Successful team

I was fortunate in that I was able to work with motivated and capable people during all of my internship experiences. My most particular experience was when I worked for Nivea -a skincare firm. During my summer internship at Nivea, I worked with a marketing team made up of four other young, full-time employees. The team leader was 25 and had worked with the firm since graduation so therefore was deemed the most qualified out of all of us. The team system worked in a way that everyone was responsible for a particular task which comprised of visual marketing, textual marketing, cost analysis, plan implementation and brand development. In this sense, everyone was accountable for their respective tasks. It is however important to note that the team leader would be held accountable for any mishaps and that this point was known to the team.

I deem the team successful because we managed to turn in a project proposal a week earlier than deadline. This proposal was later cleared by the marketing head and implemented in a advertising campaign across PC and mobile platforms.

There are several factors that made this team successful, the most important one being our closeness of age. I reference age because this internship was in Asia where age hierarchy dominates many aspects of work life. In a marketing campaign, fresh and novel ideas are just as important as the implementation and realization of the idea. I've heard from many colleagues I worked with during that summer about older team leaders who were resistant to change and new ideas because they were more concerned with posting acceptable results and playing it safe rather than hitting the ball out of the park by treading through unfamiliar territory. Another issue with age is that seniority often dominates the decision making process of the team in that those who are older have way more sway than those who are younger. Having a young team meant that communication was easy people were receptive of thinking outside the box. This was incredibly important to our project as the product we were trying to market had a target demographic of males between the age of 20 and 35. We had great team chemistry, but when deadlines had to be met, the team leader was firm and held each of us accountable for our work. Due to us being comfortable with each other, we coordinated our work better as well. An example was the the clear line of communication between each of us and the person in charge of cost analysis. Due to the tight budget constraints of marketing campaigns, unforeseen costs must be accounted for and communicated clearly so that running over the allocated funds would not become a hurdle that would delay the project.

Opportunism

Over three summer internships, I saw  a couple of instances where a coworker had to choose whether or not they would act opportunistically despite legal and moral codes. The majority of these instances ended in the coworker abiding by company code but occasionally a rotten apple comes up.

One of my bosses who I worked for brought me along to an informal negotiating event where we met with a representative from the potential client firm. The first thing my boss does after grabbing coffee and sitting down was to pull out a thin white envelope and slipping it past the table. The scene looked right out of a movie. The representative looked taken aback after he was asked to open the envelope and I saw through the thin paper that there were a couple stacks of cash. The talk then proceeded as planned with the usual sharing of company facts and potential partnership strategies. I knew my boss had a personal stake in the negotiation as the success of the project would directly impact his year end bonus which therefore explains his action. What was more surprising was how the representative did not offer any sign of acknowledgement and instead just quietly slipped the envelope into his bag. It looked like a practiced reaction which tells me that underhanded dealings in business negotiations might not be as rare as I had thought. I found out later during the end of my internship that the deal that they were negotiating did indeed go through which was not nearly as surprising. 

To side track from personal experiences, I thought about opportunistic behavior while watching the GOP debate this week as well. I wonder just how many of these politicians are simply sweet talking to win votes and conversely how many actually hold true to their word. Take Carly Fiorina for example. Her strong foreign policy stance when she vowed to cut Vladimir Putin off and refuse to engage in bilateral talks surely appeals to an eager nationalistic voter's ears. But given Russia's scale, global presence and Cold War history, just how much of that does she mean and more importantly, to what extent can she achieve such a promise?

Organization experience

As with most others, my most pronounced experience with organization and transaction costs came with internships. This summer I interned at American Express under their GNICS division which was in charge of developing new credit products and how to market said products. I worked as a paid market analyst intern. The position required gathering market data such as relevant consumer bases, their consumption patterns and future growth and outlook of specific segments in order to better market new products towards key consumers. These data then had to be interpreted into text form as well as communicated visually via graphs and diagrams. Due to the nature of the job, the selection process for the position focused heavily on the prior writing and researching experiences which had to be demonstrated through case studies and previous research papers.

Throughout the summer, I prepared a market research report on a new line-up of credit cards that departed from the traditional high-end target consumer base of American Express products. This meant having to deviate from conventional strategies and analyzing the needs of emerging segments of the lower to middle class. I was also fortunate enough to have been assigned project leader and having other interns to manage and coordinate deadlines which was a fantastic experience and a rare glimpse, to someone my age, of what corporate management is all about. After finalizing and delivering the report, I then shadowed my boss by accompanying him to round table talks with other firms to secure value-added propositions to the new AMEX card. This meant seeing first hand how the common interest of gaining market share and brand penetration can unite firms from wholly different market segments. A great example of this is that from the analysis of consumer bases, the strategy of providing customers with faster shipping and discounts to pharmaceutical companies was identified. However, transaction costs really comes into play here as signing a value-added proposition with one firm often comes with the condition of exclusivity, meaning we could only cooperate with one pharmaceutical company for them to agree to giving AMEX card holders a premium. This then launched the entire project into a series of new market research in order to determine which firm best fits the portfolio resulting in a lot of extra work and time.

My expectations for the position was largely that I was to perform a 9-6 office job. Instead, I got the chance to experience managements, see negotiations and explore a new market. I would gladly take a full time position at American Express again as I feel strangely attached to the brand after spending 4 months trying to develop it.

Janet Yellen Econ 490 Fall 2015

Janet Yellen is the current head of the United States Federal Reserve and the first female to chair the position. Prior to her current position, she served as the Vice Chair of the Federal Reserve as well as heading the San Francisco Fed.

As head, her job is to pursue the Federal Reserve mandate to pursue price stability and maximum employment. She is ranked among the most powerful women by Forbes.

Yellen has been at the center of the financial spotlight recently as all eyes look to her decision of whether or not to hike interest rates amidst the low unemployment rate of the U.S hovering around 5.1%. Her decision will reveal whether the Fed thinks current levels of low unemployment will lead to inflation.

Sources
http://www.forbes.com/profile/janet-yellen/
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/janet-yellen-and-the-fed-should-hold-fire