Capitalism and enterprise are about haing a dynamic economy and innovation, but ultimately, they rest on the actions of businesspeople who assume and accept the benefits and risks of an initiative. It is people acting as leanders, organizers, and motivators who are the central figures of modenn economic activity. Most entrepreneurs strive to make a productive, useful contribution to their society while creating wealth for shareholders and themselves. Profit maximization, however, is not the only goal of these creaive business people, who else value independence and leadership challenges.
There are four types of entrepreneurship.
1. incremental venture. The founding and management of a routine business exhibiting modest novelty.
2.innovative venture. The initiation and operation of a business based on an innovation
3.inmitative venture. the indentification and imitation of a novel business or venture
4.rent-seeking venture. the founding of a business that utilizes standards, regulations, and laws to share in some of the value of an existing enterprise.
Four steps to starting a business.
1.The funding team or individual has the necessary skills or acquires them.
2.The team members identify the opporunity that attracts them and matches their skills. They create a solution to match the opportunity.
3.They acquire (or possess) the financial and physical resources necessary to launch the business by locating investors and partners.
4.They complete an arrangement or contract with their partners, with investors, and within the founder team to launch the business and share the ownership and wealth created.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Internship- week 10
I learned four levels of subordinate maturity, matched with their most appropriate leadership style. very immature subordinates, low to moderate maturity subordinates, moderate to high maturity subordinats and high maturity subordinates. The last one are independent, motivated, and highly skilled. They are best handled with a delegating style and need neither task direction nor the emotional apron strings that relationship oriented behaviors provide. In the very beginning, I had trouble acting managerial in my role as this small insurance agency-despite having only one employee. By learning slowly shifting the balance between task and relationship oriented behaviors, I am able to nudge subordinates toward higher maturity levels. I also negotiate a behavioral shift with subordiantes, finanally immature subordinats can be found at every level. Anyone can slip up when moving into unfamiliar jobs, even in senior levels of management.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Internship-Week 9
I learned from MBA about leadership. THere is four basic combinations or leadership styles exist. The situational leadership model takes a "how to" approach in arguing that effective leadership requires the right combination of task-oriented behavior and relationship-oriented behavior with subordinates. Four basic combinations are telling, selling participating and delegating. The leadership between Sammy and I are more like participating style, it is a more collaborative and emotional leadership style focusing on consultation, coaching and supportivenness. Little or no task direction is provided. Sammy does everything she needs to do, and after having trained a month, she knew what her job is.
The real trick is to match the appropriate behavioral style to the maturity level of the subordinate. Maturity consists of both 1. job readiness (level of skills and experience) and 2. pyschological willingness (level of self respect, confidence and motivation). As the subordinate's maturity level incerases, leader should become less task-oriented. Conversely, relationship oriented behaviors should increase up to moderate levels of subordinate maturity and then slowly decline.
The real trick is to match the appropriate behavioral style to the maturity level of the subordinate. Maturity consists of both 1. job readiness (level of skills and experience) and 2. pyschological willingness (level of self respect, confidence and motivation). As the subordinate's maturity level incerases, leader should become less task-oriented. Conversely, relationship oriented behaviors should increase up to moderate levels of subordinate maturity and then slowly decline.
Project Management- Chapter 11 Ideas
Project team members have four major communication needs: responsibility, coordination, status and authorization.
Whether you are assigning work to an individual performer or to a vendor, these following basic rules should be observed:
1. Explain the deliverables.
2. Be clear about the level of effort expected and the due dates.
3. If you know of any obstacles they can expect or special information they'll need, make sure they know it too.
4. Hand out work assignments personally, allowing plenty of time for questions and discussions.
Then kickoff meeting really kicks me off. I like this subject too. A kickoff meeting usually marks the beginning of the execution phase of a project. By this time, the staement of work and project plan have been approved and the team is assembled. It is an opportunity to celebrate initiation of the project.
Project status meeting. A good project status meeting meets a lot of communication needs within the project team. status meetings give the project manager an opportunity to
1. increase team cohesion
2. keep the team informed about project developments from sources external to the team
3. identify potential problems or share solutions to common problems
4. ensure the team understands the progress of the project and works together to determine any neccesary changes to the project plan.
5. make sure that the entire team shares the responsibility of meeting all the project objectives.
In additon to the basic rules for running an effective meeting, the following guidelines are useful for running a project status meeting:
1. be prepared
2. including all the related members
3. use the meeting to disseminate decisions made by management or customers.
