Entries in the Category "MGMT250"
Learning Plan
I found that the Learning Plan assignment helped me more than I expected. Writing about the “My Values” exercise, MBTI, and Learning Style Inventory helped me discover my personality. Using this information, I learned how I can communicate and manage most effectively. Additionally, the Learning Plan helped me outline achievable goals that I would like to accomplish. After completing the assignment, I feel I have a definite path to follow in my future. Hopefully the Learning Plan will continue to be a functional tool in the future by providing me with something to refer to when I am in need of guidance.
Get SMART
While writing the Learning Plan, the SMART framework for setting goals proved to be extremely useful. SMART is an acronym used to describe goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This framework helped me create realistic goals that I felt would benefit my future. This is an example of one of my goals from the Learning Plan, “By this time next year, I will have a 3.4 cumulative GPA and continue to sustain this GPA until senior year.” As you can see, the best part about the SMART framework is that it produces short, specific goals that are easy to remember. They are exceptionally easy to create and helped me plan out my future.
Cleaning up Cleanup
While working as a car salesman this summer, there was always one problem that persisted to annoy my fellow salesmen. This problem was dirty or scratched cars on the day of delivery. The source of this problem was the cleanup crew at our dealership. The cleanup crew was responsible for making new cars spotless for delivery. Unfortunately, the quality of work and reliability from the cleanup department had its high and low points. The climax occurred when a salesman lost his temper and yelled at a worker in the cleanup department. As a result, tempers flared and the worker threw a towel at the salesman and said, “Do it yourself!” Due to many complaints, the majority of the cleanup crew was fired. The reasons for termination strongly relate to those mentioned in my Management 250 class during the "termination at will" discussion. The cleanup crew exhibited unsatisfactory performance and misconduct. The situation described gives a great example of when employees should be terminated. In a effort to improve the situation, we hired a cleanup crew that was managed by an external company. The problem with cleanup was solved only temporarily. Unfortunately, once the managers from the external company stopped visiting, the same problems began again.
Continue reading "Cleaning up Cleanup"
Termination at Will
In class today we talked about the topic of “termination at will”. This means that a company has the right to terminate an employee whenever and however it sees fit. This only applies when there are no contracts or union agreements that prevent the company from firing the employee. To avoid legal repercussions, the employee should satisfy one of the following five criteria. These criteria are unsatisfactory performance, misconduct, lack of qualifications for the job, changed requirements for the job, and elimination of the job position. I feel as a future manager this set of criteria will allow me to make responsible decisions when determining the future of an employee within my company.
Tom Mendola Case
Today in class we discussed the Tom Mendola case. Tom was a seventeen year old worker at a manufacturing company. He came from a family of ten children and was forced to work because his father had acquired a debilitating illness. Unfortunately, Tom repeatedly performed below expectations despite having been reprimanded several times. In my opinion, Tom should have been fired. He repeatedly showed that he was unreliable and performed below average in multiple departments of the company. It was acceptable for him to receive a couple of warnings due to his young age, but over three was excessive regardless of his circumstances. It was important for Tom to realize that he must perform to the level at which everyone else performed even though he was younger and had a rough home life. The best course of action for the supervisor was to fire Tom because Tom was not able to handle the monotony of a manufacturing job. It would also benefit Tom because he would probably perform better at a job that he found more interesting.
The Jonah Creighton Dilemma
I enjoyed the class discussion about the Jonah Creighton case. It was interesting to hear the diverse solutions to Jonah's dilemma. The most interesting aspect of the class discussion focused on whether or not it was correct for Jonah to direct his time on resolving something that was ethically wrong. Many argued that it was wrong for Jonah to use company time and resources to do something that was not his job. In my opinion, there were several ways Jonah could have solved the problem while still being able to do his job. The most effective way to handle the situation would have been filing a complaint with the company's human resources department. Doing this would have transferred the responsibility from Jonah to another group of people more capable of solving the issue. It also would have saved the working relationship between Jonah and his supervisor. Most importantly, Jonah would have been able to continue his job knowing that he had not compromised any of his values.
