Entries in the Category "MGMT250"
Learning Plan
The more and more that I continue to think about my learning plan, the more I want to continue change it. I continue to have problems distinguishing between career goals and life goals. Sometimes, I even think of it as my diary and want to write on and on about my life and how I’m going to fix them. I am really happy that we have to write this for class, because it is forcing me to think about other areas in my life, but I also find it hard to write this because it seems impersonal, because it is only dealing with concrete things. But I was able to create some diagrams out of my goals and my paper continues to look better and better. Is anyone else having problems?
To fire or Keep
Last week, we faced a difficult decision in our HR Simulation. We all know the situation: who do you fire or give a written warning to: the manager accused of sexual harassment or his subordinate that lied on her resume. Both are grounds to be fired. The female did get very good reviews, but she lied. I believe that they both don’t have a case to argue that they didn’t do this. Because the two offences separate would have caused both of their firing, putting these two employees together, doesn’t change the situation to have only one of them fired. In our group we were split. Two of us wanted to fire both, the other two to fire the manager and written warning to the girl, and the last to not fire anyone. Who knows what the right decision was? I guess we’ll see.
Punishment v. Discipline
Punishment, when it comes to the workplace, can be considered ultimately as just getting the boot: fired. However, there is more apparent punishment when you don’t get that raise you thought you deserved, or you’re not getting as much money based on sales.
There can also be discipline such as a warning, talking to the supervisor. I would think that even evaluations and follow ups for that if performance isn’t where it should be would go under here. There is more social pressure with discipline to do better, than punishment which is more monetary.
4 credit class
There are many language classes that shouldn’t be considered a 4 credit class because they have included a one-hour online lab on there. However, many teachers don’t actually use it and the ones that do, don’t really keep track of it as part of our grade. But the class continues to be 4 credit hours.
Management 250 should go up for consideration to become a 4 hour credit class. Our teams meet for at least an hour every week to complete everything we need for the HR Simulation. We had a lot of readings in the class, especially during the middle of the semester, and having 4 credit hours would make it easier.
Feedback
I forget when we were talking about class evaluations but I wanted to talk about a couple of ways to improve the system so the feedback is more relevant.
1. If we had mid semester feedback sheet, I know I would provide more feedback. At the end of the year, with everything else going on, I don’t remember as much detail about the class. Also if I think I’m getting a good grade, I won’t remember the things that I was frustrated and weren’t working during the entire semester. Does anyone else agree with this?
2. Class evaluations should also be given at the beginning of the class, so the length of the class doesn’t depend on how fast we finish our evaluations. We would still have class afterwards, so students would put more time in and giving more examples.
Career Interview
For my learning plan I decided to interview two people from the finance world but in two different divisions: investing and accounting. I really enjoyed the interview with my boss, Dave, on investing. I have been interning with him for about three months and have really enjoyed the experience. Dave had worked almost 25 jobs by the time he was 25. There was a time in his life where he was living out of a suitcase with little money trying to find a job in a foreign city. It amazes me that he was able to find a job that lead to an investing job at Morgan Stanley and he now owns his own business and loves it. He is the first successful entrepreneur that I have met, and I learned a little bit about all the paperwork that are needed to be kept on file as well as different licenses he needs. Now he is a acquiring a license to be able to sell life insurance to his clients. I don’t know if owning my own business is something that I want but I understand all the benefits as well as the disadvantages.
Leadership vs. Management
I am currently reading the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and I found some great thought on the differences between leadership and management. “Management is a bottom line focus: how can I best accomplish certain things?” Leadership determines what needs to be accomplished. Peter Drucker and Warren Bennis describe “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things” Sometimes we are so busy trying to be managers and just reach a goal without really evaluation if that goal is right. Effective leadership is more necessary than ever. We need more a vision of the end. It is easier to come up with what needs to be done after but a lot of thinking needs to be done first. It seems that with this management class we are truly learning how to manage. We are not really taught how to be leaders but rather just go through the motions so that we can do all the readings, homework, group work and on time. This takes up so much time that as students we never have the opportunity to think why we are doing all of this and to truly reflect. We don’t have time.
