Book Report 5: The Goal

  The final segment of The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement follows Alex and his team as they try to determine how to maintain momentum after Alex and Lou leave the plant and promotions take effect. Alex is personally concerned with what he will do when he steps into his new position. Where should he begin? He poses this question to the group, who tells him to get to know his new co-workers better, tour the facilities, and so on. Essentially, they break this down into fact-finding, and then debate the usefulness of fact-finding and how to organize the information he may gain. This would use deductive reasoning, by starting with facts and organizing them to construct conclusions. Alex ponders how Jonah handled things, since Jonah is a physicist and has never worked in a plant, but yet is able to understand and effectively advise on plant improvements. Alex spends some time reading through popular science magazines and the like, and ultimately discovers that there is no secret of science that links to understanding the plant, but that the scientific method and inductive reasoning aid in finding the problems within the plant and ways to improve them. In this case, inductive reasoning would involve establishing a hypothesis and then finding the facts to support or disprove it.
   The main gem of this segment of the book is not in what the group discusses, or even Alex's personal findings, but in how the characters work together. Bob, the soon-to-be plant manager, is skeptical and has difficulty thinking outside the box. Stacey has a bad habit of caving in and returning to old habits in regards to releasing materials in the plant, and is constantly apologetic and blaming herself for mistakes. Ralph likes to constantly revisit and revise old theories that the group has discarded to find benefits. He is very analytic and pulls his insight from different areas, such as chemistry, computer science, and history. Bob is frequently impatient with Ralph for bringing up topics that Bob has already abandoned. It seems that, quite possibly, the team's greatest challenge will not necessarily be to maintain and improve plant processes, but to work together without Alex ensuring that everyone's voices are heard.
   In terms of Alex's personal life, his situation with his wife has more or less healed over. Now, every evening they discuss their day, and Alex discusses the plant and his ideas with Julie. It's simple, but it helps Alex and Julie to feel more involved in each other's lives and often helps to brainstorm new solutions to issues in the plant. The greatest thing that The Goal discusses, in my opinion, is to not let random facts cloud one's common sense. The best solutions for Alex's plant were guided by those who knew very little about working in a plant, because they were not side tracked by obscure details. Furthermore, The Goal teaches not to disregard the opinions of those around us, because sometimes even children can guide us in the right direction.

Tearing Down Tiered Management

I find it ironic that, in Wednesday's class, the lowest group had to write slogans glorifying management when we suffered from poor management during the majority of the activity. During the activity, my group was stuffed into the dusty corner at the end of the hall away from all of the other groups, and did not receive any information until nearly forty-five minutes into the class. To top it off, the information came from another group and not our middle manager. Everyone seemed to be kept in the dark, and as a result, we achieved very little and never saw a single Goates Buck. Based on stories I've heard from other groups, the people who received Goates Bucks or direction had to approach the higher tiers of management, which we were instructed not to do. Overall, I feel like this activity showed that the exclusivity in tiered management needs to be broken down in order to respect those in higher positions, and also that lower level workers' needs must be addressed by those in higher positions in order to encourage a steady work flow. At this point, I'm interested in the discussion of the activity in class so that I can see how things worked for the middle managers and top managers.

