My test results came out with a dominant C (conscientiousness) and a lower D (dominance). Although the difference was only one point between the score of these two- 11 points to the C and 10 points to the D- I think the results are pretty accurate describing my management orientation. A person with a dominant C is a person that thinks analytically, weighing pros and cos, uses a systematic approach to situation solving and it is diplomatic with people. But at the same time because my lower D, I'm a person that accepts challenges, questions the status quo and likes to take authority on solving problems.
Would I like to have a different type of management orientation? Perhaps not totally different, but I have always thought that there should be balance on everything, so I wouldn't mind having a little bit of Influence orientation, the type of people that initiates the contact among its peers, generates enthusiasm and creates a motivational environment and also have more of Steadiness trait where the person demonstrates patience (something I lack of) is a good listener and creates a stable, harmonious work environment.
I think it is helpful to determine one's management orientation because it not only helps you to identify the areas on management where you will excel, but it also help you realize where is that you need improvement and perhaps support from your peers/co-workers. However, I don't agree that decision on hiring or promoting a person should be solely based on this type of tests. Moreover, this test is only helpful on the area of management, but to a personal level, I think it can help you notice what kind of person you are, and perhaps look room for improvement. :D
Remember when you were a kid-around 7 or 9 years old- and you used to play with your imaginary friends and pretend you were a teacher to your toys or a perhaps a doctor? And when your mom used to ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow older?” What was your answer? Mine was a teacher. Although later on the vision of myself switch to the one of a banker- even though I had no idea what made a banker a banker- I always found myself taking the role of secretary/cashier/manager whenever playing to the restaurant with my friends-this time real friends. I was always chosen to handle the “money” (monopoly money) because I was responsible, organized, and good on Math :D I was happy counting the bills time after time after time; the idea of handling money and being on charged of the “restaurant” was exciting. So I grew up thinking I wanted to work in a bank.
Now, fast forward yourself to your last year of high school. Your plan is most probably to graduate, go into college for the next 4 years get a degree and hopefully not touch a book ever again after the age of 22, which is when you were planning to graduate from college, at least for scholastic purposes. Well, that’s was my goal on life. I used to daydream about being 22 with a bachelor’s degree and a nice job. Wow! All the rest of my life to enjoy, to travel around the world, to explore, to live.
Fast forward one more time, this time to the present. I am 26 years old and still pursuing my 1st bachelor degree.Not the vision of future that I had on mind when I was 18, right? Although I had a very well written idea of what I wanted my future to be like, life took me in a different direction when I turned 19. I was living in a different country-the USA- learning a different language-English- and knowing that there was no way I could graduate college at age 22. I was working full-time, when I had never worked before in my life-and going to school part-time, taking English classes. My point is that at age 19 you are thinking you will turn 22 and will have this awesome job, and that everything is going to be happily ever after but at age 26, you just want to graduate! Give me a piece of carton that says I have a degree- I don’t care on what- because at age 26 you have realized that your major and career paths are not always related.For instance, I have friends who graduated from college as English majors and are now working in the financial industry. So at age 26 I decided that wherever this life decides to take me- I was going to have at least 3 set goals.
