First week at the university.

    Organisation is a social arrangement for achieving controlled performance towards goals that create value. Every day each of us has a deal with organisations. So, my previous week started with an introduction to the University of Sussex. It was as exciting as the first day at school lots of new people, knowledge etc. Sometimes there could be some challenges with introducing to a new organisation because of its poor management. Despite the huge number of students, it was easy to achieve needful buildings and everything was explained.

    At the first business & management lesson the group was formed by the following way: 4 persons per team and needed to create the tallest tower with marshmallow on top. Actually, I have never played this game. Firstly, you could think that it is just a game, but it tests how do you work in a team. Also it helps to find out various solutions by changing the way of thinking because the mind works in conditions that are differ from routine. 

    Unfortunately, our developments were not so productive as I expected and we failed. With regards to Tuckman’s Stages of team development, we achieved only “Norming” level and missed out the first stage. To make a review of our mistakes I would like to assert that there were common problems for the team where participants do not know each other. According to Berlin’s theory where the main idea is that the well-structured team has to be appropriate balanced and includes persons with different skills. So, we did not identify different preferred team roles at the beginning therefore we did not continue the moving through the stages of team development and built only first level of tower. This game is the fastest and the easiest way to identify your problems as a team worker. Also it helps you to avoid the same mistakes in the future. It is a vital knowledge in a university life and consequently in a business.