Nurturing Creativity in Business

Dropping Rhymes

Initially I thought that this was yet another lecture

But as time went on, it became a whole new venture

From dropping eggs to communication

This class has taught us much about education

Since no one knew their circles from their squares,

It was only a matter of time before we threw them chairs

If it was not for professor Kurpis

Our class would've definelty turned into a circus

As close as we were to a brawl

Professor Kurpis answered the call

And showed the way to that management goal

So whereever the future takes us, and how far

One day we'll all visit the beach and see that star

And just like a bunch of weirdos

All of us, don't lie

Will pick it up and let it fly!

Communicating via Blog

Blogging through the semester has definetly been a fun experience.  It allowed a lot of the students to interact with each other and share thoughts and experience not only about the class but about their life as well.  It feels like I've gotten to know quite a few people without even having to speak to them.  These type of blogs also allow the students to stay in touch after the semester is over, which is in my opinion great.  The best thing that I like about these blogs however is that they require no research and they let you express yourself in ways that you could not do otherwise.  In other classes, for example, writing assignments or research papers are always required to be cited and you always have to watch what you say in order not to stumble into some kind of unintentional paraphrasing.  With blogs, however, it provides us the opportunity to just write about important topics, without having to worry about citing, or making sure that we are 'politically correct' all the time.  The fact that blogs are also 20% of our grade is also a great thing for the class.  I think doing blogs is great and they should remain as part of the course objectives in the future.

mcgangbang

The McGangBang

                When I first entered into the McDonald's restaurant located in my neighborhood, I was kind of nervous.  I did not know how the McDonald's staff would react towards my order.  To my surprise the staff was pretty accommodating, despite the fact that they thought I was crazy.  After placing my order of McGangBang, I actually had to explain what it was to the cashier and her manager.  They did not know what it was.  The manager actually started to explain to me that it would be a messy sandwich and said that I would not want to eat that.  However I persisted that they make the sandwich anyway.  They finally agreed to make the sandwich and so I waited for the order to be complete.  All the mean time that I spent waiting, the cashier that took my order kept giving me small laughs and kept trying to find out why would I want a sandwich like that.  I didn't want to tell her that it was for a school assignment though so I just kept saying that I have a really hungry friend back at my house.  However I don't think she believed me because immediately after I placed the order, I asked the manager to sign the receipt.  At first she didn't want to do it, but I persisted with my nice looking smile and my irresistible charm that it was only to win a bet.  After a few tries she finally gave in.
            After placing the order, I was paying close attention at how the order was going to be made.  I wasn't so pleased with the results.  If  I was to be hired as a management consultant to this McDonald's restaurant, I would definitely have some things to fix.  First of all the wait time between placing my order and actually receiving it was very long.  The staff actually ended up serving three other customers that placed their orders After me, Before me.  The communication between the staff and the manager was terrible.  The manager had to repeat the order to the employee that was making the sandwich at least three times.  The employee thought that she was just making two different sandwiches of double cheeseburger and a mcchicken.  The employee actually packed both of the sandwiches in two different bags.  When the manager realized it, she immediately told her to unpack them and tried to explain yet again as to what the actual order was.  It was pretty hilarious to look at because of the facial expression that the employee had on her face.  Finally she looked at me, looked at the sandwiches in front of her, looked back at me, and with amazement attempted to make the order.  My recommendation to improving their communication skills would be to possibly make out receipts for special orders that specifically state what the order should be.  Manager should also be able to effectively communicate the order to her staff.  I did notice that her tone of voice and her reaction to everything was very low, which could have possibly affected how the employee understood her.
            The staff's organization was not very good either.  Their food preparation station was filled with various orders and the staff actually had to recheck and unwrap some of them in order to make sure that they were the right ones.  Not only that but after all the fuss about my order, it ended up being wrong in the end.  When I explained to the staff in the beginning, I specifically told them that the Whole mcchicken should go inside the double cheeseburger.  I even stated that the buns of the mcchicken should be in there as well.  However when my order was finally ready, I unpacked it at the counter in order to take the picture of it, only to find that the order was not complete.  Instead of placing the whole mcchicken inside the double cheeseburger, the staff only placed a piece of chicken in between the two burger patties.  I almost burst out laughing because of how bad it looked compared to the picture that I saw before.  However I didn't want to make the staff feel too bad, and so I didn't say anything, took the picture and left.
            The manager of the restaurant could have definitely exhibited a little bit more leadership than she had.  Since orders like mine don't come around too often, she should have either made the sandwich herself, or took particular care in supervising her staff that the order would be completed correctly.  Even though McDonald's is not the most elegant or service friendly restaurant you could possibly think of, the leadership skills are still necessary in order to make sure that the customers are satisfied and keep coming back.
            After having to wait over 7 minutes for my order, and watching three other people get served before me, I was a little frustrated and was happy to finally walk out of there with my messy sandwich.  Of course I didn't eat it, I just ended up placing it on the train station bench since I was waiting for the train.  After all that the sandwich has been through, I just didn't have the heart to throw it out.

