I have always been fascinated by how learning can change the way my mind processes information, perceives problems, interprets details, and in a large all encompassing sense, the way it thinks. Learning fundamentally shifts the way I think. Learning new words gives me the ability to describe what I am feeling, to relate those thoughts to other thoughts and feelings, and to formulate conclusions with those associations. Vocabulary in a sense illuminates the world to my mind and enables me to actually understand.

The same can be said for ideas. As a student of commerce concentrating in economics and finance, I am constantly astonished at just how great an impact learning a new idea can have in terms of affecting how I interpret the universe. After a number of quantitative microeconomics courses I found myself seeing nearly any large-scale issue, both in my personal life as well as society at large, in terms of supply and demand functions, marginal equilibriums, and various other utility models. After a couple of courses in Industrial Organization Economics and Game Theory Analysis I began to see nearly every scenario involving more than two people as game theoretic equations. Just after a couple of crash course in Corporate Finance, I was surprised to yet again see myself breaking down multiple facets of my own life and the world around me into questions of present value and time valuations.

My point, is that the world rarely changes, but the ideas in our heads, what we have learned, that foundation of knowledge is constantly being tweaked, and more and more ideas are continuously being added. College is by far the zenith of this process. As a college student I am not only learning about myself, who I am, where I belong in the world, but in a more academic sense I am encountering new thoughts and ideas that change the way in which I process my surroundings. The inputs may be fairly static, but the mechanism for assigning meaning to those inputs, our own mind, is completely dynamic.

This realization hit me this past weekend when I found myself subconsciously utilizing ideas we learned about in our previous class, to help me understand my every day life. I saw that my operations management class was changing the way I understood the world, and transitively was changing who I am.

In our previous class we learned about process control charts that help managers see if their process for making goods is out of control. This would indicate that the process is being affected by special cause variation. If the process is out of control, something needs to be fixed; there is a problem that is not caused by mere chance. We learned how X-Bar charts control the central tendency of the process, R-Charts control the variability in a process, and P-Charts control for defects.

This past weekend, I realized on three specific occasions that I used these methods to isolate problems I encountered in a day. The first involved my car. I know roughly how many miles I can drive my car once I have filled up my gas tank, and any mileage above or below, I can explain, to certain extent, by good or poor driving. This weekend however, for two consecutive fill-ups, I got far fewer miles than I anticipated. This level was well below my mental lower control limit, so I knew there was a problem. This prompted me to look into the issue further, and when I did I saw that there was a leak in my gas line that was costing me A LOT of money. I used the same technique when I was planning how many hours of sleep that I NEEDED to be fully functional and capable for work on Saturday morning, and I realized that my lower control limit was about five hours. Thus I knew I should really make sure to get six hours of sleep. When I was solving math problems in a new subject area, I utilized a subconscious P-Chart when referencing my answers to the back of the book and looking to see if a satisfactory ratio were void of “defects”.

Have you noticed anything like this happening to you so far as a result of this class, or any other of your classes? It would be interesting to see how different majors see the world differently. Please share any interesting stories or additions.

 

A recent article in Bloomberg Businessweek highlighted the shrinking gap between men and women in the corporate workplace. The article delved into both quantitative and qualitative analyses of women working in corporate settings, and the stigma that, although is fading, is still at times placed upon a successful professional woman. It is interesting to note that in 1970  only 35% of a companies corporate staff were female, and today that number is a much more proper 50%. Also in 1970 less than 5% of women earned more than their husbands, while today that percentage is about five times as much, and while there were no female Fortune 500 CEO’s in 1970, there are currently 18 (though this shows improvement, it also highlights very serious issues). The landscape of corporate employment has shifted and so too has the household dynamic of many American families. Opting out of day care and making the decision to have a parent home to raise their children, many fathers are sacrificing careers to become stay at home dads. As this practice becomes more and more common, and more and more socially acceptable, it should be no surprise that the number of female employees in the corporate work world, and especially the number of women in upper level management positions, is expected to rise dramatically in the coming years.

There have been numerous psychological studies looking at the different approaches men and women utilize in their management efforts, and the empirical data produced by such studies have put to rest many misconceptions and preconceived notions Americans hold about women in management positions. In my prior internship experiences, I have had first hand experiences with both male and female direct managers, and though I discourage anyone from making broad generalizations about an entire gender based solely on one, two, or any number of experiences, I can say that they had very different approaches, neither better or wrong.  I believe that one’s life experiences, as well as the obstacles they encounter and overcome, are among the single greatest factors in determining the way that they will manage. It is difficult to argue that men and women experience the world differently. They encounter different challenges, solve different problems, interact in different social situations, and while there is abundant overlap, certain things still remain very “male” and “female”.  In my past experiences, my female boss was much more capable in communications aspects than my male boss, and I felt that she better understood my tasks, my motivations, and my thought processes. I felt more comfortable collaborating with her and asking her for help and advice.  My male boss had an extremely acute eye for details, and was quite demanding of his staff. He saw the big picture, and the importance of each minute detail in that picture. Neither of these managers was better than the other, both had their own strengths and weaknesses, as all human beings do, and both were perfectly capable of being nice and not so nice when the situation called for it.

My question is whether or not you believe that men and women are inclined to be more or less proficient in any of the 10 strategic OM Decisions that all companies must emphasize, and why you believe this? Also, should companies in the future look to strategically place men and women in specific positions to accentuate these talents? And what are the consequences of doing this?