April Blog Post

Hey guys! One of the best things I've come across throughout my research was this article:

Motivation In The Workplace

The article included a story about three stonecutters who each saw their work very differently. One stone cutter considered his job as a day's pay; the second considered his job for what it was; and the third viewed his job as a calling. As a whole, this story is used to create "the bigger picture"; the third stonecutter saw his career as something other than the obvious. In the same light, a manager's job is ensure than employees understand their job and what it amounts to in a grand scheme. The article also includes an little video about what motivates us and the meaning behind our drive as individuals. 

February Blog Post

Hello, everyone. Cheers to yet another weekend. 

What I have for the monthly post is actually what I’m working on for the final presentation and independent component. My father/mentor recently attended a seminar for Unical Aviation Inc. titled ‘Strategic Planning & Objectives Workshop … Building an Even Stronger Team.’ What primarily caught my attention and related to my EQ and topic overall was a part of the seminar known as the Personal Values Inventory®. One critical part in particular was what motivates people.

The Personal Values Inventory® was developed by Elias H. Porter, Ph.D., founder and president of Personal Strengths Publishing, Inc. The PVI® is broken into context this way:

• Personal — “The PVI offers people the chance to learn about their personal strengths and about how they use them with other people.”
• Values — “Each of us has values that help us decide how to act. Our values affect what we pay attention to, what we do, and how we feel about things.”
• Inventory — “The PVI is not a test where your answers are graded as either right or wrong. It is an inventory for taking stock of your motivational values—the basis for how you feel and act in different situations.”

What I’ve started doing thus far was created this template:

It’s based on this placard, which my mentor completed at the seminar:

The only difference with the one I'm designing is the triangle; the whole thing becomes a little more confusing with it present.

The red, green, and blue colors represent three different ways that we can related to other people; there is even a special group that are in-betweens—hubs. Each color and the hubs, have preferences of treatment, motivations, effective/ineffective environments, and even how to be the most effective boss for the person and how to be the most effective employee. (I will get around to explaining the colors and hubs in detail.)

The numerical values on the PVI® placard my mentor derive from the PVI® booklet. Inside are 1-20 items, each with statements such as “I enjoy things most when I am…” and followed by three different responses. Here, the surveyor distributes 10 points between each response. At the end, the numbers are then recorded at the bottom; for example, in one column of responses, it could total to 58—hence, the 58 on my mentor’s placard.

I enjoyed working on this because I now have a good idea of what I want to do for my presentation and what will make it engaging. My mentor mentions that the Personal Values Inventory® is something not many people have the opportunity to take part in, and having other students take part in it could be inspiring. I’d like to think so too.

January Blog Post

Hey everyone. Ever since the great EQ change, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on what defines an effective operations manager; the term “operations” is used implicitly in reference to the title — an operations manager manages all residing operations in a warehouse (try saying that twice). These “operations” are what keeps the company, in this case, Unical Aviation, alive (in part). To paint a picture, operations are blood vessels, employees the blood coursing through, and the organization is the heart, the core. Like the nervous system is to the body, leadership is quintessential to a company/organization. But without an effective leader, how is an employee going to work at their most efficient level? A leader should be defined first, before the employee is developed.

My mentor suggested this article to me: Top 12 Development Goals for Leaders

The article in its most general sense is list of developmental goals that leaders should use for their leadership development plan; the author, Dan McCarthy, Director of Executive Development Programs at UNH, suggests that the goals should not practiced all together, but rather one goal exercised explicitly. I decided to choose five of these goals as the most important. They aren’t in sequential order but by the number of which they’re listed on the article.

Strategic Thinking 

This goal is centric on the big picture. The big picture requires that the manager look at the business from afar with a broader, business perspective. Rather than expel energy on the minute details of a business, look at why things happen over the what and how. How I interpreted this was through the following questions:

“Why didn’t that plan work?”

“Why did that work out better than last time?”

“Why would an employee be confused about this?”

3. Coaching

Many other articles I’ve read ever accredit successful businesses to dictatorship leadership. Management is principally providing guidance for employees working beside you. This goal is about guiding and developing your direct reports, subordinates in the corporate hierarchy. In regard to my EQ, this is especially important because as an operations manager, you want to guide your employees towards the company’s goal and lead them the right way. Without that guidance, the employee won’t be motivated to do their best.

7. Leadership Presence

Having a voice in a business never hurt anyone, as far as I’m concerned. Commanding a room and communicating effectively, that is, delivering clear ideas and direction, inspires others. Employees feel motivated to do better when their managers see value in their work and want to see the company progress.

10. Collaboration

 Collaboration is defined as a successful partnership in which both parties understand their goals and needs and help one another achieve their goals. Teamwork is heavily emphasized in regard to employee motivation. By placing employees into teams, however small, strengths can be revealed and thus efficiency can be achieved.

Intro to Warehouse Operations Management

One of the customary things an employee receives is a walkthrough of the entire warehouse, which is what I had to go through during summer mentorship (unfortunately for me, that additional post should have been made last month.) To start things off, I'd like to just show you what Unical Aviation is and what it looks like. Considering I've never been to an actual warehouse other than a Costco, Unical was definitely different than what one would expect at a distribution warehouse.

Unical Aviation Inc., offers a number of amenities to it’s employees, ranging from a wall of microwaves in the lunchroom or even a yoga studio on the front side of the . It’s important to consider that the environment plays a role in promoting morale of the workplace. Personally, my favorite part of these above amenities is the eating area. Aside from the owner being a Marvel fan, the figures also serve as symbolic motivators for the endurability of the company. 

Unical is a surplus aircraft distributor. What does that mean? A surplus aircraft distributor is a facility that buys or sells aircraft parts domestically and internationally; airlines represented range from American Airlines (US), Cathay Pacific Airlines (Asia), and Lufthansa Airlines (Europe). As such, Unical is also responsible for keeping expendable parts and major components of airplanes in it’s inventory. 

You would read the above shelving as:

2 - warehouse 2; warehouse 1 is Unical’s previous location

AB - refers to the aisles; aisles go as far back as ZE

10 - refers to the bay or section

D - level on the shelf, i.e. level A, B…

4 - 5 - basket number

F - refers to front of the warehouse; R refers to rear of the

     warehouse

The warehouse of Unical is arranged in rows upon rows of shelves, each containing baskets filled with bags of similar parts, which could be nuts, bolts, washers, and other expendable products. The rest of the warehouse includes bigger parts, “major components”, which range from engines, main frames, and landing gear.

This is a very general overview of Unical; the warehouse itself is made up of many different components and departments, which all circulate around the warehouse. One of the first things you have to learn in the warehouse is how to organize and read the labels. Sure, it sounds like an easy task, however, as you can imagine, that's a good number of things to understand. Knowing how to read a consignment code, let's say for example, JAL-MI137, is just as important as knowing how to read a basket label. This is another story for another day, so stay tuned!