Communicating via Blog

I think the blog assignment is very effective as a communications tool for this class, and it is very interesting to me also because I have never had a class that used blog assignments. It provides a way for me to learn about and from the other students; about what they think about the subject matter, the class activities, and to provide a way to share thoughts and ideas with people I might not have a chance to otherwise interact with. I believe that I have benefited from meeting others online, because it is another way to communicate with other people outside of class. Since we don’t have enough time for each one of us to know each other and experience what the other is thinking; the blog assignment becomes a good tool for solving this issue. It’s very interesting to know other’s ideas about class activities and I would be happy to know if anyone has some of the same thoughts as me. I might continue to post blog entries after this class has ended.

Poem

Many toil,
Most work,
A few create,
I manage.
I manage the ideas and labors of the many, the most and even the few.
Management organizes all.

McDonald's Restaurant

I went to Michigan with my friends during spring break, so I bought this order in Michigan as well. I asked one of my friends to drive me to McDonald, and he was so surprised that I was missing McDonald’s food. Because that was the first time I went to Michigan, so I didn’t know where the McDonald’s restaurant is, but it wasn’t difficult to find and we saw the restaurant in about 10 minutes from driving. When we were in McDonald’s Restaurant, I asked my friend if he could order this for me because I was so embarrassed. I gave the printed assignment sheet to him and I told him to just ask the staff to give the food that is listed on the paper. When my friend asked the cashier if he could have that order, I heard the staff say “oh, that’s so weird, but I will do it for you anyway”. My friend and I were kind of embarrassed at that time. The cashier told the kitchen staff that she wanted 1 small hamburger with four pickles on it and 1 small order of French Fries with no salt; the kitchen staff repeated the order again, and the cashier said “yes, correct”. I heard the staff in the kitchen ask to the cashier, “are you sure you just want French Fries with no salt”? The cashier said “yes, please”. It took about 15minutes to complete this order. Three people got involved in completing this order. The three included the cashier who took the order, a kitchen staff, and a person who packed this order. They treated me nicely when I asked for this picky order. The cashier was smiling at me and my friend while we were waiting for the order. In addition, the order was completed correctly with four pickles on the hamburger and no salt in the French Fries. The workers were all friendly and well trained to do the task assigned but as a team there seemed to be no method in place to handle special orders. The company has surely made its mark on uniformity of style, cleanliness and taste but special orders seemed to bring the system to a halt. The three workers involved had to stop and communicate in new ways to get the order completed correctly. The order was correctly produced but it took a long time. Fifteen minutes is a long time to wait in McDonalds, fast food should be fast as well as tasty. The entire production of this order caused the line in this fast food place to slow way down and that can’t be good for business.
I think McDonald’s teaches their workers to be professional even when the customers make some difficult order with many restrictions. In my case, although the order seemed abnormal, they still made the order that I wanted. If we manage our work properly and treat the customers nicely, we always can bring back the customer, and this is very important in managing a business. The cashier who ordered my food was very professional, when my friend showed her the assignment sheet; she read it and asked my friend to confirm the order. After she placed the order on the computer, she rechecked the order with the paper that my friend have on hand. The way she treated us was very polite; she kept smiling as we ordering and continued smiling while we were waiting as well. Smiling is a good and wonderful aspect of the job training at McDonalds but the smile wears thin after several minutes of waiting for the now slow fast food. Perhaps in addition to the smile McDonalds needs to compensate the customer with some free item for enduring the long wait. After all, the hamburger should have been no problem at all only requiring the careful placement of four pickles. The no salt French fries must have been a difficult order to fill. I am sure that we have all seen the McDonalds workers liberally pouring salt on all the heating fries waiting to be sent out to the customers. I suppose that the facilities to produce this particular special order created some difficulties. McDonalds should consider a special work station to handle special orders. Today’s fast food market is rising in competition and McDonalds would do well to realize that special orders may pay an important part in their future business. McDonalds has been very successful over the years but times change and to continue to enjoy business success McDonalds should incorporate a new level of management training to accommodate special orders such as the one present in this assignment.
If I was bought in as a consultant to McDonald’s to help them improve their efficiency, I will recommend that McDonald’s should invite customers to ask for special orders. Because sometime the special order can be creative and the taste can be delicious too. In this way they can use the customers’ creatively as research and in this may bring more customers as well be a source of new product lines. There is another way to improve operations during special orders. McDonald’s can add a self service bar where customers can choose bread, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, etc. to make a hamburger or sandwich. Personally, I would be happier to choose items that I want for my order rather than choosing them from menu. In this way, I don’t have to tell McDonald’s staff what I want and what I don’t want for my order. There should be no exact price for special orders; the price should depend on the number of items that the customer adds to the orders. Maybe McDonalds could create a special menu of possible special order possibilities. Whatever McDonalds decides to do in the future, I believe that special, and orders are likely to be a growing part of their business.

