BLOGS GREATNESS

First day of class, the professor mentioned how our assignment will be posted by us in our blogs. This was very unique to me, since I have never posted any blogs for any class before. The professor tried to promote communication doing this. In my opinion, he greatly succeeded. With every blog, we knew more about each other. Where we came from, what did we think about various tasks that we performed in class, our vision, along with many other things. Many professors, stress how important communication is in everything we did, and yet do not promote it. I believe that the blogs were very affective to me and to the class in general.
I believe I benefited greatly from meeting other people online. I realized that every person is unique in a certain way, and different from anyone else. The blog about vision can best support that statement. While certain people’s goals and objective were to own ten houses and ten cars, many people’s objective was to have a save place to live with a great family. I would have never learned that, if not for these blogs.
After many class activities, the class had to write the blog. I think this was a great idea, because now in your own time, you could go back and dissect everything you did in class. Find the things you did right and keep doing them, and improve the things that you think did wrong. It was a way of rethinking the way you do things. This could be greatly applied in your own life away from school.
The professor randomly put up articles for us to read about management, away from what we were doing in class. I think it was very helpful, since we got to look at management in general. The examples about corporate culture, and my favorite professor’s blog about the falling bear was very interesting to me. I think the professor, put up enough blogs for us to read. Not only it educated us, but it also entertained us. I think that I will continue to post about management blogs. Hopefully someone in our class could stop by my page once in a while and read what I wrote. I think that this blog was very effective in promoting communication. I think the professor needs to keep using it in the semesters to come. I cannot think of any major improvements that could be done to improve it. I think the blog is great as it is.

POEM

It is more than just a skill you learn
It more a talent that you earn
To manage others and make them work sync
While controlling everything they do and think
To earn the talent of management and learn the skill
One must climb up the vigorous social hill.

The McDonald's Experiment

On Sunday April 27, I did a very unique task. Sometime around 6 pm, I stepped into a McDonald’s branch located on Kings Highway and East 16. For my managerial extra credit assignment, I was supposed to come to the cashier, and order a cheeseburger from the dollar menu, with four pickles inside, along with French fries without any salt. When I stepped inside McDonald’s, I was a little bit intimidated because I did not want to make a scene, with the place being as packed with people as it was. As I was waiting on the line, I was observing how fast the employees were working, and noticed that the manger was helping her employees by taking some orders. There was one line per three registers. When it was my turn to order, I stepped to the register where the manager was working. I asked her for my order, of a cheeseburger with four pickles and French fries with no salt. She took my order in a professional manner without double asking me what I said. She acted as if she gets these strange orders every single day when she is working. After I paid, I had to wait about 5 minutes for my fries. The manager put in a new batch of fries in the oil, since the already prepared fries were covered with salt. When I received my order I had not salt on my fries and had exactly four pickles in my cheeseburger. I was very impressed with how the manager handled the situation in a professional manner. I was expecting to get into an argument, demanding my four pickles, but I did not. This experiment proved the manager worthy of her position in that branch of McDonald’s.

Personality test

In our leadership/management diagnosis I came out to be an “I”. I was very glad that the test came out this way. Not because I think it is the best way to manage, but simply because I believe that it perfectly describes my personality. After hearing someone’s suggestion, if I do not fully agree with it, many times I would explain to him or her why it is wrong, in a calm and persistent manner. I am trying to be influential, while still proving and pushing my point. I do not think that I can become another type. I spend my whole life, being an “ID.” I do not believe that I can be very statistical, or creative. Sometimes I can be dominant, but in a managerial position, it is best to influence, you get your point across, and you help other people adapt to your point. I do not think that this test should be conducted prier to hiring someone. The professor mentioned how an “ID” or “DI” are best suitable for managers, and he himself was not one of the two. I strongly disagree with the fact that you can make your decision on hiring a person just by looking at this test. I am positive that there are great managers that are neither ID nor DI. This test would definitely help me with my personal intersections. Now I clearly know where I stand. Even though I was influencing people all along, I never knew it. This test just opened my eyes, and helped me understand what I was doing.

