By far, the only thing I'm proud of this summer...

The reflection paper I wrote for my engineering management class.

Reflection Paper
MT 244 – Summer 2006
This course has been very informational and inspiring that picking out 5 most important points has not been an easy task. It was nothing like I have taken before and I am so glad I took this class before my senior year. The stuff that I learned from this class is going to be useful in my senior year and in preparing me to step in the career world and most importantly it will be useful for life in general and understanding people or understanding that people are complex. Also, as an international student, I get to learn a lot about the American work culture and with the knowledge I will get to see things differently from my future colleagues. I am pretty sure that I have changed in so many always after taking this class and am planning to learn more and practice it on daily basis. The following are the 5 points that I have come up with as important in no particular order.
#1: ‘Goal setting’. This was the first thing we learned in class. The first activity was ever the most awakening of all. We were to write down our goals divided into three time frames, short term, mid term, and long term. Upon doing that, I found out how I was having a hard time figuring out what my goal was while others just went on to write them down. Everybody seemed to have defined their goals ahead of time. This I never knew about my circle of friends. I knew that people had goals but I did not know that everybody had them so quantifiably defined that it seemed like it was a sure thing to happen. I learned a great lesson in this. It is best to have a quantifiable goal so that we could have the picture clearly in our mind. With the clear picture, we would know for certain what we should do to go about accomplishing them and set other goals around it to be realized in a well defined time frame. It is very important to have the sense of time framing in goal setting as it was emphasized by Prof. Jordan, time passes by before you know it, you’ll wake up 40 years older and wonder what happened. This is indeed very true. I remember hearing complaints from the elderly but as a youngster either it hardly knocked any sense to me or I just didn’t bother to understand. I know this could happen to me too because it wasn’t long ago I was a freshman lost on the way back to my dorm and now I am about to enter my senior year. Time really does fly by. Before I wake up wondering what happened since I turned 20, I’d better set my goals clearly and lead a purposeful life. Over the years, I often woke up hating what the day had in store for me. Having goals and purpose in life makes me eager to live each day and eases the pain of doing something I really hate but have to do nonetheless, because now I know it brings me closer to achieving my goals. Goals, as I see it, are also a sense of comfort and resource of strength for people who occasionally hate what they have to do. But if you still hate it, and it has nothing to do with your goals, you should know that it is not for you and you’d better do something about it. I also learned something else, and I am glad I learned it when I was still young – that according to Jordan’s theory of option, the number of options declines with age. As you grow older, you have fewer options. It is also important to keep your options open for as long as possible because we don’t know what’s going to happen or if our plans are going to work out. In other words, welcome all possibilities, make the best choice and see things in long term. Thus, we have to have quantifiable goals but need to keep options open. We need to be constantly reminded of our goals for a successful life. Life doesn’t just happen. Better take control of your life while you can.
#2: ‘Power’. First we were asked to define power. I tried to do this in my head, but all that I came up with was from physics point of view, power is the ability to do work, which was really what I understood about power. In the general sense, power is the ability to overcome obstacles to achieve results and to influence people. A person without power cannot do these two things. Power comes from many resources and over time can become secured or obsolete. Power can also beget power. There are three things to do with power; resistance, compliance and commitment. I learned how to identify power-driven people and how they work. In the working world, there are generally three drives; achievement, affiliation and power. The power people work around influencing others and being their own person. The importance of caring about other people and wanting to succeed is also to be emphasized for a manager. With power alone, one can only be powerful – influential and authoritative. But in management, which is getting things done through other people, one also needs to have the drive for achievement and affiliation. I particularly like the professor’s point that there are two kinds of power, position power and personal power. This puts things into a good perspective. Some power we have to let go when it is time and some power we accumulate through out life and are there to hold on to until the day we die. I have seen many cases (at least from the news or on the TV) where people go crazy when they lose their position power. People could lead a miserable life or even commit suicide from losing power. Perhaps being powerless comes as a shock to these people who were once on the top of world, if they had personal power
to hold on too perhaps they would have been happy to let go. What they should have
done is they should have developed personal power and let go of their position power
gracefully. Personal power could be knowledge, expertise, friends, loved ones,
possessions, experience or principles even. These are the things that people should be making as early as possible. As suggested by Peter Drücker, do continuous learning. As a young person, that has no position power, I should accumulate personal power and make everything a learning experience. If I were to have position power one day, be it as a CEO, a manager or a parent, I am to understand these power can be taken away, nonetheless I should hold the power with full responsibility and consideration when I still have them.
