Experience in Managing Wine Business in China - Coursework Example

Applying Critical Reflective Practice Introduction Being a graduate does not only involve completing a college or a degree course. There are students who complete their course but yet they are not able to demonstrate their ‘graduateness’. There are attribute that one needs to posses in order to be a complete graduate by demonstrating their ‘graduateness.’ The attributes include; capability, inquisitiveness, creativity, entrepreneurship, ethical and global outlook among others. The capability attribute refers to the various abilities that a graduate has to apply the knowledge acquired at the university. The graduate should be able to put the various theory and models into practice. They should be able to lead, manage, direct, control as well as apply the theories in problem solving. Inquisitiveness on the other hand is the ability to ask probing questions which can be helpful in a decision making process. Creativity refers to the ability of one to generate solutions to a problem while entrepreneurship is all about identifying, creating and taking advantage of opportunities. A graduate should also be able to take responsibility for any actions and behave in the right way. With the wake of globalization, a graduate should be able to think internationally. As a graduate, I would like to venture in the leadership profession. Leadership is everywhere in today’s world. Every organization requires leadership in all its departments for success. Leadership is required in management, in marketing, in accountancy as well as in HRM. The specific job role that I would like to practice is management within the private sector. Private sector has become significantly effective in driving the economy of the world today. It is a sector that is very active due to its capital intensive nature. Being a manager in the private sector will give me the best career experience and will be perfect for my career development. In fact, I have been working in a family business during holidays for the last three years. This essay is a reflection on my experience during last summer when I was assigned to work as a store manager in my father’s wine store in Shanghai, China where I helped the shop realize rapid growth. The reflection is to be categorized in the various graduate attributes. Graduate attributes Capability Capability refers to the ability of someone to do something. In the case of a graduate, one should be able to apply the knowledge acquired during the course modules in the real world. More often than not, it has been stated that the theoretical knowledge that one acquires in class is not helpful unless it is put in practice (Martin, 2006; Sashkin & Sashkin, 2004). There are students who acquire the knowledge but fail to apply it in practice. Being a graduate, one should be able to apply the knowledge in practice in order to demonstrate the ‘graduateness.’ The ability of an individual to bring the best out of people is very essential in management. It should be noted that people are the most valuable assets in an organization. For a leader to be able to bring the best out of people, he or she needs to have standing skills, excellent knowledge and a positive attitude. When I was working at the wine store in Shanghai, it is due to my capabilities that I was able to help the shop attain rapid growth. First, there was a misunderstanding between me and the employees in that they failed to initially understand my style of work. This is a misunderstanding that can lead to a decline in the performance of any organization. The employees need to understand the working style of their manager as well as his work ethics. It is not easy for employees to give their best of they do not understand the work style of their manager. It is the manager who gives directives, organizes, controls and oversees all the activities that are carried out in an organization. Therefore, in the event that the employees do not understand his or her style of work, they will not be able to effectively follow the directives given. The ramification of this is that the results will not reflect the directives and that the desired goal may not be attained. My responsibility at the shop was to arrange the daily operations that the employees on the other hand were to follow. I was also to maintain communication with the head office. Having experienced the challenge of employees not understanding my work style, I had to demonstrate my capabilities as a leader to get them to understand me and get the best out of them. I knew the best way I could get the employees working and understanding my work style was to lead them by example. So I was working very hard despite them not taking me serious as they though I was at the stores just for vacation. When they realized that I was working very hard, they also changed their attitude and started working hard as well. From my experience with the employees, it could be easy to conclude that the employees were previously not giving their best to the organization. It could be the reason as to why its performance was not up to expectations. The leader is defined as a leader due to his ability to influence people and motivate them. The employees at the shop lacked motivation and the kind of leadership that would see the shop make desirable profits. So I demonstrated one of my attributes as a graduate as being capable of influencing and motivating employees in an organization to work hard and hence increase its growth. I was able to change the previous attitude they had towards work. They started taking the work seriously. By arranging the operations of the shop, I was able to bring in a well organized way of working. I was able to demonstrate the fact that operations management is very essential in an organization by organizing operations and getting a positive result out of it. I adjusted the daily operation of the store successfully. In addition, I was able to maintain a good communication with the head office. It should be noted that communication is always an important tool of success to any organization. Enquiring Enquiring refers to the act of asking questions. A good leader should be able to ask probing questions in order to understand the underlying situations in a better way. One should be able to ask the right questions which are relevant to the varying situations. The fact that a graduate normally has considerable knowledge on the field in which they are in, it means that they should be able to ask the right questions (Bornstein & Davis, 2010; Minniti, 2007). The ability to enquire is very essential especially when it comes to problem solving. One is able to understand the problems better and hence will be in a good position to generate possible solutions. In solving a problem, the leader needs to have