My 1st goal is to get my degree not later than when I turned 28. For this I need to take 5 courses per semester for the next 4 semesters in order to graduate by Spring 2012. I decided that my major will be Economics. My 2nd goal is to get an internship next Spring 2011; an internship in a field related to my career which will mean to forgo some paid hours at my current full time job. But the trade off is worth it since the internship could potentially lead me to a job in the field I want to work on. This internship will of course be in the city which would lead me to my third goal: move into the city. I currently live in New Jersey and commuting everyday into the city is killer, and even though I could get a place in Manhattan, I hate the idea of having to share a tiny apartment with other people and ended up paying what I pay for a 3 bedroom house, with a nice-size kitchen, living room, backyard and private parking space in NJ. I want a place of my own. So far this is the sequence- get the internship, get the job, get the nice salary, and get the apartment. This moves me to my 3rd goal: work for the next three years and go back to school for my master. I have always heardit is better to invest more money in your post graduate degree than in your undergraduate degree and that’s what I will do- I want go to ColumbiaUniversity and get a Master in Economics or an MBA. Even though I haven’t yet completely figured it out how I will accomplish this goal, I have decided to apply to the honors program at Baruch (I graduated with Honors at the Community College where I come from, so I thought if I could make it once, I can make it twice) to increase the possibilities of being accepted into Columbia. Of course on the unlikely event I don’t get accepted in Columbia, ( I say unlikely event because I will get accepted :D) I will then work towards accomplishing my 4th goal: field work for the United Nations. I have always feel this drive on me towards helping people, specially kids, kids that haven’t had the same opportunities I did, so I think the UN is the perfect option for me. The pay is not exquisite-but think about it-even with a $35,000 year salary, what expenses could you possibly have living in a third world country? I mean, where are you going to buy the super expensive Coach purse? Or the Jimmy Choo shoes or the Ralph Lauren clothes if the idea of a mall is almost non-existent.You could easily save up to 100% of your whole salary because most of the time, UN field workers live on the communities they are working with, and the food is provided by the UN. Even if it is a volunteer/no paid job, I will still want to work for them. How I will accomplish this goal? Networking and French lessons. Getting a job in the UN is a very difficult thing to accomplish, even for those field jobs there is a lot of people applying but I have two friends who interned in the UN and although their current position is not of field workers anymore (they had worked their way up) they have offered me to connect me with the right people once I’m ready to work for them.To work for the United Nations there is an indispensable requisite: to speak a second language which it has to be an official UN language: French or Spanish. Since I already speak Spanish-my first language- I have registered for French lessons at the Alliance française in NYC starting this upcoming semester to increase my chances to be elected once I apply for a job. This 4th goal is kind of movable; it can happen at age 31/32 on the event I’m not accepted into Columbia or at age 35/36.
On the personal level, there are three other things I want to accomplish: learn to play the violin, learn to dance flamenco-a traditional Spanish dance and do the Inca Trail. For the first one, I have already started taking violin lessons once a week since the beginning of this year. Flamenco lessons I will register on summer time and for the Inka trail, which is 4-day trekking through the Sierra and Forest of Peru, climbing to altitudes that surpass the 12,000 feet above the sea level, I have decided to start training for it for the next summer, before I launch that desire internship.
This time life will not trick me, this time I’m ready to succeed. :D
Because we did poorly on our first exam, Prof. Kurpis decided to offer us an opportunity to get to an agreement on how to improve our grades and modify, if in any way, the next exam. He offered us the whole class period to reach this decision with only one condition: the whole class had to get to an agreement at a 100% level. Everyone had to agree with the decision taken or it was not valid. This was also a way to cover the topic of decision making process. Overall, the whole class did a good job. However, with a little bit more of organization, we could have finished the second task assigned: modify the format of the next exam.
There are various things we can rescue from this decision making process. First of all, one of the classmates took the leader role and stood up in front of the class directing the whole decision process. This classmate volunteering saved us a lot of time we could have lost trying to decide how to organize the class. Another thing to rescue is that the whole class, around 40 classmates, came together as a group and decided to work towards one single goal. Moreover, since the whole class was part of one group, more information was available; more points of view of what course of action to take to improve our grade. Also, by relying on the group decision making we counted with more alternatives and the cohesion of the group to work together and to reach an agreement was present since we knew whichever the decision made it had to be at a 100% level, in other words, all students had to agree with it in order to count.
