Understanding Our Blind Spots
Financial crisis underscores need to transform our view of risk
For many business executives, the extent of last fall's financial meltdown came as a shock. Economist Andrew W. Lo was less surprised.
A professor at MIT's Sloan School of Management, Dr. Lo has studied the connections between financial decision making, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology. In particular, he believes that "behavioral blind spots" -- evolutionarily hard-wired reactions to perceived risks and rewards -- are particularly dangerous during periods of economic extremes, such as bubbles and crashes.
Testifying before the House Oversight Committee in November, Dr. Lo discussed how credit crises have been regular occurrences over the past 35 years.
The Journal Report
"Financial crises are an unfortunate but necessary consequence of modern capitalism," he said. Financial losses, he added, are a byproduct of innovation, "but disruptions and dislocations are greatly magnified when risks have been incorrectly assessed and incorrectly assigned."
Michael S. Hopkins, Editor in Chief of MIT Sloan Management Review, and Bruce G. Posner, a contributing editor at MIT Sloan Management Review, spoke with Dr. Lo for Business Insight.
Reassess Governance
BUSINESS INSIGHT: What's the most important implication of the financial crisis?
DR. LO: For CEOs and other corporate leaders, the single most important implication is about the current state of corporate governance. Many corporations did a terrible job in assessing and managing their risk exposures, with some of the most sophisticated companies reporting tens of billions of dollars in losses in a single quarter. How do you lose $40 billion in a quarter and then argue that you've properly assessed your risk exposures?
I don't think it's credible to say it was just bad luck. If troubled companies want to explain away 2008 as a "black swan," then someone should take responsibility for creating the oil slick that seems to have tarred the entire flock! The current crisis is a major wake-up call that we need to change corporate governance to be more risk-sensitive.
BUSINESS INSIGHT: What allowed this crisis to happen? How could so many seemingly smart people be so blindsided?
DR LO: The very fact that so many smart and experienced corporate leaders were all led astray suggests that the crisis can't be blamed on the mistakes of a few greedy CEOs. In my view, there's something fundamentally wrong with current corporate-governance structures and the language of corporate management. We just don't have the proper lexicon to have a meaningful discussion about the kinds of risks that typical corporations face today, and we need to create a new field of "risk accounting" to address this gap in GAAP.
BUSINESS INSIGHT: Now that the financial landscape has been rearranged, are there things that corporate managers can do to capitalize on the current environment?
DR. LO: One of the things companies are surely going to have to deal with over the next year or two is greatly reduced liquidity in the capital markets. Borrowing costs are going to go up, and it's going to be much harder to finance new ventures, so companies will have to be much more creative about rebalancing their pension-fund obligations and raising capital to fund operations. Managers should be prepared for some tough times.
At the same time, there's going to be tremendous interest on the part of, say, pension funds in finding new ventures. My guess is that starting this summer, pension funds will begin increasing their allocations to private equity, hedge funds and other alternative investments -- assets will be flowing back into risky ventures with a vengeance. The money that's currently in T-bills has got to go somewhere -- and anybody who has cash is going to be in a great position. Companies are going to have to find creative ways to tap into these nontraditional sources of financing.
New Opportunities
BUSINESS INSIGHT: What kinds of new market opportunities do you see emerging -- things that aren't typical?
DR. LO: Well, if you think about the kind of dislocation that's affected financial markets, you'll see that much of the current crisis stems from the fact that it's very difficult to get information about the value of certain mortgage-backed securities because they're so heterogeneous.
What if there was a service like eBay Inc. that provided a price-discovery mechanism for these mortgage pools? An electronic market for mortgages or mortgage-backed securities -- something that's easy to use and that allows users to value these illiquid securities quickly -- could be an extraordinarily valuable service, particularly if it gains any kind of market share, like eBay.
