Management poem

Running on the treadmill makes me sweat
Thoughts of elliptical runs through my head
Bits by bits the sweat trickles down
O yes! I think I am getting drown

Writing in my journal
Rushing to get works done external
Recording expenses and planning tomorrow’s spending
O yes! I think I can increase some saving

3 a.m another sleepless night
Piles of books gather in sight
O I said I procrastinated again
I blame shows such as Gossip Girl and 90210

What is to prioritize first?
What is more important to occur?

It all comes down to if I can manage to do everything all at once

Communication via Blog

Having a blog is an important tool used to understand this class for purposes of both learning about the materials and getting to know of our fellow classmates. It helps me at least reflect back to the class activities we had done and what I got out of from those activities. It also provides a useful communication passage for number of us to get to know each other. By reading and commenting to other people’s blogs, we get a sense of knowing the similarities and differences in us—our dreams (from Power of Vision) and our personalities (from personal profile system). It did help me in meeting others via online and extended to communicating in class. The blog initiated communication between classmates who I didn’t get a chance to talk in class. It helps to establish a more comfortable and learning experience. It counts for 20% of our grade (required no outside research), which I think is beneficiary. It is definitely an easier task than writing a paper or essays relating to management, because the topics we wrote for are merely reflection of what we learned.

I am not exactly sure if I will still use the blog after this class has ended, because I have a Xanga which I have been writing on since high school. I might come back to this blog for mostly academic purposes.

Finally, I do think that the blog should remain a component for this course, because it is an effective tool (at least to me it is). I think it can be improved if students write more on it, using it as both academic and personal use, because from what I see most people including me, we just posted assigned blog on the topics we had to write, but we rarely posted any other ones other than the assignments. Maybe some people don’t have the habit of writing blog, but it will be a good idea if the professor can give an extra credit of 1 or 2 for people who use the blog constantly, so that way, there is more communication between students.

Trip to McDonal--A Special order: Picky Picky

The trip to McDonald was hectic. The staff who took our special order for “hamburgers with exactly four pickles and small French fries with no salt” looked confused, thus she made us repeat it several times.

Most fast food restaurants punch in the orders systematically. The staff input the orders into the system, and other staffs would prepare the food. When we requested for our special orders, she was unable to input our orders with exactly four pickles. Consequently, she spoke in Spanish to the staff in the back to clarify our orders. By her tone and her facial expression, I could tell she was not pleased to serve us.

To make the matter worst, we embroiled in obtaining our receipts separately. We explained in the beginning that we wanted individual receipt but we would pay the total together. Maybe we didn’t make it clear, because she only gave us one bill, and the bill didn’t show four pickles or fries with no salt. We asked her to print four more receipts, but she was unable to do so. Meanwhile, there were many people lining up behind us. She started to look even more aggravated, despite that, we continued to ask for the receipts. Finally, she looked for the manager for assistance. He, too, was unable to print more receipts because he didn’t want to mess up the transactions that were already in the system. So we asked if he could write us the receipts stating our requests. Luckily for us, he took the time to do that (I felt that he just wanted us to get out of there and serve the next customers).

Although the order took longer, it was completely correct. On top of my burger, there was a slip tagged on printed “extra pickle”. I guess it was used for the staffs to identify the orders. The food preparation itself did not take long, but it took more than 10 minutes for the manager to write the receipts.

The communication between the staffs was less verbal and more systematic. Each person was put into his/her own role performing specific task. There were three people involved in the ordering—the angry staff, the manager, and the staff in the back. I felt guilty for causing such hassle for the workers.

I didn’t like the customer service I was getting. I could see from the staff’s perspective that the order was unusual, but as an employee, she should show more patience and care toward customers. The manager was there when she took the order, but he didn’t make any remark towards her attitude. He gave workers more freedom in their work performance rather than restricting them to act accordingly.

I would say they cooperated well among one another (not mentioning the confusion part about the receipt). They assisted one another when needed. I would give it 7 out of 10 for their work.

If I were the consultant, I would definitely ask the staff to have better customer service toward special orders and also have a more advanced input registrar machine (the one that is more flexible in punching in special orders). This way, the staffs can be better prepared for the challenges in the future, and the customers can have a more pleasurable buying experience.

The ABCs of DISC High C Low S

The results pretty accurately gauge my management orientation. I was a High C (conscientiousness) and a Low S (Steadiness). Some characteristics from C that I see myself in are concentrating on key details, weighing pros and cons, checking for accuracy, using policies only as guidelines, stating unpopular positions, clearly defining performance expectations, and controlling over those factors that affect my performance. And from characteristics of S, I see myself in performing in consistent, predictable manner, desiring to help others, being a good listener, showing loyalty, and working at a predictable routine. There are a few from both lists such as making quick decision and reacting quickly to unexpected change are something I don’t manage well.

I wish I could have some of the characteristics from D, because Type D seemed more like a leader and has qualities of being a leader. They initiate a cause, accept challenges, take authority, and solve problems. They are the one that lead people in many cases, and they are optimistic about the matters.

I think it is helpful to determine people’s management type to better understand them and also establish a better personal relation. It is an easy test to have an overview of how the person is―whether this person can work well with others, lead others in a team project, or being a good listener, and get work done routinely. Furthermore, this test enhances our own understanding of ourselves. It classifies our behaviors and offers a range of both positive and negative descriptions of us. In this case, I know that when I interact with another C, we will have more in common and thus infer that we may be working well.

