Managerial poems...

Management is no easy task,
as some people are a pain in the ass!
But as they say practice makes perfect,
so this is a good time to start and learn it.

Kurpis's class has taught us the skills,
that one day we can use to pay the bills.
Now that these skills are ours,
we need to go out and hit the bars.
Enjoy one more night our on the town,
before our finals make us frown.

Blogging review time

Does this blog benefit the students of management? Does this blog allow them to better grasp the concepts taught in class and learn from one another? I would argue it does! I feel this blog is a unique and valuable addition to a college class. By blogging, for one it allows people who prefer not to participate in class to have their voice heard as well. I found that instead of conversing with other students online and then befriending them in class, it worked the opposite way personally. I commented on people who I knew already from class, as I was interested to hear what they had to say and how they write.

Most of our required blog posts were about class activities we conducted in class, which I feel helped us better understand and evaluate the concepts taught through these activities. It also allowed us to see what others got out of the activities, maybe giving light to a different viewpoint we did not think of prior to reading their post.

The professor's blog did address different aspects of management that were not covered in class, but I feel like there could have been additional topics included in the blog. This would allow someone who would like to learn about additional topics the material to do so.

I did understand the way in which this blog offset the weight our tests take on, which takes off the pressure from us when exam time comes up. This makes the anxiety of the course easier.

I have enjoyed this blog throughout the semester, and I will definitely make an attempt to continue posting to it when I have time. That's just the problem, right now I have such a limited amount of time that I am not sure how much I will be able to post in the future.

I do feel this is a good addition to the course, and it should be continued in the future sections of the class. One suggestion may be not to make the blog posts so structured, allow the students to just write what they think about the activities in general.

Pickles and Salt

On a Sunday Night, I went into a McDonalds in Pompton Plains, NJ around 7:45 PM. There was a small line when I arrived, so I waited and approached the cashier to place my order. I ordered one hamburger with exactly four pickles and a small order of fries with no salt. The cashier at first did not find this request odd, and told me the total was over five dollars. I questioned the amount, and realized she thought I wanted four hamburgers. I corrected her and specified four pickles on one hamburger. She laughed discreetly at my request and told the cook in Spanish to place four pickles on my hamburger. She then went over to the deep fryer and began cooking a small amount of fries.

When she came back near the cashier, I told her I needed an itemized receipt stating my extra requests. She printed me a receipt which said no salt for the fries but did not say four pickles. I explained to her that I needed the extra pickles on the receipt as well, which seemed to slightly aggravate her. She questioned me on why I needed this receipt, and I replied “I just need the receipt to say a hamburger with four pickles and French fries with no salt.” She questioned me again, asking why, I just repeated myself and she began working on the computer. The receipt printed out momentarily and she handed me it with an underlying attitude. The receipt read said “extra$ pickle,” so I handed it back to her and asked her to write four next to this and initial it. She took it back and quickly scratched a four onto the receipt and handed it back to me. One could observe at this point that she was not happy with me, and impatiently waiting for my food to finish so I could leave.

After six minutes and twenty-four seconds from when I placed my order, the cashier came over and placed a bag of food in front of me and walked away. She did not wish me a good evening or thank me for visiting McDonalds. The cashier was primarily the only person involved in this transaction, besides the cook which she told in Spanish to place extra pickles on my burger. When I first arrived she was quite pleasant, but after each requests I made she grew more and more annoyed. She did complete my order correctly in a relatively timely fashion though.

Overall, the staff performed mediocre in this situation. The food was prepared in a reasonable amount of time without error. The fries were cooked fresh when I ordered them and given to me without salt, and the hamburger was prepared quickly with four pickles. The communication between the employees seemed to be done properly, but the cashier made a mistake while taking my order, thinking I meant four hamburgers instead of four pickles. She also failed to place both the pickles and the salt on the receipt the first time she handed it to me. The employees were quite coordinated, as the cashier knew exactly how to handle my request for no salt on my fries, and the cook did not have trouble placing exactly four pickles on my hamburger. The customer service definitely could have been improved, as the cashier should not have allowed me to see her frustration, and met my requests with a smile. She also should have wished me a good night after giving me my food. Since she works in a customer service position, she should be prepared to deal with situations when customers make odd requests.