Book Report 4: The Goal

  In the fourth portion of The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, Alex is faced with yet another problem at his UniCo plant. After developing a system to move materials productively through essential bottleneck parts, the plant was able to ship significantly more orders, reaching a landmark for the company. However, in the process of moving items through the bottlenecks more quickly, the plant appeared to be developing new bottlenecks. According to Jonah's definition, the machines that began to hold up orders were not actually bottlenecks, though. The group had to brainstorm ways to keep the non-bottlenecks producing at the same pace as the bottlenecks throughout the entire plant. The solution that the plant receives is to cut batch sizes in half. By cutting down the batch sizes, materials can flow more quickly through each process. This will require more set-ups on non-bottleneck machines, but the plant is able to justify this since the non-bottleneck machines are able to have idle time as a result of the flow of materials being determined by bottlenecks.
   The plant is full of skeptics, but once Alex convinces the group to disregard the cost accounting aspects of their operations, it becomes clear that the plant can not only eliminate backups at non-bottleneck material; they can also determine fairly accurate due dates for customer orders. It becomes clear that with the new system the group has implemented, the average time for completion for customers orders has decreased from four months to four weeks. The next issue the plant faces is maintaining a steady flow of incoming orders to match their production speed. If operations continue at a brisk pace while the flow of orders stays the same, the plant will quickly work through all of its orders and run out of work. Alex contacts the marketing department and asks to promote the new, quick production times that the plant is able to offer. Soon enough, the plant is bringing in increased sales, and even regaining old customer contracts.
   The next area of difficulty that Alex faces is trying to convince his managers that the plant is indeed on the right track, since all of their improvements go against traditional cost accounting procedures. After explaining the intricacies of the changes that have been implemented in the UniCo plant to the company's productions manager, who does not buy in to Alex's strategies, it appears that Alex's plant may quite possibly be shut down. However, when Alex speaks to his manager, he realizes that he is actually being promoted and will be in charge of managing three plants.
   Alex has two months remaining at his UniCo plant, and has to determine who he wants to promote to fill newly vacated managerial positions, and is surprised by his group members' responses. His first challenge is to convince Lou, his accountant, to come with him as the controller. Lou is a year away from retirement and Alex thinks it will be difficult to convince Lou to step into a new position, but Lou is so motivated by the changes they have made in the plant and the new discoveries he has found in accounting methods that he asks Alex to bring him along. Next, Alex wants to put Bob in charge of production, but Bob does not want that position. Throughout all of the changes made in the plant, Bob has been the most skeptical. Seeing the success of the changes has made Bob want to become the plant manager, so that he can work to combine production with sales, which until then he never thought possible. The next question is who should be in charge of productions. As each position is filled or passed over, there is one consistency: everyone has become more passionate about their job and the ways that they can work together to make the plant as productive as possible.
   Outside of the plant, Alex also manages to repair his relationship with his wife. They had been separated since the time of the hike, and Alex has tried to create more date nights and time for Julie to rekindle their relationship. After a certain point, Alex asks Julie to consider what she wants from their marriage. What is their goal? While it may not be as simple as running a plant, it helped the couple to recognize that they had been coasting on other people's expectations of what marriage should be, without making it their own. They began to take one another for granted and failed to communicate. Now, Alex and Julie are embarking on a second wind of their marriage, trying to implement those necessary changes to keep things running. They recognize that there will be bumps along the way, but they are willing to work through them, the same way that Alex was able to pick up the plant in its time of need.

Ethics and Assertion

I wonder how much assertion plays into an individual's style of ethics. I know that, typically, I tend to follow an agent style of ethics. Part of this is because I feel that in order to succeed, I have to do what the person in charge of me wants. Essentially, my "people" is my boss. I do what is necessary to please my boss, and sometimes the decisions I make on the job coincide with my personal wishes, but I still need to frequently disregard my own desires in order to keep my boss happy and run the business well. I also know that I typically am only moderately assertive unless I have to be. I get the impression that a more assertive person would be able to disregard others' desires more easily and run things based on what they want, or according to a Machiavellian style, and someone who is not very assertive is more likely to make decisions based on what everyone else wants, or according to Plato's ethics. I am not sure how sold I am on this idea though, because it works on the assumption that wants and needs are perfectly aligned.

On Plato and Playing the Martyr

In class we discussed three main styles of ethics from Machiavelli, Lincoln, and Plato. According to Machiavelli, any means should justify an end, so long as the end is worth pursuing. Essentially, he believed that it was better to make decisions that will help one retain power. He also believed that it is more effective to be a self-centered leader who occasionally does nice things for the people than to be a selfless leader who occasionally disregards the desires of the people. Straying from the norm in the former situation would come as a pleasant surprise to the people, while the latter situation would only cause the people to lose faith in a leader.  Lincoln's form of ethics is that of an agent, where a person should disregard personal desires and the desires of the general public to do what is best for the company. Finally, Plato believed that it is best for a person to be selfless and always disregard their personal desires to do what is best for the people. By doing so, Plato believes that by keeping the people happy, the benefits will flow into the individual's life as well, making up for the sacrifice.
Plato's style of ethics may appear ideal, but I find it difficult to view it as the best form of ethics. Essentially, it is too idealistic to believe that if a person sacrifices his or her own desires to do what is best for society, then society will be at peace and in turn the peace will overflow into the individual's life, compensating that person for his or her sacrifice. If one considers society as all people, then it is difficult to believe that one specific action will benefit all of society. If the action does not benefit all of society, then it seems unlikely that the results will be so positive that they will compensate the individual for sacrificing their own desires.
Essentially, I feel that Plato's ethics ask for an individual to play the role of the martyr. The individual performs selfless tasks for the good of the people, despite personal desires. Sure, great opportunities may flow into that person's life as a result of the decisions that they make, but if that person goes against their own moral values, then it could cause more detriment to the individual than the flow of positiveness from the people can justify. Unless an individual feeds off of the intrinsic value of doing what is right for the people, in which case the reward of a selfless action is found in the simple satisfaction of pleasing the people, it seems unlikely that a person will benefit from such an action. Furthermore, unless the individual's will is aligned perfectly with that of the people, it would appear that such actions are not entirely selfless since the individual will be performing an action to make his or herself feel good. In an ideal world, I think Plato's ethics are effective, but when applied in real-life situations, they do not provide enough of an overflowing benefit to the individual who is sacrificing personal desires to compensate for what the individual loses by passing on an action that would better suit personal wishes or morals.

