Dear MGT

Planning, Controlling, Organizing, Leading

-What the managers do!

Be better, be first, be sustainable, and be new

-We have the same purpose!

Drive, self-confidence, creativity

Cognitive ability, business knowledge

Motivation, Flexibility, honesty and integrity

-We’re the managers!

the ABCs of DISC

In the DICS personal profile, there are four different kinds of people. Dominance: emphasis is on shaping the environment by overcoming opposition to accomplish results; Influence: emphasis is on shaping the environment by influencing or persuading others; Conscientiousness: emphasis is on working conscientiously within existing circumstances to ensure quality and accuracy. Steadiness: emphasis is on cooperating with others to carry out the task.

I did test that it says I’m D-S type person. I think the test got it partly right about me. DISC personality type ‘Dominance’ (D) explains my style to tackle problems. My self-determined answers to the given challenges provide an insight into the style of decision making and their implementation. The “Dominance” type people tendencies include: getting immediate results; causing action; accepting challenges; making quick decisions; questioning the status quo; taking authority; managing trouble; solving problems. I think now I have those tendencies, but I will keep changing during my experience. However, the test also pointed out my weakness which is “With high DISC personality type 'D' rating, you feel excited when you face problems. However, there are certain situations which may take away your energies to solve them. You become frustrated when you are put in tight controls. Slow speed of events and delay in results may depress you. You can lose your temperaments when you have to pass through routines frequently. You hate tight schedules.” After took this test, I will follow the result to improve my weakness, since I hope to be the C type person.

Communicating via Blog

Communication is one of the most important skills. I believe we will be happier if we can improve our ability to communicate. This blog has been as a communications tool for the class. It provides a great way for me to learn about and from each other, about what they think about the subject matter, the class activities, and to provide a way to share thoughts and ideas with other people. I do strongly agree to create a blog, it’s benefited from meeting others online, also extended to communicating in class.We know that our class only have few hour a week, it’s not enough time to know each other and get the whole knowledge like a book, especially in the evening class, everybody hasty back home. Since I’m studying in college,I make rare new friends. So I think professor’s good idea that to write a blog gives us a good chance to learn more and communicate more.

This blog provides a good way to encourage students to think about the class activities we did. Every time we participate in class activities, we should understand why professor gave that assignment to us. To share our opinion, I think there’s no other good way since our class only few hours a week.

Through Professor’s blog, I found out some good views from those outside reading. As Professor Kurpis writes “Do what you love. We always find time to do what we love. When you do what you love, you do it well – you make a good job of it and you are rewarded along the way. Some things you just love for no discernible reason, and doing these things is no chore. When you’re doing something that makes you feel good and gives you a sense of purpose and achievement, you are at your most effective.” Although it’s not related to the class, it’s good for us to know or think about our future. Especially for me, as a second language student, I prefer to read more to improve my english.

Professor Kurpis provided a way for us to easily manage and control 20% of our grade that was not test related. I do really like some professors give us a chance which is count 20% in the homework. If they only count 100% for those exams, I think I will more anxieties towards the classes. As a full time students, I would like professor give us more options to make up our grade. I will continue to post my thoughts or ideas about school, work, life on my blog after this class ended, because communication is important for me to improve all my skills, such as writing skill, management skill, communicate skill, etc.

Special Order in McDonald's

This is my first time to take special order in McDonald’s. This experience is much harder than what I thought, because I tried two of the different locations of the McDonald’s then finally get it. First time, I went to one of the McDonald’s in Chinatown, sadly I came was not at the right timing, because it’s rush hour, a lot of people waited on line, in that time the cashier rejected me to print a special order receipt, she just asked me come back and explain to me why the machine can not make it.
Luckily, I accomplished it smoothly and successfully about 6 minutes in the second time when I went to the other McDonald’s which locate in Fulton Street. I remember that only few people there. I was so nervous because I did reject by them about the receipt in the first time and I thought my special order would take long time to complete and maybe a lot of the staffs would get involve in it. So I walked up to the cashier who looked nice for me and made my order, “Can I get one small hamburger with four pickles on it and a small fries well done with no salt? ” After I took my order, she gazed on me and looked like can not heard clearly about my order then she asked me, “Excuse me, what you just say?” At that time, I was worried about my pronunciation and I told her again but slow down at this time. She answered, “Anything else?” Then I told her I also need a ranch snack wrap and a coke. After I took my order, she walked to the guy in the blue shirt to tell him about my special order in the hamburger with four pickles. And she walked to the other side to pick my fries, but I can not see what she done on my fries. Just few second, I was surprised that she took it as a normal order. Then I told her give me a receipt which state all my special orders.
After 2 minutes, when I get the receipt, there shows only four pickles burger but didn’t state well done fries with no salt. But she still looked nice and she told me her machine can not make this special receipt because there’s no spaces for that to print it out. After she explained to me, she gazed on me again, and she said “actually, the receipt isn’t that important, you just enjoy your order is fine”. Then I was shocked by what she just said. I can not tell her this is my assignment, so I told her I need to see the manager, I do really care about the receipt. After I requested to see her manager, she looked like so worried, she told me give her few minutes to do that for me then she walked back to the room. But after few minutes she brought back the receipt in hand writing shows that “fries well done with no salts” and the manager’s signature. It cost me about 6 minutes to get the order.
I opened the burger and checked my order that was exactly followed what I want. During the process I was treated nicely, the cashier very nice to take my order, and the guy just follow the order to make the burger, and finally get signature for my receipt, I remember that only three staffs involved in my case. I’m very satisfied with McDonald’s service, and I think this is an acceptable wait. Their customer service was nice because the cashier never argue with me when I gave them the order and did everything just right for my order. The way they handle special orders are effective. That is very important to a fast food restaurant because customers expect save time in such kinds of restaurants. The services they provide are also highly efficient, they don’t matter the customer’s request is reasonable or not. Obviously the manger and the cashier are rich experiences so that they solve troubles easily. They don’t waste time to argue with me or question me because time is money toward a fast food restaurant. I think my case didn’t challenge the manager but challenge the cashier, because the cashier is the one who always face the customer first. In my opinion, McDonald’s has a good system for the stuffs during their positions; they only focus on what they need to follow.
If I were brought in as a consultant to McDonald’s to help them improve their efficiency, I recommend that they should help and train the cashiers how to use the machine to make the perfect receipt. There’s a problem of a technical skill.