4. using the open task report, get the status of every task that should have been started or completed since the last status meetings
5. take advantage of the fact that the entire team is availabale to consider ehat action needs to be taken on any problems
6. don't try to solve problesm that are too big for the meeting or that don't include everyone present.
7. review the readiness for future takes on the OTR.
8. review project logs.
Whether you are assigning work to an individual performer or to a vendor, these following basic rules should be observed:
1. Explain the deliverables.
2. Be clear about the level of effort expected and the due dates.
3. If you know of any obstacles they can expect or special information they'll need, make sure they know it too.
4. Hand out work assignments personally, allowing plenty of time for questions and discussions.
Then kickoff meeting really kicks me off. I like this subject too. A kickoff meeting usually marks the beginning of the execution phase of a project. By this time, the staement of work and project plan have been approved and the team is assembled. It is an opportunity to celebrate initiation of the project.
Project status meeting. A good project status meeting meets a lot of communication needs within the project team. status meetings give the project manager an opportunity to
1. increase team cohesion
2. keep the team informed about project developments from sources external to the team
3. identify potential problems or share solutions to common problems
4. ensure the team understands the progress of the project and works together to determine any neccesary changes to the project plan.
5. make sure that the entire team shares the responsibility of meeting all the project objectives.
In additon to the basic rules for running an effective meeting, the following guidelines are useful for running a project status meeting:
1. be prepared
2. including all the related members
3. use the meeting to disseminate decisions made by management or customers.
4. using the open task report, get the status of every task that should have been started or completed since the last status meetings
5. take advantage of the fact that the entire team is availabale to consider ehat action needs to be taken on any problems
6. don't try to solve problesm that are too big for the meeting or that don't include everyone present.
7. review the readiness for future takes on the OTR.
8. review project logs.
Project Management- Chapter 10 Ideas
After having read Chapter 10, I like the framework for building high-performance team. They break the components of a strong project team into trhee areas that work together in the same way that an arch works to support a bridge. Teamwork arch shares the same properties as a structual arch:
1. A strong team requires each of the individual components.
2. The strength of the arch lies in the way the pieces work together.
3. Weakness in one component cannot be compensated for by strength in another component.
Point A Point B
Positive Team Environment Collaborative Problem Solving
Ground rules Continuous learning
Team Identity Conflict Management
Listening skills Decision Modes
Meeting Management Problem analysis
A positive team enviroment, collaborative problem solving capability and leadership, these are the three primary components of a high performance team.
1. A strong team requires each of the individual components.
2. The strength of the arch lies in the way the pieces work together.
3. Weakness in one component cannot be compensated for by strength in another component.
Point A Point B
Positive Team Environment Collaborative Problem Solving
Ground rules Continuous learning
Team Identity Conflict Management
Listening skills Decision Modes
Meeting Management Problem analysis
A positive team enviroment, collaborative problem solving capability and leadership, these are the three primary components of a high performance team.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Project Management-Chapter 9 Ideas
This Chapter taught me about balancing the trade-off among cost, schedule and quality. Good project management does deliver more for less, but there are still limits. Three most common porject constraints are time, money and resource. Three levels of balancing a porject: project, business and enterprose.
There are many ways to balance projects as there are projects:
1. reestimate the project , you will either positive, negative and best application possible impacts.
2. changing task assignments to take advantage of schedule float. it involves moving people to critical path tasks from tasks that are ont on the critical path in order to reduce the duration of the critical path.
3. add people to the project. it can either increase the numer of tasks that can be done at the same time or increase the number of people working on each task.
4. increase productivity by using experts from within the firm
5. increase productivity by using experts from outside the firm
6. outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it. this method carves out a portion of the project and handing it to an external firm to manage and complete. It is especially attractive if this portiion of project requires specialized skills not posessed by internal workers.
7. crashing the schedule. It can emply any of the alternatives listed in this chapter to reduce the duration of critical path tasks, but it takes the extra step of producing acost/schedule trade off table.
8. working overtime. The easiest way to add more labor to a project is not to add more people, but to increase their working hours.
Balancing at the business case level
1. reduce the product scope. it will be to reduce the functionality of the end product.
2. fixed phase scheduling. the project phases are apportioned from the top down and scheduled according to the required completion date.. At the end of each phase, the scope of the project is reevraluated to fit the remaining schedule.
3. fast tracking. it involves overlapping rasks that are traditionally done in sequence.
