My Current Responsibilities and Career Path - Essay Example

Describe your current responsibilities and career path, including both short and long-term goals. A few years ago, little did I know that my incentives to undertake business in the first instance based on my penchant for financial management would patent themselves in the corporate world to test my ideals of business studies and necessitate further academic study in the diverse field of management. Initially, the osmosis of business decisions into the permeable fabric of the corporate society had birthed, for me, nascent passions for Business Management especially in the area of Luxury Goods. Currently I am enrolled in a undergraduate course in International Business and I have a work experience of almost three years. I have started business in the Cosmetics in my native country of Morocco which pertained to the distribution,retail,import and export.In the recent months I have decided to move to London which is the hub of major business activity. Most of my time is spent looking after my business,however I do devote a considerable amount of my time to my academic pursuits which are thoroughly linked with my business considerations in the arena of import and export.My aim in my academic and financial exodus to Europe is threefold.To gain the necessary acumen to be able to enhance my understandings of the intricacies involved in then sale and purchase of luxury goods,their marketing and the legal and economic implications and considerations involved there in.I look forward to my degree being an adventure into the intricacies of wealth creation and business management.Even as a child I was thoroughly impressed by the likes of Bill Gates and Martha Stewart and wondered with much curiosity how these top class entrepreneurs conquered the marketing world.Some day I intend to see my business acumen take me all the way to the top in the corporate ladder and allow me to have my company trade as one of most successful corporate entities on the world’s prominent stock exchanges. 2-How will obtaining a graduate degree at IUM contribute to your career objectives? What do you hope to gain? As I have already gleaned from the materials available the MScLGS is a term based 60-credit program for recent graduates like me who have already tasted the ups and downs of the corporate world.My aim is therefore to try and acquire quire knowledge and skills specific to the luxury industry. Only as a innovative and imaginative managers will I be able to pursue my own business goals in the future and I believe that this degree is offering me just that.I feel that this course can provide me with the necessary acumen in the arena of strategic planning, identity and brand management, product policy, new product development.Also important is the part about the product portfolio management in the luxury goods market which will help me market my products and goods in a more strategically innovative way.Essentially I feel that this course will allow me to untilise and emphasise upon strategic thinking and creativity can be used to a corporate advantage with the requisite quantitative and qualitative research methodologies with the correct amount of intellectual and academic acumen to better understand the modern corporate environments in its economic, cultural, psychological,and technological contexts.Also necessary is the understanding of the commercial and business variables alongwith the consumer perspectives in this regard from a more industry-specific perspective highlighting the cognitive and managerial capacities required to achieve success in business perception. In this vein, it is UMI that can provide me with penetrative acumen to see the fine difference between corporate ideals and impetuous business resolutions. I believe that the business community requires those who can foresee the consequences of the fast changing commercial environment and I intend to do the same after successfully completing a degree at your prestigious University 3-How do other people see you in terms of strengths and weaknesses? Eversince I was 16 years old and a struggling high school student I had a strong ambition to make my way to the top. Organisation is a key word in my personal, social, academic and professional life and I firmly believe that Organisation makes any business entrepreneur succeed like success. I have made this vital principle as the guiding star of my life. I believe that harmony with my colleagues at work and class-fellows and school teachers can work wonders in the efficient achievement of group tasks. During my interaction with the business world I have come to realise that my weaknesses in the area of interpersonal skills do not stem from my own inadequacies in the (arguably successful) handling of English as a second language but my style and expertise in the management of people around me and working under me.The work environment comes with its own diversity of people and the interaction with “real humans” who suffer from all kinds of problems like anger,envy and love.Managing people has more to do with connecting with them.Also in my experience with marketing and management I have come to realise that ambitious words on paper do not necessarily get us anywhere but in a live face to face interview where our interacting capabilities are put to test and we have to respond spontaneously and intelligently. I admit that despite my command of written English I need to improve upon my spoken English which I firmly believe will generate confidence in me and make me achieve what I want through my excellent management skills and my dedication and zeal to precision. I have always felt that I can overcome my deadline lapses through effective time management especially during the holiday seasons in my business management.I have always believed in slightly enhanced internet research to will get me to the places I want to go, especially when I have been able to gain insights from online management reports and journals for my own personal education.Last but not the least I am well aware of the threat of procrastination which is one of my most profound faults and gets me into trouble significantly during the holidays. This is partly due to my family oriented life style and fatigue from my business activities which I need to finance the running expenditure of my Further Studies. I realise this may not entirely be my fault but I realise that professionals cannot afford to lay back on their jobs. 4-What arguments would you use to demonstrate your capacity to perform well in the program? As mentioned before organisation is a key word in my personal, social, academic and professional life. My best teachers in the art of organisation are, of course, honey bees and ants -the two tiny wonderful creature of God on our planet.As an entrepreneur I do realise that although entrepreneurship can be highly