Decision Making

When our class was coming down to the final minutes and we were all trying to get 100% agreement on what we wanted for Test #1 and Test #2 I was fine with just about everything that was agreed to.  However, I have to admit that if it was just based on solely what I wanted I would have been fine with the Essay being included in the test and maybe then having a choice of 2 or 3 different topics.  However, since I felt that I had gotten a lot of the things I wanted, like no multiple-multiple choice, a curve and dropping of the lowest grade – I didn’t mind giving up the essay portion of the test if that’s what it would have taken to get 100% consensus.  So I would say that my method or strategy at the time was that of the Accommodation method.  I was as invested in the essay as other people were so I was fine with not getting my desired outcome on it.

I definitely saw others in the class using the ‘Compete to Win’ attitude, especially with the essay.  There were 3 or 4 people who were adamant about not having an essay, for different reasons I’m sure.  Some were yelling out ‘no essay’ and kept coming back to the essay even after we had decided to drop it from the list of demands.  There were also a few people using the ‘Compromise’ method, again when it pertained to the essay.  I know I heard at least one person say that if we were to have the essay at least let’s get some choice as to what would be asked of us.

I think for the most part there was no conflict on the ideas we put forward.  Everyone seemed to agree on everything, except for the essay, pretty quickly.  So the only thing I would have done differently would have been to take a quick vote on the essay in the beginning and noted that there would be no consensus on it so that we could’ve gotten it out of the way faster.  Other than that I thought we actually did a really good job as a group establishing a lot of requests that benefited everyone.

The Planning Process

I actually wasn't in class for the 'Egg-cellent' planning project so I'll have to share the planning process we used for deciding what was needed to run a pizza/italian restaurant in one of our first classes.  When the professor asked us to decide what resources we would need to run a busy italian eatery our group quickly got to work.  The first thing we did was ask if anyone had any experience in the restaurant business.  Fortunately for us we did have a couple of people who had experience working in restaurants, one person even worked in a pizza shop.  The knowledge these two people shared with our group was very valuable because it helped us determine exactly how many people it would take to make a pizza, serve it and receive payment for it as well.  Also using our local experts we were able to determine how many people would be needed to staff the kitchen for the italian food portion of the restaurant as well as how many servers would be needed to serve out tables efficiently and effectively. 

I think what helped was having people in the group who realized the value of the knowledge provided by people familiar with the industry as well as being able to listen to the input of others.  Eventually the plan we came up with was a true team effort.