Evaluation
Coming towards the end of my Master’s journey, I am at this stage in a position where I can draw some conclusions in relation to the work I have done during this year and the limitations that have been discovered as a result of the many interventions to answer my initial question.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this project, I have started this project with a personal desire that came from my own personal experience of being always considered different because of my background. The desire to make a change and improve other people’s life has been the main motivation for me to continue and obtain successful results from my interventions. The self swot below shows in more depth what have been my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and Threats during this year.
Reflecting on the start of this project, one of my weaknesses has been the lack of expertise in this topic; Diversity and Inclusion is very big area and it includes many factors and therefore at the beginning, I was not sure how and in what direction to proceed. Moreover, I would also add that my strong initial motivation might also be considered partially a weakness and a threat as I was eager to make a change immediately and obtain feedback right away without realising that changes take time and feedbacks does not always come the way I expect them to be.
Another one of my weaknesses that sometimes has made me stressful is my lack of experience in pitching my project or findings to stakeholders or peers.
Since my first turning point at the end of Unit 1, I have discovered that I needed to be an expert in this field in order to lead everyone around me to trust my knowledge and findings, and ultimately take my project seriously, and the only way to do this was to obtain more knowledge. In this regard, I have used my motivation, dedication, and communication skills to successfully engage and network with different stakeholders who have initially provided me with invaluable knowledge, but also after reviewing my interventions provided me with meaningful feedback to support my project research and its development.
As I have mentioned in the Threats aspects, initially I was concerned about the role of failure in this project; more specifically I am not referring to my willingness to fail, as I consider myself being an individual who has always challenged himself to grow and improve through also failing in some decision making, but I am referring more precisely to my concern of the level of failure that I might encounter. In this regard, considering my initial desire to undertake this research, I consider failure for example not being able to interest people and stakeholders about the meaningfulness of this topic or not being able to manage time and resources to successfully engage and implement my interventions in the chosen businesses.
This course has provided me with the time and resources to optimally discuss the development of my project, as I have mentioned above in Opportunities aspect, through the numerous group projects and presentations, I was able to improve my pitching skills and also be able to constantly improve my designing and presentation skills. I was also able to challenge myself in finding new ways to reach out to people and stakeholders such as organising Instagram live events at the beginning, or using LinkedIn or other social media to connect with industry experts, and ultimately learning and using ZOOM and organising interviews with them.
The opportunity to reach out to stakeholders and provide something meaningful for their business has made me feel a valued individual in the industry, which has in the case of VOWOW let me create great connections across all the management till the team members and enrich my network with a very diverse team. Moreover, being able to deeply discuss performance evaluation tools to be implemented from scratch in their business is something that I consider an extremely valuable experience and knowledge that will help and support me in the future development of this project.
Moreover, the group tutoring I was receiving, has in my opinion been the greatest support and opportunity of this year, in this regard, I am grateful for this opportunity as the learning obtained through these sessions has been by far one of the most rewarding of this project. During my educational career, I have never felt supported as it has happened during this year. Because of my tutors, I am now able to evaluate problems from multiple views and I have the ability to make more appropriate questions, and through the end of this project, I have developed experience in creating strategies to answer them.
In conclusion, I would say that not all my interventions have been successful, for example, a big limitation has been obtained from JDR Motors, which has absolutely refused to communicate or answer further questions, considering workplace inclusivity and performance evaluation tools not necessary to their company. In this regard, I have obtained new knowledge such as the cultural agility aspect being something that I was not considering before this intervention, and this has been a favorable aspect to evaluate while planning my next intervention. I have learnt that no feedback or no answer can still be considered knowledge learn something new from it.
In relation to the limitation of this project, I would say a big part can be considered Time. Through all the units I was challenged to obtain new knowledge and create new interventions which have led me to a good level of testing and proposition implementations within my stakeholders’ businesses. In this regard, I must consider that if time wasn’t being a limitation, I might have been able to test my findings and implement my proposition within many more businesses to provide a much more accurate validity of this project. However, being in an academic context I realise that this project has developed successfully within the timeframe of the academic year, and most importantly this learning journey will serve as experience and will allow me to experiment with further projects and actions myself in the future.