I recently listened to Ken Robinson lecture "Schools kill creativity" that was uploaded on TED web-site. A few points brought my attention. The main one addressed importance of not being afraid of making mistakes in fostering of one's creativity. He gives an example of children that usually are the most creative in their answers. In the early age they don't have goals and don't obey social norms. Instead, they do what they enjoy the most and what makes them happy. But as soon as they get into school, they start being trained not to make mistakes, get right answers instead and be "a good girl" or a "good boy".
Ken believes there's a straight correlation between entrepreneurship and ability, readiness of an individual to make different mistakes. Instead, in school we are taught how you how to minimize mistakes, how to mitigate risks and how to make right decisions. They give you an ideal picture of what you should be: a banker, a lawyer. And they kill you desire to be a dancer, an artist, a musician, because in the heads of many it's a synonym of "poor". And you, they believe, want to be reach: to get more stuff and to life life that you not necessary wanted to live when you were a kid or a teen.
On my job interview recently I mentioned that I like skydiving. I drew correlation between taking risk and jumping from the plane. I said that may be this was the craziest thing I've done in my life, but I learned a big deal from it. My interviewer didn't like this response and mentioned instead that one should always be careful in assessing risks, which should always be calculated and etc...Again, I though, the same story - don't make mistakes, be reasonable...But should you always?
A friend of mine told me a story when he broke his hand, but had a job interview scheduled. He didn't want to miss a chance to get a job and decided to attend the meeting. When shaking his interviewer's hand, a guy asked my friend what happened to his hand.
- My other interview just didn't go well, said my friend (obviously he was kidding), who has a good sense of humor and who tried to break ice. The interviewer didn't get the joke. My friend concluded that he would want to work for a boss that doesn't understand jokes. The result? Five month after starting a job of a financial analyst my friend worked as a managing director within another company. He helped it aquire a few profitable mergers. How did he get hired? He just took a risk and mentioned the same joke on his next interview....
If you look around, current social and economic system fosters productivity, intellect and absence of mistakes. But if you never make mistakes, you can never learn how to think creatively. You will always be tightned to a standartized approach of solving problems. Instead, I believe if you make something not right, you really put effort and did your best, you should be rewarded. For example, my management professor gave us an example of the times when his idea resulted in big losses for a company. Nevertheless, he received a big bonus for that mistake. And I think that this is essentially what company's management should be: encourage people not to be afraid to make mistakes, not to be afraid to take risks, allow them trust their inner self.
Finally, this blog entry has something to do with a management class that I took in college. Every week we had an opportunity to get extra credit for our exam. Only a few people got the extra credit. I never got one, even though i was motivated to receive one, because my management exams were really hard. What I've noticed is that with each missed opportunity I was less and less motivated to keep going. As well as other people in the group I was with. Some didn't even pretend they were not interested at all in completing the assignment, because just like in casino the odds of winning "extra credit" were against the bettors (on average 5 people out of 30 had a chance to get a credit, which is around 16% chance to win).
When I think about the way to improve this situation and students' motivation what comes into my mind is prof's Kurpis bonus example. His mistake was rewarded. In a similar manner, allowing a few teams to win and receive half of the credit would do a better job to motivate them, for in the future they would wish for more points. Encouraging them take a risk (even if that involves making a mistake) with two or three points of extra credit would motivate them more, especially giving the fact that three additional points wouldn't really boost one's grade when the median for exams was either 60 or 75. My next idea may sound even crazy, but giving extra credit to a group that performed the worst in case they can explain what went wrong would also motivate them to reach higher and perform better next time. the team that found the worst way out of a situation can be seen as a creative team simply because if offered its unique approach and din't follow common rules. Tomas Edison said that he discovered 1000 ways not to get electricity, but in the end he got it. He loved mistakes and kept going and essentially he came where he wanted to.
Anyway, this is what I think. Personally, I will continue to keep wondering on the trip of my life. And i will continue making mistakes as well as learning from them. I'll keep diving for new discoveries.
To be perfectly honest, I appreciated the importance of writing this blog only until the end of the semester. Not that I don't like to write or not that I'm not a big fan of social networks, but the assignment was so challenging, that I couldn't tell from the very beginning if I was going to like it.