It would allow holders of mortgage-related instruments to post their securities online and allow investors to bid on them. It would show prices on a historical basis so bidders could see how a portfolio of mortgages from a particular region of the country traded four months ago. Like eBay, it would provide a wealth of information and, ultimately, liquidity -- that's the key.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R2
Monday, March 23, 2009
Greener and Cheaper ( An Interesting Article from WSJ)
Greener and Cheaper
The conventional wisdom is that a company's costs rise as its environmental impact falls. Think again.
By ALAN G. ROBINSON and DEAN M. SCHROEDER
For years, it was the conventional wisdom: If you improved quality, costs would also rise. But then companies discovered the opposite was true. By redesigning processes -- reducing mistakes, doing things right the first time -- companies could provide better products and services and cut their costs.
Now it's time to learn this lesson all over again, as it applies to going green.
The Journal Report
Despite what many companies think -- that reducing their environmental impact is a nice idea, but impractical because of the cost -- businesses can go green and lower costs at the same time. No one disputes that it's expensive to cap smokestacks and process hazardous waste. But as the earlier lesson suggests, the focus shouldn't be on cleaning up and its costs -- the focus should be on creating less mess to begin with.
The experience of an auto plant in Indiana helps illustrate how re-engineering processes with green principles and greater efficiency in mind can not only improve a company's standing with nature, but increase its profits and give it competitive
Subaru of Indiana Automotive Inc., a factory of more than 3,000 workers who make roughly 800 automobiles a day, has pursued green initiatives since its launch 20 years ago in Lafayette, Ind., by Japan's Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. With employees at every level of the plant looking for ways to save energy, reduce waste and generally make processes more efficient, one measure of its success is a 14% reduction in electricity consumption on a per-car basis since 2000. An even bigger achievement: It has not shipped any waste to a landfill since May 2004.
The authors, skeptical themselves at first, have confirmed the company's claims with their own detailed research. How did Subaru do it? By redesigning numerous plant processes, thus producing less waste and requiring less material as inputs. Since 2000, the company says, it has reduced the amount of waste it generates per vehicle by about 47%. Of the solid waste that the factory still generates, 99.9% is recycled or used by other companies as manufacturing inputs or as raw materials that they process to resell. The remaining 0.1% is hazardous waste that must by law be incinerated by a licensed facility.
Committing the plant to reducing its overall environmental impact has required a mix of solutions over the years, some simpler than others. Subaru's engineers continuously look for ways to improve the plant's green performance, increase efficiency and lower costs.
Here's what Subaru of Indiana has learned on its way to reducing its environmental impact, and how other organizations, too, can work on green initiatives -- and their bottom lines -- at the same time.
Levels of Commitment
1. Profits come by increasing efficiency and reducing waste -- but they don't always come immediately.
Many of the Subaru plant's early green initiatives delivered quick paybacks and required little effort: dimming assembly-line lights automatically when the workers took breaks, for example, or plugging leaks in compressed-air lines, or recycling more materials.
Redesigning whole processes, though, requires more effort. Recycling, for example, was expanded to include returning packaging materials to suppliers for reuse. This saves Subaru and its suppliers money, but it also requires significant changes in the way both parties handle the associated tasks.
Some green projects increase costs, at least initially. Having trash hauled away to a dump, for example, was less expensive than the plant's current practice of paying to have trash incinerated as fuel at a nearby energy plant. But Subaru officials say they constantly re-evaluate each process to meet green goals in the most cost-efficient way.
Indeed, some that started out increasing costs eventually led to savings or break-even status thanks to continual re-evaluation. For example, in its drive to achieve zero-landfill status, Subaru re-examined how it disposed of a toxic solvent used to flush painting systems between color changes. The used solvent was formerly shipped off site for specialized -- and costly -- disposal. Now an elaborate in-house distilling process removes impurities from the used solvent, making it reusable. Solvent consumption was slashed to one tanker-truckload every three months from four to six tankers per week. (Some solvent still has to be replaced due to evaporation.) Impurities that come out in the distillation, meanwhile, are sent to a company that uses the residue to make coating material for ladles in the steel industry. Subaru pays that company to take the impurities off its hands. But despite these additional costs, Subaru officials say they expect the solvent operation to break even -- including design and construction costs -- in about five years when balanced against its savings in solvent costs.
