Another Week Started

MONDAY

At the start of the second week, I spent a large portion of the time researching social media. Thus, I extensively compared USATF’s Facebook and Twitter pages to other major sports organizations. Through this research, I was able to create a list of recommendations of ways to improve the use and functionality of this social media. Additionally, I read several trade articles regarding how to marketers can maximize the use of social media. The articles gave me insight on innovative and creative ways to make social media worth a marketers’ investment.

TUESDAY

Today was a rather interesting day. Even though I started over a week ago, today was intern orientation as well as an all staff meeting. First, I was able to sit in on the all staff meeting. At this meeting, I was able to introduce myself to all staff members again. To my surprise, I ended up sitting at the main table with all the senior level executives, which I think helps to embody the culture of USATF. Even though I am an intern, there was no sense of discrimination because of my lower status.

The meeting itself was very interesting. At the meeting, each senior executive gave an update on what was going on in there department. Then, the CEO talked to everyone (very casually) about the goals and direction of the organization. In addition, the CEO gave everyone the opportunity to ask him any questions they had about anything. Fortunately, this meeting gave me a good mindset to approach my internship with USATF. I was able to really understand the direction of the organization and their openness to anything new. It seems like the employees are all on board for change that will make USATF go from “good to great.”

After the all staff meeting, it was time for the official intern orientation. In this orientation, several HR/Business Ops. Managers spoke to us more about their expectations and general company philosophy. This helped to really set a good tone for the rest of the internship; however, it should have happened during my first week here. Furthermore, one of the managers conducted a brainstorming session where we all were instructed to discuss our goals for the internship. I found this goal exercise to be extremely impressive because it shows a lot about the company. You always read about these sort of exercises in textbooks, but I feel like few companies actually do them. After the goal session, we played a game as interns with the Director of Business Operations and the COO. While the game was a little difficult, it helped to get everyone a little more comfortable in their environment.

Overall, I learned a great deal about USATF company culture. Not only is USATF very open to new ideas, they are also not afraid of taking calculated risks. This risk taking is an excellent quality for an organization looking to grow and change its national image. To me, its obvious this company culture comes straight from the top. Doug, the CEO, is quite brilliant, but extremely grounded. I think he will get USATF on the right track and the US will win 30 medals in 2010.