Kiss of Death

Saying "good job" is kind of like saying "I love you." Once you throw it out there, it's difficult to stop saying it, and it begins to lose it's meaning. Sometimes you start to say it out of obligation, and if you stop saying it, the other party becomes skeptical or changes their performance. Verbal kiss of death.
It's easy to see "good job" being used to manipulate people to do things the way we want them done. Praise is a biscuit, and we want to train the dog to sit. Once the dog is trained, it does not seem necessary to reward a general behavior or performance, so we stop giving the dog treats. The dog will stop sitting on command because it no longer receives a treat, or reward, for that behavior.
When dealing with people, we can tell someone that he or she is doing a good job, and they may continue to perform in that same way, rather than developing another behavior that may be equally or more impressive. People grow to expect praise for certain behaviors, or only perform in ways that will earn them a "good job." Overall, praise is a way to manipulate people that can ultimately hinder a person's natural development.

Getting There is Getting By

I believe that personal passions are the greatest motivators. In class, we discussed money as a motivator, but money can only do so much. Really, anything that you can place a price tag on may be almost worthless in terms of motivation. Sure, initially a person may work towards a cash incentive, or try to input more effort into their job to justify making more money, but there comes a point where people realize it is not necessary, and they stop putting forth the extra effort. Essentially, the best motivators have a deeper meaning and touch upon an individual's key values. 

The best example of motivation in my life is the work I do for WSYC-FM. I put in anywhere from thirty to forty hours a week in reviewing new music for the station, contacting promoters and musicians, programming, and putting together radio charts. I don't make a penny. For me, I feel satisfied simply by helping independent musicians reach new listeners and expand their fan base. When I was thirteen, I started listening to Kevin Devine, a straight-forward singer/songwriter and amazing lyricist who was playing in coffee shops and church basements. Two weeks ago, I was able to see him perform a sold-out concert at the Highline Ballroom in NYC with a full backing band, touring off of his new album which is reaching the top of CMJ's Radio 200 charts. This is why I do what I do. Music is one of the most important things in my life, and the more I can help the people who make music, the more fulfilled I feel at the end of the day, no paychecks attached. 

Book Report 3: The Goal

   In the last segment of The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, the protagonist, Alex, realizes that within his plant, production of a good is only a fast as it's slowest process or machine, and that production is not complete until all components of production have been finalized. He discovers this after leading his son's boy scout troop on a hike and observing the group's ability to stay together and moving around boys within the group based on their speed, and eventually distributing the weight of the slowest boy's backpack to alleviate his work load and speed up the whole group. Alex calls the slowest machines that are holding up production in the plant "Herbies" after the slowest boy on the hike. When Alex sent his team searching for Herbie in the plant, the team discovered that the plant actually had two Herbies, and both machines perform very important processes that are necessary for at least eighty percent of all parts that are produced in the plant. Alex calls Jonah, an acquaintance who has been advising him, for advice. 

   Jonah describes what he calls "bottlenecks," which are resources with capacity less than or equal to market demand, and "non-bottlenecks," which are resources with excess capacity. The bottlenecks are essentially the Herbies of the plant. They do not have the capacity to handle the demand placed upon them, and hold up other processes in the plant because of their importance. Essentially, the bottlenecks determine the effective capacity of the plant. Ideally, the flow of products through the bottlenecks should be slightly less than that of market demand, so that in case market demand decreases, the plant does not experience a loss. The group identified the bottlenecks as the heat-treat furnace that all materials run through, and the NCX-10 machine that handles the work that used to take three separate machines. Looking through the plant, the group can find no reasonable alternative to using these two machines, and purchasing more machines would be beyond their means. Jonah visits the plant to help find solutions. 

   One change that Jonah recommends is to move quality control from after heat-treat to before heat-treat. By making this change, defective batches will not waste time and room in the furnace. He also advises to have the bottlenecks working constantly during every available production hour, and that the group should negotiate with the union to find a way to keep the machine running during breaks. Next, Jonah wants to know if processes can be moved to other machines, such as the old machines that were replaced by the NCX-10. Unfortunately, the old machines were sold and no other machines in the plant can do the same job. Jonah discusses outsourcing some batches instead of performing bottleneck tasks in-house. He then tells the group that the bottlenecks should work only on parts that are immediately necessary, rather than working on spare parts. Basically, the plant should only focus on production that will contribute to throughput. Finally, to put an emphasis on how important the bottlenecks are to the plant, Jonah explains that the actual operating cost of a bottleneck is the total expense of all work in progress in the system divided by the operating hours of the bottleneck, because the bottlenecks are vital to almost every product that passes through the plant. 