Interviewing
We discussed ethics in class on Tuesday and before yesterday, Wednesday, I had never dealt with a great ethics dilemma at work. I interviewed with GE about a finance assistant position. I was offered a position today. However, I had given up on GE because I had already turned in about four of my application to different finance managers there and had never gotten a response. In the meantime, I have been talking to the recruitment manager at Cohen & Co, a regional accounting firm about a possible summer internship. My interview with them is next Wednesday. With GE, I was surprised that I actually got an interview and I figured that since it took them so long to finally contact me about an interview it would take them at least a week to let me know of their decision.
When one of my interviewers called back today with the offer, I didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, she called while I was in class and I had some time to think about it. I decided to ask for a week to think about it (I wouldn’t be starting until end of December anyway or the beginning of January) and decided to tell her about my other interview. I could tell that she wasn’t expecting to hear that, but I’m happy that I did. Its better to always be honest because the moment you lie you have to keep track of all your lies and it will never be good.
Jonah
Even though the discussion got quite heated today in class I realized that the two sides were arguing the same thing. They both agreed that Jonah should have taken other steps and what he did actually do weren’t effective in creating any kind of change in the company. Devon argued more on a practicality side: as one man there was nothing that he could really do, and by immediately getting angry when he first heard about the discrimination over the phone he immediately cut off Dan. Dan faxed him a response, instead of calling him back. Their relationship was done. Jonah was completely right in wanting to fix this problem. It’s not ethically right to get a diverse group of recruits, promise the top performers opportunities of working abroad and not being able to deliver. Even though in our group we were discussing the cultural differences between the US and Britain, as Trevor pointed out, with Coulding-Henson based in America they still have to abide by our non discriminatory laws. I thought this was a good case study to read, but I am not sure how I’m going to be graded, since the Learning Plan didn’t turn out so well.
Wow
6.15 out of 8
Two people in entire class received a 7 or 8
I followed the instructions
Frustrating
Need I say more?
More on Teams
Teams are a fascinating subject. There’s so much that can go wrong and yet so much that can go right. With a good leader, the rest of the team can work at its best. It was good to read about the five dysfunctions. They should be kept in mind when working within a team and each of us become more aware when a situation presents itself: a conflict or a positive / negative comment. I especially liked the parts of an apology. Sometimes apologies are just made because we recognize they need to be, but not really realizing what we are apologizing for. Now I know to be specific, explain and show that I am ready to move on with the project and that I am still committed.
I also liked the part about not always being a critic. During the summer I met someone whose job is to find solutions. So often we just complain and complain about what’s wrong with one class or what someone said or didn’t say. Instead of using all that time just to criticize which doesn’t give good feedback, we should also include any possible solutions. It’s a great way to get more ideas and it’s constructive. Another one I really liked was “take credit for successes and mistakes”. Even though it’s the hardest to take credit for your mistakes, it’s important to do so.
Emotional Intelligence
I decided to get started on the learning plan. Just seeing that 12 to 15 pages are expected to be written on the first part alone scares me. I have enough questions to answer but I don’t think that I can drag out the answer for 12 pages, let alone more than that. I’m going to use some quotes to describe me as well as rely on the tests we took in class: MBTI and the LSI. I’m also going to take an online test on Emotional Intelligence.
If you haven’t heard about Emotional Intelligence, it is the ability to understand how you react, communicate, feel, remember and learn from emotions. It is very important to understand yourself so you can use your emotions to help you and those around you. It also helps take control of negative emotions. There are some tests that you can take to learn more about yourself that also give suggestions on how to improve your EI. One such website is offered in our textbook by Tucker on page 28. I find these tips very helpful although very hard to put into practice. It takes practice to consciously start thinking about your emotions and taking more responsibility for them.
Dysfunctions of teams
I really enjoyed reading the article "The 5 dysfunctions of teams". Even though some problems seem common sense, it was interesting to read exactly why some things happen. I was especially surprised that conflict is good for a team. I would think it is good only when the team knows how to handle it and that is how they become stronger as a team; they learn to trust each other and know that no one will be afraid to speak up.