In another case, a series of process redesigns that first increased costs ultimately produced lower costs, less waste -- and better quality work. The plant used to weld its steel auto frames in a way that produced lots of sparks, which, in turn, left lots of a waste-metal byproduct known as slag on the floor. Subaru started looking for a company that might want the slag for the base metals it contained. It found a company in Spain that wanted to recover copper from the slag. So, Subaru started shipping the slag to Spain -- and paying the Spanish company to take the material. Thus, for a while, Subaru was reducing its environmental impact, but at increased cost.
This led it to consider a previously unrecognized waste: excess sparks. The plant devised a new welding process that produced fewer sparks and less slag, lowering electricity and materials costs. Its consumption of copper welding tips plunged 75%. Subaru still ships some slag to Spain, but not as much. The new welding process also shows how attention to the minutest environmental details can lead to savings that a purely cost-driven organization might miss.
2. Management's leadership is vital in setting goals and getting departments to cooperate.
Management must define goals for reducing environmental impact, and make clear to all departments that such goals are just as important as metrics on productivity, quality and safety.
Green Is Economical
A crucial step by the managers at Subaru of Indiana was a decision in the mid-1990s to adopt internationally recognized standards for measuring and managing environmental impact. These standards, created by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization, are designed to help companies see from top to bottom how much waste they are producing and where improvements can be made.
Collaboration among departments is essential -- another reason why top management must lead. Consider an idea that originated with a worker in engine assembly at the Subaru plant. The idea: to return packaging material to a supplier for reuse. Engine assembly couldn't do this on its own. Engineering needed to certify that the material could be reused. Purchasing had to renegotiate with the supplier. Transportation and logistics dealt with how the materials would be returned, and accounting looked at budget and control ramifications.
Without clear signals from above pushing for such cooperation, progress will quickly bog down.
3. The front lines have to be engaged.
Front-line workers are ideally positioned to spot ways to reduce, reuse and recycle -- a discipline commonly referred to as the three R's. Subaru has made the three R's part of worker training, along with a system of thinking known in environmental circles as the "waste hierarchy." This is a ranking of possible environmental actions in increasing order of environmental benefit:
1. To burn material for energy is better than sending it to a landfill.
2. To recycle it is better than burning it.
3. To reuse material is better than recycling it.
4. To reduce the amount needed is better than reusing it.
5. To eliminate the need for material is better than reducing it.
One way work teams spotted opportunities to do more with the three R's was by dumpster-diving. If nothing was to be thrown away, everything being put into the dumpsters had to be eliminated, reused or recycled. The dumpsters themselves had to go (though many are now used as recycling bins). Teams began by spilling the contents of bins in their own areas onto the floor, then sifting sorting and grouping the material by source and type. Then the teams came up with ideas to eliminate each type of waste -- either at the source, or by devising ways to capture and recycle it.
One of the biggest challenges and costs in recycling is the sorting of items into the various waste streams for further processing. If this can be done at the source, by the people who first touch it, costs are substantially reduced (or even eliminated). Even more three R's ideas emerge this way. Front-line input is also necessary to ensure that such sorting is smoothly incorporated into the work flow.
4. Green initiatives achieve lots more when companies involve their suppliers.
Subaru of Indiana has made willingness to work on green initiatives a major criterion for selecting suppliers. Its steel suppliers, for example, agreed to provide rolls of steel in exactly the needed widths and lengths for each part being stamped, allowing the plant to reduce steel scrap by more than 100 pounds per vehicle since 2000.
