Family Estate - Visualization 

 Challenge 

 When my father passed away in November 2009 in Zambia as a Member of Parliament 

 which is equivalent to been a Senator in America , my older brother and I became the legal 

 administrators of the family estate which comprised of a motel with 5 employees , one farm 

 specializing in cattle ranching and fish farming with 4 employees , another farm specializing 

 in maize & cattle ranching with 5 employees and some real estate properties run by a 

 property management company valued at the time about $ 500 000 . 

 Since my older brother was working in Australia and he was n’t able to fulfil his fiduciary 

 duties as been the eldest of the family to run the family estate , he took on the role as an 

 advisor along with my mother and it was decided that as the second born , I was going to be 

 the one running the day - to- day operations of the family estate as I was the second person 

 beside my father to earn a Masters Degree in Business Administration in 2007 and at time I 

 had been a business lecturer since 2007 with a background of   teaching Economics , Business 

 Administration courses and running my own business as a Research Consultant . 

 Ultimately , we found out there was n’t an accounting system in place on getting financial data 

 which would have enabled us to make informed decisions on what was happening and which 

 direction we were going to take to move forward with the motel and the two farms . As such , 

 there was also a lack of communication between management and the workers . 

 Selection 

 The visualization tool was the one we adopted the most because it enabled us to attain a 

 typical understanding of the matter space before identification and definition of probable 

 answers to the typical understanding of the matter space before identification and definition 

 of probable answers to the prevailing problems . By using the visualization tool as learnt in 

 module 1 , employing inductive reasoning , we were able to think about possibilities that we 

 had not yet seen . The choice of visualization was motivated by the fact that a conclusion to 

 the problem was already reached therefore it was necessary to open up to new unlimited 

 possibilities to reach the cause to the problem . Visual thinking gave us a whole room to think 

 about all possible answers or ideas and minimize the chance of omitting important ideas or 

 solutions within the problem space . 

 Application 

 We had 2 participants from each farm and the motel whom we put into the room with 

 whiteboard in order to conduct a mind mapping . It was necessary to encourage every 

 participant to be free from the decision made by management and upon up to design new 

 ideas or tasks that can be tested . In order to achieve the objectives of the workshop , 

 storytelling was the tool everyone had to agree no one knew the exact problems and the issue 

 of lack of communication was contributing to the problem of not reporting financial data to 

 management . The next step was to use the Stakeholder Mapping Model and it is a process 

 and visual tool to clarify and categorize the various stakeholders by drawing further pictures 

 of what the stakeholder groups are , which interests they represent , the amount of power they 

 possess , whether they represent inhibiting or supporting factors for the organization to realize 

 its objectives , or methods in which they should be dealt with . It allowed us to understand who 

 the stakeholders are for the organisation . 

 This model classifies stakeholders based on their power and interest in the project . It allocates 

 the stakeholders to one of the categories : 

  high power / high interest 

  high power / low interest 

  low power / high interest 

  low power / low interest 

 This session took about 20 minutes and the behaviours or characteristics of the stakeholders 

 in the problem space were mapped in relative terms to the business performance of their 

 business unit .   Then we had a 30 minute session where we used the tool of idea generation 

 and here were some considerations for our brainstorming session : 

  To learn from past and ongoing engagement by looking at each business unit 

 engagement activities . 

  To be forward thinking by considering potential stakeholders from new markets , new 

 customers and new impending regulations . 

  To be social since social media has provided an unparalleled opportunity to identify 

 and reach lesser - known stakeholder groups . 

  To be aware since people tend to focus on formal authorities in the mapping process . 

  To be gender sensitive since we had to include women as part of our stakeholder list . 

 Therefore , the final session about 30 minutes , participants were told to not put their names to 

 encourage emotional intelligence by answering the questions below from each category and 

 each stakeholder identified was analysed by using the following criteria : 

  Contribution ( value ): Does the stakeholder have information , counsel , or expertise 

 on the issue that could be helpful ? 

  Willingness to engage : How willing is the stakeholder to engage ? 

  Influence : How much influence does the stakeholder have ? 

  Necessity of involvement : Is this someone who could derail or delegitimize the 

 process if they were not included in the engagement ? 

  Action : We used these five criteria to create and populate a chart with short 

 descriptions of how stakeholders fulfil them and assign values ( low , medium , or high ) 

 to these stakeholders . 

 Insight & Approach 

 This exercise was very insightful because it gave us some unpredictable results into some of 

 the problems we were having even though we had initially started the exercise in the hope of 

 solving the issue of reporting financial data to management and also lack of communication 

 among the workers . Instead , the exercise revealed there was a serious issue with the 

 structure / execution of tasks from top management to the workers and the elements that were 

 highlighted attributing to the problem space were more of employees ’ motivation and 

 capacity to perform their duties efficiently and effectively . Elements that would have likely 

 been overlooked in traditional methods to problem solving were uncovered and considered . 

