Principle of management

I’ve adapted this assignment from Rob Walker at the Art of Noticing.

Over the next week or two as you go about your life I want you to make an effort to notice 2 things about a business. “Business” could mean a lot things in this case: it could be a bar, a restaurant, the College, trying to pay a bill online, riding the bus, etc etc. Any interaction you’ve had with a business can count if it fits the criteria. I want you to notice 2 things in that business:

    1. A problem that can be fixed

    2. Something that deserves praise

Don’t pick something too simple because I want you to use your management brain to tell me how to fix the problem, and also what the organization/business did right from a management perspective. Use course concepts and terms in your explanations.

This is an individual assignment, I’m looking to hear your deep, specific personal thoughts. For that reason, similar sounding projects submitted by students will be graded very poorly.

Deep, personal thinking is worth more than a lengthy but shallow report. See rubric attached.

Total assignment should not be longer than one page. Be concise and to the point.

Use course concepts and terms.

This Assignment is worth 10% of your final grade. Maximum length: 1 page

That’s a lot of grade for a one page assignment. I want you to leave out the fluff and get right to the point. Tell me using course concepts and terms what they did right and wrong. Pack as much management knowledge into that 1 page as you can.

See rubric for grading details

Submit in Moodle.

Late assignments will be docked 10% per day.

Rubric for Assignment #3 Observing Management

These examples are simplified but should give you an idea of what it takes to earn each grade

Potential Content Grade

Recall simple events.

Example: I walked into McDonalds and the floor was wet. I almost slipped D

Recall events and a relevant concept or term.

Example: I walked into McDonalds and the floor was wet. I almost slipped.

Obviously the manager wasn’t supervising her staff, or maybe the employee

was poorly trained. C

Associate some course concepts and draw connections.

Exmple: Maybe the employee was poorly trained because no one should leave a wet

floor in a restaurant without signs. The lack of oversight and supervision is going to get

a customer hurt, and McDonalds sued. B

Examine a depth of course depth of course concepts and draw connections

Example: Besides lack of training, the manager should have daily or weekly safety

meetings to remind staff of important things like wet floors. Incentives could be given to

motivate staff to care about safety, and to report any unsafe work situations they see. B+

Identify and resolve the issues in the problem. Adequately identify what the business

did correctly. Use depth of course concepts and draw connections.

I’m running out of space to give you an example, but hopefully you have an idea by now.

Something like this would get you started:

After observing McDonalds wet floor, I see 5 potential areas they made errors:

1

2

3

4

5

The manager could resolve this by using the following course concepts…. A

In this example, you would then continue with something McDonalds has done that deserves praise (could be their marketing, helping an elderly customer to her seat, making their cheeseburgers so tasty, becoming a top notch coffee competitor to Tim Hortons, anything praiseworthy that you can identify) Explain which management concepts they likely used to make that thing happen.