The New Rules of Management

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More women than ever before joined corporate boards in the first three months of 2009, but is this a recession-related blip, or a promising trend? According to Directors & Boards magazine, 38% of executives named as independent directors on corporate boards in the first quarter were women, a "chart-busting" figure that's by far the highest since the publication began tracking appointments in 1994.

—Matthew Boyle, Management IQ

Manager's Sonnet

(Planning) (Organizing) (Leading) (Controlling)

Managers work hard
their task is defined,
every step of the way
they generate and evaluate
resulting to a decision made.
Avoiding problems is one thing
but solving them is something great,
your given a team
to control and lead
in finding success
with what you create.
Opportunities and threats
go hand in hand
when you have the 4 steps.

Communication via Blog

     It is the start of a new semester. It's my first time taking a class on management of any kind, and to be honest I was very excited to learn something that I can use in my life,and that will also help me with my career. Mr kurpis gave us the syllables, and without even blinking, I start flipping the pages to see what was required in completing the course. Among the tests,participation,attendance,etc like every other class, I saw that we would need to open up our own blog webpage. At first I was confused, ok so we will open a webpage but what would we do with it. I soon learned that we had class activities,and for each class activity we would need to write our feedback and what we learned in the blog assignment's given to us. To be honest I think the format and unique style of the blog has helped me alot, in ways that I thought were not possible. First it has taught me to think big, to have a vision of what I want in the future. Second it has allowed me to communicate with my fellow students more easily and more freely. Third it has given me the opportunity to express my ideas about all aspects concerning management.
    I felt that I benefited alot from meeting a couple of my classmates,whom of which I talk on the regular now. If it wasn't for this blog I probably wouldn't, being that I am shy. I think the blog streched me more as a person, and kind of forced me to think outside the box in expressing my ideas. I am not saying that it was challenging I just think that its a nice variety. The blog also helped me get a sense on topics outside the management requirements. for example last week we were talking about the prof"s friend. A manager having to deal with issues on how to react when an employ under you that goes behind your back and tries to override a decision that's already been made. The whole class gave their opinions on how they would handle the situation and I agreed with a few. I would try to be more clear and understanding when I am addressing an issue that an employ might have dealing with the rules and regulations of the company. Secondly I would make sense of this to my superiors just to cover my tracks, and the last thing I would do is fire the individual. No one is above the company, so no one should get special privaleges (rules are rules).
      Going back to the blog. I like the idea of having control over my grade, being that this is not a test, and it consits of a timely manner, I have the ability to do each assignment the way I want it with time on my hands. I can correct and delete anything. This is a plus for me because in a test once you mess up your done, but in this blog you can rewrite your views and ideas as often as you like, all you have to do is complete it on time.
Last but not least, this will not be the end of my blog, I will write stuff from time to time about my other classes, and the progress in them. I will also try to keep a connection between other students in this class via blog. I think this has been one of the best formats and techniques I have come across so far as a student. The only thing left will be my BPL class, I cant wait for the challenge.

Dominance,dominance,dominance

So here we are taking this personal profile test, and in my mind im thinking this is not going to work. There are alot of traits to a person's personality, but boy was I suprised. There were 28 slides with four different types of words that might define us, we had to choose two out of the four one being the most and the other the least, that best describes us. As I circled each word, I was getting more anxious to finding out what type I fall under. As a result I am a D(dominance) which couldent have described me better. I am the one who wants to get results without questioning my judgement. I like taking action and control of the situation at any moment. I am the one who will help people by being strict and precise, rather than nice and confused. The scary thing about all this, I asked myself is this who I will be forever? now that I know, I would like to maybe change a little and become more considerate and caring of others. It's a business world we live in but after all we are human beings. So yeah I would like to change from a dominance type and become an influencial type. I think I can become this type because some of the words were tricky, and some were the same. If I had more time to decide I think my answers could have changed, and I think this test would have been more accurate. In the long run yeah this test might help you figure out people in life, but it won't be 100 %. You would need more tests to get better results. Overall this was a fun experience, being that I never took a test like this in my life. Now I would like to take more tests similar to the one we took in class.

