Ser, o no Ser...

To be or not to be, that is the question for management.
Who say you can’t be an eggscellent manager or a leader?
In professor Kurpis’s class everyone is a manger, everyone can be a leader.
All you need is a positive vision, a strong motivation, a solid determination, a desire of inspiration, and an innovated mind.
You can mange yourself, your team, your pizza store, your organization, your corporation or even your country (kingdom).
If Hamlet had taken this management course, perhaps he won't lose the name of action.

Evaluation of the "Blog"

Professor’s Goal 1, 2:
I think the blog assignments are helpful to understand management process. However, communication wise, I think it is not that great because I still don’t know many people in the class. I know their names from the comments they left but I have no idea who they are and how they look like. If it were not for the requirement of responding, I won’t bother to comment at all. Benefits, I think some comments are helpful, some are not, and some are basically repeating what I said. Some people didn’t put much effort in replying a comment because some of the blog entries were really long, longer than a 3 page essay. It is hard to read everything and try to reply a comment that actually reflects on the post.
I do agree that it has been a great encouragement for us to think about the class activities we did, rather than just put it behind after a while, not knowing exactly the point of doing those activities. Yes the blog has been effectively getting me to think and share my perceptions about what we did in class, so professor Kurpis has accomplished these goals.
Goal 3:
I did not know that we have to reply Professor’s posts until recently, but I did read about two of the blogs he posted before, and they were interesting. Not directly related to management but they are very thoughtful, get me to think about how I would react if I were in those situations. I think this kind of interaction between students and professors should be practiced more in Baruch, because from what I experienced in the past, I get the feeling that professors don’t really care about their students. It is good that they are teaching us the rules and principles of business, but it is better to provide more understanding of our culture and motivate us to think beyond business.
Goal 4:
It has definitely been a great way for students to easily manage and control 20% of their grade that was not test related. I have seen some blog entries with only two paragraphs and it still count so it is an easy homework assignment.
Did I understand the degree to which the test anxieties could be offset by appropriate attention to your blog?-NO
Goal 5:
Do you plan on continuing to post your thoughts or ideas about school, work, career, life on your blog after this class has ended? -Not really, unless I have time but even if I do I don’t think people in this class would have time to read about it.

So overall I think this “blog assignment” is a very unique, even though I have done a similar type of online assignment for my writing class in the past, but this is more interesting. I feel like this is really for myself rather than for the management class, although all the topics are related to management, but everything in that blog is all about me. Value…I think it motivates me to approach learning more.

DCIS

Well the test result for me is D and S, which make no sense because how I could be both Dominance and Steadiness? I mean I might want others to go my ways sometimes, but most of the time I went with whatever my co-workers or team members’ suggested. Like I said previously for the management problem, I hate team work. I would do anything to have works done on time regardless whose idea is being used or who is the leader. I am pretty cooperative person, rather than overcoming oppositions or persuading others to do it my way. I think S describes me well. I like to be in a predictable environment, with minimum conflict. I have desire to help others, especially those that cannot finish their work on time. I am a good listener, and I am flexible in work procedures. I don’t think I can be Conscientious or Influential. Nobody listens to me I have to emphasize my point several times to get it across. Even though I like to delegate tasks to others or initiate and facilitate discussions, people won’t take me seriously. I can’t be influential because I’m not popular, not enthusiastic, and certainly don’t view people and situations optimistically. Now come to think about it, maybe secretly I WANT to be dominant but I APPEARED to be Steady.
I think this test is helpful to determine management “type” by understanding your true self. It might not be 100% correct but at least it tells you how your personality can be related or reflected on your management style. Im not sure whether this test would help me in other personal interaction, because I still don’t know how those words can predict how I interact with others.

“I’m lovin it”

So I went to McDonald after I got my second midterm back.
It was almost 7:30pm on November 26, 2008. I gave the cashier at McDonald the order I wanted after he greets me. I told him that I want exactly four pickles on my burger and a small fries with no salt. “Hamburger?” he asked with a funny look, and I replied, yes. He quickly punch in the order and was about to get the food, I quickly added, “can you print 4 pickles on the receipt?" and he said yes. After many experiences in the past with unpleasant McDonald service, I was surprised that there was no problem making this special order.
The gentleman who took my order was quiet nice, he turned around and told the guy who was preparing the food: “a hamburger with 4 pickles,” and then he went over to the fries corner and drained out the ready fried/cooked fries and shovel some into a small fries box. Then he told the employees behind him, “no salt on that one.” I gave him the bills and he gave me back change. One of the cashiers almost accidently took the unsalted fries to his customer, but the gentleman who took my order was very careful and quickly got back the fries from him. Finally, I had my fries with no salt and a hamburger with four pickles in paper bag. I checked the hamburger after I left and counted the pickles which were exactly four. I was overexcited that this adventure went so well, I didn’t realize the gentleman did not give me the receipt. I ran back and luckily the gentleman was able to print another copy of the receipt and hand it over to me.
The whole process took about 15 minutes, and I had to rush out because there were quite a number of customers waiting on line. I would give a 4 out 5 ratings to communication and coordination, and 5 to customer service. I did not run into any trouble from making the order to receiving it. I think McDonald’s service has improved a lot from the past. The customer service was quick, the employees were friendly and the order was accurate. They did not have any problem dealing with a special order like this therefore I don’t have any particular recommendations for them regarding this. If I have to pick out a problem I think it would be that they were really into fast pace performance, they neglect simple things like giving the receipts after each order. For an average customer, by passing a step like that is not very important to them. I think this is how most fast food restaurants’ employees were trained. They tend to rush the orders sometimes because they cannot keep other customers waiting with one order. I guess the gentleman just forgot to give me the receipt since I forgot to ask as well. I was satisfied overall, because the order could have been messed up during the process, but the gentleman took extra care of it and made sure that I had the right order so it was a good experience.

