Enticing Openness Like A Sandbox Metaphors

Concept from Li Identifying one concept from the textbook by Li posed itself a very hard task. There were a lot of concepts that stuck out as important and the writing style of this book made it very easy to assess how the different concepts could be added to various organizations. However, the concept that made stuck out the most or engaged the most thought would be the concept of viewing openness like a sandbox and creating covenants rather than policies. A sandbox is not something that one would naturally think of when trying to come up with a metaphor for structure or openness. The reason why this concept enticed so much thought was because it makes a lot of sense when it is fully thought about. The sand within a sandbox stays where it

On the one hand, there are clearly defined boundaries to the sandbox, and within those boundaries, it’s a safe place to play. On the other hand, the sandbox still has rules: no throwing sand at other players, no taking someone’s truck unless you have permission (Li, 2010, Pg. 107). Li states that the first step of the sandbox metaphor is to determine how big the walls will be (2010). The best way to figure out the size of an organizations ‘walls’ would be to ask simple questions. What can employees do currently? What can the employees not do well? What ways does the organization need to be more open? What rules should be set up for the organization? Different organization can determine the different sized sandbox that they will need. The Sandbox metaphor is a great way for an organization who is struggling to communicate or an organization who is struggling to regulate the effectiveness of employee

I say this because managing information is very hard and managing information in the aspect of communication and openness is even harder. Information is an interesting field for me. I deal with a lot of information throughout the course of my work days. The hard part comes into the information that I can share and the information that I cannot share. This would be on a member and client basis. Then there is the type of information that I am told to manage and disperse this information to the right persons. The problem comes in managing who is appropriate to disperse the information. Zaremba (2010) states, “Maintenance messages explain guidelines, rules, policies, regulations, objectives, and any related procedural information. The word “maintenance” is used to describe this category of message because these communications help maintain the operations of the organization” (pg. 109). This term shook up my thinking. This was a term that surprised me by how much it made me think. Rule, policies, regulations, and guidelines are something that, most of the time, employees roll their eyes at. Many employees “know all there is to know” about the rules and guideline of the company. But Zaremba tells us that without these maintenance reminders, the company will not operate properly. This type of information is often the hardest to relay because it is not