In general a course ends in the classroom and you hardly ever critically evaluate the information that you received. this is very common for the majority of liberal arts courses. Unlike them, science, math, finance, accaunting requires a lot of extra work. You go over the problems and you finally understand what it's all about. In a similar way my management class required a lot of brain stretching, problem-solving skills, thinking outside of the box. Having a blog was useful, because I actually had to sit and rethink what I've done, how I could do better and therefore, improve my future performance.
Another feature of this blog assignment that I truly enjoyed is ability to find out more about your classmates. If you think about social life in public schools as it is, students just meet for classes and then go to work. There's not a lot of interactions and, therefore, less possibilities to network or exchange ideas. Blogging is a way of speaking with your classmates in a less formal setting. It gave me an exposure to what other people think and how they think and I found it very useful.
However, despite the fact that we had to respond to three classmates' blogs, I felt sometimes that it was just part of everyone's routine. I didn't really notice bloggers responding to the comments, as well as I myself never responded to other people's comments on my own page. Involving into a conversation could result into new ideas, findings and discussions. And this is how I see the way to improve this blog assignment. Have less blog topics (I think that 5 is enough - I would get rid of culture shock and may be smth else), but have students collect more than 7 responses to their blog entries. It will definitely foster each student's creativity and change the way of delivering information. It should also improve virtual interactions among classmates.
Finally, meeting deadlines, I think was also a good part of this blogging exersise. In order to get a full credit we had to be consistent and organized during the entire semester. We didn't have an option to write 5 papers at a time over the weekend, which I'm actually very good at. However, motivation to receive full 20 points for this assignment was so strong that I never missed a deadline. I knew that class was not going to be easy and having some room for a grade would never heart. Again, having my grade under control allowed me to improve my time-managment skills in allocating time to different classes.
Finally, being ESL student who lived in this country for 3 years and learned english basically from the scratch allowed me better memorize terminology and concepts. Not having english classes in my curriculum anymore hurts, because I can't really practice my writting and observe how effective I am in delivering my ideas to the public. I do appreciate everyone's feedback and comments left to my blog! I read them all.
Thank you everyone, for you cooperation and for the wonderful semester!
Dc – type, which stands for dominance and conscientiousness. Honestly, I was surprised to get this result. I never thought of myself as a dominant person. So I went back home and retook the test. But I got the same result, with even higher level of dominance.
The thing is, in my opinion dominance has a negative connotation. Usually I would describe a dominant person as an individual who is very aggressive, overconfident, authoritarian, persistent. For this reason I would never want to be associated with this definition. I would rather put myself somewhere in between Dominance and Influence type. I don’t like to dominate, but rather influence people, offer my ideas and get feedback.
It’s true that’s I’m direct and straightforward, analytical and demanding, enjoy solving problems and accepting challenges. However, when it comes to making decisions, I prefer collecting as much information as possible, consult with as many people as I can, be open to any suggestions. I also weight pros and cons of a situation as well as always question status of things. I’m also not afraid to express my point of view even if others disagree with me. My friends call me paranoid sometimes, but they always turn to me for an advice, because I’m very cautious and logical, deliberate before I make a decision, collect and process information, recognize the needs of others. And the fact that I got conscientiousness as a second type explains my behavior. Overall, I’m surprised that I agree with the action plan for the Dominance part more than with description of it: taking authority, for instance or getting immediate results is not my strongest side yet, as well as i have average ego, but I’m definitely working on it. To put it in simple terms, I can describe myself as Doberman with a Chinchilla’s personality: seem to be strong, intelligent, powerful, but a bit humble when it comes to taking authority. For example, I recently had a job interview. I though that I failed it. But I got a call for a job two days after the interview took place. A person who interviwed me, mentioned that I carried myself very well, I projected confidence and delivered the qualities they were looking for in a candidate. When I heard it I was shocked. I thought of how good it was they didn’t see my legs “dancing” under the table during the interview, which in turn addresses my next point. I agree that it’s possible to become another type, because our personality is partially formed from our habits and tasks that we deal with on a regular basis. The more opportunities that require high level of responsibility and action (i.e. taking authority of a project, for instance) the more it allows one to be a dominant type. A few years ago I would rather belong to a steadiness type, but after taking initiative to come to another country I developed new characteristics in my personality. I had to make so many decisions and responsibilities for the past three years, that it completely changed my personality from a life observer to the one who actively participates in it. Definitely this test allowed me better understand my personality and what I need to work on is the following: structure a more predictable environment, develop systematic approaches and time-management.