A Japanese supplier sends the plant engine parts in seagoing containers packed tightly in specially contoured Styrofoam blocks. Formerly, most of the Styrofoam stayed in Indiana and went to recycling. But since the containers go back to the supplier, now the Styrofoam does as well. In all, some 80 kinds of plastic caps, metal clips, cardboard spacers and other packing materials are returned to Japan in this way. The suppliers assess whether the materials are reusable; if they aren't, the suppliers recycle them for making new packaging materials.
5. All wastes are potential products.
As Henry Ford once observed, everything coming out of a manufacturing process, including waste, is a potential raw material for another process.
Subaru located companies that could use its solvent residue and slag. Its cafeteria waste, too, currently goes to an outside party: a waste-to-energy power plant near Indianapolis that burns the material. In each case, Subaru pays these companies to take the materials off its hands. But just as it eventually found ways to improve its industrial processes that lowered costs and yielded other gains, it is now considering how to turn its food waste into a cost-effective product.
Industrial-scale composting is one possibility, using a circular track and a special breed of worm. The idea is to dump the food waste each day next to the previous day's waste, leading the worms to eat their way continuously around the track, leaving behind high-grade fertilized soil. Research by Allegiant Global, an Indianapolis waste-logistics company that has worked closely with Subaru on its environmental goals, identified the Canadian red wriggler as the "thoroughbred champion" of composting worms because of its voracious appetite. Subaru could also use the fertilized soil on the factory's grounds, give it to employees for home use, and sell it to local garden shops and plant nurseries. As for the plates and utensils, the company is looking into items made of materials digestible to the worms, like starch.
Another kind of waste with profit potential: unharnessed energy. In the factory's second-floor spray-painting operation, paint that misses an auto body is captured in water that falls in a torrent into tanks below ground. There the paint is skimmed off and the water is pumped back upstairs for reuse. The plant is considering installing a small hydroelectric generator to tap the enormous energy in the 10,000 gallons per minute of falling water.
6. Green leadership creates competitive advantages.
Drives to reduce environmental impact force companies to study their operations and material flows from a fresh perspective and in great detail. Innovations that result can give them competitive advantages.
Subaru says it has saved millions of dollars by combining green thinking with in-depth studies of its processes, suppliers and equipment. Where the biggest savings have been achieved, in descending order: reducing waste by revising processes; conserving energy; and working with suppliers.
In the future, should government and the marketplace put increasing pressure on companies to improve their environmental performance, Subaru of Indiana should be well-positioned compared with its rivals. While its competitors may be caught in reactive modes, forced to divert cash and resources in a scramble to comply with new rules and customer demands, Subaru will be able to focus on creating its next competitive advantage.
Pity the competitor who is forced to do in 18 months what Subaru of Indiana took two decades to get right.
—Dr. Robinson is a professor at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Dr. Schroeder is the Herbert and Agnes Schulz professor of management at the College of Business Administration, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Ind. They can be reached at reports@wsj.com.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R4
The conventional wisdom is that a company's costs rise as its environmental impact falls. Think again.
By ALAN G. ROBINSON and DEAN M. SCHROEDER
For years, it was the conventional wisdom: If you improved quality, costs would also rise. But then companies discovered the opposite was true. By redesigning processes -- reducing mistakes, doing things right the first time -- companies could provide better products and services and cut their costs.
Now it's time to learn this lesson all over again, as it applies to going green.
The Journal Report
Despite what many companies think -- that reducing their environmental impact is a nice idea, but impractical because of the cost -- businesses can go green and lower costs at the same time. No one disputes that it's expensive to cap smokestacks and process hazardous waste. But as the earlier lesson suggests, the focus shouldn't be on cleaning up and its costs -- the focus should be on creating less mess to begin with.
The experience of an auto plant in Indiana helps illustrate how re-engineering processes with green principles and greater efficiency in mind can not only improve a company's standing with nature, but increase its profits and give it competitive
Subaru of Indiana Automotive Inc., a factory of more than 3,000 workers who make roughly 800 automobiles a day, has pursued green initiatives since its launch 20 years ago in Lafayette, Ind., by Japan's Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. With employees at every level of the plant looking for ways to save energy, reduce waste and generally make processes more efficient, one measure of its success is a 14% reduction in electricity consumption on a per-car basis since 2000. An even bigger achievement: It has not shipped any waste to a landfill since May 2004.
