Decision making

This is the second experiment of making a decision. This time the task is much harder then designing an egg protector. Not like the first time, Professor assigned everything and maxium 5 people in a group to make a decision. This time, the leader(professor) doesn't play any role and give group member enough freedom to decide what we want. Not like a small group that we are easier to compromise, the whole class need to agree with one idea in the limited time seems like an impossible task. But we did it, it is a shock to me. Bailey has a great leadership who steps out to lead the whole class make a compromise and solve the chaos situation, make an impossible task become possible.

At begainning, eveyone tries to compete and win agreement. Since different people have different needs, some people did bad at the exam try to higher their grades and people who did well want to change the test format to do even better next time. I use the compromise approach because I don't like the conflict. Whatever final decision will not affect me that much as long as I study hard I can handle every test format. I just want to follow the majority opinion to get a best deal for everyone so I didn't against anyone or any idea. I just sit behind and be quite. Time passing very fast people are still arguing and trying to get personal benefit, obviously it doesn't work. I can see the rest of peole start to worry about the risky condition because if there is no compromise decision come out at the end of class we will not get anything. We don't know what decision will be passed and don't the effects. Breaking down to small groups is the best way I can think but doesn't work at this chaos situation. No one wants to listen or waste time but actually they waste more time by arguing and competing. At this time, a powerful leader steps out and calms everyone down. She respect everyone's idea and ask why they make the decision. Suddenly, the procedure became organized and more peaceful. Finally we all agree with drop the lowest grade and double the highest one, also provide extra credits. This final decision looks like benefit eveyone. The experiment once again shows the importance of leadership. If Bailey didn't step out become a leader charactor i don't think we can come up with a decision in the end. There has to be a leader to guide group members to make a decision. The importance of management is once again presented.

Planning Process (egg project)

Our group didn't success at making an effective egg protector as we think it will work. When the egg drop down and cracked i was so disappointed because i really think our group did a very good job, we actually go through every step. First, we defined our goal was to make a contraption to prevent egg from breaking when it hits the ground. Also, 50% of the egg has to be visible. We kept reminding each other that we only have 25 minutes to plan and actually 10 minutes to finish the contraption. The materials we have are very limited, there are only 8 flexible straws and not very sticky tape and only one scissor for the whole class. We decided to not use scissor since we know the percentage to get it from so many groups was very low so we can save the time to do something else. We also asked our group members who ever had this kind of experience before but unfortunately no one did. After determining our resources we begin to come up with some ideas. We don't actually have a leader, everyone tries to contribute good ideas. The only guy in our group come up with making a cushion on the bottom of the egg by crossing over straws and taped it up to the egg. We taped the two sides of the straws to keep air inside and we think this is a genius idea to protect the egg but we still failed because we didn't calculate the weight and the height. Our little cushion is not powerful enough to support the egg. Since the rest of the group can't think anything better so we all agree with this idea, no argument at all. Then we distribute works to everyone. One person who is extremely careful needs to hold the egg. Two people make "air straws" by taping up two sides of the straw. The person who comes up with the design actually make the contraption. Last person needs to write down everyone's name and draw the picture of our cushion. Everything goes very smooth. We have enough time to plan everything. Then we take the action just as we planned. We finished in 7 minutes and tested on our table. We were very confident that the cushion will work out however, it still failed. I think we should ask the shortest person from our group to drop the egg, it will be more likely to success. But never mind, at least we learned a lot from the experiment. Next time we will do better!