There are of course certain things we could have improved: there we two things we needed to decide upon: how to improve our current grade for 1st exam and what changes to make if any for the 2nd exam. We couldn’t reach an absolute decision on the 2nd topic so in order not to loose what we had previously agreed on the 1st topic we left the changes on the 2nd exam to the professor’s discretion. I think we failed on getting an agreement for the 2nd topic because of lack of time and better organization. We tackled both topics as one, when they should have been treated separately. Our ideas got mixed up on the blackboard and the leader many times had to erase them just to end up writing them up again. We also left behind good options for both topics because of lack of better understanding from classmates. For instance, one of the options for topic number-how to improve our current grade-was a curve. Classmates were asking for outrageous curves so the professor decided to stood up and offered us his curve schedule if this option was chosen; it was a 10 points curve at the most but since we couldn’t agree on a 100% on it we had to leave it behind and instead we went for the extra credit option. However, since we failed to be specifics about the extra credit-how many points, the format, the deadline-professor assigned us an extra credit worth 10 points-the same 10 points we could have gotten without doing any extra work by just agreeing to the curve schedule. I think some of my classmates were so focus on trying to benefit themselves as much as possible from this decision process that forgot about the overall benefit of the class and ended up hurting everyone at the end. The lack of understanding also led is to leave behind another good option on regards to modifications to the next exam. A vast majority didn't want the essay on the next exam, but because it was not the whole class we had to let it go. I raised my hand and came out with a differente option: since we couldn't agree on not having the essay on the second exam and the probabilities the professor would included it were high-after all, it was worth 30 points on the first exam- I offered the class having the essay but had the professor assigned us 5 possible topics for the essay and let us prepare on advanced and then include only 3 out of the 5 possible topics on the exam. People didn't buy it; this option got also dismissed.
On terms of how people handled conflict and which type of method did I personally used to handle the potential for chaos during the decision making process exercise I had two different approaches: at the beginning of the process I opted to accommodate myself to whatever decision the class would reach and let the other classmates offer possible courses of action since- I thought- the chances that my idea would be mentioned by others before having to do it myself were pretty high-at the end, it was a big class and after the professor handed back the exam there seemed to be a general discomfort with the multiple multiple choice questions and with the essay-which were two of the things I also didn’t like about the exam. In other words, I was going to let other people talk and just vote. But when this accommodation approach started to compromise my own benefits-classmates couldn’t decide whether keeping the essay for the second exam- I stepped in and switch from an accommodating way of handling conflict to a kind of “compete to win” approach: trying to push my alternative in classmates’ minds and pull them together to vote for it. So I was personally going with the “compete to win” approach and expecting that my classmates would go for the “collaborating” and “compromise” ways of handling conflict. I did this because my primary goal-not to have an essay on the next exam got ditched when people couldn’t get to an agreement on it. So like in any other situation when you can’t go for the 1st best choice, you go for the 2nd one-in this case, keeping the essay but putting limitations to it and strictly ruling on what and what not to be allow for it. That’s when I decided to finally speak up because I thought, “ what do you rather have? An essay with an open question and not to know what the possible topic could be or have an essay with a closed topic that would come from a bank of 3 to5 topics previously assigned by the professor?” I mean, the probabilities of you doing better on an exam with a closed topic, where you can have the opportunity to write the essay prior to the actual exam are higher than the ones with an open topic. It made sense to me but clearly didn’t make sense for all of my classmates since this option got also ditched out; probably they couldn’t understand the intrinsic benefits of having the essay questions assigned to us prior to the exam and they were only focused on the burden of having to write more than one essay.
At the end, we decided to have the lowest grade dropped and weight the highest grade out of the two exams at a 40% with an extra credit option that would count towards our highest grade and the format of the second exam left to the professor’s discretion. It paid off for me: I went from a 67 on the first exam to a 100 on the next exam (with the help of 10 points extra credit).
The semester is almost over Summer is around the corner and the only thing that is on your mind is vast oceans and kilometers of white sand.
But stop your mind racing for a minute And pay close attention to this rhyme Because what you are about to hear It is what was covered on our Management class.
Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, Mc Gregor and the human side of enterprise, Kotter and his management grid, Perhaps all these dudes Don't sound familiar to you But I bet you will use them In a future nearby When you become That intrepid guy.