The authors, skeptical themselves at first, have confirmed the company's claims with their own detailed research. How did Subaru do it? By redesigning numerous plant processes, thus producing less waste and requiring less material as inputs. Since 2000, the company says, it has reduced the amount of waste it generates per vehicle by about 47%. Of the solid waste that the factory still generates, 99.9% is recycled or used by other companies as manufacturing inputs or as raw materials that they process to resell. The remaining 0.1% is hazardous waste that must by law be incinerated by a licensed facility.
Committing the plant to reducing its overall environmental impact has required a mix of solutions over the years, some simpler than others. Subaru's engineers continuously look for ways to improve the plant's green performance, increase efficiency and lower costs.
Here's what Subaru of Indiana has learned on its way to reducing its environmental impact, and how other organizations, too, can work on green initiatives -- and their bottom lines -- at the same time.
Levels of Commitment
1. Profits come by increasing efficiency and reducing waste -- but they don't always come immediately.
Many of the Subaru plant's early green initiatives delivered quick paybacks and required little effort: dimming assembly-line lights automatically when the workers took breaks, for example, or plugging leaks in compressed-air lines, or recycling more materials.
Redesigning whole processes, though, requires more effort. Recycling, for example, was expanded to include returning packaging materials to suppliers for reuse. This saves Subaru and its suppliers money, but it also requires significant changes in the way both parties handle the associated tasks.
Some green projects increase costs, at least initially. Having trash hauled away to a dump, for example, was less expensive than the plant's current practice of paying to have trash incinerated as fuel at a nearby energy plant. But Subaru officials say they constantly re-evaluate each process to meet green goals in the most cost-efficient way.
Indeed, some that started out increasing costs eventually led to savings or break-even status thanks to continual re-evaluation. For example, in its drive to achieve zero-landfill status, Subaru re-examined how it disposed of a toxic solvent used to flush painting systems between color changes. The used solvent was formerly shipped off site for specialized -- and costly -- disposal. Now an elaborate in-house distilling process removes impurities from the used solvent, making it reusable. Solvent consumption was slashed to one tanker-truckload every three months from four to six tankers per week. (Some solvent still has to be replaced due to evaporation.) Impurities that come out in the distillation, meanwhile, are sent to a company that uses the residue to make coating material for ladles in the steel industry. Subaru pays that company to take the impurities off its hands. But despite these additional costs, Subaru officials say they expect the solvent operation to break even -- including design and construction costs -- in about five years when balanced against its savings in solvent costs.
In another case, a series of process redesigns that first increased costs ultimately produced lower costs, less waste -- and better quality work. The plant used to weld its steel auto frames in a way that produced lots of sparks, which, in turn, left lots of a waste-metal byproduct known as slag on the floor. Subaru started looking for a company that might want the slag for the base metals it contained. It found a company in Spain that wanted to recover copper from the slag. So, Subaru started shipping the slag to Spain -- and paying the Spanish company to take the material. Thus, for a while, Subaru was reducing its environmental impact, but at increased cost.
This led it to consider a previously unrecognized waste: excess sparks. The plant devised a new welding process that produced fewer sparks and less slag, lowering electricity and materials costs. Its consumption of copper welding tips plunged 75%. Subaru still ships some slag to Spain, but not as much. The new welding process also shows how attention to the minutest environmental details can lead to savings that a purely cost-driven organization might miss.
2. Management's leadership is vital in setting goals and getting departments to cooperate.
Management must define goals for reducing environmental impact, and make clear to all departments that such goals are just as important as metrics on productivity, quality and safety.