Vision & Mission

Life is like a big puzzle. Some people solve it, other's are stuck trying to figure it out. There are alot of unknown's in a student's mind, but one thing is for sure, we are all here for the same reason, that is to graduate, and get a good job. I have alot of goals for myself. Some might be easier than others, but that's what I like about it, the more difficult something is the more I push myself to achieve it. First and foremost,
I want to graduate with good grades from Baruch and go on to start my master's. Then I would like to work for an import export trading comapany. As years go by, I hope I will save enough money to start my own company selling winery. These are all a chunk of what is soon to be. My biggest goal is to open up a foster
care home for childreen all over the world. I know this will be hard to achieve, but I plan ahead. Remember

Vision without action is just a dream.

Action without vision merely wastes time. 

Vision coupled with action can make things happen! 

                             

                                                                                                                                           

Going back to the video, I learned a couple of things:
visions need to be developed by

1)Leader's initiated

2)Shared + support

3)Comprehensive and detailed

4)Positive & inspiring

The future is unknown therefore the steps taken in the present, can make it easier to get you where you want to be. It might take alot of hard work, alot of studying, but as long as you have a vision, you're already one step closer. All my life I have been wanting to help people. Since I was little, I would give away my toys to my cousins being that I never had a brother or sister, and I would feel good doing it. Hopefully soon I can start distributing more than toys.

ready or not, your decision is on the spot !!

        Monday the 13th looked like Friday the 13th to me. We had just taken the first exam of the semester, and I was very nervous and anxious at the same time to know what grade I got. Sitting in class the prof blurs out "I hope you wont hate me after this" At first I didn't understand him but as class proceded and we got our test papers, this only meant bad news. This was not the only suprise that was coming our way. Being that the heighest grade was an 86 and most of the class had below 60 we had to come up with a planning process. All of us had to agree 100% on a decision that would help us out in the long run. We came up with many options, alot of ideas, different directions, but still could not narrow it down to what was needed to get the job done. So as time was running out two students stepped up to the plate, and took charge of everything we would throw at them. We asked for a curve we got it, we asked for extra credit we got that too, we asked to have the lowest grade dropped, and I am thinking in my mind this is clearly nuts and extreme, is it really possible, can it be that the prof is toying with us?? Throughout the process i took part of the avoidance decision thinking that this will never happen. But it was happening right in front of my eyes. We laid down the law and the proffessor agreed to everything we decided. Now being that there is around 35 students in the class this was not easy to achieve. Some students wanted to keep their grade and learn from their mistakes, others cared more about fixing their actual grade than learning the stuff. Everyone engaged in some sort of decision whether it was compete to win, avoidance, compromise, accomodation, or collaborating of some sort, the outcome was fantastic. All the question marks and the unknowns became clear and very understanding. We came up with all the answers including the extra credit, the only thing we forgot to mention was how many points will the extra credit consist of in our second exam. I guess it's out of our hands now.

An Eggs-cellent Way to Plan

I think overall, my team did a good job on the project. We started out by observing what we had to do and what was our options of going about this. We started gathering ideas, of how we could make a strong base so that our egg wont break. Being that we were all new to this idea, one of my group members asked if anyone in the group took physics before, just so we can get ahead on what to do, and how to succeed. Some said yes and others no, but this dident help in the matter. We all had different ideas on how to create the base for the egg. Looking at our tools we began to model a vision of how we will make this happen. In the middle of the project we got our tools and assigned who was going to do what, even though we dident have an actual leader, we all did something to contribute to the project. One was cutting tape the other was putting straws together, another was drawing. Being that so much time had passed, we changed our idea along the way, and made the base into a triangular shape instead of a cube. Having such limited resources we were restricted of creating something that we really wanted, thats why when it came time for the execution, our project failed. On the outcome of it all our idea was good, but we dident really think it through. Would 2 feet of tape be enough, would 8 straws do the job?? These are some of the things we forgot along the way.