Blog about a Blog

I really do like the entire blog idea for class assignments. I felt it was really cool to have this as our assignment instead of reading a book.

I don't know if I could say that communicating through the blog really extended into the classroom. Most of the people that I commented on or that commented on my posts, we haven't spoken outside of class or in class for that matter. It just felt more like we would talk here and only here.

I really enjoyed the aspect of sharing opinions regarding certain companies and management issues. I felt that it was a useful alternative to taking words out of the book and teaching it in class. Each person had their own unique niche of companies that they knew about and provided some insightful thoughts into their management issues. It was definitely a good breath of air to hear others opinions on certain topics and I think really fostered a better method of learning about the subjects. I can't really think of an idea to make it more dynamic. Possibly an extra post every so often about certain companies or opinion-based questions about companies of the student's choice that is more on the consumer view of things rather than digging up information or management things?

I think for the outside material we could've used more. Some of the material covered in the professor's blog was quite insightful and is a motive of inspiration. Not only that, it provides a view that is outside of a textbook, which is what we need more of. I think a hands-on, realistic look at management and just on things in general would be beneficial to class. Perhaps some real life examples or things of that sort.

I think I will post on this blog beyond the class. It was fun to do and being able to examine the little things of companies or management that we notice is cool. Rather than being a silent grunt in the workforce, it allows us to make a little noise, even if no one is really reading it.

I think the blog should remain part of the class. Networking, sharing thoughts, and learning at the same time was pretty nifty aspect of this blog. I think to improve it, there should be more assignments based off a real-life view/aspect of companies. One or two of the assignments were very "textbook-ish" such as the Porter's 5. I think some people learned a bit about companies that they never really thought about and also may have changed a bit of perspective in their thinking, which is a big plus. Some people tend to have this jaded idea that management is followed straight out of a textbook, but I think through more real-life blog posts, they come to realize that there's a lot of ways management works.

That concludes the blog posting required for the classes. I hope to see you all again and that we all learned something from sharing our thoughts and opinions with each other.

Diagnosing Your Problems Today!

So let's talk about a few problems that are pretty good indicators that management isn't doing a good job.

Customer complaints! There's nothing worse than having the people you make your money off complain about things. Whether it be the product you're selling, bad customer service, or just that you're too far away from them, they have a lot of power over you. If they're complaining, you know something is wrong. It could be a multitude of things, but if it's one specific thing, such as poor customer service, you know management isn't doing their homework when hiring people. The management could also not be teaching their employees on handling customers. So there could be many things on management's part.

Now if a company has too much debt, this could be a strategic problem. But this all depends if the company is effectively utilizing their debt. If they aren't and the company has a weak product, obviously their debt is a problem then. Their strategy doesn't efficiently utilize the money they have borrowed or their product just isn't successful. This definitely points to a lack of proper strategy on part of management.

Now there's a whole slew of indicators that show management might not have a proper strategy in place. One of the companies out there that exhibit some of these problems is Take-Two Interactive. Currently, this company does not offer much product variety compared to their competitors like Electronic Arts or Activision. Take-Two publishes only one particular known brand name of a game while their competitors have numerous brand names that their company publishes. The company is also much slower at getting their product out compared to their competitors who produce a hit game numerous times throughout the year. Take-Two takes anywhere from 2-3yrs to produce a hit game.

These problems have come and created a company that recently posted a loss of $185 million in their previous fiscal year. The problems have expanded into an overall outlook that the single game they produce and publish is the only thing that could possibly get the company into the black. However, it is slowly being seen that the product might not even recoup all the losses incurred from other failed games or investments.

Take-Two cannot create quality games at the speed of EA or Activision and many companies are less like to go through Take-Two to publish their games because of their poor track record other than their single game, Grand Theft Auto. All these problems created another problem in a poor company image.

Take-Two has a lot of work in their future to repair these problems.