Green Is Economical
A crucial step by the managers at Subaru of Indiana was a decision in the mid-1990s to adopt internationally recognized standards for measuring and managing environmental impact. These standards, created by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization, are designed to help companies see from top to bottom how much waste they are producing and where improvements can be made.
Collaboration among departments is essential -- another reason why top management must lead. Consider an idea that originated with a worker in engine assembly at the Subaru plant. The idea: to return packaging material to a supplier for reuse. Engine assembly couldn't do this on its own. Engineering needed to certify that the material could be reused. Purchasing had to renegotiate with the supplier. Transportation and logistics dealt with how the materials would be returned, and accounting looked at budget and control ramifications.
Without clear signals from above pushing for such cooperation, progress will quickly bog down.
3. The front lines have to be engaged.
Front-line workers are ideally positioned to spot ways to reduce, reuse and recycle -- a discipline commonly referred to as the three R's. Subaru has made the three R's part of worker training, along with a system of thinking known in environmental circles as the "waste hierarchy." This is a ranking of possible environmental actions in increasing order of environmental benefit:
1. To burn material for energy is better than sending it to a landfill.
2. To recycle it is better than burning it.
3. To reuse material is better than recycling it.
4. To reduce the amount needed is better than reusing it.
5. To eliminate the need for material is better than reducing it.
One way work teams spotted opportunities to do more with the three R's was by dumpster-diving. If nothing was to be thrown away, everything being put into the dumpsters had to be eliminated, reused or recycled. The dumpsters themselves had to go (though many are now used as recycling bins). Teams began by spilling the contents of bins in their own areas onto the floor, then sifting sorting and grouping the material by source and type. Then the teams came up with ideas to eliminate each type of waste -- either at the source, or by devising ways to capture and recycle it.
One of the biggest challenges and costs in recycling is the sorting of items into the various waste streams for further processing. If this can be done at the source, by the people who first touch it, costs are substantially reduced (or even eliminated). Even more three R's ideas emerge this way. Front-line input is also necessary to ensure that such sorting is smoothly incorporated into the work flow.
4. Green initiatives achieve lots more when companies involve their suppliers.
Subaru of Indiana has made willingness to work on green initiatives a major criterion for selecting suppliers. Its steel suppliers, for example, agreed to provide rolls of steel in exactly the needed widths and lengths for each part being stamped, allowing the plant to reduce steel scrap by more than 100 pounds per vehicle since 2000.
A Japanese supplier sends the plant engine parts in seagoing containers packed tightly in specially contoured Styrofoam blocks. Formerly, most of the Styrofoam stayed in Indiana and went to recycling. But since the containers go back to the supplier, now the Styrofoam does as well. In all, some 80 kinds of plastic caps, metal clips, cardboard spacers and other packing materials are returned to Japan in this way. The suppliers assess whether the materials are reusable; if they aren't, the suppliers recycle them for making new packaging materials.
5. All wastes are potential products.
As Henry Ford once observed, everything coming out of a manufacturing process, including waste, is a potential raw material for another process.
Subaru located companies that could use its solvent residue and slag. Its cafeteria waste, too, currently goes to an outside party: a waste-to-energy power plant near Indianapolis that burns the material. In each case, Subaru pays these companies to take the materials off its hands. But just as it eventually found ways to improve its industrial processes that lowered costs and yielded other gains, it is now considering how to turn its food waste into a cost-effective product.
Industrial-scale composting is one possibility, using a circular track and a special breed of worm. The idea is to dump the food waste each day next to the previous day's waste, leading the worms to eat their way continuously around the track, leaving behind high-grade fertilized soil. Research by Allegiant Global, an Indianapolis waste-logistics company that has worked closely with Subaru on its environmental goals, identified the Canadian red wriggler as the "thoroughbred champion" of composting worms because of its voracious appetite. Subaru could also use the fertilized soil on the factory's grounds, give it to employees for home use, and sell it to local garden shops and plant nurseries. As for the plates and utensils, the company is looking into items made of materials digestible to the worms, like starch.
