Reflective Writing

                                     Reflective Writing

                                           (Michele)

My role in the event

In our group which is named Forest, there are three members in total. One is from Organization and Change Management, and he is a part time student. The other two are full time students who are from MBA. Generally speaking, we are all quite optimistic and easy going, so we get on well with each other.

 

Because of several reasons as followed, we all recommended the group member from Organization and Change Management as our group leader. On one hand, he had longer working time than us, so we thought that his rich working experience would play an important role on our group project. Since we were evening class, we were advised to do the project with more working experience as guidance, so that the group project would be more excellent. On the other hand, we thought that he was very proactive. He was willing to be the first one to put forward his ideas and shared with us.

 

Therefore, my role in the event was a group member. I tried my best to look up the course material and listen to the class carefully, and then shared my understanding or ideas about the group project with my group members. They would also give me some suggestions that helped me to broaden my eyesight and form deeper understanding about the course content, so that I was able to apply the theory better to group project. At the same time, I also gave them some suggestions about their ideas. In a word, we learned from each other.

 

In fact, we usually discussed in details several times to make sure that we had collected the ideas from each group member. Then, we made an outline together before the group task equally assigned. After that, I would do a lot of efforts to finish my part. In the end, we worked together to integrate our separated parts into a completed group project.

 

When we cooperated with another group named Ants from day class, our group Forest always formed a united opinion with our own members before we discussed with them, because it could save a lot of time. Generally speaking, I thought that we had a quite pleasant journey with group Ants. Meanwhile, I believed that I also have learnt a lot from them.

 

The reason why I adopt this role

 

There are two reasons why I adopt this role in our group. For one thing, as we know that there should be only one leader in one group to make the team more united, so we should recommend an appropriate person to shoulder the responsibility. Compared with our current leader, I thought that I might not be better than him in the fields of leadership and working experience. For another, this course was his core course. Therefore, we supposed that he had more relevant knowledge and experience from his past study and exercise than us, so that he could control the general direction of the group project much better, as well as gave us some precious advises and comments.

 

After we finished our group project, I thought that the role I played in the event was very suitable for me. Besides, I had already tried my best to make a contribution to the project. Meanwhile, I was really satisfied with our group project.

 

Next, I am going to pick some significant events that inspired me a lot.

 

Meaningful Events

Topic choosing

 

In fact, our group leader brought forward three topics and asked us to choose two from them. The first one was that” a website about food, such as Chinese food and drink (eg. wine or coffee) matching”. The second one was “collaborating fashion with meal or tasting”, and the last one was “charity group with other business”. During the discussion, I recommended the first or the third topic. I thought the first one idea---food and drink matching was a good choice, because both food and drink belonged to the dietary field. Thus, it would not be difficult to match them. As for the third one, I believed that the operation ways of charity group attracted a lot of attention from the general public, for example the usage of the collected money. Therefore, I thought the topic was meaningful for the society. However, in my opinion, the second topic might be a bit difficult for us, for there were few connections between fashion and any other field in the list. Thus, in fact, I was not in favor of choosing the second topic.

 

However, after discussion with my own group members, both of them preferred the second one, which one I was least interested in. They thought there would be some significant differences existing, whatever field they chose to collaborate with fashion industry. As a result, the second topic seemed to be a great challenge for us, and it would attract a lot of attention from others. As for the first topic, some of them believed that it would not be attractive owning to variety of similarities between food and drink. Although the third one was an excellent choice, considering that another group also chose charity business as their topic, my group members believed that the competition would be fierce, so they decided to give up. Finally, my group members decided that we chose the topic of collaborating fashion company and catering company as our topic.

 

At that time, I felt a bit confused, for I did not have any opinion about this topic, so that I did not know the way to conduct the following group presentation and report. Besides, I thought that if we chose the first or the third topic, we might find a lot of material to look up, as well as some cases to learn from. Therefore, I would be more confident if we picked up the other two topics.

 

However, since the majority of our group members chose this topic, I should follow them. Next, I looked for and read some materials myself and some pictures shared by my group members. After some research, my interest was arisen, and I became to be confident with this topic.

 

Then, we had a virtual meeting with Ants group by QQ. They also preferred to choose this topic.

 

From this experience, I knew that interest was very important for a topic choosing. However, interests were also limited by our past experience and the degree of our understanding about this field. The reason why people did not like something might be that they did not have a deep understanding to find the good side of the object.

 

Besides, people should keep the courage to challenge, instead of avoiding them. Because of the challenges, we were likely to learn some knowledge that we never knew. 

 

Lastly, unity and democracy was very important for a team and even an organization. When we chose a topic, it was possible to take everyone’s opinion into consideration, but we could not satisfy everyone’s need. Therefore, the principle of “the minority is subject to the majority” was very important for each group member. Group members should accept the decision that made by the whole group, even though someone might not like it. Only by this way could a group go further and does better.