My Vision

Four years ago, if asked what were my ultimate goals, I would have sat scratching my head thinking of how to answer the question for hours. I did not know if there should be any perimeters or boarders set on such things as goals. I never wanted to go too far. I did not want people to take me as a dreamer rather than and actionist.
All of that stopped when I read Ted Turner’s article on success. He stated that a person who wishes to get anywhere in life, needs to set his goals so high that he would never reach them. Mr. Turner mentioned how people who set their goals low, end up achieving them and living the rest of their lives without any meaning. Taking Ted Turner’s advice I set my goals very high, so high that I would outgrow many people just by trying to reach them.
One of my goals is to create my own news network. I watch news everyday, and being informed of our surroundings and the world in general makes us all more versatile. I would want to create a news network that provides more information than its competitors. I would like to hire journalists who are not scared to take sides, over those who just report facts. My second goal is to become a CEO of a fortune 500 company. I believe that by achieving this status, I would know that every single day that I spent in school studying did not go to waist. In addition, having such a rank would put me in a position where I have to make crucial decisions, and take on responsibility that I so well desire. My third goal is to open up a set of hotels along with nightclubs all over the nation, and hopefully one day expand overseas. Since I was a little child I always wanted to leave my mark on the planet, and I think that this is one way I could do it.
With all of this said, my goals are obviously set higher than the typical standard of “realistic” goals. And that is how I wanted it. I am going to apply everything that I learned in school, plus everything that I will learn in the future to achieve these goals. I am going to take an extra year in school just to learn subjects that I was not required to take, just to make me a smarter person. I will work very hard to try to achieve these goals, and if I am not going to reach them, I am at least going to know that the journey was well worth it.

Disaster in Decision Making

During our in class activity, to determine the faith of the class' first exam, many conflicts broke out. Many people took different approaches either to favor themselves, or to favor the class as a whole. The way I see it, the conflict was devided among two different topics, the first one being the exam that we took, and the second one being the style of our next exam. For the first topic, I picked "Compete to Win." I received a grade of 88. I was strongly voting for the curve, because with that curve, my grade would have been boosted to 95. People who did better than me, or way worse than me picked drop the lowest grade as an option. I took "compete to win" as a way of solving this conflict, is because I believed that it would benefit me enourmously, and it would also benefit the class. Nobody would be hurt if the grade is curved. The professor said that we need everyone in the class to agree, and I would not agree if it was anything besides curving the grade. I am sure most people had the same look on this as I did. Amazingly enough, at the end we got to please both, the people who wanted the curve, and the ones that wanted their lowest grade dropped. On the second part, where we were picking the format of our next exam, I took the "Avoidance" way. I decided to withdraw. I believed that if everyone keeps throwing their ideas in, we will never get anything done. Unlike the first part where we had much more time, for the format of our next exam we had almost no time. That is the biggest reason I chose to withdraw, just to come to a common conclusion. Given the reaction of my classmates, I would have prefered to devide the class into certain groups, which would elect leaders who would represent them. This way we could have had, about 5 people speaking at a time, representing their group, instead of 80 people screaming out their ideas and causing great conflic. Since we were caught by suprise, and in the heat of the moment, people's selfishness did not let them think properly.

Great planning led to failure

Given the task at hand, me and the team decided to follow the typical procedure of planning. Step one is to define your goals and objectives. Our goals and objectives were clearly given by the professor. Our goal was to give a secure base to an egg so that when we dropped it from approximately 10 feet high into the garbage bin, it would not break. In step two, we looked at our resources which were eight regular drinking straws and about three feet of tape. When giving out positions we picked the shortest person to drop the egg, so that the height would have shortened from which the egg was dropped to reduce the amount of force our object would encounter when hitting the bottom of the garbage bin. Then we went around the group asking each person what they think about how the egg should be secured, which would constitute as step three. Some ideas were dismissed given the proper explanation of why it might not work, and others were considered. Then we picked the best one as a team. The design was very good. As we got our resources, and as we started putting things together we fell apart. People were innovating and focusing on things that were not supposed to be innovated or focused on as much. The execution was terrible on or team, even though the design was very good and would have most likely worked. If I was to take back time, I would have clearly stated which things were more important, and on what we needed to focus most our time on.