the facts at hand. He needs to know the arguments to support the case and also those against the case (Rowland, 2006). Being inquisitive is an attribute that demonstrates self awareness of the leader/ graduate, curiosity as well as his solution orientation. Enquiring helps in supplementing, enriching, complementing and operationalizing effective leadership thinking. It is a behavior that will act as a catalyst towards attainment of the desired results. In other words, by a leader being inquisitive, they are able to communicate effectively, collaborate authenticate as well as be able to strategize effectively. Leaders who are enquiring recognize the fact that in order to achieve great results, one has to start with questions and that missing any question will mean a potential crisis created. This was one of the attribute that I helped me achieve the increased performance of the wine shop at Shanghai during my vacation. I sought to understand the intention of the people I was working with and this was a boost for me in my bid to design an operation program that would fit every member. Once I understood the needs of employees and their intentions, I was able to design the program that would be a source of motivation to them. It should be noted that different people have different needs an expectations in their careers. Therefore, they will always work and prefer varying assignments based on what they expect to achieve in the future. It would not be easy for me as a leader to understand this without having the ability to ask questions. I was also very inquisitive in order to know the reason(s) why the motivation was not as it could be expected. This helped me to further understand the situations at the shop prior to my assignment there. Further, by being inquisitive, I was able to know any problem that arises at the shop and could contribute significantly in finding the solution. It is not possible to improve the growth of any organization when the leader is not able to solve any underlying decisions. It was an attribute I exercised and I feel that by the time am completing my course I will be able to demonstrate my ‘graduateness’ in this context. Creative Business organizations have become very competitive over the last couple of years. Every organization is striving to get the best share of the market. This has led to organization trying any possible means that will help them improve the quality of their productions. Innovation comes in play here. For an organization to be able to develop innovative goods, the employees as well as managers and leaders have to be creative. In addition, creativity is vital when it comes to decision making. Decision making process is characterized by so much uncertainty (Dacey and Lennon, 1998). It is not easy to know the exact outcomes of a decision. Therefore, managers try to make the best possible decision to minimize the chances of the decision not delivering the expected results. Further, in organizations, there will always be a problem that needs to be solved (Runco, 2007). The problem could involve improving the quality of production, maintaining or striving to gain a competitive edge, marketing and sales promotion, adjusting to the external environment as well as administration issues among others. It is the leader who has the responsibility of leading the members of the organization in finding solutions to the problems. In order to get the best decision, one has to be highly creative (Harman & Rheingold, 1994). Decision making is a cognitive process where the mind is highly involved. One has to critically think in order to come up with a decision that can give a positive result. Therefore, creativity is an attribute that one has to possess in the current business world. It should be noted that employers today are looking for personnel who are highly creative. It is therefore important for graduates to demonstrate creativity. When I worked at the wine shop at Shanghai, I was faced with a number of challenges which I had to overcome in order to stand a chance of delivering success to the business. First, the business was not performing as per expectations at the time. So I had to help improve its growth. Secondly, the employees were initially not serious as they thought I was there for vacation despite the fact that I was assigned to be a stores manager. Thirdly, I had to find out the reasons as to why the shop was underperforming and generate solutions. As a prospective manager and a leader, I had to demonstrate my creativity in solving these problems. The fact that I was a junior among the rest of the employees means that I felt kind of inferior. This is a feeling I used to boost my creativity. According to the Psychoanalytical Theory of Creativity, when people feel inferior they tend to be creative in order to prove a point that they are not as inferior as they may seem to be. I creatively developed the operations program that everyone followed in their duties. Any problem that was experienced at the store as well as in any other department that I was associated with, I would try my best to handle in the best way possible. Bringing in new ways of doing things was also a way of expressing my creativity attribute. For instance, I inflicted the hard work ethics in the business. Getting the employees to start working hard as I did called for a degree of creativity. The new working program too was a result of creative work. Enterprising As it has been mentioned earlier, the world of business is highly creative. As a result, organizational managers need to be in a position to create business opportunity which will give the organization a competitive advantage over its rivals. The act of identifying new business opportunities and venturing into them is known as entrepreneurship. This is a very important attribute that graduates need to demonstrate if they are to survive in the job market (Covington, 1998; Baron, 2012). Organizations look for young people who are enterprising and who can help them grow through identifying new business ventures. It should be noted that businesses venture are associated with risks as well as rewards. An entrepreneur should be able to carry out a successful assessment of the risks as well as the rewards so as to determine whether those opportunities are worth venturing into (Weiss, Molinaro & Davey, 2007). Organizing the available resources so that they can be useful in increasing a business performance is also an important aspect of creativity. Resources are always scarce and they should be utilized as effectively and efficiently as possible. The resources should be used in such a manner that they are profitable to the organization. My enterprising attributes were arguably the most significant to the improvement of the business growth. I knew that one of my challenges would be to get