Week One

This week I learned some interesting things and had some interesting thoughts. Something that came up during our group discussion was a question about whether or not our boss had ever asked us how we worked most effectively. Some people in our group discussed the actual work environment and others discussed a method to accomplishing tasks that works for them. I personally like to have a clear task and then figure out on my own the best way to accomplish that task. I like to organize and break things down into almost a checklist and then go through it. This helps me feel like I am making progress the whole way through. I do the same thing with homework. I list all the assignments I need to do and the topics I need to study for all my classes on the same page. I can then work through it and cross them off.
We also discussed in our groups some of the challenges associated with working in a diverse team. I had a boss over the summer while I was doing an internship that was from a different culture. He was very polite and never told me to do things. He would always politely ask and I felt that it made him uncomfortable to do that. I would rather have had clear cut activities to perform. I also never received any feedback as to my progress while I was working there. This made it difficult for me to progress and improve. He probably didn’t want to offend me by giving me negative feedback but I feel that I could have really benefited from some. This made me realize that as a manager I need to provide feedback to my employees even if it is uncomfortable.
Something else that was interesting to me was the part in chapter two about an aging workforce. The differences between the retiring generation and my generation are staggering. The fact that I grew up with computers, cell phones, email and so many other things will shape the ways companies function. I have often thought how long it will take before big business decisions are communicated and decided upon using text messages. My guess is it is already happening in some companies. Although much of the retiring workforce has become computer savvy, the newer generation has computers involved in many more aspects of their lives. I think this will bring about huge changes in the way a business functions. For example, most businesses could probably get rid of having an office. People can video chat meetings and send huge amounts of information to each other quickly over the internet. Because of this I think more and more people will begin to work from home and entire corporations will lose much of the office space the currently occupy. These days there isn’t much that can’t be accomplished from a home office.
Also, the part in the book about off-shoring made me think about the different skills I should be acquiring during my time at school. Do I really need to learn a ton about computers or will that type of work be going overseas to more specialized groups? With all the software programs coming out for different industries it’s hard to know what to focus on studying. For example, in one of my classes, rather than learning software associated with construction estimating, we are just learning how to do it on excel. This is because when we go work for a company we have no idea of what type of programs the company will be using.