Good Work Team

Man, am I glad that this week is over. I really enjoyed doing the team consulting project and presentation, but it was so much work. I have never met together with a group so much. Our group, Brethren Consulting, met up on Saturday mornings and late at night; we even got kicked out of the Tanner Building because it was so late that the building closed. Even though it may not have been so enjoyable working so much, I feel that we worked very well as a team.

We presented on Thursday and we rocked it. Our presentation went really well! After doing all the work on this assignment I started to feel like a professional :) One thing that is cool, is that we did so much research about our topics that we really did become 'professionals' in that branch. When questions were asked at the end of our presentation, we were able to respond with a clear, concise answer.

Even though we finished one presentation, there is still a big one coming up! I will be presenting my five-minute masterpiece in a couple weeks. I really like presenting, so I think that it should go well!

Professional Networking Event (extra credit)

Today I attended an event of the BYU Management Society. It was located at the clubhouse of the Sleepy Hollow Country Club in Orem. I thought it was super awesome and I learned a lot. Also, lunch was included : )

The topic of the meeting was about innovation; DNA of an innovator. It was interesting because the speaker, Jeff Dyer, talked about many things that I am currently learning in marketing and in MCOM! It was really cool to see how some of the things that we are learning actually apply in the real world. In this post, I will talk a little about what I learned at the event.

The first thing that I learned is that innovators love to challenge the status quo. They like to think outside the box and do something that, sometimes, is not completely normal. However, it is by this way that the next billion-dollar idea can be brought about.

Second, the speaker emphasized that we are all more creative than we think. Part of our creativity is genetic, but we can develop our creativity. We can do a couple things to help spark a creative thought. One, we can modify things that already exist. If we do this, we already have a HUGE head start. This gives us a strong basis to follow. In addition, he explained that creativity loves constraint. It is hard to think of ideas when we have no constraints. When we have such a broad topic, it is hard to narrow down on a solution. If we have, however, specific constraints, we will develop specific answers.

The last thing that I really liked was the idea of acting differently. Sometimes people believe that innovators need to think differently. However, innovators need to act differently, and this will lead to a different thinking process.  

Overall, I loved the event and I took many notes. I plan to apply all of these things while I am here in school, but also later in my future career.

Go Team!

By this part of the semester, we have moved on to doing less individual work and more teamwork. I really enjoy working on team projects because I feel that this is what I will be doing most during an internship or my future career. The assignment for the team analysis project was introduced to us not that long ago and we have to write a multi-paper consulting report and present next Thursday! It has been a little stressful trying to get everything done, because we are far from it, but we have been working together very well as a team. Multiple times already we had met together to plan the next step and work on our report.

For our project, we chose to research and present a consulting plan to Vivint. We decided to select this company because they are a relatively new company and they still have many things that they need to improve to have better customer satisfaction. What we overlooked, however, is what kind of solutions we could possibly develop. After analyzing many complaints for the company, we realized that it will be a challenge to develop plausible solutions. Many problems deal with ethics which is a hard thing to change. The best solution is to replace management, but that is not really something you can do. By meeting together and planning, we were able to develop some logical solutions that will fix this problem.

Remote Meeting

The way that our group works together without being together is through Google Docs. For all of our team projects and presentations we have created several Google Docs so that everyone can participate and work together without needing to meet up. This has been very successful. At any time, we can add to our projects and edit what others have already written. I feel that this is one of the most effective ways to meet remotely because we can literally work on the project and not just talk about what we want to do.

The only downside I see with Google Docs is if we have a question about the assignment. If this happens, then we have to meet together or use a different form of communication because its hard type out clear questions and answers.

Brethren (Team WSB Presentation)

Today we presented chapter 8 as a team from our WSB book. Our presentation was based on solving problems and writing proposals. As a team, I feel that we did really well! Before presenting in class, we got together as a group two different times to format our slides and practicing the timing and speaking part of our presentation. I will do an evaluation on a personal and team level.

