Summary of Chapter 11 Communication

Effective communication results in a successful transmission, acceptance and understanding of information from both sides.

To get anticipated results through communication in leadership, following are few ideas I think it’s critical.

Ensure that you prepare your message well both content and context. Either verbal or written messages need to be clear and simple. The communication is consistent with the actions and make sure the words will build up the trust and encouragement. A written summary is needed to follow up all the pending action items and the schedule of delivering results.

Establish the right working climate – provide a sincerity and fairness communication environment so the participants are more positively on expose and expressive his or her message. No particular party or person will dominate the meeting therefore any creative or inspiring ideas will be brought up.

As there is argument or disagreement, listening to other opinions and criticism first and look for any valuable information. The importance of communication is trying to find a solution that everybody agree upon instead of trying to ‘win’ the argument. Think out of box on providing new solution or through compromise to come out what team needs most rather than satisfying the personal achievement.

BUS528 Summary of Chapter 10

High Performance Project Team

The high performance team requires synergy, which means delivering the result by working interdependently and trust each other. As dealing with the new project, all the team members not only tried to apply his/her skills and knowledge on the assignment but also learning something new. A great team should be good on exchange view, knowledge among others, work together and remove unnecessary conflict. Also capable of analyzing the problem to be solved by diverge thinking first thru brain storming to find a creative generation of multiple answers to a set problem, then apply converge thinking approach from cost verse benefit & risk analysis to make action based on the data and facts. Project manager can speed up team learning by following thru ask the inputs, recognize the need, encourage full participation, eliminate fear, establish the accountability and celebrate the success of each milestone achievement.

My current project is to solve the product related failures experienced by the customer due to process variation / marginality issue. We originally thought the issue was fixed 3 months ago but now realized the fix was not good enough on the sensitive device. As I called up the meeting to get involvement of design, failure analysis and process engineering groups; the team members quickly develop 3 alternative solutions and feedback to fab to execute 3 engineering lots after presenting the data, experiment results and exchange the concerns after one and half hours meeting. To me this is a good synergy from the high performance team. The key members – from engineers to directors - are aware of the issue and attended the meeting to direct the resources on fixing the issue. Review the result professionally and assess the schedule on delivery to mitigate the further concerns from the customer. No one is finger-pointing or criticizing other groups about how come the 1^st fixing proposal did not work as expected but focus on solving the issue and move forward. That’s the working attitude that I appreciate most from the team members.

BUS 520 Organization Behavior: Result of Something a Leader said or did, you felt personally Powerful and Capable.

I have changed five different jobs since I joined the industry. Frankly, most of managers that I direct report to not giving me too much of positive feedback as I worked for them. I will get compliment of “good jobs” or “thanks” from my bosses or colleagues from time to time but nothing really specific. I think they said it by courtesy. However, I did put all my very best efforts on doing my job. Maybe they are afraid of giving me too much compliment and worry that I will follow up and ask for the salary raise or promotion? As time goes by I slowly realized their appreciation.

I remembered not long ago that I attended the church event and met the Vice President that I previous worked for. By courtesy I said hello to him and his wife. At the end of event I politely told them it’s time I got to leave. By then his wife stand up and told me that my V.P. always mentioned about my contribution to the company. My V.P. also approached me, holding me with both his hands and said that the company will build a new assembly line in near future and welcomes me back. By then I realized that this is not just a compliment but really the appreciation from hearts of my previous VP and his wife. And I will always keep in mind.

The second person I would like to appreciate is the manager I previously report to. Remembered at one of posts that I mentioned my manager left the tough working environment after me? We now work for the same company and in charge of different groups. He is the person giving out his recommendation to my current VP that I am worth to hire. Help and give me advice to go through the darkest time on dealing with my family issue. As I initially work for the company and short of resources, he is the one allocate his manpower to help me out. However, he never praised me in front of others but in private he told one of his friends that I am sharp and hard working. I knew this is not compliment because he also mentioned to his friend that I am not the sweet person in the mean time. In my mind he always is my mentor and I also treat and respect him like his my elder brother. As I writing this article I just suddenly realized without his help actually I won’t go thru so many down turns in the past few years. I will stop by his office again and thanks all his support to me in the past 12 years.

The last person I want to mention is my current VP. My VP gave me praises in very different way. He is the one challenge me and gave me complicated cases to solve all the time. He tests how good I am technically and mentally. I remembered as I joined the company, my group having lots of personal conflict and efficiency of the job cycle time is poor. By then all the staffs reporting to me had been worked for company over 15 years and are more senior than me, in their mind they were highly doubt how could a mid 30 years old “kid” can lead the group. After aboard, I was really short of hands due to one of key engineers left. I got to take care most of the jobs by myself and prepared the materials for meeting and presentation. I still remembered how tough the time was. But as one year passed I proved to my VP that I am capable of dealing with all the “stress tests” applied onto me, he added two more engineers into the group.

I still remembered one day about 3 years ago my VP called me into his office and asked me close the door. Then he pulled out his drawer and handed over me a check. And told me from now on I have been recognized as the key contributor for the company and will receive additional incentive bonus at regular basis and the number of stock options will also increase. At that day I could not be happier, since I earned back all the efforts I put on.

As later I am really depressed due to my own family issue and telling my VP that I may look for job at elsewhere and may not stay at bay area anymore. He is one advise me that my expertise is good to serve the company rather than any place else. He fully understood the family difficulty I experienced and allowed me to leave early to pick up kids. I really need to thanks for my VP and my manger’s understanding so I can continue my career at the field I am good at.

