One of Major Decisions in My Life

Life is a series of choices. Opportunities are reserved for those well prepared. When opportunity comes, the decision needs to make.

One of the big decisions for me is to join the current company I work for. By then I got lots of stresses from previous job and family issues to deal with. So I was thinking about change to improve the situation. But if I change the job I need to give up a large portion of the stock options from the IPO company which I can profit for sure. However, I was sick and tired of transferring technical knowledge to oversea and don’t like doing business travel on quarterly basis. My decision is pretty simple and straight, work for the top leading edge company with the highest profit margin in the industry and I can apply my previous knowledge I learned. I already gained enough mid level management experience, technical knowledge and expertise that allow me to find the job as long as there is an opening at the company. I am not interest to apply multiple opportunities because I knew which company indeed is good for me in the long term. Good news is my previous boss also works there therefore I get the first hand info and wait for the job opening comes. As submit my resume in when job opening available, I got the confirmation of job offer right after the interview.

As I submit my resignation, the previous company made a counter offer which was higher than I thought and told me the potential of future promotion. I reviewed my situation once more and decided not take the counter offer. I did not ask the new company make “another” counter offer either. I don't want to play any game and also because I knew what’s the priority of my life and I don’t want to bring any workload to home anymore. I want a good balance of my life back.

Now 5 years passed. The previous company I worked for did successfully IPO at April of this year. The current company stock option I got still underwater. And somehow my family issue did not resolve as I expected. But if you ask me do I have any regret? I can frankly tell you I did not. Because I did try my best to recover and get my balance of my life back instead of doing nothing. I knew if I never try any effort to change the situation I will regret more. After all money is not the most important item in our life, but finding the meaning of life is.

To me no decision is right or wrong. Neither good or bad. What really matter is: I have made the best judgment and analyzed all the information to face all the unknowns. No matter how the consequence is. I will face it, take care of it, settle down and then move forward.

Best wishes to all

BUS 520 Strategies of Impressions Management for Personal and Company

Perception is not reality. That’s what we always heard and being reminded from time to time. Well, this assignment is about the promotion of self and corporate image. Now seems like I need to play few strategies using the perception to influence other’s judgment to gain more advantages…. J

Strategies of Enhancing Dream Company’s Image

As the company trying to enhancing the image in public, the company must know what’re its own advantages and weaknesses verse the other competitors. So the corporate image can be further promoted and enhanced. The niche of a company primary product could be justisified either by the best value, the best time to market or best performance. It is granted that a leading company providing strength on all three perspectives can simply charge the customer premium more than expected. But in general for a new comer does not have all these advantages at once. Hence I would like to discuss more about my thought on the image enhancement for a new company.

To me, strive on the best value product with good quality, user friendly features, stylish sense and the best service will be the four key factors and the foundation of building the customer’s perception to the company. These four essential elements are more critical than just emphasizing on the performance of the product.

As the company needs to provide the actual product with high enough profit margin and makes the customer willing to pay more, it needs to pay extra attention on the product quality and customer service. These two are complimentary, better quality will simply reduce the frequency and level of the service. As the result, the service team will not fatigue or feel overload and will provide the best service to the customers. To make sure all the customers being well treated and being respected, the key of providing excellent service is attitude of the employees interface with the customers’ complains and time to resolving the issues.

The next one to impress the public is logo of the company. Logo reflects to a company’s long term vision and the core value. The embedded perception from the logo will further attract the both potential and existing customers and further enhance company’s reputation.

Understand the trend of change and what competitors will do are also important. A successful company should have a good marketing research staffs who are capable of accessing the latest industry information. Spending extra efforts on customer basis survey to know what kind of customer group to target at and analyze the time to market info is critical for a product to success. Based on the marketing survey, the top management can direct the design & application engineering groups to develop a prototype model for market trial and further produce the product at production mode.

How to package and present the products that reflect the core image of the company is another key element of success. As a product delivers to market, the leading edge on the features of products could have only 3 to 6 months timeframe but the developing cycle or time for next generation could be at least 18 months away. In general what customers looking for is NOT numbers of features a product can perform but how easy they can use the features and can be integrated together (mobile phones and cars are typical examples). As a customer willing to spend the money is also subjected to whether a product presents certain style or value in their mind. Have a good commercial style design and user friendly features will attract the customers to pay more premiums on the product itself.

With all these essential elements – quality, user friendly feature, stylish and excellent customer service -- as foundation. Next follow-up will be the customer survey on promoting the image of the company to the public.

Advertising to media highlighted the customer satisfaction rating verse other competitors is one of the popular strategies. Advertising is also used in achieving brand loyalty and effectively attracting the target customers to secure market share. Advertisements also improve the brand recognition and gaining competitive advantage over rivals.