Margolis, Joshua D. "Jonah Creighton." Harvard Business School.
Simple Problems Often Require Complex Solutions
Weighing the costs and benefits of every decision made, whether it is a business, economic, or social decision is extremely important. In my human resources simulation group, we have discovered that simple solutions are often deceiving. The expected results of our solutions did not always correlate with the goals that we expected them to achieve. This is because increasing wages or adding benefits are not the only factors that determine success. There are many other factors such as competition within the industry, worker morale, and productivity rates that must be correctly interpreted. In my management accounting class, we have begun discussing decisions that managers must make when presented with data about profit in specific product lines. The most obvious solution is not always the best since there are many factors to take into account. Therefore, the goal of any manager is to carefully analyze every decision being made rather than hastily make decisions.
Productivity and Stress
Dealing with stress is another topic that relates to my previous entry and the points made in The Human Challenge. In a business setting, it is important to be able to handle stressful situations calmly. Stress is especially prevalent when the unexpected occurs. This often happens when there is poor planning or poor scheduling. While working as a car salesperson this summer, unexpected events occurred due to either uncontrollable situations or lack of planning. Everyone at the dealership would handle stress differently. Some employees got angry, yet others were able to handle stress calmly. I found that the calm employees were much more productive. In my previous post, I discussed the poor budgeting of my time while taking an accounting test. The main reason for my poor performance was the stress which was the result of poor planning. If I had paced myself properly, I would have been able to confidently finish the last questions of my test.
Tucker, Mary L, Anne M McCarthy, and Douglas A Benton. The Human Challenge
Managing Yourself And Others in Organizations. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002.
Productivity and Accuracy
Today I realized that productivity is just as important as accuracy. While taking my accounting midterm, I failed to take into account the pace required to fully complete the exam. I started out fine and knew all the answers perfectly; however, as time passed I realized that there was much more to complete than was possible at the current pace. Therefore, I was forced to finish the rest of the exam in a frantic rush. Although I knew the material well, I failed to take into account the importance of productivity. In any business, employees must be able to complete work quickly and accurately. This may be the reason why Case's accounting teachers have begun making their tests longer. As a result of this experience, I will remember to pace myself better on the next exam. Ultimately, I will be better prepared for the real world. This experience also reinforces the points made about time management and productivity as discussed by Mary L. Tucker in The Human Challenge.
Tucker, Mary L, Anne M McCarthy, and Douglas A Benton. The Human Challenge
Managing Yourself And Others in Organizations. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002.
The Importance of Training
When reflecting on our classroom discussion about training, I realized that I was exposed to extensive training while working as a Volkswagen sales consultant. The first type of training was internal. I received advice from my manager at the dealership. He gave me several helpful tips that he had acquired during his twenty years in the car business. Additionally, Volkswagen corporate and the car dealership had to orient me and the other new sales employees to their goals and views. Volkswagen required employees to attend training seminars at local hotels. They also had a training website with flash presentations to introduce sales personnel to new products. Volkswagen also provided live televised courses that included employee participation over the phone. The last type of training I received was from external sources. I listened to third party training tapes that were supplied by the dealership. Training was a very important part of my job and helped contribute to my success. Training should be considered important to the success of any business.
Inefficiency and Mismanagement
For a car dealership to succeed, mismanagement must be kept to a minimum. I remember one situation that could have been prevented with more proactive management. In this situation, there was a car with a puncture in the door which required the replacement of the whole door. The car was not repaired promptly, and it remained parked with this damage until it was sold. Waiting until the last minute to find a solution resulted in compromising company efficiency and resources. The service department was forced to swap the door from a similar car. This solved the problem only temporarily because I soon sold the new car with the damaged door. Again, there was an inefficient use of company resources, and the customer left the dealership with a negative impression. One way to solve this problem would be to have better communication between management and employees. The manager may have thought that the employee who sold the first car had put in the work order for a door replacement. However, no one ended up doing this. Better communication between the manager and the employee could have easily solved this situation.
