Practice Being A Manager

Effective planning and decision making are crucial to the success of organizations. Your success as a manager will be determined in large part by your planning and decision-making capabilities. This exercise highlights some well-tested tools for strengthening your planning and decision-making skills. Individual Preparation

Step 1: Identify your "best company." Suppose that you are going to develop a plan that will result in your being hired to work for the single BEST COMPANY possible. "Best company" has not been defined for you, so you must determine what this might mean. Identify your "best company," and make your plan.

You need to consider such aspects as building the right academic and work profile, marketing yourself to the company, and interviewing effectively. Carefully record both your plan and the steps that you took to develop it. In class you will be asked to share this information with a small discussion group.

Small Group Discussion

Step 2: Discuss your plan. Taking turns, individually share your plan with the members of your discussion group. Members should listen carefully, ask questions, and make notes regarding the similarities and differences of individual plans.

Step 3: Create a brochure. Now suppose that your group has been asked to develop a brochure for distribution in college career centers. The brochure will be titled "Getting a Job with Your Dream Company." Using what you have learned from sharing your individual plans, work as a group to develop a sketch/ outline of this brochure.

Class Discussion

Step 4: As a class, discuss the following questions:

• Did you follow the rational decision-making process in identifying your best company and creating your plan for landing a job with this company? Why or why not?

• What role might bounded rationality have played in your individual and/or team decision-making process?

• Does planning increase the likelihood of success in being hired by a great company? Why or why not?

• If you were an editor assigned the project of developing the brochure "Getting a Job with Your Dream Company," would you be more likely to give the assignment to (1) a qualified individual, or (2) a qualified group? Considering your recent experiences in this exercise, what are the trade-offs of each approach (individual versus group decision making)?