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Many of us have a long list of memories
Many of us have a long list of memories, a slew of childhood or present stories and experiences that we feel are relevant to who we are at this present moment. Some of these instances can be positive or negative, however we wouldn’t be who we are unless we went through those obstacles in life. There are many events in my life that I feel shaped me into the woman I am today but specifically it would be watching my mother take on the roles of many while managing her main role as mom. She may not know this but shadowing her has allowed me to pick up and respect her independence, patience, and possession of a loving spirit. I am the baby girl of six children and the remaining are all males so you can only imagine how tough that would be for a mother, but she wore her superhero cape at all times. She raised us all on her own and made it look easy. This is where I picked up on her independence trait. I witnessed my mom do it all and there were times she’d be told no and to, “do it yourself” and she often did do just that. Often, she’d reflect that same lesson on me and tell me “put your big girl pants on” just so I’d have the confidence in knowing I could do things myself as well.
My mother displayed before me, the definition of independence and my hat has been off to her since I reached the age of understanding. Living in a house of seven, patience is key. My brothers were all heavily involved in sports. They were rough and dangerous; I guess just being boy. We all have different personalities, so that comes with differences and which result in disagreements and fights. The boys were boys and always hurt and banged up so I spent most times watching my mom handle each delicately as a doctor would with the upmost patience. If my mother could do everything, managing a household of six all on her own I should have no excuses. Respect was one of the first words I learned to spell and understand. My mom held no tolerance for disrespect no matter who or what the case was. Later she led me on to understanding when you give respect that respect come back to you. She raised us all to respect each other’s time, space, and differences. Respect others by watching your words, tone, and body language. I learned everyone wasn’t raised with such beliefs and that’s fine but when dealing with who I am today, if the conversation is to continue, there’s going to be a understanding of respect and how it goes both ways before it gets too far. My mother deserves a medal for her commitment to being the best woman and mom she can be, and I don’t think I’m being biased when I give her the credit I do. Truthfully, there’s no amount of credit I this lifetime that could come close to what she deserves. There have been countless amounts of times where I wanted to give up after many failed attempts and discouraging moments, but I used my mom as a reference and motivation to keep myself levelheaded and going. A mothers’ influence on there child(ren) holds more weight in that kids’ life than you can imagine so to have someone as light hearted, kind, patient, transparent, and independent as my mother is the most amazing feeling in the world. My mom didn’t aim to be a role model, her main focus was to raise my siblings and I the best way she knew how, with what she learned through her parents and preparations based off the shock of her own experiences. I couldn’t thank my mother enough for passing her work ethic and dedication on to me, especially during times like today. I’ve been tested on my patience and dedication the last six-months. Remaining calm in hectic situations is a talent and gift I received from my mother. With having switching schools and moving back to my home state mid-semester, things get complicating and frustrating. I didn’t want to even think about another class once I finished my summer classes, because the toll the previous weeks took over me prior to such. If my mom weren’t there to comfort and remind me daily what I’m working towards, I would’ve lost it. Having to change your whole life routine unexpectedly, hasn’t been the easiest and I think I’m speaking from everyone’s perspective. My mom has made no signs of frustration yet due to all the changes lately, she just adapts and keeps it moving which I admire so much. Having to remain calm in situations because you have younger generations looking up to you must be so draining and comment her for doing such for so long. Watching her all my life and still struggling to figure out how she does it will always be a challenge for me, but I’ve mastered it to some point. My mom teaches me lessons and gives me that guidance every day and I thank her so much for it.
Within life comes many obstacles and you either fall under or rise above. My mom taught me dedication is more about self-decline than any other behavior. You have to want something within this life for the better of yourself. No one can do things for you forever nor want it for you, with that being said I keep the circle going within myself. I think it’s safe to say I wouldn’t be the young woman I am without my mother’s influence. She’s a role model, leader, and my most favorite, a Mother. I can only wish to pass down such great qualities and teachings my mother gave to me, to my later kids. They say, “you’ve never helped someone until you’ve helped someone who can’t help you back”, and my mother can truly say she’s helped someone.
Management Issues in Nokia (4)
Management Issues in Nokia
Name
Institution
Management Issues in Nokia
IntroductionNokia is a multinational electronics company that was once leading globally in the manufacture and sale of mobile devices. The firm which had its headquarters in Espoo, Finland, was enjoying a large market share of over 40 percent of the global market (Peltonen, 2019). However, the company’s market share drastically declined forcing its owners to sell it off to Microsoft in 2013. Poor organizational culture was the main cause of the downfall of Nokia. Specifically, the prevalent culture in the company was reliance on a traditional method of management that was strictly dictatorial and not concerned with cultural diversity among its staff and employees. Nokia relied on lots of filters and censorship to control communications between top management, subordinate staff, and other employees. Subsequently, management theory and management of workplace diversity would be employed to adequately understand the problem which faced Nokia (Alexander, Havercome & Mujtaba, 2015). Accordingly, this paper will analyze the issue mentioned above and provide three recommendations that could help Nokia effectively handle the problem and remain competitive.
