The Negotiators- Decision Made!!!

 As a professor whose always trying to enhance the student experience in the classroom I try to make my exams as fair as possible and to reflect the materials we went over in class, I would like to get honest feedback of what you guys thought of the midterm.” These were the words of the professor at the beginning of class. A few students raised their hands to give their honest opinion of the structure, the level of difficulty, time allotted among another reasons why we all thought the exam was to intense. After the professor posted the statistics of the exam ( 59.99) the class average)there was a different outlook a lot of students now started to voice their opinions whether or not they had those opinions before am not certain but the variance on hands raised at the beginning and after the statistics was given was at the end of both spectrum.

After I saw my score and the professor give us the option of negotiating our grade I chose to be collaborative. I quickly analyzed the situation after I saw my grade and realized that the entire class had to agree upon any proposal made. In the classroom I noticed a combination of other methods in practice for example, now I don’t know the students name but am almost certain you’ll understand my point here-the student that got the highest grade in the class exercised accommodation because he did not have to agree on any proposals that we made because as is his raw grade was good as gold but he stood in there and went along with our decisions because most of his classmates were in dying need of extra points so he put his interest at the side cause his classmates were more important and I totally thank you for being selfless. Another incident that I observed were a lot of students just sat back and made other people make decisions for them that would affect their grade this was an example of avoidance. I thought that the students who withdrew themselves were afraid to voice their opinions in the event that they thought that the class would be upset with them because of the fact that 100% as the professor clearly stated had to agree with whatever proposal made, and I think the professor realized this to, this is why he kept reiterating, “I would do whatever it takes to protect whoever don’t agree with the majority.”

Overall given the circumstances, the time, and the stakes up for grabs(improving our grade) I thought that the class handled the situation quite efficiently and our results were remarkable given the amount of players in the decision process and what was up for grabs(our grades).

Every situation that our professor asks of us duplicates the real life and gears us up for when we become managers some day.

AN EGG-CELLENT WAY TO PLAN

Our group was well organized from the beginning of the egg-cellent activity to the end. The goal was to build a three dimensional looking triangular contraption using materials provided (1 egg, 2ft tape and 8 straws). We drew a sketch of our figure to keep in mind and stay within the guidelines.

The twenty five minutes was the most important of this activity, more important than the ten minutes to actually build the egg contraption. This is so because we used this time wisely to plan every detail of our project inch by inch. We believed that excellent planning is more imperative and would guarantee great results. The ten minutes was just enough to realize our goal. The planning phase was thorough allowing little room for marginal error.

The group treated this activity as a real life situation and so we had a plan B if our major plan was undermined. We took into consideration a lot of constraints for instance, “what if the tape was not enough” the idea was that we were going to place the straws one inside each other to avoid using tape, which allowed us to have sufficient tape to reinforce and secure the most important part of the project (the egg). Another constraint that we bear in mind was, “whether we should cut the straws or leave them as is” we decided that less is more and that using just eight straws will save time.

Constructing the triangular three dimensional looking figure was the most efficient way in keeping our egg from cracking and accomplishing our goal. For our plan to be executed in the best possible fashion every student was allocated a role. We chose a leader who then delegated a specific simple role to each student.

Student 1- construct the front triangle

Student 2 – construct the back triangle

Student 3 – cut the tape into pieces

Student 4 – protect the egg from breaking

Student 5 – assemble all parts to complete our project

Student 6 – keep group abreast of time

Our leader was in front of the class with our plan in his hand on time. Although our egg did crack our planning process was very thorough allowing our execution phase to run smoothly without doubts and even without having to modify our plan. We stuck with our plan A and completed our three dimensional triangular egg contraption.

As in our book with the example of Oprah Winfrey and any other company thorough planning almost always promise great outcomes and if the plan needs to be modified identifying the problem in a critical time and working around the problem is fundamental to being successful.