The ABCs of DISC

The test showed that I have a conscientiousness personality (C high S). This type of person has an emphasis on working conscientiously with existing circumstances to ensure quality and accuracy. I think this test correctly resulted concerning my personality, but I don’t know how the test accurately gauges my management orientation. Within the business field, I think it is better to have an influence type of personality because this type of person can shape the environment by influencing or persuading others. I don’t think I can become another type because it’s hard to change one’s personality. If we can change our personality easily, then we can hide our personality easily as well. I think it’s helpful to determine a person’s management type to better understand where they are coming from because personality might be affected by cultural or social issues. A test like this would be helpful with personal interaction. If you already know what kind of person they are, it’s easier for you to communicate with them.

VISION

I believe “Vision without action is just a dream. Action without vision merely wastes time. Vision coupled with action can make things happen!” I have my future goal that I want to be a great financial consultant, to have a good family relationship and maintain a good healthy body. In order to make those dreams come true, I think I have to work hard in the school and get a degree in order to make it easier to get a job. My friend has recommended that I go and listen to a finance group meeting. That is just a group of people who come from various business fields and gather together in this group. They tell others what they did and explain how to succeed in their own business fields. My relationship with my family is fine and I hope I can keep it up in the future as well. As far as health is concerned, I think everyone should have a good body in order for them to work, play, and enjoy their life. So I will eat well and keep my body in a healthy way.

Decision Making

I think I have used Compromise, Avoidance, and Accommodation to handle conflict in our class decision making exercise. First Compromise: I think some people and I had to use compromise because it is a fair and necessary way to handle things like our discussion. Although we did not quite agree about the final vote, and yet we still have to do so. Second, Avoidance: I believe there were a lot of people who have good ideas, but they just decided not to express them. Decision making is challenging under time constraints and uncertainty. People usually need more time to think of a best idea for their own situation, but in our class discussion, I think was impossible because everyone was prone to self-serving behavior, thinking of what was best for them. Personally, I don’t like to keep the essay part because English is not my first language. On the first exam, I lost a lot of points on the essay part. However, I think there are more people who like to keep the essay part because they think that is a good way to gain points. Therefore, I just chose not to express my feeling, although I don’t like it because I don’t want to hold everyone back. Third, Accommodation: this is seeing issue as more important to others than self. In our class discussion, this was not a individual concern, it’s our whole class concern, so we couldn’t just think of a way which would have the best benefit to oneself, we should think of a decision that would be beneficial to everyone.

Egg-cellent

The “Steps in the Planning Process” that our team actually went through was:
Step1. We defined our goal of preventing our egg from cracking when dropped from the air to the ground. And step 4: make a tactical plan.
Although we did make a tactical plan concerning what must be done in order to prevent l our egg cracking when dropped. The planning process that our team has missed:
Step 2.We determined our resources and current status vis-à-vis objectives.
Step 3. We developed several alternative strategies.
Step 5. We implemented the plan and evaluated the results.
I don’t know why our team has missed so many of them. But I guess is because we were overconfident about our planning. We didn’t think too much about the planning. Our planning was not good enough nor did we develop a better way to do it. We didn’t develop as many strategies that we should have. We should have thought of more methods to protect our egg. Our team simply went through the plan that we had after we all agreed to do so. I think we should have to listen each team member’s idea, and then we should have decided the best one. We have to make sure we use the 5 steps of “steps in the Planning Process”. Although we failed to achieve our goal, we accomplished something together as a team. It was a pleasurable experience to work as a team with everyone. It’s a nice planning process that our professor has given and thanks to our professor for letting us go through this learning experience.