“Man age’s” manage

     Since I have taken a MBA class, “Personal branding”, my school work is kind of enriched. I do blog and read more for twitter that kind of stuff every day. I am used to make a schedule to plan what I am going to do today and what should I do tomorrow or this week. However, plan cannot catch variety. Every time I make a plan, I usually screw it up; delay work happened a lot to me. I doubted why I had to do that to waste my time on planning. I just kept failing to make it; there was no competence and no accomplishment. Maybe I was not that spontaneously and no one pushed me.

     Due to adding up age and getting more experiences, this condition has been getting better. Especially on account of this class I got a lot of improvement. I have gotten routine tasks every day. Recently after getting up I read a couple of readings from blogs related to what I know and interests. Since I am an international student that my English is not that good, it takes me a long time to accomplish. Then, tweet it. Except following blogs what I am interested, I also check new blog posts from my classmates because it is a bit more easily to read than from professional bloggers; also I can know what my classmates are doing and their thoughts since we are at similar age. Besides, I try to avoid studying just before midterm or final exam so I distribute daily time to study the texts. I apply this tactic to my assignments as well. However, my belief is when I should study, I study; it is time to play, I play. Therefore, I also arrange some time to hang out with people and take some rest. This is an essential element within a schedule. I believe most students who work at the same time already knew and practiced this strategy on their works because they got work every business day. But for me or for full-time students it is hard to manage time well because they might not be responsible enough or have no active attitude. I really appreciate this class gives me such a chance to let me practice how to manage time better even though I spend more time on social networks. I think this will be quite beneficial for me and my future career.

Cannot see the forest for the trees

     I was in a lecture which was about how to find a good internship of top 500 companies. I recalled that the speaker told us not post improper stuff on Facebook, just like my professor said “Make your Facebook look professional personal”. The speaker gave us a story about that. There was a man who was looking for a job has a Master degree from Ivy League school. After interviewing from a big company, he did not get enrollment. He replied to thank to the interviewer and asked the reject reason. The interviewer told him that he browsed your Facebook and found some improper pictures and words; he was quite interested in the interviewee’s educational background but could not trust him. This thing seems a trivial mistake but influence on the first impression quite deeply.

1. Categorize your social networks. Whichever you are using social networks for presenting your company or your brand, try to categorize what you want to share and make it clean and precise.

2. Public or private. Also separate what you want to be published or talked and what you want to hide. As everyone known that we do have emotions. Sometimes we need to vent; sometimes we want to hang out with people after manic work. But we have to be very careful about sharing our private life.

3. Do not leave bad record. This is very important because trust credit is people want to hire you or not. Of course if you spend money by credit cards, you must pay the money back periodically. However, when you have a chance to not pay a subway ticket (The system or the organization has incomplete mechanism to let people not buy tickets), what would you do? You still pay for it or just not pay it and get in the subway? Remember information flows easily and widely.

4. I published one essay talked about organizational Justice, which is related to corporate governance. For example, assume you are a part-time MBA student; you work in the day time and go to school in the night time. When you need to copy your homework, would you like to choose to spend money on copying in the library, or copy it at your company for free? Sometimes we want to do something underneath, or follow people what they have done immorally. However, this dishonesty would harm the company’s value invisibly and your boss might take it as your performance.

     Someone said ethics can make up defects, but intelligence never makes up the gap of ethics. So, be dedicated to follow rules and let people know you are worthy to rely on is the way to build trust.

Transformers

     A great student might be able to transform to a good worker, but a great student is not equal to a great worker. Unlike in America, in Taiwan graduate students are most full-time students. They pay only attention on being professional students and take many credits at each semester. They are used to finish whole education before getting into career field. Therefore, what their point is grades. Grades are so important that they prefer to do individual works and exams well than to socialize or hold relationships with people. Conversely, American students attach importance to the latter, the interaction with people thing.

I am a current MBA student in America, and have found out most of my classmates are owning jobs at the same time; so called part-time students. They are playing both roles together so it is not that hard to do both well. But how about me? How about those full-time students without any job experiences? A great student knows how to do presentation well, but might not know how to socialize with people. A great student is quite knowledgeable on theories, but might not know how to practice theories on his job. Professors’ requests are different from what companies or societies want you to contribute. Consequently, I guess to grab opportunities is an advantageous way for a great student turning into a great worker. I am taking a creative class named “Personal branding”, which teaches people how to market themselves via social networks. If a good student can completely realize his value and be good at marketing himself with it, I believe this is a great step to widespread tons of chances to get people to know you; also you grab a massive opportunity for you. I am still working on looking for my value since I am a typical Taiwanese student, and it is really hard for me. For my future I am not sure I will succeed or not, but at least I have this chance, to market myself.

How would a good manager act?

