Out of Date Ideas

I was reading this talk given by John Von Achen. In it he gave a great insight to many of the topic that we have been talking about in class. One story he told was of coming across a cassette tape one day in his house. Wanting to listen to it, he looked and looked for something to play it on. But couldn’t find anything. Even his car didn’t have a tape player. In its day, the cassette was revolutionary and the high tech item. It use to be very efficient and useful. But in todays world it is rendered almost useless. You can hardly even find something to play it on. This principle can be applied to the business world. Old ways of doing business where, in their day, amazing and got the job done. But with the market that we have today, those ways are out of date. We need not to be stuck in the past; using Covey's and Pink's models, we can think of new and innovative ways of doing things.

Utilizing and Valuing Technology

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
I like this guy. His paradigm on our world and all the technology and resources we have is very refreshing to hear. The world and all the opportunities we have are so priceless. A successful business shows gratitude for the resources available, and then utilizes them to their full potential. We have so much to be grateful for, and our capabilities have come a long way in such a short amount of time. This man has a fresh perspective on life and is able to realize just how amazing things are and that things have been much harder in the past. People have so much more now but yet they are unhappier than people who had to deal with harder circumstances with less resources. Businesses should take advantage of the resources they have, and an advantage to a U.S based business is the mass production and availability of technology. Take a couple minutes and watch this video, you wont regret it.

Sanitation in Public Restrooms

There are definitely many objects in the bathroom and aspects about the public restrooms people want to change. I would like to point out though, not all public restrooms SUCK as some would put it. I have used a few public restrooms that if those could be replicated everywhere……well then many people wouldn’t mind going to the bathroom in them but, I know that it would cost a load of money to replace and duplicate these types of restrooms. One of the biggest issues I have seen and that others complain about is sanitation. There are definitely areas in the restrooms that can be improved but some of the issues at hand lie in the beholder. Meaning, there are many people out there that simply just don’t care to wash their hands or make the trash go in the garbage can. If bathrooms were nicer, maybe just maybe more people would feel the need to respect the public restrooms a little more. All in all, I think a big issue is that many people don’t want to take the time to wash their hands (or don’t think it necessary, which is gross) or want to make sure their trash goes in the garbage can. In stating this, how much of an affect would changing the public restrooms have on making them nicer, if people continue to trash them? I think in general more people would respect a more “elegant” bathroom, taking better care of it, and making it a more “pleasant” experience when one uses a public restroom. Although, we will still have those who don’t care to take better care of them.

Michaela Ferguson

Importance of Entrepreneurship

I really appreciated Dave Clark coming in to speak with our class. He helped me realize that being an entrepreneur isn't just starting a small business with a creative idea. It's much more than that. Equally as important are the entrepreneurs that work in larger businesses. I also loved his explanation of 1.) Thinking 2.) Reasoning 3.) Acting. These words all sound easy enough. It's the implementing of these in greater depth that lead to being an entrepreneur. While they don't always lead to success that is also part of being an entrepreneur-- taking risks. One of my favorite things that he told us in class was that entrepreneurs take risks. Not being risky, but they also don't wait for success to be 100 guaranteed, or even 90 percent. Sometimes you have to trust that your hard work, diligence and passion is enough. I looked entrepreneur up in the dictionary and this is what I found: "a person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk." So not only does an entrepreneur need to be willing to take needed risks, but to also have the initiative needed to run a business. Dave Clark really has made me look at all aspects of my life about where I can apply this principle of entrepreneurship and realize why it is one of the fundamentals of the Huntsman school of business.

Winners Truly Never Cheat

As i was thinking about the book "Winners never cheat" by Jon M. Huntsman, a personal experience came to mind that reenforces the the value of being honest. Back when i was in high school one of my summer jobs was working for a car wash. It was far from an enjoyable summer employment but in high school that would be hard to accomplish. But i was able to pull a valuable lesson from it. We were given minimum wage and we split the tips. But the problem with this system was that a portion of the employees were less than reputable kids. Some of the kids pocketed the tips and still took their portion of the tips that the rest of us pooled together. This was really hard to put up with but i did not want to be the kid that snitched. But one day one of the managers caught an employee walking away with pocketed tips. The employee was let go and the rest of the employees at the car wash were more careful and the pocketing of tips diminished quite a bit. This was just one situation that reenforced Huntsman's principle of Winners Never Cheat. I was also able to see how my own choice to not pocket tips left me able to work worry free. While those that were pocketing were constantly looking over their shoulder, making the end of everyday of work a stressful experience. Winners truly never cheat
Tyson Andrus

They can put a man on the moon but they can't figure out public restrooms?

In the past couple decades we have accomplished a lot of incredible stuff. We invented rock and roll. We have hybrid cars, Skype, Facebook, reality tv... etc. The world is such a modern place, I can talk to my friends without opening my mouth through texting. We have done so much but yet we have failed to update the public restroom. Of course, we do have automatic toilets and sinks but overall I think the feelings about public restrooms have remained the same, THEY SUCK! Nobody likes going in there because they are afraid of what they will see, smell and even touch. But the world better step back and make room for the USU Business by Design teams. We are going to reinvent the public restroom. Putting a man on the moon was easy compared to the task that lies ahead...

Employer-Employee Relationships

 My mom worked for a company for the past five years designing lightning protection systems for comercial and private buildings. Although there were a set of rules for the lightening protects systems it took a lot of creative ability to design a plan for each individual building and fit the plan into the budget of the client. Over those five years she became extremely skilled at her job, and built up a very profitable client base. But not once, over those five years did my mom receive a raise, and at times she was screwed over by her boss, who would fail to deliver projects to her, or leave out important pieces of information and then in front of higher up management blame problems on her "incompetence".

Eventually my mom got fed up with this behavior and started working doing freelance projects, she took many of those clients with her, and now works not only doing lightening protection systems, but solar panel design for roofs and private architectural design.

Her experience taught me about the importance of an employer and employee relationship. I don't know what made my mothers boss act the way he did, but in the end it did not benefit him, or my mother at all.
It is important as an employer to treat your employees like people and not objects. To respect and try to understand them. But, as an employee it is also your responsibility to give your employer something to respect. Many of us will work as employees before or if we become employers and I think it is important to be the kind of employee that you would someday like to employ. This will not only help you within the company, but also later when you are seeking to hire employees, it will be much easier to spot the traits you would like in your employees. When a company is filled with good management and good employees; that is a win-win situation.