That day I was standing in line trying to get myself from falling apart. Don’t get me wrong but being considered a hazard is not something people easily put up with. But that’s what everyone is going to think about you after they hear you telling a cashier “I want a hamburger with EXACTLY five pickles, small French fries well done and Big Mac Souse and could you please, put my order on the receipt”.
Surprisingly, my internal practice helped and by the time I reached the cashier my order didn’t seem strange to me, just if I were at Starbucks trying to get my regular tall soy triple latte with weep cream on top of it. So here we go, my order is placed at McDonald’s this time.
The cashier wouldn’t even look at me. With a serious face he placed the order and asked me if I wanted anything else. I mentioned that I wanted my order to be reflected on the receipt. This time, he looked surprised, but pressed the button. It looked like everything was going according to the plan. Vu ala, I thought, I’m a lucky girl.
-Anything else, miss?
-That’s all, can I please, take a look at the receipt?
Obviously, the first attempt was not successful. As you can see from the picture, only one extra pickle was reflected on my check, not five as I needed.
-I’m sorry to say, sir, but I need these five pickles to be on this receipt, and you put only one EXTRA PICKLE.
-Why would that matter anyway, you have these pickles on your hamburger and there’s no way such a transaction can be reflected on the receipt.
-Sir, I’m visiting NYC from Russia. My company covers my expenses here, but I need to have receipts for each transaction that I make here, so that they can reimburse me.
This time he though I was crazy. He said it was impossible to put 5 pickles on the receipt mainly because for the computer system they have installed extra stands for infinite amount of additions, and there’s no way to either copy extra pickle 5 times, or replace 1 with 5 in the order.
-Can I speak with a manager?
-I am the manager.
-I do need this receipt, could you please, get it for me?
At this point he called a women from the kitchen and asked her to make sure that I would get exactly what I wanted even though my order has been delivered already. I guess, after 6 - minute conversation, my previous order cooled and they had to make a new hamburger and fries. The old lady gave me a very unpleasant look, as I was standing in front of her with a poster “McDonald’s s**ks”, but she proceeded my order.
Keeping calm and polite, he repeated my order, looked at the screen and pressed few buttons. I couldn’t believe my eyes! After the firs transaction it took him ONLY 4 minutes to figure out how to get the right receipt. (You can compare my receipts and see the difference).
-Here is your receipt, miss. Here’s your order. Anything else I can do for you today?
At this point he saw my grateful eyes and proceeded to his next customer.
After I got my order and took some pictures, I came back to the counter to say “thank you” to Martin – that was my manager’s name. I can’t tell if he really was busy making coffee and bringing milk into the kitchen or was avoiding me (he didn’t like me as a customer for sure, but at least he was respectful to my hazardous need), but I had to wait for him for another 8 minutes. Finally, I approached him by the coffee machine and said “Thank you, Martin”, so that everyone could hear that. At this moment his face brightened and he said:
-Sorry that I didn’t get it right on the first time. Take it easy. Have a nice day!
-Thank you, Martin! Awesome job!
I checked my order again, took some pictures, and proceeded to the exit door. I didn’t offer the food to McDonalds customers, as I’m sure none of them would feel comfortable eating food that was touched by someone’s hands (I deconstructed that hamburger with my hands). So I looked for homeless people on the street. Surprisingly, Washington Square Park was not populated with homeless at that day. I offered the food to the squirrels in the park, but eve they didn’t like it. I left the bag on one of the benches. I hope someone who really needed it could find it.
After I got back home, I started to think of what I would do as a manager consultant to improve service at McDonald’s. Because I got my order right and my receipt very quickly, I would give personnel’s efforts 8 points on a 10-point scale. Manager (who was also my cashier) did amazing job, was polite, respectful, didn’t mess up with me. He also excelled at controlling other cashiers while was fulfilling my request, carrying heavy boxes and bottles, making coffee and I can go on. The point is that no matter what he was doing, he managed to have everything under control. If I were to give him an advice, I would recommend him to change his job, and do something more sophisticated with better pay.
But since we have Martin at the place, he does a terrific job in order preparation process. Not only he assigned my very special order to a woman in Spanish, but controlled the order himself after it was completed. In the future, if they have an increasing growth trend of customized orders, it wouldn’t hurt:
-to have a cashier trained to take regular or special orders, able to write them down on some sort of paper (just like Starbucks writes on cups),
-to have a trained cook at the kitchen responsible for special and regular orders,
-to add appropriate features to their software to allow faster order taking and printing.