   Taking Jonah's advice into consideration, the group decides to produce strictly according to overdue orders in order of lateness, making sure that this priority system is carried through to the bottlenecks. Quickly, Alex notices issues with his priority system because the machinists on non-bottleneck machines cannot distinguish important orders from unimportant orders, and were working on orders that didn't need to be run through the bottlenecks. The group then decides to mark orders with red and green tags so that workers in the plant know which orders are necessities. Alex is able to convince the plant's union representative to change the policy on lunch and coffee breaks for workers who are running the bottleneck machines, so that they can keep the machines working without wasting operating hours and slowing down production. The plant is also able to acquire an older piece of equipment for free from another plant that, combined with another piece of equipment the plant already owned, is able to do the work of the NCX-10 machine. Finally, after observing the effects of the changes on the plant, it becomes clear that one team of workers on heat-treat furnace have been significantly more productive than the teams working in other shifts. Alex speaks to the team leader to discover what they had been doing differently to get such stellar results, which involved arranging and mixing batches of materials to be placed in the furnace while the previous batch was being heated. Alex gives the team leader the night off and asks him to come in the following day to explain his strategy to teams working the other shifts. After making these changes, the team celebrates a new plant record of fifty-seven orders shipped in one month, totaling approximately three million dollars, with a twelve percent decline in inventory!

Culture Monsters

After reading the article about Walmart's uniform change, I started thinking about other cultural changes In the Walmart scenario, they were changing the uniform from a smock to a polo shirt and khakis, and we discussed the impression the uniforms had on employees and customers, and how they spoke about Walmart's culture and values. At first I thought of uniform changes at places where I have worked, but then I started thinking outside of just clothing. One thing that I considered was Sesame Street, and changing the Cookie Monster to the Veggie Monster. I don't recall watching the show much when I was little, so I'm not really affected by the change, but I know a lot of people who dislike the change because it's simply not what they grew up with. The change was intended to send a healthier message to kids about eating, and thus trying to shape the culture of American youth. This also made me question whether Sesame Street defines youth culture, or is simply an accent, and the same for Walmart. If youth culture pulls from greater influences than just Sesame Street, the change from Cookie Monster to Veggie Monster could result in a loss of viewer interest because they can no longer relate to the characters. If, on the other hand, Sesame Street has a significant influence in defining youth culture, then perhaps the change can help to encourage healthier eating habits among American youth. In the situation with Walmart, I feel that there is an issue with who defines Walmart's culture between the employees and management. Depending on what cultural influences impact an employee outside of work, each employee may have a different take on the uniform and whether they accept or reject it. Walmart can try to change to a more business-casual uniform, but just because they change the appearance of their employees does not mean that they can make the employees buy in to the core values and culture of the company.

Nacirema

I found it particularly interesting how Body Rituals Among the Nacirema is set to repulse the average American when, in fact, it describes the daily lifestyle of most Americans. Three facts that the article notes that I found interesting were using hogs-hair brushes to clean their mouths, visiting the holy mouth man who fills teeth with magical potions, and women sticking their heads in ovens. This all sounds somewhat disgusting, mythical, or even dangerous. However, how are these acts different from the practices of most Americans? The hogs-hair brush is a toothbrush. The holy mouth man is a dentist who fills cavities. Women who stick their heads in ovens are just taking a trip to the salon to get their hair done. The article also mentions that the Nacirema place an emphasis on the mouth and its influence over social situations. Most Americans are obsessed with their teeth, since the mouth is a gateway of communication.
The article mentions the daily practices of most Americans, but changes some semantics to make the actions sound bizzarre. I enjoy that the article forces the reader to confront and analyze his or her own habits, and even prejudgements. In part, I think this shows that we tend to frown upon habits that seem different from our own without actually analyzing them. If it sounds strange or different from the way we do something, then it must therefore be horribly weird and impractical, and as such the Nacirema are clearly barbaric.