Strategies of Improving Personal Image

Following is what I can think of about improving personal image

Working attitude – Rule of Thumb –

The attitude on taking care of a new assignment to me is more important than all the other factors. It's better be optimistic and willing to accept challenge rather than resisting on taking the responsibilities or change. Lots of the complicated task get accomplished the upper manager may not know how difficult it is. What the top observes and sense is each individual staff's working attitude. Believe or not working attitude actually affects the increase of annual salary review and judgment of the future promotion in the long term.

The style of dress, verbal and writting communication skills --

The way we dress reflects to how serious we caring about the job. Wearing a casual suit at routine basis just looks like not professional enough. In addition, always think twice before speaks or make sure document for distribution without typing errors before sending out. Be clear about the topic want to express and organize things well so others will understand fully. Any data and information would like to refer to needs to be up-to-date and correct.

Enhance the expertise and try to bring up influence to the higher manager --

Since my expertise is in technical field, I for sure will let my manager know what I am really good at. Sometime even I have the answer or conclusion in my mind but I will leave the business decision to him and would not across my boss’s authority. If the decision is different from my thought I will try to influence more by bringing up what I am concerned about. Some of the decision is purely business orientated, it’s nothing about right or wrong from a technical point of view. As the topic not what my manager or myself can make the final decision. I will recommend get inputs from other associated groups and have the higher management involve, so all the team members will be aware of the complexity of the situation.

Self motivated on new project ---

In general I will try to accomplish one or more big projects may not list in my annual performance review. This is extra credits I would earn. Doing self-motivated project is to keep bringing up and highlighting my additional value to the company. Therefore, even my performance could look the same as other peers, the additional project(s) being accomplished will make the boss realizes I always try to contribute more to the company.

Improve social skills –

Don’t forget to say hi or have a short conversion with your manager on daily basis. At least he/she knew you are around and can provide help at anytime. Try to find right timing sending your manager and the upper management small gifts they prefer so the present will be “effective” (the recommend best timing is aligned to your annual review).

Positive feedback to the people around –

Never pop up any nasty words in front of the coworkers, no matter how frustrate it is. Otherwise it will lose the respect from coworkers. Showing others how firm the position I am holding at and express how upset or disappoint is fine. But no matter what should well control the temper and trying not to say any bad words or attacking someone personally or privately.

Any further inputs or recommends I am all ears. Please share with your experience with me. I want to learn more from others’ experience.

BUS 528 Summary of Chapter 5&6

Chapter 5 Risk Management

A good decision is subjected to well organize planning techniques. A good plan has well balance on costs, schedule, and quality that allow the project manager to achieve the desired goal. Such a plan should also consider all the risks could have occurred. Risk management is to list all the possible “what-if” risk scenarios into the consideration, prioritize the risks, and develop a response strategy in advance to increase the project successful rate.

Risk management process as follows: Identify risks àDevelop a response à Establish reserves (i.e., back up plan) àContinuous risk management.

Following are 5 strategies commonly used on reducing the risk:

prevention (avoidance), backup solution (contingency plan), pass-over the risk (such as paying for insurance or outsourcing to contractor), and risk mitigation (remove unnecessary errors thru systematic approach).

Table 5.5 from the book illustrates the example of how to monitor risks using a risk log, which is very effective on tracking the risk status. “The expected value of risk” is the way to quantify the risk (expected value of contingency = cost of contingency X probability of risk event). We can use the “matrix of negative impact verse risk probability” to prioritize those with high value of risks and then further allocating budget or strategies to manage them.

Chapter 6 Work Breakdown Structure

The purpose of WBS is to break the project into small, functional-wise meaningful and executable unit of work. Therefore as a project manager can fully track and control the project.

Building a WBS allow a project manager to:

Provide a detailed of project scope

Monitor progress of project at each stage

Generate estimation on cost and schedule of delivery

Build project teams

The WBS breaks all the work in the project into separate tasks. There are two kinds of tasks on a WBS: summary tasks and work packages.

The work packages are the ones that are actually executed. Understanding the relationship and structure between summary tasks and work packages is essential on establishing a good WBS. Work packages refer to any particular routine functions, while summary tasks are related to any of system integration which may combine two or more work packages. Besides, a WBS must be broken down starting at the top.

Three criteria are essential for a successful WBS.

Work packages must include into the summary task.

Each summary task and work package must be named

The 8/80 rules. No task should be smaller than 8 labor hours or larger than 80.

If a project employs contractors or vendors to do some of the work, WBS can be used as a reporting requirement for the winning bidder.