2.0 Management Issue DiscussionThe main issue identified in Nokia is poor organizational culture that is marked by reliance on a traditional dictatorship approach of management that does not consider and appreciate cultural diversity in the work environment. Accordingly, the organization could not remain competitive and accommodative to its employees. As a critical aspect, appropriate organizational culture has significant influence on workers of an organization since it could motivate employees, thus making them more productive and efficient (Yuso, Said & Ali, 2016). At the case of Nokia, employees were dissatisfied and demotivated by the dictatorship approach of management. Besides, the unsupportive cultural environment in Nokia discourages creativity and innovation, practices that could attract additional benefits to the firm by making its processes more efficient and effective for higher competitiveness. A suitable organizational culture would favor employees from varied cultural backgrounds, considers their requirements and contributions for better performance, and enables workers to adequately understand the vision and mission of their firm.
Consequently, the cultural issue in Nokia is related to planning since organizations should establish suitable roadmaps that stipulates necessary measures and tools for controlling and monitoring their processes and management practices to ensure that they remain favorable to every employee and facilitate smooth operations. Thus, Nokia should have planned well to ensure that its management team exhibits appropriate conduct that supports cultural diversity and considers changes in the world's dynamic business environment. Thus, this study would illuminate on participatory and contingency planning theories for adequate understanding of the management issues facing Nokia. Therefore, the company collapsed since it failed to consider the adverse effects of relying on a dictatorship and dormant leadership that does not acknowledge and appreciate cultural diversity.
3.0 Critical Discussion
3.1 Participatory Planning: Positive Aspects
Participatory planning has lots of advantages to virtually all stakeholders of a business since it encourages contributions of every interested person. When every interested individual is engaged in decision-making processes, the eventual outcome would probably be satisfying to everyone. It is imperative that participatory planning acknowledges and appreciates diversities that exist in different types of people. Subsequently, every stakeholder enjoys a sense of ownership, an aspect that draws benefits that entail motivation of employees, assumption of responsibility by all stakeholders, and encouragement of every stakeholder to contribute towards betterment of their entity. Similarly, every stakeholder strives to ensure timely and appropriate responses to varied occurrences as responsible and empowered persons with sound understanding of their firm’s goal and target objectives. Eventually, all the stakeholders would be proud owners and originators of every intervention strategy that promote positive growth and development of their organization. Also, participatory planning has high chances of providing sound decisions, promotes creativity and innovation by relying on contributions from several individuals with varying levels of understanding, expertise, experiences and values.
Besides, participatory planning promotes development of trust among involved people. Consequently, beneficial relationships would prevail in an organization that embraces such type of planning. Moreover, local communities and other engaged parties would be ready and willing to share vital information that facilitate development of apt solutions to existing gaps and barriers, thus promoting peaceful and profitable coexistence. Still, employees and other engaged parties would exhibit high performance since their contributions, concerns and opinions are respected and valued by their firm.
3.2 Participatory Planning: Negative Aspects
Participatory planning consumes lots to time and energy since it endeavors to collect and consider contributions from every stakeholder. The relatively large number of participants who are engaged in participatory planning require more time to present their opinions, suggestions and other contributions. Further, some of the engaged parties may generate remote and less useful information that does not support development of the desired decisions. Thus, a firm would spend much time which could otherwise have been used to accomplish other essential activities such as development of products and services.
Moreover, participatory planning promotes sharing of information, a practice that may result in leakage of sensitive and critical information that malicious individuals could utilize to harm an organization, its processes or employees. Some information that should be preserved for top management and other few personnel would spread to several individuals. Hence, an organization may not adequately preserve security and privacy of its sensitive information.
3.3 Contingency Planning: Positive Aspects
A contingency plan is vital for an organization since it serves as a suitable alternative and backup plan that a firm would adopt when the predetermined processes and operations fail. Accordingly, a contingency plan is a rescue strategy for a firm when anticipated risks emerge. Since a contingency plan offers all details including actions to be done and individuals who will be engaged, a firm would handle a disaster with more comfort and limited or no instances of panic and confusion. During emergencies, organizations may not have sufficient time to make sound decisions, thus, contingency plans are crucial because they are developed and tested on time to ensure they are effective in addressing a disaster. Moreover, a firm would take advantage of new opportunities by developing and embracing an appropriate contingency plan that ensures allocation of adequate resources for embracing new and better business strategies that may arise. Subsequently, a contingency plan is well-developed and actionable, rendering highly-applicable during instances of crises. Besides, a firm has high chances of emerging successful by embracing an appropriate contingency plan since it (contingency plan) offers detailed procedures of implementing applicable processes. As a result, an organization minimizes damages and avoids bad public image and reputation by establishing a contingency plan that strives to ensure that its operations continue smoothly with the least or no interference from an emergency. Also, virtually all stakeholders of a business are reassured of safety and positive progress of their project despite looming risks.
