Stan Garber's Journal

Lesson learned
Even though my team only accomplished one of its two objectives during the simulations, I felt that the lessons I learned in managing a company were invaluable. The first thing that my team and myself realized was that attempting to reach one goal at a time was not the ideal approach because other companies will be working on multiple goals. When you start working on other goals, a competitor in the industry maybe already accomplished those goals and taken away market share from you already. The key strategy that we found was to determine your top goals immediately and create an action plan that will simultaneously help you reach these goals. The results maybe a bit slower, but at the end your company is still constantly growing and not falling behind the industry in any certain field. Then slowly start initiating secondary objectives when you achieved your primary goals. If we incorporated the idea of quality control in the first year, then we probably would not be so pressured during years two’s operations.

Quick thought
We got our results back last week and I found out that my company had the highest morale rating in the competition. That was really exciting news for me and team mates because of all the heard work we put in the last eight week. However, we had our large move came in the last quarter of the simulation. I felt that his was mainly because our wages surpassed the local and industry average. I guess it just proves that money can really drive people to perform better in certain industries and level.

Feedback
I have gained a lot of experience with providing feedback to others. Yet, I still find it difficult to provide useful feedback from worthless feedback. I always have to approve a website design before any designer moves to the next stage. At time, I run into the problem of just telling the designer that I hate the design or that it is not the image that would fit the company. Furthermore, most of the times I expect them to figure it out because they are the artistic ones. However, this type of feedback is quit useless much of the time because they have no idea what to change or what to keep. I have found that the best way to deal with these problems is to give a few quick suggestions and then ask a few unbiased people about what you would to the design. This allows me to give the designer a clear-cut answer on what they need to fix or adjust in the layout before moving on to the next stage.

Action Plan
This past week, I was able to start writing the second part of my learning. When I started to thinking about what goals would make good learning goals for the next few years, I found that I kept altering ideas. Yet, I finally came to two particular goals that would help me become a better businessperson and a more complete individual. The first goal is to become a more effective public speaker in a professional environment. My personal goals, was to become more tolerant and patient with my family members. The ironic thing about this goal is that my action plan contains some unique ideas on how I would accomplish this goal. Two steps included me going fishing with my father and the other included me spending more time with my grandparents. Both of these activities will most likely increase my patience level with individuals.

Honestly, if I were not thinking about these direct goals, then I would never come up with these unique ideas. I guess the really fun thing about the learning plan process is that it allows you to explore different aspects about your life and a lay out a plan on how you will reach your BHAG. I can’t wait to accomplish these two learning goals because it will bring me one step closer to being a senior investment banker.

360 the best way?
I think the past few weeks in management have been the most helpful to me, since the semester began. We have been talking about different types of appraisal programs and how they are both negative and positive in the work place. The ironic thing is that topic has been on my mind for a few months because I wanted to implement some type of appraisal program in my company, to see how all the employees and management are doing. The material that I learned definitely put some light on the situation and I think that the 360-degree evaluation seems to be the best method for our company structure because all three partners need to review each employee strengths and weakness. With some planning, I hope to have the appraisal program initiated in late December. One question I have, is the 360-degree appraisal program the best way to get an answer to what managers should be improving on in the future from the employees feed back?

Lesson Learned
It was definitely a fun weekend, in the work department. I guess each team has individuals who shine immediately when given assignment and other members that need more support and extra attention. I witnessed that sometimes you cannot always rely on someone to finish an assignment in a certain period. Even, though I had to pick up the slack and finish/fix up two write-ups for our team simulation, it taught me that having a plan for the worst is necessary in all situations. My team typically has all our decisions material and writes done by Sunday night, which gave us just enough time to fix up all the miscommunications errors.

After receiving my Part I back to the learning plan, it seems that I need to focus more on direct writing when trying to put my ideas and onto paper. The problem is that I tend to write exactly what is in my mind and it causes me to make simple grammar errors in my writing. Proofreading is definitely something that I need to pay more attention in revisions and future assignment. It maybe, also, in my best interest to have others look over my writing to make that my writing is up to par.

a few quick thoughts
It is the end of our first year simulation, and I am very pleased with my team’s performance. We accomplished our goals that we set four quarters ago. I think that a major reason why we were able to accomplish these goals were for the reason that we setup a clear-cut plan on how we would address our primary goals. Then a system of communication was established, which allowed us to get all our material and paper work done a few days before the due date. I think the only way a team can be successful at what they do is to establish a clear path of communication between all the team members and make sure that each team is involved in the whole process.

Looking back at the compensations options and laws that we talked about in class, I found that many of these factors play the largest difference between having a staff willing to make the company successful or just taking their paycheck and moving on. Motivating employees that are not owners in the company can be quite challenging, which I have experienced first hand with my web design company. To combat this problem we disturb bonuses to each web designer when the finish working a project. These bonuses are mainly defined by scale of the project and most of our designers know that if they do a great job on the project, then a nice bonus will be given to then. Each industry has different incentives and I personally believe that the best way to motivate people in a company is to give employees a profit sharing program, which encourages employees to do better.