#3: ‘Total Quality Management (TQM)’. TQM is a management strategy that is centered on the awareness for quality in all organizational process. When I first heard of it, I thought it was pretty redundant. I mean, isn’t management all about quality? Apparently, only managements that practice TQM are so. TQM has been adapted by the government, schools, and corporations and so on. Center on quality is a good principle to live by. Because at the end of the day, we’d want to end up with the best and continuously do better. Before WWII, the expression ‘Made in Japan’ had been seen as products that were of low quality, perishable, cheap, etc but then after several decades, Japan emerged as one of the most powerful producing countries and came up with the best quality products in the world. This could have never happened if not for the implementation of TQM in the system. Through out the decades, we have seen how TQM leads corporations to success.
As defined by the Deming Prize Committee of the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers:
"TQM is a set of systematic activities carried out by the entire organization to effectively and efficiently achieve company objectives so as to provide products and services with a level of quality that satisfies customers, at the appropriate time and price."
On an individual level, applying TQM could too be very beneficial. I see that this is doable. A TQM person would be all about quality in all aspects of his life. He would have systematic ways and approaches to satisfy his needs and meet his goals, and also he would be tolerant and pleasant to other people (customers). A TQM person would be an altogether person and pays attention to all his needs and sees himself as an organization where he’s the manager to lead the entire divisions. I so think a good management can begin with one self. One is going to master management skills a little if not a lot when he sees himself as an organization that needs top notch management. And eventually, he’ll make a good manager that pays attention to everything around him.
#4: ‘Synergy’. Synergy is getting a consensus out of a group of people. When we did the "Lost At Sea" activity, the group's result was greater than the average sum of the individual's scores. We were all better off as a group than on our own. The power of synergy is indescribable. Different people have different opinions and different ways of looking at things, and when these different people get together, lots of ideas will arise from under the table. Two heads are definitely better than one. But still there are two kinds of synergy; a positive synergy and a negative synergy. In the case of our “Lost At Sea” activity, we encountered positive synergy. A negative synergy is when an individual’s decision is better than the whole group, as we saw happened to the group next to us. But looking at society perspective, still the group as a whole is better off. It was only that one individual that encountered negative synergy and would have done better on his own. As is often the case, negative synergy does happen, but the positive still outweigh because the entire group still benefit from the group consensus. Therefore synergy, on a society level is always a good thing. I have learned that differences should be valued and looked for, because through differences we get different viewpoints to something and help us make better decision for all to benefit. I also learned the need to sacrifice one’s well-being for the well-being of the society – as in the case for negative synergy. This was proven by the Walt Disney company example discussed in class, and we can see that the company is still very successful to date.
#5: ‘Interviewing’. We all will be familiar with this at some points of our career.
Interviewing is a game we should play without letting the interviewer/interviewee know that we are playing the game or even know about the game. There’s an art we need to master to succeed an interview. Besides the many laws we ought not to break. (I had no idea such laws existed before this class). The typical process of an interview was described in the lecture. Basically, first up is the screening (avoidable if you graduate from a great school such as Vanderbilt), where they test your personality to get viable people past to the next process. Next up is behavioral interviewing, where they try to find out if you are safe, all together and if you are going to cause problems and last but not least if you are going to fit in the culture at the workplace. Most managers will also try to find out if hiring you will make them look good. It’s all about selling here. The best way
to interview people is to ask open ended questions. We also went through a list of
questions and I did find a lot of them very difficult to answer. In each question you answer, you sure want to sell and make yourself look good strictly without lying (or if you need to lie, be subtle and smart about it) and without breaking the law. It’s not only inyour answer, it’s also the way you answer it, and how you answer it. You should expect to be judged a whole lot during an interview and should never let your guards down and at the same time need to be casual and cool about it. There are rules when dealing with certain questions like salary. You should be smart not to sell yourself short or too high it’d scare people away. You best do research on the company you are interviewing for, and the job market. Personable people are also what most employers are looking for. Therefore we should brush up our people skills, be presentable and know about a lot of things to make ourselves interesting. The trick is also to stand out from the other candidates. The art of interview is beyond CGPA. And good resumes are not enough. It is one game I’d like to master at.
I learned about a lot of things in this class, 5 points is an understatement. ‘How To Win Friends & Influence People’ is easily my favorite book and I intend to continue reading it for reinforcement. It’s always amazing to me to notice how each person is unique and yet as a whole we are all the same. The way we were brought up, the environment we were brought up in, our society and the media contribute a lot to the way we see things. But deep inside, we were made of the same thing. There were many things I learned that help me to understand the differences and similarities and to better understand myself. The outlook on career life has pushed me to think ahead and got me to be aware that I need to prepare myself as I embark the future. The course overall has made my summer wonderful.