TO YOU, MANAGEMENT

For teaching me how to plan,

for teaching me how to organize,

for teaching me how to lead,

for teaching me how to control.

For giving me a new perspective,

for telling me how to deal with others,

for teaching me to understand others,

and for letting me understand new minds,

This is for management,

This is for you.

Blogging, blogging, blogging...!

• I always thought that having an active blog would be something I wanted to do some day. Keep my readers posted with the last entries of my last experiences/thoughts of my life sounded very cool and absolutely interesting. However, with the experience of this blog I realized how time-consuming it is! At the end, I enjoyed the experience and how many people you can find with similar thoughts.

• I have to admit that I did recognize most of the people in class when I visited their blogs and it was interesting get to know more about them even though I never talk to some of them in the actual class. I did not have the chance to meet other of my classmates just from the blog assignment but I did exchange some comments about the different topics in the blog with some people. I believe people can be very shy (like me) to start a conversation just because you read something on his/her blog.

• One thing I did like is how I related the in-class activities to the actual concepts in the book and post these ideas (my ideas) in the blog. I also find it useful for one of the tests since one of the blog entries we wrote was about the exact same topic of the question in the midterm.

• I also felt somehow free to write about other topics that were somehow related to management and what we talked in class. And even better than this, I got to manage 20% of my grade by just having to share my thought and apply concepts to some real life situations! It cannot be better than this, right?

• I will definitely keep the blog open for future references and future posts. However, I don’t think I can make do in a regular basis like now. But I like the idea of coming back to a site where I am free of writing whatever I feel like and even better, about things I keep learning throughout my life.

S-C = S-uper C-onscientious!?

• After 24 slides, 112 adjectives, 5 alternatives between Q, W, X, Y, Z and a lot of attention to the decision making, my DISC diagnostic was an S-C person, where S stands for Steadiness and C stands for Compliance.
• I was actually kind of surprise about this test because most of the characteristics listed in the description were in fact very accurate to my personality.
• I definitely fit into the Steadiness profile since I consider myself a good team player. I am great at following instructions and I don’t mind listening to people. A lot of people told me that I could be a great teacher because I have the personality and the patience to deal with people and to help them with any difficulties. One thing that caught my attention is the line that says: “Resist change and takes a lot time to adjust to change”. I find this fact is absolutely true and I have a clear example for that: I have been through a lot of transitions in my life, and believe me, it can take me a lot of effort to be absolutely happy about it. I went from Peru, to Oregon, to New York City so I know what big changes are.
• On the Compliance profile the characteristic I most think goes with me is the Analytical side. I like thinking before doing something and re-thinking after doing it. I always want to make sure I took the right decision and that all my options are clear. I like being sure of what I am doing and gather information before saying something.
• Each person has his own personality and I don’t think you can become someone you are really not. However, I believe I can have an Influence personality in some cases where I feel like it or I have to do it. I also believe this kind of test is fundamental for work environments and for managers to understand their team workers. At the same time, you cannot always tell how a person may be and you can get big surprises some time...HUGE surprises!

The power of MY vision

• Everybody has a different way how to see life. Some people are more focused on accomplishing very challenging things in their professional lives and other people just want to achieve an emotional stability through their lives. I think my priorities right now are a lot related with my professional career more than other things. I also think they are pretty simple and probably similar to what other people of my age and with the same position are looking for.
• My first objective after I graduate from Baruch is definitely getting a job (like I guess everybody else). Hopefully I will get this job right after I finish school and not have to wait months and months in order to get one. I would also like to take a job that I absolutely like and not because I have no other option. I know some friends who plan to take a break after school before getting into the “Real World”, but for example I differ in that with them. Actually, I can’t wait until I get my first job and do all the things I see other professionals in field do. It is definitely something I am looking forward to. My next goal is to do something I have always dreamt about: get my own and decent apartment in Manhattan. It has been my dream to stop sharing an apartment with roommates and stay in a not-that-nice apartment because you cannot afford anything else because you are a student and you are broke. I want I very nice apartment in the city and be able to call it my home, my place. Third, it is something I have been planning with my friends from a long while ago. My best friends and I are planning to do a Euro-trip once we finish school. Of course this may take a while because we would need to save money first. Our goal is to be able to pay for our own trip and stop getting money from our parents like usual. And I think this last point takes me to one of the final things I want to accomplish after school, which is being economically independent. I think one thing takes to another in my list of goals. Of course I’m also being a little bit selfish here because I am not thinking about my family or even my boyfriend. But this are the things I would like to accomplish and I believe the only way to get all of them is hard work and setting the right goals too.