A few thoughts
A little bit of time has pasted since I have updated my journal, solely for the reason that mid-term week was one crazy week to get through. Last week I spend a great deal of time working on my Learning Plan. It took a little bit of planning and some brainstorming, but when I started writing it seemed like the material just flowed out of me. I guess a person only has a lot to say when he/she are truly passionate about the topic. By the end of the first draft, it seemed that this assignment looks to be one of my most successful projects in college. The process allowed me to really analyze myself as a person and put some perspectives toward the future for me. Just today, I finally applied to three different internship programs because the people that I interviewed told me that they would really help me after I get my undergraduate degree. It would be a wonderful world if I just ran my business after college, but sometimes you have to cover all your ends. I took all the comments and suggestion that the career center gave me about my resume and made sure that the resume was a true representation of me (with out any common mistakes as well (). Since the beginning of this semester, I have become much more involved in trying to determine where I want to end up in the future and what actions I have to take now to ensure that I can achieve those goals.

What is Ethical?
This past week in management we have spent a portion of our time discussing ethics in the workplace. Today, business ethics have been under the scope, ever since the corporate scandals began to unravel. What are considered ethical business practices? This is a question that for some people can be easily answered and for others a difficult one to ponder. In the case study we looked at on Thursday, Johan worked for a company that had a racial discrimination problem. He believed that it was wrong and that it was the ethically correct thing to do, by standing up to the problem. At the end Johan lost his job and made no really contribution to solving that problem. I guess what I am trying to get around is that each case is different and sometimes acting on gut maybe not the best approach. There are cases, where taking actions is appropriate, but that needs to be decided by that individual or group because the end rest may not be what is expected.

Last quarter reflection..and my first interview
My team finally got our results back from the first quarter. However, the results were not as grand as we had anticipated when making our company decisions. Yet, many of the small measure began to show small movement, which was encourage to see. In our second decision meeting we all came to a conclusion that the only way we would reach our goals was to follow the plan that we set earlier in the game. The first quarter was only 3 months of results and in the real world it takes years to solve serious HR problems and correct planning is the key to reaching these goals.

We have began to experiment with some programs to see what effects they would have on the company and what the best possible programs contribute to our short and long term goals.

Also, today I got a chance to call my first Case alumni and talk to him about his career. I got in contact with Sean Mee, who is an HR director in Alcoa Mill Products, with the help of the career center. The conversation was pretty interesting in that he talked to me about the HR department in Ernst & Young. Since I want to go into finance, I thought a person with HR experience in that field maybe more knowledge about the field. By the end of the conversation Mr. Mee explained to me how a company like Ernst & Young really runs and what their financial department expects form their employees. He also is helping me find some more contact in the Cleveland. I can’t wait to see to interview another person in the field of accounting or investment banking b/c the insight is really useful.

First week
Last week, my team finally got the opportunity to meet and figure out what the heck we will be doing for the next eight weeks. The first meeting went pretty well, but the problem was two members forgot to show up. At the time this made me pretty nervous and worried about how we will perform as a group and not individuals. However, by the end of the week everyone on the team finished up each assignment given to them. It looks like a form of trust has been created by the team as a whole, which is a key component to making sure that we will not fall behind in our decisions process. The team structure we setup seems to working very effectively, in that we always have all our material done by Sunday and have an extra day to work out any problems. Next week will be a true test to see if the team has really come together and the decision process is effective.

Team Leader...
Today, I got the opportunity to meet the rest of my HR Simulation team. Since, I was selected as team leader it would be my responsibility to get the team organized and interview each member. The guys on my team all seem very capable and determine to make our company’s HR department successful. However, I had immediately noticed that certain people desired a responsibility, which I was not ready to delegate. As I was sitting after the interviews I realized how different each member’s personalities are to one another in the team, which motivated me to come up with some ideas on how I would be able to utilize each person’s abilities. We already set our first meeting for Sunday and are planning to have regular weekly meeting on Friday. The process has already began, and I truly believe that we are going to come out on top if everyone contributes to the effort.

An unusual week of class
Last week was definitely different then any of my typical classes. I found that the networking session was really interesting. It gave me the chance to meet a number of my fellow peers in a short amount of time. The idea of giving out business cards to people that you only met for the first time really gave you a sense of pride. The resume session was something that I think helped me a great deal, because I finally put together a resume. (lol) I got a great deal of feed back from my peers and from the career center. After listening to those suggestions and improving on all the components I left out previously. I think that my resume will become my most power tool in getting my foot in the door. I can’t wait to see what new skills we will improve or learn later this semester.

Self Assessment
Today, we got our Myers-Briggs type indicator results. Based on my responses to the assessment, my MBTI type is ENTJ. These four letters mean that I am analytical, objectively critical, decisive, and assertive to name a few of the traits in the group. During class I also thought that ENTJ type would fit me best, after hearing the description from the career center instructors. For the most part I’m pretty happy with the results, b/c the traits that are associated with this type do fit my personality quit well. On Tuesday we are having our networking event, which I am actually looking forward to meeting people. Since, it is a great way to meet a bunch of new people in a short amount of time and in the business world it’s not what you know, but who you know!

First week of Class
The first week of the new semester is finally behind us. This week seemed like it would never end, but at the same time it was one of the most interesting weeks of the year. Management 250 turned out to be one of my favorite courses; in my never ending work load. I particularly enjoy the structure of the course, where we control our final grade by our efforts in class. It's a nice break from the typical grading structure that everybody faces in there classes. The first week of MGMT 250 was fun and looking at the syllabus it seems that the class does not slow down in the number of things we have to accomplish this semester.

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