My Vision....to save a starfish... :D

(Actually I don't like starfish, they look sticky.)

I have a couple of visions for my future, one of which is to become a creative director for top advertising agency (specifically a global firm). I love art and I love creativity, but to accomplish that goal I need more than just a BBA degree in Advertising. I need to take more courses in software programs like Illustrator and Dreamweaver, and more courses in design, and create a professional portfolio. I am hoping to take extra classes in FIT, but the expenses seem to be out of my reach right now, especially when our economy is going downhill. Moreover, I need to gain more experience from Ad agencies. Furthermore, earning a master degree would really help me to get a good job. These all sound time consuming and require lots of commitment, which I don't think I have as to now, with so much other burdens on my back. I could plan ahead but I am not sure I will get them all done.
If the advertising road doesn't work out, I am considerating to change to international business. I could still do so, maybe earn a double major degree or go for a master in international business. I have no idea how international business work, but I do speak a few languages and I have no problem learning different culture.
My other vision, one that need a huge capital-open a dessert restaurant, like one of those 5 stars, recommended restaurants from New York Times. I don't have much savings, and so does my family so that is not a realistic vision, yet. Maybe after I have worked for a few big companies, get a promotion, and towards my retirement years, then I could actually take action to accomplish it.
My last vision, a simple, yet seem impossible one. I always wanted to be good at Tennis, I would love to be a tennis coach or instructor one day, maybe after I retired. I used play for my high school tennis team, but I was the worst player, I have tried, and tried, just wasn't good at it. People say practice makes perfection, I seriously believed in that but it is not working out for me, not for tennis atleast. I am not giving up, but I guess the only thing I could do to reach that vision, is get more professional help, take more lessons and play as often as I could. Perhaps one day I could be a champ.

Decision, decision, decision.

I was just shocked at first, when Professor K said that he would let us decide on how we should do with the test. I was even more shocked when people suggested not just curving the test, but also dropping one of the midterms. I was never in this kind of situation during my school years, especially in college. I didn’t care what others were saying at that point, I was too upset with my own grade and still doubting about the whole process. So I chose to Avoid the process of deciding, and withdrawing from the crowd that was so eager to propose a change. I didn’t think we would reach a 100% agreement because obviously, everybody would have their own opinion and it is hard to convince others to agree on your suggestion, since each person has different strengths and weaknesses in the test. Somebody always has something they don’t like in the last minute, so I didn’t have much hope. I knew it was some kind of scheme Professor K played on us. He probably had a blast watching us arguing over each other. I guess I COULD HAVE suggested something and be more active in the process since this is also part of my grade that would be affected. I just didn’t think my opinion matters because in end, those that disagreed with the proposal went with it anyway due to lack of time and peer pressure. I think to have a better result, maybe all of us should have written down what they think and then make the decision based on the suggestions with most votes, but of course that is too time consuming and since professor values “everybody’s opinion” majority vote is not really an option, although I prefer majority vote.

Re: "An Eggs-cellent Way to Plan"

My team accomplished Step 1: Define the goals and objective of planning. Since Professor Kurpis gave us the instructions during the beginning of the class, we knew that our goal or objective is to achieve 5 point extra credit, by building a protection device to protect the egg from breaking within 30 minutes of planning period, and 10 minutes of operating. We did not go into details in Step 2-Determine resources and current status vis-á-vis objectives, because we were given supplies from Professor Kurpis, therefore we didn't need to identify them and we also did not define any group strength or weakness as we go along. In a way, we kind of bypass step 2 of the process because we didn't think defining group's strength or weakness is an important step in the process. As for steps 3 and 4, many of us have developed many alternative designs for the contraption in case the first one does not work out. Though, we were not able to try the alternatives, because the first one seem to be the one that we all agreed on, and plus there was time limitation. We did not exactly made clear on whose role is what, because we were all concentrating on putting everything together on time. One member decided to draw out the layout, others helped getting supplies, tearing tape into pieces, and luckily for us one of team member had a small scissor so we made it through and used our time very handily. For the final step we all decided to have the shortest person in the team to carry out the action, because the close we are to the ground the greater chance that our egg won’t break. In the end, our egg did not break and we evaluated that as a successful planning.

I don’t think my team needs any particular improvement. The design worked out well and we all participated in the planning process, although some of us don’t do as much as others. I think the only thing that could be done to enhance our performance is to assign roles to everyone in the beginning of the process, because some of us were just confused and don’t know who is doing what. Overall, I think we did a good job and everyone had fun and we all made an effort to earn the credit.