     A couple of days ago I was in a lecture talked bit about how to act as a good manager. He asked us which quality a good manager needs. Leadership? Confidence? Reliability? Organizing ability? No, it should be integrity. The best quality a good manager needs is integrity/honesty. As I mentioned in my second post, to build trust is the most important behaviors in career. Peter F. Drucker has ever said that the most important qualities are honesty, integrity, and trust. If a manager has quite forceful abilities, without integrity he has nothing to develop. In the next place, trying to get along with people. Communicating is a fabulous way to practice it. A manager is a leader who has to link every each worker and department, so he must have good relationship with them to make tactics work smoothly. Within the communicating bridge, listening skill plays an important role in interacting. Based on that managers can understand what other people think about and feel, and according to that they start to build bonded relationship. Moreover, try to do more than what you need to do. Try to be more industrial to make people feel reliable. You must have dedication and devotion to present your long stay. Finally, having perspectives and determination must be mentioned. Owning a wide eye sight in successful business is an essential factor, especially on a good manager. A good manager with perspectives can expect something other people cannot see. He can see the niche market to make more benefit in such a competitive and bleeding market. Like Apple Company, they totally created different products and market to attract potential consumers. Are you trying to be a good manager? Or a perfect person?

Play team-work

     Softball is my favorite sport in my whole life. I do not know how to play football and soccer, so I think softball/baseball is the best sport to present team work. There is almost no heroism, not like basketball, but each one has his own position and task need to do. When we get stuck by some problems, we need to communicate. During a game, everyone has chance to lead other people. To build leadership, each one should not keep low key and ought to encourage to each other because everyone is same important. One day when I saw my team player got a hit and push other two come back to home and get two runs; when I saw the scene they were running, I almost dropped my tears Because I was so happy I could play such a good game and everyone was cooperating to help each other.

     In recent business world, we do not even need a very outstanding boss; what we need is a well-cooperated team. The team makes tactics all together; how should we throw the ball? How could we beat competitors? When we get runs and beat them, we all share the honor and rewards. When we suffer some frustration, we need to take the risk together. When we fail, we all take the accountability and review what we did wrong. The business ecology is getting more complex, and it is no more enough to rely on individual work. Relying on other people is not shame, especially for business; that does not mean you do not do anything. It means each one has to link with each other, to share every idea has been come up with, and to synergy every idea to solve problems. The core of team work is altogether donation. And the donation must be everyone’s belief. Therefore, this team work system would adjust and transfer the resources and intelligence. A good game would be shown by every player’s best effort.

5 reasons to do the right things rather than to do the things right

     One of my favorite professors told me about these two quotes’ difference. I was so confused and felt it was like a twister. The former, means to choose more important things to do, the effect. The latter, means using prompt methods to do things, the efficiency. If you do things right, even you try your best to finish things soon the result might not be needed. However, if the direction is correct, doing the right things would sometimes save more time and make your goal achieved. Here I come up with some reasons about why we should do the right things:

1.  To build trust: One of my mottoes is if I promise someone, I will try my best to do it even I got some problems. I make an effort to do what I said, and this gives people good reliable and responsible impressions.
2. Leading is doing the right things; management is doing the things right: A leader needs to think much more broadly to direct people what they are supposed to do; management is bit similar to leading, but even the direction is right, the process might be wrong; there is more possibility to do things incorrectly.
3. A habit, not an act: Doing the right things should be a habit, not an act. We should do the right things as routine, do it frequently, and not just do it for certain feedback.
4. Save resources: For things achievement, we need right effect, not efficiency. When I was taking the military service, washing dishes was one of my routine tasks. We did not have much time on it, so we emphasized on efficiency. We cleaned dishes as soon as possible, but usually we got blame and we needed to do it again. That indicates we wasted the time and some resources. If we did it once correctly, it might have taken bit more time than the first time we did it uncleanly, but things would be get done organized.
5. Team work: Team work intelligence is so essential that we need each one’s task precisely done. Team work needs communication, cooperation, and link. If one of the team members does the things wrong, it would make the whole schedule delay. So, we need each one to do the right things to make the progress on the right track.

     Positive characters are predominant over doing the right things. A great worker or even a great leader should build up good career personalities for a winning business. Want to be more perfect? How about” doing the right things right”?

How to value myself?

     I am a current full-time MBA student, and I have never had any full-time job experience except part-time job and military service. I already have a Master degree in finance and I am still working on enhancing my education heights in order to find an ideal career. I am improving my language ability, trying to meet more people to enrich my social network, and building up professional knowledge. How companies choose me within hundreds or thousands of people during interview? How can I beat those people with abilities and personalities they need? Maybe it is inappropriate to say, every employer is like a product; they try to work on making their appearances look good to let consumers buy them. For example, education level is getting higher; everyone’s resume is fully enriched, so exterior is being impressive.

     However, workers’ personalities, the products’ inner quality, are being thought more highly. Probably the education way to success is such a long route; maybe some people regard it only as a good element of resume. Nevertheless, I can get how to build social relationship for bettering my opportunities. I can enhance my leadership via team work and club participating. Furthermore, through military service and a bit job experiences, I have been working under massive pressure to be a good communicator and listener since my teammates and me have been through tons of harsh tasks and challenges. Many people think I am easygoing and have good manner, so this might help smooth or better the atmosphere in a company. I am good at schoolwork and now taking the second Master’s degree, so I am able to learn things quickly. I treat people and handle things with integrity so it is proper for me to be in charge of core operation of company such as finance and accounting. By and large, I am confident of doing jobs which I want to do about office duties regarding finance investment and management. I believe I can give people the trust, the integrity, and the sincerity, and this is my true value!