Full Time Blogging
Blogging is more than just an efficient way to deliver ideas to the public. It seems that blogging is a great way to become self employed. In last month's Business 2.0, the article “Blogging for Dollars” discussed many individuals that are earning money from blogging. Sites like boingboing.com and fark.com are managed by single bloggers or small teams of bloggers. By amassing an audience, these sites are able generate massive revenues from companies that advertise on their sites (Sloan, 2006). With forty million page views a month, fark.com generates $600,000 to $800,000 a month. Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark, became a millionaire overnight (Sloan, 2006). Best of all, the maintenance cost required to run a blog is minimal. Curtis runs his site with the help of just two contractors (Sloan, 2006). The rest of his help comes from the millions of readers who comment on posted articles.
Reference
Sloan, Paul, and Paul Kaihla. "Blogging for Dollars." Business 2.0 Sept. 2006:
65-74.
The Rewards of a Happy Customer
For the learning plan, I interviewed the sales manager that I worked with this summer. One of the things he enjoyed most about his job was making customers happy. I realized that I also found this aspect of selling cars extremely rewarding. During the summer, I helped a woman who could not make up her mind. She had her mind set on a Passat wagon; however, she was not willing to spend over thirty thousand dollars. I met her in the beginning of the summer and kept her updated about other options and deals over the next two months. She did not come back until closing time on my last day of work. I was so happy to see her that I stayed past closing time to help her. I was determined not to lose this customer after all the work that I had put into the deal. I informed her of factory incentives that would make the cash purchase of a Passat sedan ten thousand dollars less than the price of a wagon. She was so excited about the sedan that I collected a deposit in the dark parking lot of the closed dealership.
Snapshot of a Personality
Although it may seem easy, getting to know yourself is a difficult task. The human life and mind are extremely hard to analyze. Introspective thought makes analyzing these already complicated subjects even harder. It seems that another person would be able to analyze my character better than I. This is because they do not have to deal with the ambiguity of feelings and preferences that flow through my mind. While writing my learning plan, I am beginning to realize that my thoughts about my personality and goals are disorganized. Getting an accurate picture of my personality is extremely hard because the human personality is so complex. Hopefully, as I develop my learning plan, I will explore my personality while defining and organizing my goals.
Being Yourself
Does it really pay off to be yourself? Normally, I am a quiet and reserved individual. However, in certain circumstances, I am able to reach beyond my comfort zone. During my job interview with Rockwell Automation, I noticed some aspects of my character that are not present in my everyday life. I felt as if I was not my normal self. People often say, “Just be yourself.” In certain situations, this may be good advice. However, somehow I do not think being quiet and reserved is the best strategy in an interview. Instead, it is better for the interviewee to be more professional and aggressive. Stepping outside of your comfort zone and doing things that may not necessarily be part of your character are essential for a successful interview.
Managing Turnover
This summer while working as a Volkswagen sales and leasing consultant, I witnessed a situation that probably could have been prevented with more effective management and hiring processes. One of the harder things to do in a short interview, is predicting whether or not someone is able to follow orders and take criticism in a professional manner. Unfortunately for one of my fellow new employees, it seemed that he had his own way of doing things. Due to his inability to control situations at work, he got fed up and left.
In retrospect it was obvious that this employee would have ended up quitting. In conversations with the man he mentioned that he had been a financial consultant for IBM. I wondered what he was doing selling cars. I found out that after about a month he had gotten sick of being retired. He decided that he needed something to keep him busy. It was a dead giveaway that this man would not last very long.
The car sales industry is notorious for its close to 61% turnover rate. Most of this can be attributed to the stressful 50 hour week. Many people simply cannot go on very long in the industry. These people often treat it as a temporary job. How do we weed these people out? Would it have been right to not hire someone who was obviously qualified for the job on the basis that they would quit within a few months? From the signs that I saw it was obvious he should not have been hired. That being said, I also had an older colleague who had managed 100 employees at one point in his previous career. He has been at the dealership for years and is a strong salesperson. From the managers perspective, the employee who resigned may have seemed like a prime candidate. The employee did perform to his expectation, however in the end it benefited the dealership very little. Was it correct to take the chance and hire this man? How do we know how someone will react when the tables are turned, and they are the ones receiving orders?