"Vision and management" poem

Vision.

One simple word –

-          Vision.

Whenever you need a decision

Just think of vision.

You can have plans, have dreams, have fun,

But only vision helps

When we are talking about you

In five or seven years.

Just think of vision

When you stuck and don’t know where to go

Remember vision when you think

“It’s over.. Let’s go home!”

Remember vision all the time

And don’t give up, and don’t give in

Remember vision day and night

And fight until you’ll reach your dream!

About blogging.

To be honest, I found the blogging experience kind of frustrating. For me, blogging is expressing my feelings and thoughts about something at the time when you feel to express them. It just doesn’t work as a class assignment for me. Especially I hated the comments to other people’s blogs. Again, for me it doesn’t make any sense when it is assigned to make a certain number comments by xx/xx/2010, come on, give me a break. =)

Some people say it is better than research paper and u don’t need any extra material to write a blog, but I think I would rather did 2 research papers then 8 blog assignments. When I just started the blog I already hated the first assignment to tell about myself. In real life I would never start a blog describing myself. Next day I felt like writing a post which wasn’t assigned – it was about management and my experience with a pizza delivery guy. This post has never been assigned but I did it very enthusiastically because I felt like writing it, and since my blog is about management, I wrote a lot about management in the service organizations.

If you want to keep the blogs, students should be free to choose their own topics and they own timing. For example, tell student that they will have to write at least 6 posts related to management within the semester, based on your life observation or whenever you feel to write about (related to management). I am sure you will see more creative and interesting results. And to stimulate students to write 6 posts or more, make it as an extra credit assignment with a solid number of points for each blog post.

What kind of manager I am.

I missed the classes last week (because I caught a cold) and didn’t participate in the activity and the test which would determinate my management personality. But professor gave me the description of all 4 dimensions of behavior that were in that test and told me just to choose one myself…

I think I am “I” (influence). First of all I have really big entrepreneurial spirit. I always have some business ideas and usually I can persuade my friends (or people I know) that the ideas will be successful. I also like entertaining people and I am an optimist in general. I appreciate freedom of expression and democratic relationships. The things I need to gain to be more effective also match, like I need more control of time, and work on priorities and deadlines.

If I have to hire people for my business, I will definitely hire people with the qualities described in the type of management. I would need people who can concentrate on tasks, take logical approach, seek facts, and so on. I think it is because I have a lot of ideas, but sometimes don’t have patience to make them happen. So, to help me with developing my company, I would need people who can concentrate on things and just do it.

Again, I didn’t take the test in class, I just choose this management type from the list because I think it fits me the most. Also, I think that every entrepreneur should have at least some abilities listed in this type of management behavior.

Vision.

In the class we watched a very inspiring video about the vision. In two words, the moral of the video is if you have a vision and make a certain actions to you have a high chance to succeed in life.

I am going to tell you my 5 goals in life and what actions I am taking (or will take) to complete them.

1. Open and develop own business (businesses). Status: In progress.

Actions: I have been freelancing in the social media marketing for a long time and now I am opening a company. Currently I am improving my marketing plan, finishing developing a logo for the company, and starting to develop a company’s web site.

2. Become a producer (preferably a Broadway one, lol). Status: In progress.

Actions: I have been dreaming doing something in theatre or entertainment business for a long time, an that was one of the major goals why I choose to move to NYC. For more than 3 years I live here, I have learned so much about producing Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. My minor is theatre, currently I take Theatre Management class. So basically so far I learn how to do it, every day, little by little. I think in the future I need some experience, like internship for a production company, or something like this.

3. Find more good friends. Status: In progress.

Actions: Sometimes I can be quite a closed person, or in other words introverted, so it’s kind of problematic for me to find new friends, especially a real friends (not just a school buddies). I am trying to learn more about myself and how can I make it happen by working wioth therapist.

4. Find a person I would spend a life with. Status: Looks like far far  away (lol).

Actions: Going out and dating online. Actively. Probably need to add more steps like going to a special networking event or something like this, and again, therapist. Lol

5. Enjoy life. Status: Completed.

Actions: Although I have a lot of problems, in general, I am enjoying life, I like going out to night clubs and dance, travel, meet new people, going out to museums, movies, and so on. I have a lort of dreams and goals. I feel myself alive.

Decisions, decisions.

During the management class in my college the professor gave us a chance to improve our midterm grades by completing a simple task: we all had to make a decision on how we were going to fix the grade. The only condition was given: every single person in our class should vote for the decision. After a long process of the decision making, we  made up a solution – the professor would give us an extra credit assignment, plus the grade after the extra assignment would be curved. Although decision was made and everybody voted for it, we had a hard time making it.

As we know there are several behavior models during the decision making process:

“Compete to win” behavior. There were several students in our class (I would say one or two) who very actively and , may I say, aggressively promoted their ideas.