 

Agnes b

 

In fact, one of the important reasons why they liked the second topic was that they read and was inspired by a successful case named Agnes b, a famous fashion brand from France. However, after deeper research, we found that the business model of Agnes b was quite different from what we thought. Therefore, we wanted to find some cases about cooperation between catering company and fashion company, particularly their products owned some similar design style and so forth. However, after a few days of hard work, we still could not find any cases that totally fitted our requirement.

 

At that time, one of our group member suggested that we could use the case of Agnes b to bring out our topic. I also strongly supported for the suggestion. Then, one of my tasks was assigned that I needed to use either innovation or creativity to connect Agnes b with our topic.

 

From my view of point, owning to its wide business scope, which included various kinds of business fields, for example fashion clothing, flowers, Café, Beauty and even film interests, Agnes b was easy to get in touch with different customer groups, so that the good brand awareness was easily built and the sales performance was improved. For any one of business fields, its products are likely to be known by other customers from other business fields. That was an important reason why we wanted to collaborate with the catering company.

 

However, I also found that apart from enjoying the same logo, the design of products from different business fields had no direct connection, what was totally different from our cooperation model. Since we were independent companies, if there were no similarities such as similar design style between the new created products from two companies, the cooperation relationship was difficult to be built, and the benefits of collaborating with the other company were hard to enjoy. This would be the biggest difference between Agnes b and our project.

 

As what we learnt in the class, innovation implies the improvements that can be applied to a product, a product process, a business model, and even a course to something that already exists. I thought that our group project just made some improvements, so this was innovation.

 

When I told other group members about my analysis, all of them agreed with me. Eventually, we decided to use innovation rather than creativity to associate the case Agnes b with our group project.

 

When we prepared the presentation, we wanted to add a video to make our presentation better. In the beginning, we tried to find a radio which could briefly introduce Agnes b. However, we could not find any videos that fitted our requirement. I just found two separate radios. One was the introduction of Agnes b Café, and the other one was a fashion show from Agnes b.

 

However, one of my group members suggested that we’d better not show the two videos when we presented. On one hand, the two radios cost around three minutes in total, so they were too long to show. On the other hand, the two videos did not have described Agnes b group clearly.

 

However, I thought that two videos were able to prove the opinion that there were not any similarities in products design between Agnes b’s Café and fashion clothing. Together with the pictures of our new products showed later, our innovation concept was easily and clearly to be identified.

 

After I interpreted my opinion, they agreed with me. As for the video time, I agreed that cutting 1 minute off when we presented for saving time.

 

Negotiation with the group Ants

Communication ways

After discussion, we decided to use QQ as our main communication tool, for the majority of us were from mainland China. Thus, QQ was the most familiar communication tool for us. Besides, QQ was able to be used by smartphone as long as the WIFI covered. Therefore, it was convenient for us to use QQ and we could discuss on QQ anywhere. It really saved us a lot of time. Apart from QQ, we also took email as a complemental communication tool, because email was convenient for us to elaborate the information. At that time, we thought our communication tools were perfect.

 

However, when we began to use these two ways to communicate with the other group Ants, we began to found some problems.

 

Firstly, as we know, chatting on QQ, we could not see others’ body languages and facial expressions, what made it more difficult to understand others’ opinion correctly. Besides, we were easily to be absent minded because of lacking of eye contact.

 

Secondly, typing words cost much more time than speaking, which made our communication a bit inefficient. Also, if some group members sent the messages at the same time, part of messages were easily to be covered.

 

Lastly, when some were typing a lot of words to present their ideas, other group members might move attention to the next point.

 

Under this situation, we decided to add another communication way that was video chat. It was similar with talk face to face. By this communication way, we could interpret our opinion one by one, and we were unlikely to lose patience.

 

Win-win relationship

At first, considering of the difficulty of creating new products according to the catering design, our group suggested that only the catering company created products according to our fashion clothing design. However, Ants group refused us for the reason that they thought they would lose the opportunity to promote their products. Finally, we agreed with their suggestion, because if our new products collaborated with their design, at least, they would attract the attention from loyal customers of catering company.

 

Besides, we had conflicts about the places that sold our newly created products. We hold the opinion that we should open a theme restaurant where we could sell products from both companies, while Ants group preferred to sell the products on our website first.

 

Then, we made an agreement that we sold the products on the website first, because we needed to test if our products had an excellent sales to open the theme restaurant, and then we began to think about the necessary of opening a theme restaurant.

 

Finally, I thought that we have achieved win-win situation.

 

Conclusion

 

From this event, I strongly believe that I have learned a lot. Apart from the knowledge I learnt from class, I also learnt the way that relate the study of theories to real life situations and practices.