If I was hired by McDonalds corporate to increase efficiency with special orders I would start by analyzing the POS (Point-of-sale) system. I would attempt to determine if it would be possible to include a keyboard option on the touch screen, therefore the cashier could write additional notes which would appear on the screen near the cook as well as on the receipt. I believe this option in particular would have made the special requests from this assignment very easy to handle by any cashier.

Management Diagnostic

On November 4th, in our management class, our professor administered a leadership test. The test rated you with one of four letters: D, I, C, or S. You received two letters which determine your management capability. Just to clarify what these letters mean, D = Dominance, I = Influence, C = Conscientiousness, and S = Steadiness. After completing the assessment I was rated a "I high D", which means my dominant characteristic is influence and my second most dominant characteristic is dominance.

I believe this assessment describes me quite accurately. I am not the most dominant position, as in I do not have to take control of every situation which arises, but I like to influence the outcome of the situation. I do not wish I was another type, and am completely satisfied with the conclusion the test came to.

I believe it is somewhat helpful to determine people's management "type" to better understand them as a person, although I definitely do not believe this assessment will tell you everything about a person. Regardless what a person's "type" is, if they have the capability to be a leader and are given the opportunity to use it, I believe they will use their capabilities.

I believe this test can help you draw some preliminary conclusions about an individual, but I believe that you would need to get to know them before you can actually determine if they have leadership potential or not.

Decision Making with a large group of people

In class, on 11/14, which was the day our professor gave us our midterm back, you could tell the classroom was unhappy with the results they received on the test. After receiving some feedback from the class, our professor presented us with a challenge. He told us to figure out as a group how we would like him to change the grades to the test. He said he would not consider anything outrageous, but he is open to a curve, extra credit etc., but every single student in the class must come to a general consensus.

When the decision making process began, I was open to compromise. I felt that all the people in the class were equal, and we needed to come to a decision together. I did not realize how hard this was actually going to be. I chose this method because I felt the only way everyone in the class would be happy with the decision if everyone had an equal say in it.

If I could look back on the task at hand now, I would rather have everyone take on the collaborating approach. This approach was suggested by some class members in the beginning of the session, but then disregarded. If everyone broke into smaller groups, and came up with group proposals, and each group presented each proposal to the class, we would have had a better chance at taking full advantage of this opportunity to shape our grades. We could have taken the most popular proposals, and combined the most attractive attributes of each to come up with optimal idea.

Regardless, we did eventually reach a consensus, in the last minute of class, and make out pretty well. Next time, we will make out even better!

Fortifying an Egg

In class, we were given a group task to complete. The task was to take 25 minutes and plan out how we would build some sort of protection mechanism for an egg, with 8 straws and 2 feet of tape, which would prevent the egg from being broken when dropped from 10 feet. After the assignment was assigned to our team, we began planning immediately. Using the steps in the planning process as our judge, we incorporated a part of each step into our planning process, but there is room for improvement. The goals and guidelines were clearly established for us, since this was a short-term in class assignment. We did know about what resources we had available to us, but did identify each team member's strengths and allocate work accordingly. One of our team members immediately came up with a design. After perfecting this design, we did come up with two other plans, but decided on using the original idea because it was by far the best. On actually making a plan to implement is where great improvement could have occurred. We did briefly divide up the labor of constructing our contraption, but we did not do this effectively enough. This is where our main flaw occurred, which hindered us from success. We should have better divided up the work, so each person knew exactly what to do during the 10 minute construction period. We did implement our idea, as everyone else in the class did, but did not take time to reflect and evaluate our results.

Since we did not plan out the actual construction well enough, we found ourselves rushing to complete the construction in the allocated time. Even though our design was excellent, we did not have enough time to secure our egg inside of our contraption well enough, therefore it broke on impact. If we would have better planned out and allocated duties during the construction period I believe our egg would not have broke.

Current Managment Problem

Bring the president of a student organization on campus, I encounter numerous management problems which arise from overseeing and leading a team of people. I have five members of the executive board which report directly to me. The major problem which I face is to continuously keep these people motivated. When we are in a meeting setting, everyone is happy to take on responsibilities and guarantee results. After the meeting is over, people lose their motivation and it is my responsibility to change that. I follow up on the tasks we discuss at the meetings, and remind my team of the goal we are working towards to help with this problem of motivation.