Congruence Model, The Matrix structure The Expectancy theory, You better be prepared Because final exam Is about to be aired.
You wanna be a leader? Keep this on mind, without strong confidence, drive or ambition honesty and integrity there is no way you will make it as a one of a kind.
Wherever life may take you, never forget your ethical values, and remember that power of vision is the gem to this puzzle that although a lil bit intricate is never the less promising to be very dazzling.
The end of the semester is close, summer is around the corner and the question that most of us have been asking ourselves became a reality-in the form of a blog entry, of course-to evaluate the effectiveness of this blog for our management class. Probably most of us embarked on this little project with only one idea of what it meant: a must do exercise worth 20% of our grade. Some others probably saw it as a pain-in-the-you-know-what..."I mean, come on! I work a full time job, I go to school full time, got a husband/fiance/children/dog/cat to take care of, and now you want me to write a blog? Don't you think I have enough with research papers?" , and still for others-those blog lovers-it was an exciting and fun way of working towards their grade. Whichever category you fell in, I can honestly say that at the end, the blog paid off. It not only provided us with a way of connecting with other classmates and getting to know what they thought about certain topics and in which ways we differed, but it also worked as an extra tool to master the management concepts previously learned in class. Because practice makes perfect, it was not enough to go to class, pay attention to the lecture or participate on a class project, take notes or read the book; we needed to come back home, let the new terms sink in our brain, and then put down on writing-blogging- about it. So in this way, if you had ever left class after any activity wondering:"how in the name of God is this related to management?" lol well, by actually doing the blogging and deeply analyzing the various class activities, the connection between the activities and management started to show. The blog also covered some topics that perhaps were not completely covered or not cover at all in class because of lack of time-after all, 22 modules is a lot to teach in a 15-week semester. I have always thought that learning is not a one way street; it involves different methods and some might work better than others depending on the person implementing them. For me, the blogging actually pushed me to go back to my notes and the book and to actually read and understand the material to apply it whenever writing a new post.
However, because nothing is perfect on this world, there is always some room for improvement and this blog is not an exception. Posting about real world issues-for instance, the recent Goldman Sachs scandal, the passed health care reform, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, or the great success of Japanese clothing store Uniqlo (in Soho, anyone?)-and relate them to management would be a good idea for future blogs since it pushes us to read the news, and to be informed about what's going on this world; which whether we like it or not, it is the place where we are living in :D
Although the blog idea was effective in meeting its goals, I think the fact that every student had its own blog and the only way to keep connected to them was making yourself a follower-which I only found out after my third blog entry (sorry guys! I'm not a blog savvy)- left me with the feeling that although the blogs were there, classmates were not REALLY, in a true sense, connected. In other words, I felt like I knew they were there, but there were no "ropes" connecting us to one another; we (our blogs) were floating around this vast parallel universe called Internet. Last semester, I learned a concept in my CIS class: 2-click distance. What it means is that in average, whenever surfing the web, it should take only 2-clicks for a person to get to the website with the information he is looking for. The more clicks it takes for you to get to the desired website, the more distracted you will get which will increase the chances for you to desist on your search. The 2-click average distance is a concept use on the creation of search engines as way to measure their effectiveness. In a way, this is what was happening to me before I got to discover the "become a follower" option; I would get to like one of my classmates' blog, but I would get lost whenever trying to reconnect with it on the next assignment. Two semesters ago,in a Literature course, I got my first-hand experience with blogging: the class was half lecture half online; for the online part, the professor created a blog where she will post every reading we needed to do on class, and for those assigned to be done online, we needed to respond to some questions and post our response as a comment to the reading post on her blog. Then, just like the Management Blog, we will have to comment on three of our classmates' entries. This way, only one stream of entries, comments and responses was created which increased the interaction among classmates since all the blogging was happening within one same blog. This is the link to that course blog if you don't understand what I mean http://gworks-milstein.blogspot.com/ If you click on the link you will see on the left of the screen a list of reading assignments titles and a URL address along with each reading. Further click on one of the URL and it will display the passage of the book we needed to read and the class responses as comments to it.