Another kind of waste with profit potential: unharnessed energy. In the factory's second-floor spray-painting operation, paint that misses an auto body is captured in water that falls in a torrent into tanks below ground. There the paint is skimmed off and the water is pumped back upstairs for reuse. The plant is considering installing a small hydroelectric generator to tap the enormous energy in the 10,000 gallons per minute of falling water.
6. Green leadership creates competitive advantages.
Drives to reduce environmental impact force companies to study their operations and material flows from a fresh perspective and in great detail. Innovations that result can give them competitive advantages.
Subaru says it has saved millions of dollars by combining green thinking with in-depth studies of its processes, suppliers and equipment. Where the biggest savings have been achieved, in descending order: reducing waste by revising processes; conserving energy; and working with suppliers.
In the future, should government and the marketplace put increasing pressure on companies to improve their environmental performance, Subaru of Indiana should be well-positioned compared with its rivals. While its competitors may be caught in reactive modes, forced to divert cash and resources in a scramble to comply with new rules and customer demands, Subaru will be able to focus on creating its next competitive advantage.
Pity the competitor who is forced to do in 18 months what Subaru of Indiana took two decades to get right.
—Dr. Robinson is a professor at the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Dr. Schroeder is the Herbert and Agnes Schulz professor of management at the College of Business Administration, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, Ind. They can be reached at reports@wsj.com.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page R4
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
A Challenge Task--Decision Making
Teamwork is a word and concept well known to everyone. Everyone of us also has some kind of decision making experience. But when those two things combine together, it becomes a challenge task for many of us. Since we got different score, we all have different attitudes toward what we want to get. Some of us want a huge curve, some don't; many of us don't like the True/False questions, but others are good at it; some did well on the essay question, others did poorly. What some of us are expected to get often conflicts with others. Thus, it is a very tough quest to have some decisions and get everyone agree on it.
In such a decision making process which involves a lot of arguments, there is five basic way How people handle conflict:
Compete to win
Assertiveness to get one’s own way
Avoidance
Withdrawal; used when there’s “no chance of winning”
Compromise
Used with decision making under pressure; all members are equal
Accommodation
Seeing issue as more important to others than self
Collaborating
Requires bargaining and negotiation among group
Multiple group insights required
i think the way i handle it was Avoidance. Since everyone was acting on their own best interest, no one really care about what others want and how we can got things done. a lot of people were shouting out their opinions and criticizing others thought. The class seems like a mass and people were acting bad toward other. in this kind of environment, i don't think my opinion would be taken or even be heard. it would just add more noise and possible criticized by others.
Thankfully, we have two classmate who have a great courage to stand up to the front and reorganize the class. As we approach to the time limit and we had really done nothing, everyone suddenly realized that we must cooperated to get things done. None of us can get what excelly what we want, in order to get the best deal, we must give up somethings we personally want.
For future decision making process, i would choose to collaborate with others. as a team member, i willing to invest time to shape and agree upon a common purpose and overcome and share my ideas. in a this excise environment where we must get 100% agreement, our ideas are really depend on others agreement, without collaborating we can go nowhere. moreover, i would divide our class into small group, thus can reduce the conflicts and increase the efficiency. In this approach, we can get more idea without have so many conflicts and people are more likely to take part in a small group environment than a large one.
In such a decision making process which involves a lot of arguments, there is five basic way How people handle conflict:
Compete to win
Assertiveness to get one’s own way
Avoidance
Withdrawal; used when there’s “no chance of winning”
Compromise
Used with decision making under pressure; all members are equal
Accommodation
Seeing issue as more important to others than self
Collaborating
Requires bargaining and negotiation among group
Multiple group insights required
i think the way i handle it was Avoidance. Since everyone was acting on their own best interest, no one really care about what others want and how we can got things done. a lot of people were shouting out their opinions and criticizing others thought. The class seems like a mass and people were acting bad toward other. in this kind of environment, i don't think my opinion would be taken or even be heard. it would just add more noise and possible criticized by others.