Socialization at CMJ 2011

After spending the past week in Manhattan and Brooklyn for the CMJ Music Marathon, I feel obligated to relate some of this week's readings to various trends I noticed on my trip. One thing I noticed in particular was the importance of socialization. Initially, I viewed the primary goal of my trip as networking with other radio stations, promotional firms, record labels, and other industry folks. Reflecting now, however, I feel that a large portion of my adventures this week were actually attempts at socialization made by promoters.
For each day of my five-day stay New York, I was basically courted by promotional companies. I have worked with a number of these people over the past two years, but met even more during CMJ. Every day my presence was requested at a number of promoter meetings and showcases, and even offices. A large part of these meetings was getting a general feel for a company (and it is unarguable that each company has developed its own culture) and in finding ways to work efficiently with the group based on feedback on various artists and events.
Since I've been working as a music director for over two years, I have learned a good deal about how to hold my ground when working with promoters, and as a result I am being considered by a few companies for internships and/or employment. Most of the socialization this past week was an attempt to help me adapt to a company's culture, and seeing if I am actually worth hiring. One group in particular was interesting in how they handled the socialization. Within this group, all of the promoters were encouraged to attend the same events of artists they had been/are promoting. This group, while maintaining a level of cohesion in requiring support from all members, was also very open to discussion about the artists. Two other groups tried to develop cohesion through different activities than simply attending showcases together. For one event, I was asked to perform karaoke because the group viewed it as essential "to put oneself out there" despite how uncomfortable it may be, in order to make a solid impression and ease later interactions. This same company also works as a team in several annual 5K charity races to build cohesion outside of the office. As unrelated as some of these activities may seem to promoting musicians and other programming, it is hard to find a stronger or more outgoing team of promoters.
Overall, I think this showed both socialization that encouraged individuality (attending showcases for the group, but encouraging honest positive or negative feedback) and socialization that put little emphasis on individuality and a huge emphasis on group cohesion (numerous team events that are unrelated to record promotion). All of the companies I met with showed how cohesive they were as a whole, and it was interesting to observe how they used different methods of socialization, and how effective those methods were at crafting a stronger group.

Book Report 2: The Goal

   In the most recent segment of The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, the protagonist, Alex Rogo, struggles to apply Jonah's equation to the issues in his UniCo manufacturing plant. To recap, Jonah is an old acquaintance who is advising Alex on the issues with his failing plant. Alex's plant is in danger of closing within three months if he does not make several serious improvements. The issue is in identifying what needs to be changed to bring about those improvements. Jonah has Alex ponder the goal of a business, which is ultimately to make money. In order to do this, Jonah claims that the plant must increase throughput while simultaneously decreasing both inventories and operational expense. In this equation, throughput is the rate at which the system generates sales, inventories are the money the plant invests to purchase things it plans to sell, and operational expense is the money the company invests to turn inventory into throughput. Now, Alex must determine how to make all three changes occur simultaneously within his plant.
   Alex spends much time brainstorming how he can increase throughput while decreasing inventory and operational expense, but has difficulty at first. One problem he encounters is that in order to make some of those changes occur, he may lower his efficiencies, which would upset his boss, Bill Peach, and further threaten the existence of the plant. To get more advice, Alex flies to New York to discuss the problem with Jonah. Jonah discusses the myth of a balanced plant with Alex, who believes that the plant may need to balance capacity with market demand. However, this would raise inventory and carrying costs through the roof and ultimately lead to bankruptcy. Jonah now describes dependent events and statistical fluctuations, which are events that depend on other events to occur, and variances from one event to the next, respectively.  He leaves Alex to ponder the dependent events and statistical fluctuations within the plant.
   Alex is baffled and doesn't know where to start. It isn't until he is asked to lead his son's boy scout troop on a ten mile hike that he gets ideas. During the hike, large distances constantly appear between the boys. Alex tries to figure out a way to prevent the gaps in the line from occurring, but struggles to do so and decides to observes from the back of the line. During the hike, he realizes that if one boy moves slower, that causes everyone behind him to move slower. If another person moves slower, that hold the rest back as well. Essentially, no one can move faster than the person in front of them. Each hiker's speed is an event dependent on the speed of the hiker in front of him. The speed and any pauses are statistical fluctuations.
  There is one boy in particular, Herbie, who is overweight and out of shape. Herbie moves much slower than the other boys and holds back those ahead of him. He runs to keep up with the boy in front of him. Still, gaps continue to appear. After a while, the boys rearrange themselves to a position that they find optimal. The fastest hiker is in the front, and Herbie is at the end with Alex. At this point, the gaps are even worse. The troop is already behind schedule and Alex must find a way to finish the hike on time. He recognizes that the line is only as fast as it's slowest member because the hike is not complete until it's last member has completed it. He decides to test an idea and moves Herbie to the front of the line to lead to troop. The group realizes that Herbie has a massive backpack and distributes the items in the bag throughout the group to lighten Herbie's load. Herbie is able to move at a brisk pace, and the other boys can keep up with him and stay condensed. They manage to finish their remaining hike in an optimal time after this change.
   Alex is able to take the lesson he learned on the hike and apply it to his plant. He decides that he must find the "Herbies" in his plant, or the machines that are bogged down and holding up work-in-progress. While searching though the plant, Alex and his group find that there are two essential machines that are slowing down progress. While searching for these machines, the group realizes that most of their data on the machines in the plant are very outdated and not useful. They also cannot think of alternatives to the two machines, or how to alleviate and redistribute the workload from those two machines that are so vital to the processes that go on in the plant.
 

