Last Full Week (Week 8)!

Week 8

This week was primarily focused on creating a plan for a focus group. While I have done this task in the past, it was great to receive feedback from my boss on the best way to gather information. Some of these tips including using video, pictures, and certain irrelevant small talk. Overall, the primary purpose is to make the participant feel a strong level of comfort in group. Once you establish this comfort level, it will be a lot easier to get good information from the focus group.

A secondary part of the week focused on some minor event planning for the 2009 Outdoor Visa Championship Series Office Olympics (the annual summer office picnic). For this event, I created several interesting emails and signage that emulated the business of USATF. This provided some fun to the entire event. In addition to fun, the event help me better understand how company culture is created and why several companies typically have office picnics. Despite the fierce competition, I noticed that people really became friends and I would argue that this friendship creates a much more conducive work environment.

For a small portion of the week, I worked on overcoming some of the barriers to recreating the USATF website. I had a meeting with web team as well as my supervisor to discuss implementing changes. Fortunately, I was in charge of leading this meeting. Still, I did notice some tension coming from the web team. This tension helped bring to life the tactfulness you must use when suggesting changes to someone’s job. As the textbook say, people do not like change, especially when it comes to their jobs. Therefore, you must discuss the issues in ways that help to advance the organization as well as enhance their position in the organization.

Additionally, I continued to make edits to the powerpoint presentation. With that said, I ran into some technological problems due to some video content. This problem helped me realize to always be prepared to go to Plan B when using technology. You never know when technology will fail on you in the middle of a presentation so you must be prepared.