Personally, I feel well about my part of the presentation. I practiced a lot and I feel that it paid off. One thing that I feel that I did well was maintain good eye contact with the audience. Not once did I have to look back to my slides for help. In addition, I feel that I spoke clearly and in an engaging manner. One thing that I could have done better was my hand motions. I feel like I could have made more emphasizing motions. 

As a team, we worked really well together! As I said, our practice paid off. I think that all of our transitions were smooth. Everyone knew when the needed to speak and stepped up front to draw in the attention. In addition, I thought we looked great as a team. We dressed up with matching ties to look nice and snazzy! I also like how are slides turned out; I thought that they looked very professional. Even with all of our practice, we were a little rushed at the end. We probably should have taken some information out of our presentation to make everything a little more clear. 

My Life Now=Proposals

Well, if I did not know what a proposal was before, I definitely do now. This week I learned a TON about them for a couple reasons. First, because we have been working on them in class. On Tuesday, we started doing the research for our briefing article. For this assignment, we had to get a specific proposal passed off with Professor Middleton and we will be writing a brief report about that topic. Not only do we have this assignment, but also a new one was introduced to us today in class. In our teams, we will be writing a consulting proposal for a company. We will study the complaints filed against the organization and come up with a solution on how they can fix their weak points. In class today, we decided that we will study and write our report for Vivint.

Also today, my team presented about solving problems and writing proposals. I feel that this will help a lot in our team project because that is exactly what we will be doing. I had never really understood what a proposal is or knew how many different types there are until I studied about them for our presentation.

There is just one type of proposal I will not be doing this week....

These next couple of weeks will be a little stressful in this class. We went over the remaining assignments for the semester and there are many things that we need to do still. I will have to go into fifth gear to keep up with this class and all of my others.

Online Interview

I actually enjoyed doing the online interview. I was a little nervous at first because I had never done one before. The interview online definitely had a different feel to it than doing one in person, for this I am grateful that I could practice! A challenge that I had was to not look down at my resume while speaking. In person, the interviewer can tell what you are doing, however, online it may appear as if you are scared or nervous. Not making eye contact usually is not the best idea in an interview; you need to appear to be confident!

As well as being interviewed, I also enjoyed doing the interview. This part didn't feel that much different to me from an interview in person; you do not have to worry about as many things as being interviewed. While starting the interview, we had some technical difficulties and lost connection. I am happy that this happened because it gave me a small taste of the real world. Something like that could happen, so now I know how to react in that situation! Overall, I loved the experience.

My employer: Coleman Edwards (5)

The Good, the Bad, and the...Persuasive?

What I enjoyed most this week was practicing persuasive and bad news writing. Before studying this topic, I had never really realized that there is a difference in the writing style depending on the message. We learned that for good news, you put the main idea right at the beginning to motivate the audience. For bad news, you hide the main idea a little in the text so that you can warm them up to it.

For my persuasive writing assignment, I chose to write a girl why she should date me and for my bad news letter, I broke up with someone. I learned many things during this assignment, but I believe the saddest is that I discovered that I could more easily break up with someone than tell them why I am dateable. I hope that it is not too big of a problem :)

As a team, The Brethren, we started to work on our presentation; it will be on Thursday. It was enjoyable to get together as a group and work together; one of the things that I love most is working as a team. We were able to design all of our slides and get the master copy ready, all that we need to do now is practice!

One Step Closer to the Future

I feel that this week was the week that most inspired me. We did many things that I will be applying through my whole college and job career. The two things that were most inspiring to me were learning about resumes and job interviews. This is something that I have always wanted to work on, but never really knew where to start. The last resume I had made was in high school and my last job interview was when I was a junior in high school. Before, I only had a very basic knowledge of how to create a professional resume and present myself in a professional way. I was amazed at the resume I was able to create with the instruction we received in class and in the book.  

What I most enjoyed during the week was doing mock interviews. I felt as if I were able to speak well and clear. However, at the same time, I was able to receive some great feedback of things that I can do better. I will be sure to remember what I learned and apply it when I have to do a real interview.