Finally, although 20% of our total grade was taken away from the exams and weighted on the blog, it is inevitable to not feel anxious before exams. After all, still 70% percent of our grade was based merely on the 3 exams; so since 70 is greater than 20, it does make us think that failling or passing the course depends solely on the exams which is not true. Personally though, I am the kind of student who rather had her grade heavily weighted on the more traditional ways-exams-than in more creative ways. And not because I lack of creativity (my DISC test results gave me a high percentage on creativity) but because, and many of you would agree with me here, my lack of time. Being a full time student with a full time job can really put some limitations on how much time you can dedicate to homework. I'd loved to have put more time to the blog postings because I found it very interesting what my classmates' opinions were, but many times I found myself writting the blogs in the middle of the night, right before the due date. Being a full time student and having a full time job is not fun at all. So for those of you out there, in their early 20's , young-free-spirits who don't have to go to work Monday through Friday from 8 to 5, and then literally run to class, enjoy the free ride while it last! lol :D Being a college-student ONLY is one experience I didn't get to live, but hey! when life gives you lemons, make yourself a lemonade! lol So for future purposes, I would probably change the percentage of the blog assignments, maybe to a 10% or 15%, or give the students the option to decide how much they want their exams/blogs/research papers to weight towards their final grade, of course, within certain ranges. But overall, like I said at the beginning the blog was an activity that excelled its main purpose; would I continue posting after class is over? hmmmm...why don't you find out in a couple of weeks? :D
On the egg planning activity where we had to construct a protector for an egg and release it from a certain height, our group didn't accomplish the mission which was to be able to drop the egg on the protection device and not break it. I will go over the steps in planning process and try to identify where we failed as a group whether by not covering that step at all or by not fulling developing it.
Step 1 is about defining our goals and objectives. We actually did go through this step because we first established what was needed to be done: how to be able to drop the egg without breaking it. Not only that but we also needed to construct a type of mechanism that will restrain the egg so it doesn't move. We also had to keep on mind that at all times 50% of the egg should be visible. Professor setting up the clock for all of us also helped to keep track of the time, but as we got closer to the deadline we realized our shell was not protective enough and started trying to add more padding to the shell. We also determined who was going to be on charged of what during the process of building the case: getting the scissors, building the cage, cutting the straws, dropping the egg, etc.
Step 2 is about determining the resources and current status. I guess it was hard not only for our group but for the rest of groups as well to go through this step without being able to use the material to actually plan our possible egg cage. So instead we guessed the size of the straws and built straws from paper so we could actually start figuring out how our cage was going to look like. We also drew various possibilities of how our cage would look like trying to figure out where to use the limited amount of straws more efficiently. This kind of helped but it also brought confusion to the group since everyone wanted to implement their idea and it took us long to finally decide for one and go for it. About the scissors, since there were only one pair available for the whole classroom, we asked the professor if we could go to other classrooms and ask for a pair of scissors, since the professor gave us the OK, we were able to get one but we kept it hidden until the very beginning of the building process since we didn't want other groups to copy our tactics and go to other classrooms trying to get their own pair of scissors as well. It worked :) because we were the only group who had their own pair of scissors and need not to share it with any other group. The scissors came helpful because we had previously decided to cut the tape by the middle so we could double up the amount of tape available.
Step 3 is about developing several alternative strategies. Our group kind of rush through this step since we were working against the clock. Although we thought about the idea of putting all the straws together-kind of building a "chain" and then attaching it to the egg- we asked the professor if this was permissible but he told us the egg needed to be released, let go from our hands, so we dismissed this idea. Bottom line is that the only group who actually won used the same idea we first thought of! :S Oh well, I guessed we didn't realize that by grabbing all the "chain" and then releasing first the egg and then each straw which was part of the main chain we were actually letting the egg go off our hands. We actually made the mistake of not further developing this first idea and rapidly move to another alternative which was in fact building a cage to protect the egg. We decided to wrap 50% of the egg with the tape so it will increase the probabilities of keeping the shell together in case of hitting the floor.