 Given that implementation of some of the new insights will require prototyping and testing of 

 new work - flow processes , the best approach would be learning launch . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Family Estate - Visualization 

 Challenge 

 When my father passed away in November 2009 in Zambia as a Member of Parliament 

 which is equivalent to been a Senator in America , my older brother and I became the legal 

 administrators of the family estate which comprised of a motel with 5 employees , one farm 

 specializing in cattle ranching and fish farming with 4 employees , another farm specializing 

 in maize & cattle ranching with 5 employees and some real estate properties run by a 

 property management company valued at the time about $ 500 000 . 

 Since my older brother was working in Australia and he was n’t able to fulfil his fiduciary 

 duties as been the eldest of the family to run the family estate , he took on the role as an 

 advisor along with my mother and it was decided that as the second born , I was going to be 

 the one running the day - to- day operations of the family estate as I was the second person 

 beside my father to earn a Masters Degree in Business Administration in 2007 and at time I 

 had been a business lecturer since 2007 with a background of   teaching Economics , Business 

 Administration courses and running my own business as a Research Consultant . 

 Ultimately , we found out there was n’t an accounting system in place on getting financial data 

 which would have enabled us to make informed decisions on what was happening and which 

 direction we were going to take to move forward with the motel and the two farms . As such , 

 there was also a lack of communication between management and the workers . 

 Selection 

 The visualization tool was the one we adopted the most because it enabled us to attain a 

 typical understanding of the matter space before identification and definition of probable 

 answers to the typical understanding of the matter space before identification and definition 

 of probable answers to the prevailing problems . By using the visualization tool as learnt in 

 module 1 , employing inductive reasoning , we were able to think about possibilities that we 

 had not yet seen . The choice of visualization was motivated by the fact that a conclusion to 

 the problem was already reached therefore it was necessary to open up to new unlimited 

 possibilities to reach the cause to the problem . Visual thinking gave us a whole room to think 

 about all possible answers or ideas and minimize the chance of omitting important ideas or 

 solutions within the problem space . 

 Application 

 We had 2 participants from each farm and the motel whom we put into the room with 

 whiteboard in order to conduct a mind mapping . It was necessary to encourage every 

 participant to be free from the decision made by management and upon up to design new 

 ideas or tasks that can be tested . In order to achieve the objectives of the workshop , 

 storytelling was the tool everyone had to agree no one knew the exact problems and the issue 

 of lack of communication was contributing to the problem of not reporting financial data to 

 management . The next step was to use the Stakeholder Mapping Model and it is a process 

 and visual tool to clarify and categorize the various stakeholders by drawing further pictures 

 of what the stakeholder groups are , which interests they represent , the amount of power they 

 possess , whether they represent inhibiting or supporting factors for the organization to realize 

 its objectives , or methods in which they should be dealt with . It allowed us to understand who 

 the stakeholders are for the organisation . 

 This model classifies stakeholders based on their power and interest in the project . It allocates 

 the stakeholders to one of the categories : 

  high power / high interest 

  high power / low interest 

  low power / high interest 

  low power / low interest 

 This session took about 20 minutes and the behaviours or characteristics of the stakeholders 

 in the problem space were mapped in relative terms to the business performance of their 

 business unit .   Then we had a 30 minute session where we used the tool of idea generation 

 and here were some considerations for our brainstorming session : 

  To learn from past and ongoing engagement by looking at each business unit 

 engagement activities . 

  To be forward thinking by considering potential stakeholders from new markets , new 

 customers and new impending regulations . 

  To be social since social media has provided an unparalleled opportunity to identify 

 and reach lesser - known stakeholder groups . 

  To be aware since people tend to focus on formal authorities in the mapping process . 

  To be gender sensitive since we had to include women as part of our stakeholder list . 

 Therefore , the final session about 30 minutes , participants were told to not put their names to 

 encourage emotional intelligence by answering the questions below from each category and 

 each stakeholder identified was analysed by using the following criteria : 

  Contribution ( value ): Does the stakeholder have information , counsel , or expertise 

 on the issue that could be helpful ? 

  Willingness to engage : How willing is the stakeholder to engage ? 

  Influence : How much influence does the stakeholder have ? 

  Necessity of involvement : Is this someone who could derail or delegitimize the 

 process if they were not included in the engagement ? 

  Action : We used these five criteria to create and populate a chart with short 

 descriptions of how stakeholders fulfil them and assign values ( low , medium , or high ) 

 to these stakeholders . 

 Insight & Approach 

 This exercise was very insightful because it gave us some unpredictable results into some of 

 the problems we were having even though we had initially started the exercise in the hope of 

 solving the issue of reporting financial data to management and also lack of communication 

 among the workers . Instead , the exercise revealed there was a serious issue with the 

 structure / execution of tasks from top management to the workers and the elements that were 

 highlighted attributing to the problem space were more of employees ’ motivation and 

 capacity to perform their duties efficiently and effectively . Elements that would have likely 

 been overlooked in traditional methods to problem solving were uncovered and considered . 

 Given that implementation of some of the new insights will require prototyping and testing of 

 new work - flow processes , the best approach would be learning launch .
### Output: 