A VERY Difficult Decision Making

• “This is nuts!” – That was the very first thing I thought when the professor told us about this new decision. Trying to put more than 40 people on the same terms in less than 30 minutes and especially on such a serious topic like your midterm grade??? Are you serious?

• To my surprise, we did get to a final decision. To my surprise, no one got hurt!

• From the five way people handle conflict, I have to admit that I used 2: Avoidance and Collaboration. I was very hopeless at first went I heard the assignment and I immediately gave up. I thought it was going to be something close to impossible so I just withdrew the challenge. But later, I saw how little by little the classroom was getting more organized and more people were really willing to fight for a final decision. It is here when I also decided to cooperate. I kept raising my hand to give more alternatives of solution and I did the same when they were asking to vote for one of them. I was actively talking to people next to me to encourage them to participate as well and not lose such a valuable opportunity.

• If I could go back to that day, I would have definitely chosen the “Compete to win” way. If I had a positive mind from the beginning, I would probably be more productive for the group. Now, if all of us had the same positive mind from the beginning I am more than sure that it would have taken us less time to get to a final and successful decision!

A Very Surprising Experience at McDonald’s

To be honest, when I first read the instructions of this assignment I thought it would be one of the most challenging things to do in a fast pace environment like McDonald’s. Why would McDonald’s care about such a special order especially in a city like New York? I was scared to place the order and get “killing” looks from the cashier and everybody else working there. To my surprise, this was the opposite of what really happened that day.
I walked in trying to memorize the exact order and all the specifications that were asked initially. I definitely hesitated at first and thought they would laugh at me and even refuse to prepare the order. In fact, the cashier almost laughed when I said that I needed exactly four pickles in my burger. But he was so gentle and he had no problem with the order at all, he did not even ask me to repeat it.
One of the things that first got my attention was the very first reaction of the cashier. Once I placed the special order, he went to the back of the kitchen and told the people in charge of the cooking about the special order himself. Then he came back to me and asked me if I wanted anything else. The reason why he went to tell about the order first is because he wanted the food to be cooking already while he finished with the rest of the transaction, like the payment. Also, I saw about two different teams working in the special order: one working in the hamburger with specifically 4 pickles and another guy working in the well-done French fries with no salt. This is definitely a great example of efficiency on how to save time on such an unusual thing like a special order. Plus this demonstrated how well organized the staff is and how encouraged they are for not wasting time not even with special orders like this.
The whole process did not take more than 8 minutes and I did time it. I was absolutely surprised about their effectiveness in preparing the order. I thought the most challenging part of the order would be the well-done French Fries with no salt. I thought they would have the French Fries all salted all the time by default; but apparently they do have separate fries that can be extra cooked for special occasions like this. The most admiring thing to me is that the fries were actually very well done!
One of the things I could not get done is the printed receipt with the specification of the four pickles on it. The cashier told me this could not get done, so I decided to take pictures when I got my hamburger. In the attached pictures you can actually see that they did put the exact four pickles. This was absolutely a surprise for me.
Finally, I really cannot think of any final recommendations for the staff working in McDonald’s. They absolutely surprised me with their kindness and effectiveness during the whole order. It did not take as long as I thought it would and the order was precisely as I asked for initially. I cannot stop saying how admire I was at the end.

Eggs-cellent brainstorming

• Even though I absolutely loved the class activity on the egg planning, it ended up being a lot difficult than I thought. I believe my group had very good ideas about how to protect the egg; however, we definitely needed more time, materials and division of work.
• From all the steps in the planning process, my team failed to complete the last two. We knew what our objectives were and we even made sure we understood the rules by asking the professor about some details, like how much of the egg needed to be visible. Also, we studied the materials that we were going to use and we even asked inside the group if someone was good at working with such delicate materials. We definitely developed many strategies since we had at least five ideas at the beginning of the planning and we cut it off to two at the end. We even thought about a back-up plan that we would have done if the first one was too complicated.
• But then we realized that we didn’t cover some things. Our original plan didn’t include a specific division of the work and even though it was going good at the beginning, everybody ended up trying to work with the materials at the same time, making the work chaotic. We lost time trying to divide the work and we never got to the last step of planning. We never got the chance to revise our job or to double check if it was secure enough. We barely made it to the time limit and we even forgot to write the plan to handle it to the professor.
• I would say that we did not do terribly bad but we just missed some points of the planning process that made us lose time. We never made a division of the work; therefore we didn’t know who was exactly in charge of what. By the time we figured that out, we had lost valuable minutes and we didn’t even remember about the writing plan we had to handle in. However, I think our brainstorming process was decent and we could have done a better job in different conditions.