Management - A Short Poem

You can call it a science
You can call it an art

It is a combination of skills and talents
techniques, personalities, and smarts

You can exercise your authority
Or use it to encourage unity

Whatever management is to you
learn it well to gain opportunities

Blog Communication

I felt that the blog was a good way to get the opinions of others in our class. The best use of the blog, for me, was that I could reflect on class activities and connect them to what we learn in class. Though sometimes I wouldn't have the best idea of how it connected to the class, but that is where it was useful to look at other peoples' blogs. As far as how it helps our grade, I definitely think that it is a good way to earn 20% of the grade. It is a relatively simple assignment that still serves a good purpose.
Although the blog was useful and fun for the semester, I don't think that I will continue to post in it because I am just not a blog kind of guy. But I think if others do enjoy blogging then sure why not?

DISC Assesment

On this survey I ended up being a Cd type. I think this result portrayed me pretty well. I like to think of myself as analytical, someone who thinks before they speak so to say. I always like to know the facts before I act upon something and I hate to be impulsive. The C sub D might sound kind of contradicting because they are kind of polar from each other. However I do have some D qualities too. Although I am not the most aggressive and demanding person I can be kind of stubborn when it comes to decisions. Since I stand by my facts it is hard to get me to back down unless you can provide hard evidence and proof. I am also persistent and don't like failing or giving up.
I think that the results were a fair assessment. I am satisfied and wouldn't want to be another type. I think since we are all relatively young college students we are still able to change our types over the rest of our lifetime. I think this test, given that results were accurate enough, would be useful for businesses. It would help managers hire the appropriate type for the position in question. Also it would be helpful in determining which employees could work well together and fill in needed roles for teams.

Vision

It's tough to write about a specific vision I have for myself in the future. However, what is important is to have various goals set for yourself that you can achieve. The video that we watched in class was inspiring in that it emphasized the importance of having a vision for yourself, and that having a high IQ or being from a affluent background was not the most important thing. The video made me think about my own goals and what I needed to do to achieve them. The first goal I have is career related. I am majoring in CIS at Baruch and my goal is to be a systems analyst. To get there I will have to graduate school with good academic records, which I am on pace for. Another thing is to have good internship experiences that can help me towards getting an entry level job. So far I am still working on getting an internship for this summer, but last summer I did have a good IT internship with a well known company, so I think I am doing things right.
My next goal is farther into the future. This is having a family and owning my own house. I think New York is a great city and I since I live here it is convenient for commuting to work. However, I do not intend on living here all my life. It is expensive to live here, and I would rather raise my children somewhere else. I am not married yet, so that will come later. But as for moving away, I would consider working in New York City for 5-10 years before looking for companies that are in other areas. I am not really sure on the other states I would move to but Texas, Florida, and Louisiana come to mind.
And finally another goal I have is to retire comfortably. To achieve this I know I will have to be responsible with my money management. This goal will require the most forward looking vision since this is so many years away. And the plan that I have for this will require a strict and consistent following to. I would have to accomplish my first goal before I can start to focus on this goal.

Decision Making

On our March 7th class we had a crazy and hectic class activity based on decision making. While I personally did not really learn anything about the decision making process, we as a class were able to see various examples of how people handle decision making conflicts. I believe we saw all Five types of the personality variations.

My way of handling the conflict was avoidance for the most part. While in the beginning I was feeling more accommodating, the longer it dragged on the less I cared. What I wanted most out of this conflict was a grading curve and not much more. The curve was accepted by the class early, so after that I didn't feel as strongly towards the other ideas. I did not really care about the format of the next test. While it would be nice to change it up, I got a pretty good grade on this test so it was fine with me.
I did know that everything had to be accepted or we get nothing. However like the professor said, people will feel like there is no hope. I was willing to accept most any of the suggestions as long as I get my curve. The other people in the class, unfortunately, would not be so easy.

If there was a way to do it over I think that there should have been roles assigned. There should have been a class representative or maybe multiple representatives; each representative handling a smaller section of the class. This way the smaller groups could be more easily managed. And finally at the end the representatives could get together and make a finally compromising decision.

The Egg Drop Contest

In this class activity my group had to carefully plan how best to utilize 9 straws and masking tape to create a structure that would protect an egg being dropped from 10 feet high.

Step 1: We acknowledged that we had 25 minutes to plan what we were going to do. This step probably took the most out of our 25 minutes. We started brainstorming ideas on how to protect the egg. After considering various shapes and designs we settled on forming a mattress-like barrier object to place on the bottom of the egg.

Step 2: Since we did not have the actual straws in our possession yet we had to estimate the dimensions of the straws. We figured that we would use about 3-4 straws in forming the barrier. We also estimated that we could get about 3 layers out of these straws. We used a balled up piece of paper to simulate the egg's dimensions.

Step 3: Once we finished designing the barrier we had to come up with potential scenarios that would foil our design. One thing we considered was that the egg might roll after landing and so the sides needed to have some protection too. So we added something in our design to make up for that.

Step 4: We did not really assign specific job roles to our team members, everyone was allowed to contribute in whichever way.

Step 5: After we planned for 25 minutes we had 10 minutes to implement our design. This phase was really hectic as the 10 minutes seemed to go by so fast. We were able to finish before the deadline, and our group was the first to go. Our egg cracked, unfortunately. Whomever dropped the egg said that the egg survived initially but bounced and hit a weakspot.

Afterthoughts: I think our group did a good good overall. Our design might have succeeded 3 times out of 5, but we will never know. One thing we could have improved on was Step 4. We should have assigned specific roles to our members. That would have saved us time in the implementation part.

Experience In Japan

I was born in New York City and have lived here all my life. The first time I ever left this country was when I was 17. I was accepted into a foreign exchange program to go to Okinawa, Japan. You could say that I experienced culture shock, but in a good way. The fact that everything was so different just made me even more interested and observant. Japan's culture is very different from ours. One thing I noticed when I was going to the high school over there was that there was a big sense of unity among the students. For example, all the students wear school uniforms. Another thing is that they take care of the school by themselves. Students will stay after class to sweep the floors, mop, clean the bathrooms and etc. Even I had to partake in these duties some days.
There were also smaller differences that I had to learn, like general manners that were different. For example, you always see people eating on the run in New York. In Japan it is considered disrespectful to eat while walking, you should only eat while sitting down. I just had to learn these little differences over time. I enjoyed my experience in Japan, and I would like to visit other countries and learn how they differ from America too.

First Post

My name is Asif Baig. I am a junior at Baruch College, starting my third semester here. I am in the Zicklin School of Business majoring in Computer Information Systems. This Management class seems interesting so far and I am anxious to learn more about this subject.