A New Perception of Sustainability

Starting my second semester in the Master's of Innovation Design program I had great anticipation to take a newly introduced class - Sustainable Teams and Organizations. A class that was built around the culture of a businesses, and how is students and professional are experiencing the workplace. The class provided an open discussion that allowed us to share workplace expectations, experiences, and what we think would be the safe common ground.

The class thrived on crucial conversations that most individuals don't bring up. These conversations ranged from "What if I left five minutes early?", "Is it okay to work a hybrid schedule?", "When is the right time to leave?", and the great topic of "What am I worth?". These conversations and readings helped provide an insight on what would be an ideal fit. We as a class not only learned more about toxic environments, but we also learned that several companies have taken the step in the direction to create a safe environment for change to happen. There was rarely a consensus on how a policy or organization should be ran, but after each class I can assure that you will leave curious about what could be the perfect balance of upper management and self management.

One of the most interesting segments of the class was with a guest speaker who spoke about "Learning Organizations". This was a fantastic topic as it is slowly becoming a new norm for several companies. To describe a Learning Organization is simply to put a company that puts their employees industry knowledge growth first. A big take away I had from this class is that when am organization focus on employee success and growth it can help the company achieve better morale and start establishing a standard of continuous growth and improvement.

This class brought a new level of perception at both my career growth and the growth of the organizations I want to associate with. It has brought several new perspectives as what both organizations and individuals deal with in everyday life. This is an amazing class that helps individuals discover their values and help them find what type of organization they can continue their growth in. This class has been able to teach me about myself and the type of organizations I would like to continue my career growth with.