new market for the wine store if at all I was to help improve its performance. Therefore, I created market segments for the wine products whereby the various wine brands were to be sold to various market segments based on the price and quality. I also initiated the sourcing of new wine brands in order to increase the market share. A market research was conducted in order to identify the wine brands that people would prefer to be added to the products. By adding these brands, it was possible for the wine store to reach more customers than it was reaching before and this helped in improving its level of profitability. I also came up with a strategy that could help effective utilization of the resources available. The store operations were improved in such a manner that new ways of managing inventory were introduced. Ethical Business organizations are now turning into social responsibility as a tool to earn a competitive advantage. They are expected to take responsibility of the impacts their actions have on the society (Stiller, 2010). Sometimes, business organizations have actions or operations that may have some negative effects on the people as well as on the environment. They should be able to understand any form of risk that the organization posses to the society and take an action to correct or improve it. By taking reactions to address their negative impacts, customers will be attracted to the organization as they will feel that they are part of it and that the organization is caring to them. On the other hand, leaders and managers of the business organizations are expected to behave in a manner that is morally acceptable in the society (Bolden, Hawkins & Gosling, 2011). They are expected to serve as examples to the rest of the society. It is an attribute that graduates need to demonstrate during their career paths. During my time at the wine store, I realized that wine is not always acceptable in all regions and by all people. There are people who feel that taking wine is not moral. These are people who have the potential to impact the business negatively. In order to prevent the people from thinking that selling wine was not good, I introduced the participation of charity events by the business where part of the profits would be put on charity. Selling of wine is not a universally accepted good and hence is contrary to the utilitarianism theory of morality which depicts that the things that are considered good to every one are the ones that should be considered as moral. This means that the fact that wine is not considered by a good by everyone, its selling might not be considered as being morally right. The fact that too much consumption of wine could be harmful to human health means that some people could be opposed to it. In the bid to behave ethically, I introduced a new way of advertising whereby the customers were warned against the dangers of too much wine. They are also advised on the amount of wine that they should consume in order to keep a way from the risks that wine might pose to their health. Although it was a challenging course of action due to cost implications, it had a long term benefit to the business as the number of customers buying wine increased significantly and this contributed to the rapid growth of the business. Global outlook Globalization has been on the increase in the period spreading back to a couple of decades ago. It has led to the increase in the number of multinationals. The international business has become easier than ever before as people are able to make transactions using modern technology and also the means of travelling are better and more convenient (Reed, 2003; Anderson & Cawsey, 2008). Organizations look up for the international market to increase their market share and at the same time increase their level of profitability. Despite the fact that international trading has more benefits to the organization, it is usually a challenge for small organization to establish themselves in the market. It is however important for the graduates to have the ability to think internationally. They should have the ability to help an organization venture into the opportunities available in the international market. They should be in a position to understand the various theories that govern the international market (Cuervo, Ribeiro & Roig, 2007). At my position in Shanghai, it was a big challenge to make the business international as it did nit have the capital sufficient to expand its operations to other countries. In fact, the shop was not even big enough to have many branches in China. However, with the small market coverage we had, we tried the much we could to get as big market as possible. I being the leader of the stores department and part of the management team, I tried to bring in some kind of international thinking into the business but this proved to one of the challenges that I experienced during my time there. It was never going to be easy managing the shop as a multinational yet it was just a local shop. I tried to demonstrate my global outlook attribute but it was not easy to implement it in this business. Being an international student, I have a good knowledge of the operations in the international level. It would be easier to incorporate international operations once the business grows bigger in the future. Conclusion The chance that I got to manage the wine business at my native China was a great learning experience that helped me gain so much practical knowledge on how a business should be learn. It also gave me an opportunity to demonstrate my attributes and abilities to run a business. I was able to help the business growth develop rapidly and this was a positive sign of my abilities. Learning is a process and did not end by the experience I got at Shanghai. After graduating, I will have to continue developing my attributes in order to have a successful professional career in the future. I will need to find a job in a bigger organization where I can get the opportunity to learn more. Having a mentor will also be another way I plan to continue developing my attributes. References List Anderson, M., & Cawsey, C. (2008). Learning for leadership: Building a school of professional practice. Camberwell, Vic: ACER Press. Baron, R. A. (2012). Entrepreneurship: An evidence-based guide. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Bolden, R., Hawkins, B., & Gosling, J. (2011). Exploring Leadership: Individual, Organizational, and Societal Perspectives. Oxford: OUP Oxford. Bornstein, D., & Davis, S. (2010). Social entrepreneurship: What everyone needs to know. New York: Oxford University Press. Covington, W. G. (1998). Creativity and general systems theory. Parkland, Fl.: Universal Publishers. Cuervo, G. A., Ribeiro, D., & Roig, S. (2007). 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