Negotiating for Dummies

I royally fail at price negotiation. There's no way around it. I feel uncomfortable making exaggerations, and I'm nervous that if I threaten to walk away, then I'll lose what I want. I set my goals low, accepting early defeat. However, after reading Secrets of Power Negotiating, I think I may be able to turn things around a bit. Roger Dawson offers several pieces of advice. For example, he recommended making extreme offers in the beginning. The offer may seem ridiculous to me since I know a realistic amount to accept, but the person I'm negotiating with may not know that. By setting an extreme price, the person I'm negotiating with may rethink what they know about the product or service, and switch up their offer. Dawson also recommends flinching, which seems very dramatic but can make the other party think that you are genuinely upset by their offer. Dawson also recommends offering concessions to move a split difference in your favor, and to be willing to walk out on a deal. If you aren't willing to walk out, you may as well not even bother negotiating. The key is to remember that both parties want to get something out of it, and if the other person feels more at risk for missing out, they may be more willing to give you the deal you want.

Resolving Disputes

Getting Disputes Resolved discusses three main approaches to resolving conflicts. This includes displays of who has the most power, who has the most right, or resolving in a way that suits everyone's interests. Typically, but not always, focusing on interests is the best way to resolve disputes because it has the lowest costs. When a dispute is resolved based on power, there is more room for disaster later on. One party is bound to feel like they are losing out, which can cause sore feelings and lead to recurrence of the initial dispute. This can also occur with negotiating based on rights, but it yields less dangerous results. However, there are certain situations where it is ideal to resolve issues by focusing on power or rights. One example would be in dealing with cases of civil rights. The article uses the example of Brown v the Board of Education, suggesting that if the issue of an African American child attending an all white school was resolved with a negotiation of interests, then the same result may have been reached for that child, but it would not have made a major impact on minority rights as a whole.