In class we were also discussing best and worst experiences in a team. I know when I first started my internship my boss wasn't very well organized. I would get frustrated if he didn't have anything for me to do. Soon he started showing me more of the programs that he uses as well as making up a to-do list for the week. This is a lot more efficient and I also feel more at ease to be working there, knowing that I am contributing something.
HR Simulation
Reading the HR Simulation guide left me very confused about what exactly we were doing. Read it again and the project now seemed huge. We have to do all this planning and writing up and graphs and be able to have a common time to meet with our group. This sounds like real world.
Even though I understand that we learn better this way by seeing how it really is out there, it is not fair. This class is not our 9-5 job. Our group had to meet three times before Thursday when the team plan was due, for a total of about 7 hours. The directions were not very clear and I dont personally think the Simulation itself is very clear.
However, now that we are finally done (still not sure if we completed everything that we needed to turn in) I can't wait for the results. We only have a slight idea of what the results will be, so actually seeing them will put things more in perspective. But, do we need to hire up to our potential of women and minority employees?
Tell me about yourself
As Jen Bucher pointed out, sometimes in an interview, the first question is “Tell me about yourself”. I’m going to repeat what I have learned from either the career center, or another class as to how you respond to this.
The best way is to ask the interviewer back “I appreciate that you took the time to see me today. There are a lot of things that I want to tell you about me but I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Is there anything specific that you would like me to focus on?” The wording can change, but I think it is a very effective way to show that you appreciate they are taking the time to have this interview, and to also keep you focused on skills that have to do with the job. Are there any other ways to respond to that?
Participation Discussion
I agree with what Danny Pho said in his blog concerning participation. There were a lot more students that participated today than ever before just to, as Danny stated, be able to get their participation in. I also think this was a topic that affected all of us personally. We were talking about 20% of our grade. There have been topics that we have discussed that I didn’t feel as passionate about, so I have not raised my hand for a comment, but have rather listened to the other comments and showed my agreement by shaking my head. We can not all be leaders of this class every day without ending up repeating some of the same ideas and concepts. Does anyone know how we are going to end up getting a grade for this? I would hope that having all 2s and 3s would give you an A for this part of our grade, but I’m not sure.
Interviewing
The Resume workshop was useful. Even though I have attended about five the past year, I found more things that I can fix in my resume. I wish that we had done this before we had to submit our resumes for Meet the Accountants, so our resumes would have been better prepared for when we met recruiters from accounting firms.
Even though I worked three different jobs at Case last year (Thwing building monitor, Italian Tutor, and Rock Wall Instructor) I have never had to go through an interview process as described on the career center website. However, before I interviewed for an internship at Bison Wealth Management, I read through all the handouts from the career center. I went and answered all the questions the interviewer might ask me as well as came up with some questions of my own to ask them. I found it very useful because I discovered that I wouldn’t know how to answer some of them on the spot. I needed that extra time to prepare just in case the question came up.
I always thought that when interviewing with one company, no other interviews could be scheduled. I thought I was committing already by going through the interview. I read professor Powley’s blog describing the interview process as something resembling dating and the more I hear from others I agree with it.
Interviewing
The Resume workshop was useful. Even though I have attended about five the past year, I found more things that I can fix in my resume. I wish that we had done this before we had to submit our resumes for Meet the Accountants, so our resumes would have been better prepared for when we met recruiters from accounting firms.
Even though I worked three different jobs at Case last year (Thwing building monitor, Italian Tutor, and Rock Wall Instructor) I have never had to go through an interview process as described on the career center website. However, before I interviewed for an internship at Bison Wealth Management, I read through all the handouts from the career center. I went and answered all the questions the interviewer might ask me as well as came up with some questions of my own to ask them. I found it very useful because I discovered that I wouldn’t know how to answer some of them on the spot. I needed that extra time to prepare just in case the question came up.
I always thought that when interviewing with one company, no other interviews could be scheduled. I thought I was committing already by going through the interview. I read professor Powley’s blog describing the interview process as something resembling dating and the more I hear from others I agree with it.