Thanks Lord always sends someone nearby me and gives me a lift when I need it most. Without Lord and helpers he sent my life won’t be the same.

BUS 520 Organization Behavior: Time When You Felt Powerless, Weak, and Insignificant

I used to have a director that extremely difficult to deal with. Thanks God he is not my direct manger but one hierarchy higher, unfortunately that is still bad enough. He is a very smart person, but his ego is also so strong. The worst part is: he cannot control his temper. He can praise a person a minute ago but the next minute when he found a minor flaw from the report. He will start popping up nasty words in every sentence and chewing the staff up in the next 15 minutes (together with the manager). Everyone being call into his office we knew there was not much good news. We all knew he keeps delaying all the staff annual reviews for at least 3 months, therefore even good news like raising salary also eventually became soured.

Here is my story….

There was once I got a tough and urgent customer return case to work on. After a quick review I knew this was not easy to deal with at all. Since my director criticized technical approaches always not diligent enough. This time I changed my strategy. I asked his instruction and did the job step by step on this assignment. Fortunately and unfortunately, the case cannot be solved and pending there. As expected he called me into his office. While he starting to lecture me, I advised him that I did follow everything base on his instructions. But you will be stunned about what he told me…

He said: You are the ENGINEER, how come you don’t have your own engineering judgment from the beginning…. Again, no matter what, he is right and others always wrong.

By then I made my mind that I will not take any negative words from him since nothing sounds right and reasonable. Even it is a stable job and good financial incentive. I told myself that I took all the beats and heats not because I accept and tolerate what he did to me. As right timing comes I will leave such a working environment.

I still remembered later I resigned and at the last day of the work my manger escorting me out of the building. Surprisingly my manger asked me any job opening from the new company I working for. He told me he cannot take the heat anymore either. As later the economic turns around, 90% of engineering staffs including my manager left the department one after another. Only one lady chose not leave but I knew how much stress she got. I have seen her lost most of hair after then.

Here is the lesson I learned: respect and take care of the staffs work for you. Everyone makes mistakes and there is no need abuse someone by using nasty words or give negative feedback.

After all I still want to thanks the tough director. He let me know what a bad example is and remind me not make such mistake as later I became a manager. Besides, thanks him now I can endure and take more heat from anyone else.

Best wishes to all.

BUS 528 Chap 8&9

Chap 8 Dynamics of Accurate Estimating

Complete specification is the basis of an accurate estimation. This requires the experienced person actually do the work to make the estimation. Phased Estimating breaks down the full product lifecycle into different phases. Each of phase is considered as a project. The authority transfer shifts as a project or product starts from market /spec requirement definition migrate to design a prototype, further convert to new product introduction and then ramp up the mass production sustain stage, which is more practical.

For all the estimation method, I prefer bottom-up estimation for my project. This means each individual task being estimated and combined together. Even it cost a bit more time but the figure comes out is most accurate. Table below illustrate

Chap 9 Balance of the Project

Use the experts from outside of the firm

Some project could be too complicated and company may not have such equipment or staff internally. Using the service company to deliver the result will be more effective.

Reduce the project scope

As additional add-in feature could be take too long or add cost too much that is not really benefit the project then the scope of project may need to trim a bit to need the schedule due day. We can think about add up the feature later as time and budget allow.

BUS 528 Chap 7

Chap 7 Realistic Scheduling

IDENTIFY TASK RELATIONSHIP

• Arrange the order of work packages and set milestone as useful marker –
• For my project, I need to breakdown the individual functions among design, backend support and system integration and then further verify what’s the associated relationship

ESTIMATE WORK PACKAGE

• Total amount of labor and equipment need to allocate for the project. Also include finding the balance of among cost, schedule and quality of the project.

MILESTONE

To highlight the breakthrough of major tasks being accomplished.

My project embedded 4 major milestones

• Design Control of Power Supply to TC Chamber Interface
• Program Chamber Profile
• Design Fault Triggering / Circuit Protection
• Finished day of hardware build

COST ESTIMATION

• Budget of Labor, Equipment and Materials

CRITICAL PATH

• Define as the task cannot have extra hours being spent otherwise the original schedule will be revised. This means any of tasks in this path with zero or negative float.

RESOURCE LEVELING

• Identify resource peaks and redistribute the resource make job more productive without affecting the due date.

The outline of my project schedule as follows TASK NAME	Labor hrs
Design Power Temper Cycle (TC) Test
1.0 Spec requirement Review	6 hrs
2.0 Power estimation and HW dimension check	4 hrs
2.1 System features and utility arrangement check	4 hrs
2.1.1 Evaluate Existing Chamber Features	4 hrs
2.1.1.1 Design Control of Power Supply to TC Chamber Interface	20 hrs
2.1.1.2 Chamber air flow check	16 hrs
2.1.1.3 Program Chamber Profile	8 hrs
2.1.2 Evaluate Power supply meet power requirement
3.0 System integration trial run	120 hrs
4.0 Power TC Burn-in schematic (product specific)	8 hrs
4.1 Design Fault Triggering / Circuit Protection	8 hrs
4.2 Estimate total power consumption (product specific)	4 hrs
4.3 Verification of 1st trial run samples	12 hrs
5.0 Burn in Board Hardware	2 hrs
5.1 Layout motherboad	8 hrs
5.2 Layout daughter card	8 hrs
5.3 Outsource to contractor for hardware build	1 mth