Book Report 1: The Goal

   "The Goal" is a business novel by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and co-authored by Jeff Cox. The story follows the protagonist Alex Rogo, the manager of a UniCo manufacturing plant as he struggles to save his factory from being shut down. We enter the story as Al's boss, Bill Peach, storms into the plant one morning and demands to know the status of a specific order that has yet to be delivered. Bill demands that the plant workers drop their current projects and finish the order immediately. As a result, he angers a union worker who winds up quitting, but only after accidentally damaging a special machine needed to produce the required part for the order. What is the cause for this upset? UniCo is hemorrhaging money, orders are being shipped weeks or months behinds schedule, and quite frankly, the company is failing. Bill gives Al three months to turn his plant around or else it will be shut down.
   Just two weeks before, all is well in Al's mind. He is en route to Houston to speak at a conference about the benefits of robotics in his manufacturing plant. The chairman of the board, Mr. Granby, even wants to stop by the plant to take pictures with the new robots. While waiting to catch his flight, Al has a chance meeting with Jonah, a physicist under whom Al studied mathematical models as a student. Al tries to start a conversation, mentioning the success of the new robots in his plant. They increased productivity by thirty-six percent! Jonah is unimpressed, though. He asks Al if the new robots caused the plant to make thirty-six percent more money. They do not; the productivity increase was just in one department. He asks if the plant was able to ship more orders, decrease employees, or decrease inventories. The robots failed to do any of that, so Jonah infers that the robots have not actually increased productivity, and that Al's plant is always late with orders and has inventory through the roof. Al is amazed that Jonah could deduce so much from what little information he was given, and asks Jonah for advice. Jonah informs Al that in every business, there is only one goal, and asks Al to think it through.
   When Al is faced with the challenge of saving his plant, he recalls his discussion with Jonah and ponders what the goal really is. Is it to produce more? Is it to maximize the market share, increase quality or purchase more efficiently? No, it's much simpler. The goal of any business is to make money. How can he tell if UniCo is making money, though? Al brings his inquiry to Lou, an accountant for UniCo, and they decide that in order to make money, they would need to increase net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow. Al may be able to get an explanation from the accountants as to what that means, but if he were to confront workers on the plant floor about increasing return on investment or cash flow or net profit, they could not see the direct correlation to their job. Al spends a late night trying to get in touch with Jonah again to get his opinion on the matter.
   Jonah explains making money using measurements that he names throughput, inventory and operational expense. He defines throughput as the rate at which the system generates money through sales, inventory as all the money that the system has invested in purchasing things which it plans to sell, and operational expense as the money that the system spends in order to turn inventory into throughput. In order to increase productivity, Al's plant needs to increase throughput while decreasing inventory and operational expense.
   After analyzing the addition of the robots to the plant according to Jonah's measurements of productivity, Al realizes that the robots have actually hurt the plant rather than helped it. Since the company acquired the robots, there was no increase whatsoever in sales, and thus there was no increased throughput. In order to keep up efficiencies on the robots, they were set to work producing more and more parts. As a result, inventories sky-rocketed. The parts that were produced were not immediately needed, and as such the business had to store them, which increased operational expenses.
   In terms of working with groups, Al's greatest challenge thus far has been communicating the plant's goal with the factory workers. On one unexpected trip through the plant, he encounters three workers just standing around reading a newspaper. He informs their superior that he needs to get them working or he will move them to another area. Soon enough the workers are set to task, moving materials from one part of the plant to another. Is that really necessary, though? Sure, they may be working, but they are not being put to work that is actually productive.
   Al has not appeared to encounter many issues with maintaining the hierarchy within the plant, but does appear to have some issues with his superiors. While he stressed about dealing with his plant's failure, he decided that the meeting he had with Bill Peach and managers of other UniCo plants was pointless. He would gain no new insight by examining the efficiencies of the failing company. Instead, he fled the meeting during a break to reflect on his own. Al may have reached a better conclusion by dealing with the issue on his own, but was disrespectful to his superiors and co-workers in the process. As a result, Al had to deal with some very angry calls from Bill Peach. Communication from Bill to Al digressed to little more than shouting matches, which proved to be fairly inefficient for working with the superiors within UniCo.
   Outside of the factory, Al also faces a number of issues with his family. He is preoccupied with saving the factory and disregards his wife and children. His wife, Julie, does not like the area that they moved to for Al's job and is unhappy as a result. Al promises to take Julie out on the town, but something comes up. He promises to reschedule for the next night, and he forgets about that commitment as well. He is so preoccupied that he forgets to call home until ten at night to say that he will not be home for dinner. He struggles to communicate effectively with Julie, and she is often upset with him because of his absence and empty promises. Julie fails to understand why Al is upset about the potential loss of his plant, and possibly his job. While he is upset, she looks at it as a way out of the town she dislikes so much. Al clearly needs to communicate better with his family, and work on fulfilling his duties as a husband and father in order to resolve issues with Julie.

Sharing Information in Groups

   In the Wisdom of Crowds, a social psychology experiment performed by Garold Stasser is mentioned. In his experiment, small groups are formed to determine the performance of psychology students. Two members of the group would be given information such as the student's grades and test scores, one member would be given two additional pieces of information, and another member would be given two different pieces of information. Even though the additional information may have been a better indicator of a student's performance, the groups would typically base their decisions on grades and test scores, the information that was given to more people. The other information was often disregarded or viewed as unusual since it was not made readily available to all members of the group. 

  When I consider the article Those Low Grades in College May Haunt Your Job Search, I wonder if the same issue occurs as in Stasser's experiment. Essentially, this article states that many employers will not hire an applicant with a GPA below 3.0, even though the applicant may have noble reasons for having lower grades, such as astounding extra-curricular activities or working through college. Could it be that more people in groups responsible for hiring are informed of the applicants' GPAs whereas only one or two members of the group are informed of the applicants' extra-curricular activities, but does not share the information with other people involved in the hiring process? 

Wisdom of Crowds & Carter Racing

The Wisdom of Crowds details a number of ways in which small groups can reach disastrous decisions. The article focuses on the failure of the Columbia mission as a result of the Mission Management Team. One issue is that people make uninformed decisions, assuming that they know best without looking at actual information. Another major issue is that group members stop regarding each other as individuals and instead define themselves by the work they do. In the case of the Columbia mission, the people working on the MMT and DAT may have disregarded important information that showed how dangerous the mission would be because their job is focused on launching space shuttles. The Carter Racing article posed this a little more clearly by stating that the group is together for the purpose of racing. They do not exist as a group to not race, therefore, they should race regardless of whatever information they have, because racing is what they do. They let one aspect of their job define what they do, and disregard reasoning as to why that task should not be performed. Perhaps they view it as a failure to not complete that job, even when the consequences of performing with error are significantly worse.