Avoidance behavior. Some students, including me, didn’t participate in the decision making at all.

Compromise behavior.  Most of the students worked as mediators, trying to get at least any result (if we wouldn’t have agreed, the professor wouldn’t give us any extra points for the test at all).

Accommodation behavior. Probably some students who get the highest grades in the exam didn’t really care about the decision, so they didn’t actively participate.

Collaboration behavior. Those were real negotiators who provided us with their ideas and respectfully listen ideas of the other students. I think it was the second larger group of people in the class after the compromise behavior.

As I mentioned above, personally I chose the avoidance behavior. Well firstly because I was really not in the mood of talking and negotiating. Secondly, I feel really uncomfortable negotiating the ideas in the large groups (30-40 people are too much for me). I am sure I would have feelt morally better had we discussed this in the small groups (3-5 people). I would have probably used collaboration behavior , or maybe even “compete to win” one. Also, as the theory says, on the subconscious level I felt that it would be hard to proceed with the idea that everyone liked. Personally, I would have voted for the standard multiple choice question, I am actually shocked that the class decided to keep the test almost the same way it was before! But, oh well, can’t change anything now.

I want another egg :(

In my management class we were assigned to create a case for an egg to protect it from breaking if someone would drop the egg from 5 -5 feet height. The material consisted from 8 straws and the 2 feet duck-tape in. We had 25 minuted to plan it in the groups, and only 10 minuts to build the case. It was a planning exercise. As you know there are 5 steps in planning:

1. Setting the goals.

2. Determining objectives.

3. Developing strategies.

4. Making a tactical plan.

5. The plan implementation and evaluating the results.

We knew the goal, and the objective was to build a case for an egg which will save it from breaking when the egg hits the floor. The first mistake we made, in my opinion, was didn’t choosing a manager (leader) of the group. You see, it is quite awkward to do it on your own. Some people may want is, some people don’t, other people want to bea manager but too shy to step forward, and so on. I think in this types of exercise the professor should assign a leader for each group. Everyone should try to be a leader in the group, which means a new leader (manager) should be selected every time when a group exercise is conducted.

During the developing the strategies stage we agreed right away that we were going to use the first design proposal. No alternatives were made. Maybe, if we thought more, we would created more efficient designs. That was another mistake.

Third mistake was is that we didn’t determine who in the group is responsible for which action during the construction process, which was set for only 10 minutes. Becauseof this mistake, we didn’t create the design we planned on the blueprint, so we had to improvise.  When the construction process began it was a little bit confusing who is doing what. The leader of the group should have assigned a different position in the construction process before the construction started to each member, so we would complete the planned design on time.

In conclusion, I believe that a leader in the group would have helped to perform better. Also, members of a group should always think of an alternative strategies and tactics to implement these strategies, and not to stick with a first idea. Also, before actually beginning of the work, the specific positions in the group should be assigned to each member. By the way, our egg did break. :)

Difference in Cultures.

When I moved to America I wasn’t shocked or surprised anyhow. But I can see some differences in the cultures. You see, in Russia people are seem to be more rude. Russian people don’t say “Excuse me”, “Thank You”, “I am sorry”, and other nice words as often as Americans. It  doesn’t mean Russians are bad. I can see two explanations of this effect. The first one is related to the historical past. The second one is related to… I don’t even know how to say it…. The culture?

Let’s start with the first one.   Although a lot of things changed since communism, the quality of service in business is still quite poor. Before 1991 it was much worse. I was a little kid at that time and I don’t remember much, but based on what I have seen in movies, read in books, and heard from other people, people felt like they are going to a battle when they were going shopping. It was almost impossible to go out to, let’s say, a grocery store and not to get into a verbal fight with a salesperson or sometimes even fellow shoppers. The definition of “customer service” simple didn’t exist and people were so angry so they always verbally fight with each other: customers with salespeople, customers with customers, sales people with sales people, and so on.

After 1991 when privately held businesses started to appear, the situation was still the same, if not even worse. Because in addition to bad customer service and angry people, organized crime, which tried to control the businesses, started to appear. It was like a Wild West in America. People know a little (if know anything) about management, marketing, and other business related subjects. And only after 2000 things are started to change. Now, although situation has changed, if you go to a modern Russia you still can see some examples of poor customer service and bad management.

The second reason why Russia people don’t say polite words as often as Americans, is that a lot of people think that when you say a polite word, such as “Thank You”, you need to really mean it. In other words, you should say polite words only in a very special situations, which really means something for you. I read some discussions in Russian forums, and people say there that Americans say the polite words just because they use to it, almost automatically, and it doesn’t really mean a lot to them.

 What’s is the moral of the story? Well, it is obvious, management of a company should pay close attention when working with people from different cultures.