4. phased product delivery. Information systems composed of several subsystems.
5. do it twice- quickly and correcly
6. change the profit requirement. If your project needs to cost less in order to be competitively priced, this method recommends reducing the profit margin.
Balancing at the enterprise level
1. oursourcing allows you to purse more porjects with the same number of people
2. phased product delivery means tat more projects can be run at the same time
3. shifting work to the customer on several projects will free up enough people to purse one or two additional projects.
4. reducing product scope on several projects requires cost /benefit trade-off analysis among projects
5. using prodctivity tools can be a strategic decision to improve productivity across projects.
There are many ways to balance projects as there are projects:
1. reestimate the project , you will either positive, negative and best application possible impacts.
2. changing task assignments to take advantage of schedule float. it involves moving people to critical path tasks from tasks that are ont on the critical path in order to reduce the duration of the critical path.
3. add people to the project. it can either increase the numer of tasks that can be done at the same time or increase the number of people working on each task.
4. increase productivity by using experts from within the firm
5. increase productivity by using experts from outside the firm
6. outsourcing the entire project or a significant portion of it. this method carves out a portion of the project and handing it to an external firm to manage and complete. It is especially attractive if this portiion of project requires specialized skills not posessed by internal workers.
7. crashing the schedule. It can emply any of the alternatives listed in this chapter to reduce the duration of critical path tasks, but it takes the extra step of producing acost/schedule trade off table.
8. working overtime. The easiest way to add more labor to a project is not to add more people, but to increase their working hours.
Balancing at the business case level
1. reduce the product scope. it will be to reduce the functionality of the end product.
2. fixed phase scheduling. the project phases are apportioned from the top down and scheduled according to the required completion date.. At the end of each phase, the scope of the project is reevraluated to fit the remaining schedule.
3. fast tracking. it involves overlapping rasks that are traditionally done in sequence.
4. phased product delivery. Information systems composed of several subsystems.
5. do it twice- quickly and correcly
6. change the profit requirement. If your project needs to cost less in order to be competitively priced, this method recommends reducing the profit margin.
Balancing at the enterprise level
1. oursourcing allows you to purse more porjects with the same number of people
2. phased product delivery means tat more projects can be run at the same time
3. shifting work to the customer on several projects will free up enough people to purse one or two additional projects.
4. reducing product scope on several projects requires cost /benefit trade-off analysis among projects
5. using prodctivity tools can be a strategic decision to improve productivity across projects.
Project Management- Chapter 8 Ideas
I have learned three golden rules for all projects in this Chapter. These rules emphasize the appropriate attitude toward estimation. First, have the right people make the estimates. Three factors define who the right people are: 1. The estimators must be experienced with the work they are estimating. No matter which techniques are used, estimating is always based on an understanding of the work to be done.2. The people who will actually perform the work should also be involved in estimating it. They will have the best grasp of their own limitations. They will know, for example, just how much time their schedule will allow them to work on this project.
3. The estimators must understand the goals and techniques of estimating. Even when people understand the task at hand, they should not be allowed to estimate their own work until they learn both how to estimate and the goal of estimating.
Second, base the estimate on experience. Even though no two projects are alike, there are often enough similarities that perfomance data frompast projects are useful in estimating future ones. Professional estimators constantly use new performance data to refine their estimating models.
Third, don't negotiate the estimate-negotiate the equilibrium. There are effective ways of countering attempts to meddle with an estimate. Dickering over cost or schedule alone throws the entire estimate out of equilibrium. While no estimate will go unchallenged, the proper defense is to demonstrate how the estimat eis tied to the product specification and work breakdown structure. When estimates are developed correctly, they can be reduced only by changing the product or the productivity of the workers.
3. The estimators must understand the goals and techniques of estimating. Even when people understand the task at hand, they should not be allowed to estimate their own work until they learn both how to estimate and the goal of estimating.
Second, base the estimate on experience. Even though no two projects are alike, there are often enough similarities that perfomance data frompast projects are useful in estimating future ones. Professional estimators constantly use new performance data to refine their estimating models.
Third, don't negotiate the estimate-negotiate the equilibrium. There are effective ways of countering attempts to meddle with an estimate. Dickering over cost or schedule alone throws the entire estimate out of equilibrium. While no estimate will go unchallenged, the proper defense is to demonstrate how the estimat eis tied to the product specification and work breakdown structure. When estimates are developed correctly, they can be reduced only by changing the product or the productivity of the workers.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)