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My Professional Work Journal Response Essay
Brenda Zavala
Westcliff University
LDR 700: Leadership and Creative Solutions Implementation
Professor Inserto
June 23th, 2023
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My Professional Work Journal Response Essay
My Professional work journal has changed my life for good. When I started writing my
weekly reflections in week 3, I started it as an academic assignment but I had no idea the impact
it would have in my life. Taking some mandatory time to reflect about my wins and lost after every
work week not only made me a better professional, but it changed my life after doing the same for
my personal life. This essay will focus and highlight the impact that journaling had and has in my
work daily life.
Reflections on my weekly Journal from Week 3 until Week 7
To be prepared to write this essay, I read the journals I wrote from week 3 until week 7 and
realized by reading that I had apply every single advice I wrote there successfully. The “Good
Ideas” section was my key to success in my case and I will explain how it became that. On week
7, I wrote on the Good Ideas section that I should look for partners at sponsors at my job; the ones
who will help me succeed and have good intentions with me for accomplishing my professional
goals. I have also realized that the simple act of reflecting helps you internalize that information
so when the right time comes for you to act on it, subconsciously you are actively looking to get
things done. For example, I intuitively looked for a sponsor in my job that is actively guiding me
to achieve my goals faster and I couldn’t have gotten that idea if I didn’t find time reflecting about
my work and actively using my weekly journal.
Reflecting on my own mistakes also played an important role to improve my efficiency at
work. Identifying the lessons learned every week helped me avoid making the same mistakes and
being more strategic about the use of my time. One of the lessons I wrote was “Focus on your most
important/critical goal, the one your boss always asks about”. This might seem obvious but
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procrastination was playing a role in my behavior and the fear of failure as well. Consciously
understanding that I need to focus on my most important goal every single day and scheduling
time on my calendar for executing that has been working for me much better than when I didn’t
have my weekly journal.
I work for a start up in the semiconductor industry and sometimes you need to wear more
than 1 hat. Envisioning the future and spending time on how I want to see myself in the next 6
months, 5 years and 10 years has solved some of the questions I have for my future. Balancing my
personal life and work becomes relevant when you need to decide what type of role you want to
work on for the next few years.
Even though the use of the tool enhanced my performance and gave me motivation
Conclusion
As a conclusion, change management was not well implemented and executed at Meta and
this was reflected in the way how employees felt about recent changes and tech layoffs. Change
leaders should be capable of facing these situations and formal training can also be implement for
the leadership team so they know how to handle these situations. Layoffs are difficult for the
economy and employees are companies like Meta should be capable and prepared to execute
change management in an efficient way.
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References
Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Akin, G. (2021). Managing organizational change: A Multiple
Perspectives Approach (4th ed.). McGraw – Hill.
Collins, N. (2023). Big tech layoffs have claimed 70,000 jobs in the last year and it could put and
end to inflated salaries – along with innovation. Fortune
https://fortune.com/2023/01/31/big-tech-layoffs-70000-salaries-innovation/
Lauby, S. (2017). 5 reasons to keep a career journal. Workwell.
https://workwell.unum.com/2017/07/5-reasons-keep-career-journal/
Prakash, P. (2023). Meta employees accuse Mark Zuckerberg of shattering the ‘morale and
confidence in leadership of many high performers’. Fortune
https://fortune.com/2023/04/20/meta-employees-tech-layoffs-mark-zuckerberg-moraleconfidence/