth. You should develop your BPPG from your learning in this course and design it to help you become a leader who can support learning organizations and who can demonstrate personal mastery and systems thinking for enhanced organizational performance.
Consider the following as you complete this Individual Reflection:

• What can you do now to integrate the experiences and insights you had in this course with your personal and professional development goals?

• What are the most important things you are taking from this course that will shape your future and enable you to make a positive difference?

All components of the Individual Reflection should be turned in as one document:

1. The executive summary: Write an Executive Summary of the course to date (2-3 paragraphs) that addresses the following questions:

• Which content and assignments in this course most helped you to better understand how to foster a culture of organizational learning and how to apply systems thinking to achieve enhanced organizational performance within your organization (or one with which you are familiar)? What impact have the assignments had (or will have) on the value you will bring to your role within an organization?

• How have the content and assignments changed the way you think of the role of systems thinking, constraint management and performance within the organization?

• How can the knowledge you gained in this course enable you to make a positive difference?

• In what ways do you think the knowledge and skills covered in this course can influence positive social change within an organization, community, or more broadly?

• How have the content and assignments continued to shape your goals?

2. In his book, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge talks about how important "Personal Mastery" is to the health of both you as an individual and leader and to organizations. Read Chapter 8, "Personal Mastery" from The Fifth Discipline, then respond to the prompts below. (Note: Review all of your previous BPPG entries and analysis, the concepts from Chapter 8, and the concepts from this course).

Then, complete the following:

• Present your own "personal vision" as Senge describes the term on pages 136-138. Note that this personal vision goes far beyond traditional goals and objectives.

• In what ways does your personal vision relate to your ability to lead positive social change within your organization, your community, or more broadly?

• Identify and discuss one way, at minimum, in which your experiences to date in the MBA program have helped you understand, craft or move towards your personal vision. If none have occurred, now that you have that vision more formally defined, review the course descriptions of the upcoming courses in your MBA program and identify those that you think will help contribute towards your personal vision.

3. Your action plan: Write a detailed action plan for one new goal for professional and personal development (you will continue to build on the list of goals you started in your previous course). These action plans should include the following:

• Your specific goal for professional and personal development with an explanation as to why you selected it. Be sure to provide concrete and specific examples of why the goal is important, the extent to which this goal enables you to be an agent for positive social change, and the personal or professional value you expect from achieving the goal, and how the goal relates to the resources you reviewed in the course.

• Hint: If you want to expand upon a plan or initiative you have already proposed in a previous week, feel free to so.

• At least two objectives for the goal you have identified. Provide a rationale that explains how your objectives support the goal.

Guidance on Assignment Length: Your BPPG, including the Executive Summary (which should be 2-3 paragraphs in length and no more than one page single spaced), your personal vision, and your action plan should be 3-6 pages total (1.5-3 pages total if single spaced).