Step 4 is about making a tactical plan. After our very first idea was dismissed, we rapidly move to the idea of building a cage. Everybody started working on it, and it was kind of messy at certain points since everyone wanted to build a strong protection for the egg. We almost run of time, but were able to manage to send a representative with the paper that contained the egg protection design and with the actual device to the front just on time.
Step 5 is about implementing the plan and evaluating the results. We decided that whoever was the shortest person on the group-in this case I-was going to be the one to drop the egg. I guess we were trying to reduce the distance between the floor and the actual point from where the egg was going to be dropped by choosing the smallest person. It didn't work. Our cage was not protective enough that when the egg hit the floor it broke. Even though I tried to release it as straight as possible and my hand was not shaky at all, the weight of the egg made it fell upside down and our protective cage ended up on the upper side of the egg when the egg was supposedly to launch on it.
I would say my team failed in two things:
First, as mentioned before, we didn’t pursue our first idea, which was to construct a chain with the straws and attached it to the egg since we mistakenly assumed that the egg had to be released from our hand. This idea was the one who led the other group to win. Too bad for us. Second, there was a little bit of disorganization when actually constructing the egg cage, even though we had previously decided who was going to do what, at the end I think everyone got anxious and wanted to participate and implement their ideas. Overall, I think my group did a good job even with the limitations we had; for instance it was very difficult to plan and design the cage without being able to manipulate the elements, and whenever there is a time limit involved people tend to feel nervous.
So I've been living in the States for the last 8 years and yes, eventhough I got used to here and think I'll never be back to Peru there are somethings that still throw me off about the American culture.
First thing will be the way Americans greet when they meet a new person; a strong hand shake will do it, whereas Peruvians will give a kiss on the cheek to the person they are being introduced to. And this way of greeting is not only common of Peru but of most of the South-American region. But I guess, after 8 years I go with the hand shake and the kiss has been left on the past. The funny thing comes when a Hispanic is being introduced to another Hispanic-it has happened to me a couple of times that you don't know what to do: I stand there for a fraction of second thinking "should I extend my hand and expect him/her to do the same? or should I lean a little bit forward waiting for the other person to do the same and give each other a kiss on the cheek?" lol..It's perhaps a two seconds of awkardness, but I guess we have figured an improved way of saluting the other person: we give a hand shake and then try to read the body language of the other person to see if he/she is prone to continue with the kiss on the cheek...so far, it's worked for me :)
Another thing I still have some problems getting used to is punctuality. In Peru, we have this thing about being on time-basically, Peruvians are never on time! lol. Nor for a wedding reception or birthday celebration,neither for a public event. A-nd when indeed, an "x"event does start on time, we get pissed off! lol So whenever we wanted people to be on time, we would have to put down on the invitations that the event starts half an hour before than it really doestrust me, not one ill show on time. So this is what we called "the Peruvian time". On the other hand, Americans are very punctual and try to go by the schedule. If a cocktail party goes from 6 to 9pm, people will start showing up 6 sharp and will start leaving before the clock hits nine o'clock.
One more thing I noticed when I got to this country is that Americans are very respectful of traffic lights and transit rules. Driving in Peru is nuts. Most people don't respect the signals and they drive fast or slow depending if they are late for work or not. Pedestrian crossing are ignored, red lights are also ignored as well as the signs that read no left turn or no U turn. Don't get me wrong, things have started to get better specially in Lima, capital of Peru mainly because there has been an increase on the penalty amounts for infringing transit rules.But for instance, if it is 2am in the morning and a driver in the States hits a red light , chances are he/she will stop the car and wait for the light to change eventhough there is no one soul walking on the streets, no coops around no cars approaching the intersection. If in Peru, the driver will not think it twice and just ommit the red light and continue til its final destination.