The Power of Vision

There are many things I want to accomplish in life, but I don’t think all of them are realistic enough for me to take actions and make them happen. However, there are few that are not just simply “dreams”. Here are the lists f my visions that I need to work hard to accomplish them.

1- Personal goal: to travel around as many countries as possible. I love to travel to different places. I am excited to learn about different cultures in countries that I have visited. In order to make this possible, I need to have enough savings for my traveling expenses, food, hotels, etc. So this personal goal actually goes hand in hand with my business goal. I also need to make a plan for this traveling trip. There will be a lot of planning to do, such as researching on the location, cities, hotel, currency, lifestyle, etc.

2- Business goal: finding a stable and high salary job. I vision myself being the owner of a Bakery/Coffee shop. I want to do my own business relating to the culinary area. To accomplish this, I am taking classes relating to different areas of expertise of being a successful operator in the future. But I think a lot of the success also depends on myself, because certain skills I can’t learn from classrooms. So during my free time, I do baking such as brownies, cheescakes, lemon cakes, now on to baking cookies. In the near future, I want to take culinary arts class to further explore this career and create my own cake related products.

3- Volunteer goal: I want to join volunteer groups and travel to those underdeveloped countries and assist the poor. This has been a long dream goal I used to envision when I was a kid. I want to make a change for a good cause, whether physically or mentally affecting the lives of those who were born to a less wealthy country. I am considering on joining social workforce, maybe I can do this after becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Decision Making Process Debrief

At first I thought collaborating might have worked the best for this decision making on changing our grade points and changing the format for the next exam. Collaborating requires “bargaining and negotiation among groups”, and each group’s insights are equally important in this process. That was how I viewed the class in the beginning when we divided into our group and shared with our teammates about the possible ways to get that higher grade. As time went by, it seemed like all of us were only focusing on our team rather than getting everyone to join in as whole class to discuss this matter. I was thinking to myself then, how was it possible to get everyone to agree on the final decision? It just seemed to be an impossible mission. Halfway through, few people took the role of a leader and brought all of our attention to the front of the classroom. In order to reach to a final decision, we must gather EVERYONE’s consent and ideas. There were 80 of us there, all of us received different grades for this exam, and most of us did poorly. In this case, we all shared different values—the ones who scored lower grade would seek to bring their grades up, and the ones who scored higher held a different belief. Moreover, each of us has different areas of expertise, either in multiple multiple choices or in the essay questions. It is hard to settle this matter to satisfy everyone’s needs.

When the class got embroiled on the matter of what to do with our current grade, whether we should drop it, curve it, and/or have extra credits assignment, I observed the anxiety that filled the room. I observed the leader was trying to get people’s attention, and some helpers were trying to calm people down and let each person talked about his/her idea. Some got really pissed, I could tell by their tone when they spoke. As for me, I kind of took the step of avoidance—sit back, shake my head, thinking it would be impossible to reach to that conclusion on time. I thought it would be more hectic if EVERYONE proposed their ideas because we had limited time in this case.

I think a better way for this decision making process to work is if everyone pays attention to the person who spoke, because since I chose avoidance, I heard that most people just repeated the same problem over and over again without reaching to an agreement. And some were confused on what the proposed idea was, because the terminology of voc being used make it complicated to understand, such as the idea on having multiple multiple choice but on each multiple multiple choice there should state how many correct choices for that particular questions have. But overall, I thought it was pretty amazing that we arrived to a final decision. It was a tough task.

An Eggs-cellent Way to Plan!!!!!!!!

My group did successfully completed all the steps in the planning process.

First started as a class, we were told of our goal for this activity, which was to construct an egg protector using limited materials and drop the egg from 10 feet high into a container, and if we achieved this we would receive 5 extra points on our exam. Then we were given our objectives, which were to name the egg, to develop and draw the design of our egg protector model, and to be able to see 50% of the egg shell.

As a group, we first brainstormed different ways of using 8 straws and tape to construct the model. We thought of cutting the straws in half, that way we would have 16 of them. We came up with several ideas of using the straws and and placed them around the egg, except not covering the top part, and then we spent some time discussing the idea. We would use the tape and place it between the straws and the egg, because the straw would not have enough resistance to protect the egg from breaking. Then we talked about the flaws and WHAT IFs when we dropped the egg, it landed on the top part where it had no protection. We considered different factors and generated scenarios for alternatives that might have occurred. Most of our ideas revolved around our first idea of taping the straws around the egg. This first idea prevented us from coming up with something different, something extraordinary. I think this was because sometimes we were too concentrated on one idea, and we modified our plan accordingly to correct the flaws. It kept us from overlooking and going beyond that point. We divided up the work in the team. Each of us helped built the model by placing 4 straws on the table and taping the straws. We then taped the straws to the egg. Although the straws only covered four sides, we tried using the leftover tape and covered the rest but with 50% shell shown. We thought it would not break because the parts that were covered by the straws were strong enough to resist the force even if it was dropped and bounced on the floor. However, the parts with shell showed were not guarantee 100%. As the result, our egg only cracked a small percentage on the side. I would say my team’s performance was still successful, and that we were also effective in almost all stage of the planning process.

I think it would be more effective if I could come up with a really different idea. I felt like some times I am surrounded by these borders or walls around my mind that I couldn't reach out. Or simply say that I am stuck by these rules, because I saw how other teams came up with just connecting the straws together and reached it down to place the egg into the container, this was one of the idea, and it wasn’t hard. But overall, I think my team did well.