Live My Goals

A person needs to achieve certain goals in One’s life before you can call them successful. Success is to achieve goals you have set. I have set certain goals I would like to achieve during my lifetime.

My career goal is to be a business manager. To be a business manager I will have to learn several skills. First I need to do is get a good education, so I’m studying in Baruch as a business student. In my opinion, one of the most important skills is to know how to negotiate and knowing how to pick my market. The other skill I will need is the good math skills. The qualities I have to become a business manager include an aptitude for mathematics. A business manager has many responsibilities. It include hiring employees, paying all bills, supervising, setting store policies, keeping good records and so on. I chose this career for many reasons, once I become a business manager I hope that I will be able to run and manage my own business, which is I want to own my nail & facial store. I know that most ladies are like to make beauty on their nails or do spa or do something on their face make them look younger than their age. And as a lady, I understand that many people are very care about their outlook, they will spend a lot of money to make it look great.

The other goal is to be a good dancer. Since I was 8 years old, I learned dancing from my school, no matter how busy I was with schoolwork, I always tried to make time to practice dancing. I practiced so hard that I got bruised. But I never give up, when I have chance to perform, I did my best to make it good. But sometimes upset my mother, I always felt pain after I practice dancing. When she found out, she hugged me and ask me to give up, she told me dancing can not be my career, only can be my hobby. After I give up dancing 5 years ago, I know I still crazed with dancing. I told myself, “I can make it” and “just do it”, because I understand that when I do what I love, I do it well. I will keep up my dancing when I after Baruch, because my dance shoes share my best moments in life. I hope Dancing will be my second career.

At last, my personal goal is go traveling around the world with my lover. I love traveling because every time when I was arrived a stranger place, I learned more from that, everything for me look like interesting and many reasons which touched me, it’s hard to explain what I felt after traveling, but it’s to sign with emotions.

How People Handle Conflict?

After the test #1, Professor gave us a very good chance, if the whole class agree that we can do whatever we want to make better on our grade. This is the second experiment of making a decision. Unanimously adopted by the whole class, I think it's much harder than designing an egg protector. At that time, a very large question came to me:" How everyone agree the same idea? Is it impossible?" I was worried about it. I worried about we may have no chance when we just focus on the argument.

First, everyone tried to win their agreement. They tried their best to compete to win. But we knew that everyone had different grades on this test. Some people did poor on this test just because on the essay part, because of they're the second language students, they don't have enough time to write a such good essay. Some people who did well in this test, they just refused to change format. And some people didn't good at the multiple multiple choice questions, etc. Those conflict created a chaos situations. In that limited time, we began to panic just because we knew that if there's no compromise decision come out, we all have no chance to change anything on our grade. Since we have different idea, our leader calmed everyone down. She respected and wrote down the idea on the blackboard , then let us to vote for it. Finally, we all agree with drop the lowest grade and also get the extra credits.

Through this decision making experiment, we see the final decision looked benefit and fair to everyone. I wanna say, our leader did a very good job for us, if she didn't persuade us in the limited time, we all lost such a good chance. If she's not catch up the time, there's "no chance of winning". This task showed us in a very good way that how people handle conflict.

How to Drop an Egg Without Breaking It!

My group's egg failed at building an effective egg protector. Even though our egg is not the survivor, but we did follow the steps in the planning process. First, we read the definition, understood that we had limited material and limited time. Second, we estimated for what may happen when the egg falls. As we knew that the egg is breakable, we need to protect around it. At that time, we shared ideas of a solution, we choosed the action alternative most likely to accomplish our task. Some people cut the straws, some people ripped the tape, and one wrote down what we had designed and the names of our group members. After careful evaluation, we decided made some cross to support the egg. But unexpected, the straws too soft and the tape not sticky, the cross can not make it firm. Since we had that trouble, we had to modify the design, but also at that moment we start to panic due to the limited time. Finally, our plan failed. Overall, I think my group was effective in this task, even we didn't succeed. No matter this task we failed or succeed, we all had a very good experience, we learn from it.