Communications between employees were very effective due to the design of the pace. A cashier is located a few meters from the kitchen, so he is easily heard in the kitchen. Martin spoke in Spanish with his employees. Nobody asked any questions, but followed his orders. You could tell that employees followed Martin’s orders easily not out of fear, but out of respect. Martin, on the other hand, was respectful towards the ladies in the kitchen. I don’t think that there’s need for improvement of their communications process, as employees and the managers work smoothly and effectively together to address customers’ needs.
If I were to rate training of employees in my particular situation, I would have given them solid nine points out of ten. As we all know, McDonald’s customers normally order food from established menu and hardly there’s need for any adjustments. Therefore, they don’t really need to spend money on training employees to take special orders, because this skill will hardly be ever applied in a real-life situation. However, it wouldn’t hurt to have just one person in the kitchen and a cashier who knows how to deal with not a traditional order if it occurs. Martin was very smart to assign my special order to one person.
Martin is a true leader at that place. He earned his position. You can tell that by how respectfully his employees listen to him and follow his orders. Hi has the qualities needed for a leader: he inspires people to do an amazing job and is an example of excellence, he is good at planning - he set the directions and allocated job to a particular person, cashiers, he made sure the process was well-organized, and controlled the result - checked my order.
Overall, it was a pleasant experience and I wouldn’t mind to come back and order a hamburger with 10 extra pickles, with chocolate chips on top and ice-cream in the middle. Because no matter how ridiculous my order would sound, Martin would be able to fulfill any of my wishes.
My own life experience of immigration proves that I’m capable of reaching any goals that I establish for myself. To start with, I’m one of those examples who had 99% probability to be rejected on their application for a visa to America. I was rejected twice. My friends and my family told me to give up my dreams about America and just do the best I could in Belarus. However, because of my interest in Human and Minority rights, I was invited to the venue in New York. When I came to America almost three years ago with 168$ in my pocket, no acquaintances and no place to stay, and hardly any English, I made it clear for myself that I will make the best out of that experience.
The thing is I didn’t know how I was going to make it. I knew that I would have to work very hard without any guarantee of success. I knew that I would have to give out golden years of my youth in exchange of work that sometimes lasted up to 16 hours. This is going to be a little strange to hear, but I didn’t really know HOW I was even going to make it …But, a few weeks after I settled down in Brooklyn my friend took me for a ride to Manhattan. While passing by the mesmorising lights of Manhattan, I was telling myself that in a year or two I would live in the middle of the city, go to school, have a great career and a family of course.
To make the story short, after envisioning myself in the city, a few weeks later I found a truly wonderful opportunity to live in a big soho-like loft and pay very decent rent to my roommate, who I became a very good friend with. I also went to school, despite the fact that the required TOEFL-score of 105 seemed to be unachievable for many of my friends, I got 99 after 1 year in America. I do work on my career in the field of finance and already have a proposal for a 3 months summer internship next year.
How I’m going to make it…
Be a respectable professional.
Currently, I’m a junior at Baruch College, pursuing a degree in finance. New York is a great place to launch a career in the field, as well as be promoted (unlike other countries where discrimination still exists) and I’m going to do my best to be successful at my job. Although I find area of investment banking very attractive one (good compensation, lots of traveling, high pressure environment) I also consider an option to work in financial department for a global organization with a good cause, such as UN, World Bank, European Bank of Reconstruction and Development etc.
I think that it would be a very interesting experience to either intern in a such organization or work for it. To obtain the goal I have to be highly academically achieved (GPA higher than 3.6), have related experience (internship), and just be well rounded (read newspapers, do extracurricular activities, network). Currently I’m working on each one of these points. To wrap up, no matter whether it will be just a regular financial institution or an institution with a good cause, I want to have an executive position in it, because I am able to manage successfully a lot of things in my life on my own, and in a similar manner I can manage others.
Help Children.
Another reason why I want to have an executive position is because power and money give access to certain people and resources, which may change one’s life. I had experience of working with problematic kids for the Chernobyl Children Project International and I would be glad to improve lives of children in the Eastern Europe. My main focus will be on improvement of conditions of orphanages. I will also devote certain amount to the program that will help qualified families (who have good characteristics but can’t have children for a biological or financial reason) take kids from the orphanages and be paid for that.
Family and…hmm.. French Bulldog or Doberman?