3.4 Contingency Planning: Negative Aspects
A contingency plan is only applicable when an organization is preparing to handle identified risks only. Since the plan is not suitable for unknown risks, a firm is vulnerable to unforeseen perils. Moreover, contingency planning does not prevent a risk from occurring, but rather endeavors to reduce its (risk’s) impact. Still, contingency planning consumes lots of time, funds and energy which could otherwise be used to accomplish other vital processes. A firm would use lots of its resources in planning, training its employees and doing other preparatory activities for an event that my never happen. Further, a firm would spend extra resources and time for constantly updating its contingency plan as the dynamic business environment presents new challenges and threats. Hence, a contingency plan may not prove beneficial since it strives to elaborate and explain how an organization can deal with an anticipated disaster instead of establishing strategies of avoiding such unwanted occurrences.
4.0 Recommendations
As discussed above, Nokia could adequately address the issues facing its management by employing either participatory or contingency plan. Nokia lags behind in development and collapses because it embraces an unsuitable form of management that does not acknowledge and appreciate cultural diversities among its staff members. Consequently, the organization relies on an unmotivated and dissatisfied workforce due to its (Nokia’s) unsupportive culture that uses commands to accomplish its operations without considering needs of its employees and changes in the industry. Conversely, the organization could utilize participatory planning to address the undesired culture. Precisely, the firm should encourage all of its stakeholders, including employees, to contribute towards resolving prevailing and anticipated issues by offering their opinions, suggestions and perceptions according to the participatory theory. Thus, Nokia could engage its workforce and other stakeholders in developing appropriate solutions for addressing the current crisis while preparing to avoid similar situation in future.
On the other hand, Nokia could utilize the contingency planning approach to develop and execute an appropriate strategy for addressing the prevailing management issues. Since the organization failed to establish a suitable contingency plan, it has no strategy for resolving the current management issues. The firm does not have sufficient time to develop and test a contingency plan before using it to handle the crisis that has occurred. However, the firm could develop suitable strategies for handling similar or other management issues in future. Therefore, it is advisable for Nokia to adopt a participatory planning strategy to ensure that it effectively address the current issue while developing suitable strategies for preventing similar situations in future.
5.0 Conclusion
This report concludes that Nokia could adequately address its current management issues by adopting a participatory planning strategy that encourages contributions from all stakeholders, including its employees. Moreover, the participatory planning is useful in preventing recurrence of such and related issues because it facilitates development of informed decisions that favor all the engaged parties.
Reference ListAlexander, V., Havercome, C., & Mujtaba, B. G. (2015). Effectively managing employees to get results in a diverse workplace such as American Express. Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, 7(1), 13. Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/openview/a9cd7938231dc194c962119b2e89615a/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=1056382
Peltonen, T. (2019). Case Study 4: The Collapse of Nokia’s Mobile Phone Business. In Towards Wise Management (pp. 163-188). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Yusof, H. S. M., Said, N. S. M., & Ali, S. R. O. (2016). A study of organizational culture and employee motivation in private sector company. Journal of Applied Environment and Biology Sciences, 6(3S), 50-54.
Learning strengths, Areas to Improve and Plan (2)
Learning strengths, Areas to Improve and Plan
Learning Strengths
Learning strengths are a foundation for academic success in motion, pictures and television. My first strength is attention to detail. To analyze images and scenes, attention to detail is a requirement, which helps in my assignments and classwork. Second is a strong memory of information. I am usually thorough and accurate because I tend to remember information given in class and required for analyzing movies; subsequenty group members rely on me to provide guideline according to already provided data. Third, I am flexible to changes in the environment. I quickly adapt to modifications in class, especially in changes made to assignment information. Fourth, I visualize a lot. During learning, I usually think openly and broadly. I easily interpret information in movies and visualize activities to undertake; as a result develop solution or target towards a specific goal. These strengths enhance my learning process, thus achieve better academic results.
What to Improve
However, I also have learning weaknesses that hinder my academic success. First, I provide too many details, in class reports, which makes me give unnecessary consequently earning poor marks. For example, after completion of a movie project, I wrote a report of 15 pages for a small class project, hence getting 20%. Second, I am poor at delegating duties and prefer performing work myself irrespective of the workload. During class activities, I get critical with people’s work, which affects performance of group assignments due to late submission. Third, I have a fear of presenting to large groups. My major in motion, pictures and television involves a lot of presentation. For example, during a research presentation in class of movie analysis, I had stage fright, shortness of breath, shaky body and voice, and sweat alot. My instructor had to make me sit, and I never made the presentation again. Lastly, I get impatient fast, especially during long-duration classes. I lack concentration at times since I get tired and become restless therefore losing some contents mentioned in class.
My Plan
My major requires a lot of report writing and presentations. To improve on my weaknesses, I plan to get training on report writing on onsite-courses, to know the essential factors to include and engage in more report writings to perfect the skill. Also, I plan to trust other people, especially my teammates and work with them more. I will achieve this by giving them a chance to contribute. To add on, I plan to embrace leadership skills, improve my communication through regular speaking and addressing groups of people to let out the fear I have. Lastly, I will try to make myself wait. I realized that I get impatient due to the thought of other activities I am supposed to do. Therefore, having a schedule for every event and assignments would prevent the weakness.