rewarding, itpresents many challenges as well. Even as a fresh graduate with a lot of business sense I feel that at times I will be unsure about which direction to move in, or what to formulate for my business ideas and plans formally.I feel within business philosophy I am more ofa reflector and theorist and I do base my learning approach on a heavy amount of contemplation regarding the material facts in front of me and their relationship with the practical aspects of my learning. I tend to resent undertaking any sort of task where I am not allowed a reasonable amount of time to reflect on my performance as I complete my tasks. However when it comes to urgent work and meeting deadlines I do preserve my logical thinking process yet I prioritise my tasks and always look ahead.I channel my energy and talent creatively by working with full focus and a regard for all the consequences of my business decisions.Therefore I believe that I can do very well given the chance to join this programme and to learn from one of the worlds leading universities in the management arena. 5- Is there anything else that you would like to share with us? As a business minded person I feel that intrinsic motivation more rewarding for me in any academic or business decision I take . I get an inner satisfaction from work and very often I feel that it is because of my intrinsic motivations and my inner ambitions of doing better at my job that I am more inclined to work harder at my tasks.However at times an extrinsic reward may make my work worth my while but I feel it has all got more to do with my dedication to excelling at my work. It has less to do with the monetary or extrinsic rewards aspect many times.Secondly I am a firm believer in the proper presentational and marketing skills in any business deal or promotion particularly luxury goods because they rely the most upon good visual tactics.Infact during my current course I had a chance to attend a business presentation by a fellow student of mine (by a current student) and I was not very satisfied due to the extremely haphazard way the student sought to convince us of his point of view.It was just plainly obvious that they had not done any original research and just gotten the subject matter of the presentation off wikipedia.I am a big stickler for original research and I believe in proper presentation. The presenter was talking too much and not helping us out with our queries. Therefore I felt that it was not a satisfactory presentation.A good presentation I attended some weeks ago was by a bright girl who did not only take the trouble of drawing up nice and clear diagrams but also listened to our queries and went an extra mile to explain the problems we faced despite her language impediment. So my conclusion is that spoken English alone is not just a requirement for effective presentations but there are other factors involved like good listening and presentation. -To be a good team player, one needs to be an effective individual leader and vice-versa. Describe an example of where you were challenged to become a leader in a team-oriented context. What was the challenge you faced, how did you address it, and what did you take away from the experience for your future development as a leader? My business philosophy is much inspired by the one the most prominent and and highly regarded ,American statesmen, Colin Powell and his principles of leadership which he enunciated in his prominent book “Exploring Leadership” where he has sought to familiarize people with some very unique leadership qualities in which he speaks about how a leader (in any area will model the way for others, inspire a shared vision and enable others to act). The ideal leader therefore will challenge the norms and work beyond the ordinary norms which dictate uniformity and monotonousness in our work.I would like to quote it when Mr. Powell once said " Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavours succeed or fail because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds….organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing". There have been many times when I have been faced with situations where managing people became a difficult task particularly when I had to deal with the clash of cultural perceptions and the tendency for my multi ethnic and multi religion employees to judge other people from their cultures.Most of my female Muslim employees have grown up in a conservative society where talking to men in public is viewed as a cultural taboo and women are forced to hide themselves from the gaze of men they are not related by blood to.Most of them employed with in my international business ventured were going through a culture shock and found its odd to see men and women talking and laughing openly in international business functions and lunches.I took it upon myself in a very unpleasant situation once where an employee complained that she had faced sexual harassment by one of my British employees.As a leader I assumed the role of a neutral arbitrator and decided to settle the matter peacefully .As the story turned out it was the lady’s first job in her interaction with her male co workers and clients as a part of her job and the British gentleman out of his cultural traits was “charming” and often passed a pleasant comment or two when he met here. However due to her cultural training she thought he was making a pass at her and one day she insulted him in public by telling him not to hit on me.My approach therefore was of a peacemaker that is to make her realise that she was embarrassing herself and the employee by having judged his intentions wrongly.The point is that every culture has its perceptions and when we meet other people we have to respect their traditions and work culture. She mistook that person’s civility for flirtatiousness which was a wrong act on her behalf.However the right approach would be to take a path which was not disadvantageous to either party.I immediately celebrated a diversity week at my work place as the concerned boss and this was my attempt to explain to my work staff that what Jimmy Carter once put beautifully, “ We have become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams”. The aim was to, as a business leader make my management realise that key to success in any modern organisation is the efficient allocation of firms assets particularly its employees skills and capabilities.This is because business philosophy dictates that many organizations fail to perceive the relationship between diversity and performance and diversity issues should now be incorporated into the employee training routine rather than the following of bored “affirmative action” plans.Therefore as a young business entrepreneur I was proud to have addressed the sensitive diversity issues so smoothly because later on I set up a dispute resolution system for any cultural misunderstandings. Read More