I also want to have a big family and ultimately this is a goal for me. Why? New York is a strange city: although it makes a transition for foreigners nice and smooth, it seems like a lot of people are disconnected and lonely in the city. Therefore, my wish is to have a caring husband, many kids and a dog, of course. I'm currently involved in romantic relationship with someone...we'll see how it goes)
An apple a day keeps a doctor away.
Another goal of mine is to stay healthy and be in a good shape. I excersise a few times a week, do yoga. I also eat a lot of raw food, mostly vegetables and fruit, and occasionally fish. I also want to sign up for martial arts. Anyone is interested?
Get ready to…jump!
Oh yes, and last but not the least goal in this very short list (the professor only asked for 5, right?) to get a license in skydiving. I have a special feeling for skydiving. For some people it’s one of the scariest experiences, but for me – it’s a very peaceful and relaxing activity. I’m only 23 tandems (have done it twice this September) away from my license. Next year I’m planning to do 10 - 12 jumps (you can do two, or even three jumps in one day) next year. I hope I will not get bored on the 15th time.
Finally, what I found interesting, is that when you truly wish something, things do happen. At least that works for me. As simple as it sounds, don’t be afraid to ask for too much and don’t be shy to think that you do not deserve something.
It truly was an unforgettable class. We only had twenty or so minutes to improve our final grade for the midterm. When the professor mentioned that my classmates had to agree on one decision, I thought that it was impossible task to accomplish. But we made it. Yet, even though the plan of the final change of everyone’s grade was not perfect, the experience of negotiation was precious.
My management class represents a high power group, and the main role of the leader was to facilitate decision making among the people. After the discussion started, two people took the initiative to facilitate dialogue among the members of the group. However, soon after listening to each other some people started yelling at each other. The process was getting out of control. It was the first time for me to negotiate something in such a big group of people under a very limited time frame. It kind of “killed” my confidence and my faith to win in this process (to deliver a balanced decision that would meet interests of everyone), and soon after starting the negotiation as compete-to-win participant I found myself as a collaborator.
It was challenging for me, because I have never had a problem of expressing my point of view in front of a big group of people. I also have never had a problem with either being a leader or being leaded by someone. In our classroom, however, there were no single significant leader at the moment. There were a few people (including me) who actively participated in the process, but no one could be called a leader at the moment. Even the person (thank to him) writing ideas on the board didn’t have the full authority over the group and was attacked a few times. Under the time pressure the situation was becoming ugly as some students were too aggressive in attacking those ones who were against the final plan or just didn’t want to vote because they didn’t have a full understanding of the proposal and it’s consequences.
My transformation from compete-to-win participant into a collaborator occurred after I made an attempt to explain everyone the importance of extra credit assignment using very simple statistics. To me, prove the importance of all options was obvious, as the calculation of the grade including curve and extra credit was very simple. The reality test showed that math was not the best argument for the group. Or may be I wasn’t eloquent enough. I went back, took my seat and realized that once you believe that your idea is workable, but no one supports it, you don’t want to be active anymore. You just want to let the whole process go.
In a similar manner international students kept silent on the issue of keeping the essay as a part of the second test. I know that for American students essays are almost never a problem. Unlike them, I, however, sometimes have a very hard time putting all my thoughts on the paper and spend time not on developing an idea, but rather finding the best way to express myself. Therefore, silence of international students in regard to the essay question was hard for me to understand.
However, despite all disagreements the final decision was made. And I think that it was a fair decision. Not every professor would agree to the terms that we offered: 10-points curve, plus 10 points extra assignment, plus drop the lowest grade for the quiz. Someone in the class said that it was our chance to shine. I agree that it was a possibility for us to bust our grades and argue for additional 10 points for the extra credit assignment. But how fair would that be??? I know that limiting oneself is not the right thing to do when it comes to achieving a goal (such as a good average grade after the discussion). But asking too much is another dilemma. No doubt the test was hard, but it would definitely motivate us to study for the next one. Additional 10 points of the extra credit would bring everyone in the high nineties and half of the class will not study for the second exam and possible fail final exam (which is cumulative, if I’m not mistaken).
Someone said that one should never be afraid to ask for too much or aim high, because even if you don’t reach as high as you wanted, you would still reach higher than you planned. However, you should never exhaust someone’s kindness (as in professor Kupris’ case), because favor can easily turn into one’s dissaproval.
A good manager provides workers with a feeling of job enrichment,