Thankfully, we have two classmate who have a great courage to stand up to the front and reorganize the class. As we approach to the time limit and we had really done nothing, everyone suddenly realized that we must cooperated to get things done. None of us can get what excelly what we want, in order to get the best deal, we must give up somethings we personally want.
For future decision making process, i would choose to collaborate with others. as a team member, i willing to invest time to shape and agree upon a common purpose and overcome and share my ideas. in a this excise environment where we must get 100% agreement, our ideas are really depend on others agreement, without collaborating we can go nowhere. moreover, i would divide our class into small group, thus can reduce the conflicts and increase the efficiency. In this approach, we can get more idea without have so many conflicts and people are more likely to take part in a small group environment than a large one.
Blogging--pros and cons
"Windows Into Lives After a Layoff" by Alinea Dizik, a recent Wall Street Journal article, points out that as layoffs increase, some job seekers are using blogs to share their experience and felling. Some believe that blogging has helped them find a sense of community, as well as show potential employers that they are keeping up with the market. One of them, Ms.Levy, who was laid off in july, says "blogging gives her something to talk about in her interviews". For others, blogging about a layoff helps them find new job opportunities. As many of them use blogs as a place to put resume and show their professional writing skills, blogs become a new place to find employees. A personal blog can be used as a minor to show how a person view the world. Dan Kaplan, a partner at a new york executive search firm says "Carefully written blogs can make candidates stand out."
However, not all blogs help people in their career. Since many laid off bloggers use blogs to share their feeling, their former employers got angered with their writing. After Kilpatrick wrote on his blogs "wanted to find a really great job that didn't give layoffs as a christmas bonus", his employer got so angry. Such a common, recruiters believe can hurt a candidate's chance of getting a interview because it is very unprofessional to say bad word about their formal employers. Ms.Chatman, a professor at Berkeley warns that "having too many personal details available online can be easily misunderstand by a potential employers who is interested in hiring the professional you." Moreover, keeping a blog can turn into a significant time consuming active with unclear reward.
However, not all blogs help people in their career. Since many laid off bloggers use blogs to share their feeling, their former employers got angered with their writing. After Kilpatrick wrote on his blogs "wanted to find a really great job that didn't give layoffs as a christmas bonus", his employer got so angry. Such a common, recruiters believe can hurt a candidate's chance of getting a interview because it is very unprofessional to say bad word about their formal employers. Ms.Chatman, a professor at Berkeley warns that "having too many personal details available online can be easily misunderstand by a potential employers who is interested in hiring the professional you." Moreover, keeping a blog can turn into a significant time consuming active with unclear reward.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Egg drop activity
Since Professor gave us the instruction and requirement, we already had our goals and objective. The second step in the planning process was also partly provided by professor. We knew we had 10 straws and a yard long tape to use. Since we just jump in to think about what we can do to protect the egg, we skip the step to identify group strengths and weaknesses. However, one of our group member told us that she previously had a same activity in her other class. Although she told us that her group didn't make it, we thought the previous experience definitely would give us some advice. So what we did in the next couple mins was try to come up with some alternative strategies, which was step in the planning process. Basically we did which the definition requires. we had come up with some different approaches to solve the problem, and evaluated every alternatives to assess strengths and weakness of each. As we near the time limit, we finally decided to use one of the strategies which we thought should work out for us. Given that there is really one person can access to the materials and egg, other group members were also trying to do something to help her. One of us was watching the clock and told us the time every 2 mins. Others were helping her apply the straws to the egg. in the last five mins, a member had a better than existing plan to do this task, but due to the lack of time, we didn't do his way. and the result is our strategy did not work out the way we thought it should done.although we failed to accomplish the task, i still found the experience to be excellent. we not only did a farily good plan, but also did a great team work.i think if we have more time to try another plan, maybe we can do a better job.
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