Making the Leap From a Potential Team to a Real Team

   I've spent the last few days contemplating how I would define the group of staff members that I work with for WSYC. For those who may not know, it is the campus radio station which operates out of the CUB. For the last few years, we have had really ineffective leaders, who mostly coasted through their jobs and did not attempt to work with other staff members. The station did not fall apart completely, but we lost most listeners and failed to establish or maintain a presence among campus organizations. Currently, we are working together to improve our programming, get all of our staff members to work together efficiently, and draw in new members.
   In "The Wisdom Of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization," Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith define a potential team as "a group for which there is a significant, incremental performance need, and that really is trying to improve its performance impact" (91). I think this is where we fit in as a group, but I am not certain. We have all agreed that we need to improve what we are doing at the station, whether that is supplying more information on the music we have available, sitting in on shows with new DJs to make sure they are comfortable with the equipment and trained correctly, supplying DJs with a copy of our radio charts, strictly enforcing rules, and reporting/appearing at more campus and community events. For the most part, we are all really trying. We have one or two staff members who have not shown a significant dedication to making improvements, but we are trying to communicate with them to find the best ways to motivate them. We are setting attainable goals, making short term and long term plans, making real changes, and improving our group communication, and hopefully we will be able to make the big improvement from a potential team to a real team (and maybe even a high-performing team).

We want to be a station that people want to listen to. 

  I think we can make this happen, but there is one glaring issue. Our membership changes constantly, and our executive staff positions are only held for two semesters before we have new elections. How can we maintain consistency in the long term when we will all eventually leave? How can we ensure that all of our hard work and plans are followed through by our successors? I am hoping that by increasing communication between staff members, and also with our general members, that we can get the majority of the group on the same page, so that when new people take on staff positions, they have a better idea what we are working toward and how much work they need to put in to make that happen. We have been discussing who we would prefer to fill staff positions when we leave so that we can hopefully help these people gain more experience before we leave, but we cannot guarantee that they will be elected. 

Model of Team Effectiveness

This week has been full of group work between most of my classes and my extracurricular activities, so I made an attempt at applying some ideas from this week's reading to those situations to see if I could make any improvements. So far, it actually seems fairly successful. However, it has been less than a week, and that's hardly enough time to tell.

First off, in my Managerial Finance class, I am working in a group with three other people, and we are currently trying to put together a financial analysis comparing Netflix to two competitors and the overall industry. When we met up last week, one group member offered to get the financial statements, we agreed that I would put together an excel file for the ratios when we turn in the project, and assumed that we could find all of the ratios online. When we met up today, we had no work to compare because we had not actually set any real plans. We agreed on how we would work, but not what we would work on in the short term.

We are being evaluated as a group by the professor for 80% of our grade, and the other 20% is based on peer evaluations from our group members. We meet up on Thursdays in a study lounge, and have no defined team leader. The majority of our communication is in person, but we also communicate through email as necessary. This is our organizational environment.

Our team design is that we are four people. We have two accounting majors, one finance major, and one MIS major. The task that is bringing us together is the financial analysis.

So far, we have no real roles and are working mostly as individuals. No one person was really willing to step up and offer to lead, and this may have been since we are not familiar with one another yet. As for task development, one member gathered the financial statements. Another member decided to work on his own at gathering ratios, without communicating this with the rest of the group. Those are our team processes thus far.

As for our team effectiveness at this stage, we have accomplished next to nothing. Our team survival is assured only due to the fact that we must work together on the project. We have not reached our goal yet of completing the financial analysis, so our organizational goal has not yet been satisfied. It is difficult to say whether or not team member needs have been met since two members have not communicated that to me. I know that one member is worried since one member has not contributed yet, and he wants the work load evenly distributed. I know that I am dissatisfied for the same reason, and also because we have not delegated any short term tasks, and as a result, it does not seem like we have done any work.

So, at today's meeting, I realized that we really had no work to show, other than our financial statements, and a ratio analysis that only one group member was informed on and that no other members could immediately verify. Here are some tasks I tried to establish today to bring about some more positive change:

• We established who would work on specific short term work. Since we have four ratio analyses to perform, have agreed to have two people working on each analysis, and each person would work on two different analyses. 
• We established that we shall each have our analyses prepared for our next meeting. 
• We established when and where we will have our next meeting. 
• We outlined the work that we want to complete during our next meeting. 

By doing this, we established who will do what (team roles), set specific plans for the tasks that we need to accomplish (task development), and set the ground work to improve our team cohesiveness by having two people working together, so that we have all information run through multiple people. This way, if anything goes wrong, there is less room to be upset with a specific individual for not doing their work (at least in theory).