7-19 Project Oxygen

Google invested a great deal of time mining its own internal data to determine what type of person makes a good Google manager. Dubbed Project Oxygen, researchers made more than 10,000 observations of managerial behaviors at Google. Find articles about Project Oxygen on the Web and read them. What were the researchers’ conclusions? Who makes a good manager, and who does not? Are the researchers right? Or are there other key factors that do not appear in the final eight qualities the researchers identified good managers as having? Are the results valid only for Google, or do you think they are general truths?

7-20 Tools for TQM

Using online resources like YouTube and Lynda.com see if you can teach yourself to create a Pareto chart in Excel. Can you create a histogram? A scatter plot? Can you find a PowerPoint template for a cause-and-effect diagram?

7-21 How Well Do You Manage Your Time?

Time management skills are important for a manager to have to work efficiently and accomplish all the tasks a manager is expected to handle on any given day. How are your time management skills? As a student, you are your own manager and can benefit from being more in control of your time. Find an online tool to assess your ability to manage your time. Write a brief report answering the following questions:

• What online assessment did you find?

• What were the results?

• How can you improve your time management skills?

7-22 Predictably Irrational

Visit the Ted.com website and search for the 20-minute video “Are We in Control of Our Own Decisions?” by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist. Watch the video and concentrate on the example of the doctor and the patient. Are there business decisions that managers make where factors outside their decision-making process influence the outcome?

7-23 Get SMARTER

The acronym SMARTER reminds us that goals should be specific, measurable, acceptable, realistic, timely, extending, and rewarding. Do some research on the Web to see how other people have implemented SMARTER goals. Then create two goals for yourself for next semester. Document how they are SMARTER goals.