The ABCs of DISC

The leadership diagnostic that we've had in class definetly gauged my management orientation.  I ended up being Dc which makes sense in a lot of ways.  I am a very dominance oriented person.  Every situation that I encounter, I like being in control and being able to dominate everything that I come across.  Ever since I was a kid, I found that in school, when the class was presented with a group project, I was always the one to voice my opinion and try to get my way to get things done.
Nowadays, even simpler things such as a basketball game can show my dominance.  I hate loosing, so I have no  problem in taking over a game and doing everything in my power to win.  The fact that I am a martial arts instructor can also hint at the fact that I am in fact dominance oriented.  A lot of times in class I have to be able to maintain my dominant stature in order to push my students to the limit and bring out the best in them.
The little 'c' that I've received by this diagnostic test also didn't surprise me because of the fact that I am very conscientious in everything I do, in that I like to analyze and think over any situation I am in from all the possible angles.  I've always followed a saying that my grandfather taught me, "It's better to measure seven times, and cut once." 
A test like this can definetly help to better understand how to interact with other people.  It would be very helpful in a business setting where making one wrong gesture can really offend the person.
As for me, I would not want to be anything other than me.  I like my dominant nature and would not exchange it for any other type.

The Power of Vision

There are definetly a list of specific goals that I envision in my mind and I tend to complete.  One of the biggest visions that I have for myself is to start an investment firm.  I have recently taken a liking to investing in stocks and once I've read a book about Warren Buffett, one of the biggest investors of all time, I've immediately told myself that I would follow into his footsteps. 
Of course there are a few other minor goals that I would have to achieve in order to make that vision a reality.  One of them would be to get an internship with an investment firm of some kind, hopefully in the summer time.  This would be a huge step towards getting me the experience and knowledge that I need in order to make my vision complete.  In order to complete this secondary goal, I've taken several actions such as composing a strong resume for myself, as well as signing up with the Baruch's career development center in order to look for possible internships.
A third goal of mine is to actually start investing on my own.  This will take some time but I am plannning to begin investing early in the summer.  As of right now I'm taking the necessary steps in order to start investing.  I've been gathering research and reading a variety of books in order to broaden my knowledge of stocks.  I've also been saving up some money that I've made in my previous jobs and my current job in order to have some capital that I could actually invest.
Completing the minor goals will eventually lead me to the biggest goal that I intend to achieve.  This will complete my vision of starting an investment firm.  However my vision will not stop there.  Once I do start an investment firm, I would make sure that it would reach the heights of corporate giants and be one of the biggest investment firms in the United States.

Decision Making

The 'decision making' class that we've recently had was definetly an awesome experience.  I've kind of had a feeling from the start of class that this wasn't just a free for all "let's decide on our next test" class.  It had a hidden purpose behind it.  This was definelty one of the most chaotic classes I've ever had in Baruch.  I was certain that we'd end up throwing chairs at each other at some point because we didn't agree on whether or not the class wanted an essay on their next test.  Awkwardly enough we still managed to pull it off in the end, even though there were some unsattisfied customers in the room.
Looking back, I can definelty see myself as being the "Avoidance" type of the individuall in this decision making exercise.  As a matter of fact I think almost 90% of the people in this exercise could be classified under this behavior.  However I wasn't avoiding the conversation as a whole because of the fact that I don't like chaos or don't know how to held it.  The reason behind my thinking was that our whole class had agreed on the curve and extra credit for the first test in the beginning of class, and I quite frankly didn't mind what kind of format the next test was going to be.  So I decided to stay out of the overall conversation of the next exam, even though I eventually chipped in some thoughts here and there.
Of course I observed the other ways that people handled this chaos.  There were quite a few Compete to Win people who didn't want to budge no matter how well the decisions being made were explained to them.  The few people that were standing in front of the room could probably be classified as the Compramising few. And even though they did a fairly good job, the resistance from the overall class made it tough for them to make the comprimises.  In terms of accomodation and collaborating, I didn't see much of that in the midst of our chaos.
Overally I think that we did fairly well considering no one knew what was the foundation for the class.

An Eggs-cellent Way to Plan

When the competition for the egg contraption begun, our group was not very well organized from the start.  As a matter of fact we completely forgot about the idea of planning.  Instead we immediately jumped into discussing the best way to build the egg saving device.  A few minutes later I paused, looked around the room, and saw chaos in almost every single group.  It hit me then and there that the way we went about this whole thing was wrong.  Our planning phases were pretty much out of the window.  We skipped step 1 and even though the goal was clear to all of us, we didn't really define the objectives.  We did, however, spend a few minutes on how much resources we had.  The fact that there were only 9 straws did catch our attention, yet the fact that we only had a limited amount of tape didn't bother us.  We thought two feet was way too long, only to find out later that we were completely wrong. 
We did consider step 3 but not in as many phases as we should have.  We took notice of any ways that our contraption might tip over or fall the wrong way thus breaking the egg.  However we didn't really come up with anything to actually fix those pitfalls. 
Step 4 was probably the worst of our planning phase because we did not implement any strategies or tactics on how we were going to actually build the device.  We also didn't assign any roles in terms of who's in charge of the tape, the straws, or even the egg itself.  Thus when the actuall materials were distributed, the building process was hectic.
Since we pretty much skipped step 4, step 5 of actually implementing our tactics was rushed and unogranized.  It seemed as if though 10 minutes went by way too quickly.  Since we didn't really think of any alternative just in case our first one didn't work out, we had to just go with the flow..resulting in the breaking of our egg.
I definetly see now that planning plays a HUGE role when it comes to completing a certain task.  I could read all the textbooks in the world and they wouldn't teach me even half of what I actually got to experience in terms of planning.  This was definetly a very fun and learning exercise.