WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST...GET ALONG?

Often times, decision making is not an easy task. Add more people to that decision making process and the task only becomes more complicated and chaotic. Once this conflict arises there are different ways to go about handling it. In the class decision making exercise the method that I used to handle the chaotic situation is one called Collaboration. This method requires bargaining and negotiating among the group. It requires a lot of insight from different group members. I chose this method because the task required us to all come to an agreement eventually. I felt the best way to all come to an agreement would be to discuss the situation and possible solutions with the entire group. The more people that feel like the contributed and said what they wanted to say, the more chances that everyone will come to an agreement in the end. I felt that this was an effective method because the class came to an agreement eventually. A more effective approach, however, would have probably been a method of Compromise. If I would have known earlier in the task that the situation would be so tense I would have wanted to initially treat all members of the group as equal. This method, it seems, would have helped the class to reach an agreement sooner and easier. This is because if every member felt as if they were just as important and had just as much say, they would be willing to listen to and consider their peers' opinions more.

QUITE AN EGGS-PERIENCE

It is always a difficult task to simply be thrown into a situation and be required to produce something demanded from that. More or less this is what happened in Management class on September 24, 2007. The task was to use 8 straws and tape to make sure that when an egg is dropped it does not break. Sounds easy right? Not really. This task took a great deal of planning to make sure that the group was going to be successful. First, we defined our objective. This pretty much means we all made sure that each and every one of us knew what needed to be done. It also means we had steps planned out which we followed and we kept track of where we stood at all times. That leads directly into another planning process which is determining our current status. This involves knowing what needs to be done before we began and knowing what resources we have to complete it. Another planning process that was fully discussed is developing a premises regarding future conditions. The group certainly did consider alternative methods of making sure the egg would not break and we discussed and even documented flaws or positives that could come about from them. Then it came time to make a plan. We chose the path that we would take and fully understood what we needed to be done to implement our decision. Jobs or roles were not exactly handed out specifically but certain members of the group took charge and knew what they needed to do and in that process no positions were overlapped. It finally came time to implement the plan and when we did we were successful. We took no corrective action because none needed to be taken. Our results were as clear as day because we not only succeeded in making sure the egg did not break but we also received the reward of extra credit for our proper completion of the task. I feel that the group was very effective in our planning process. The best judge of an effective planning process is an effective outcome and here that outcome was reached. One way the group could be more effective is we had assigned jobs earlier on. That would have created a smoother task completion. All in all it was quite an experience and a pleasing one at that.