@Lu
I would personally have asked the interviewer more about the situation. As a leader, your job isn't to do your own thing but to value the ideas of your subordinates. With that in mind, you should have drawn from your economics background and suggested a cost benefit analysis that considered the NPV of both projects in respect with risk and profit. Of course, not all decisions have direct profits and risks but if you and your team can work together to develop a model to value the proposed actions, everyone would be satisfied in the end.
@Soy
While it is important to maintain a position of power, using your own course of action and disregarding the other three is already a huge fault. Many times, a leader is not necessarily the most qualified in whichever subject they are working on. If you have faith in your team, its probably more likely that their solutions to any particular problem is stronger than yours. However, good leaders have the ability to value both human capital and courses of action.
With each course of action, a leader has to not only account for maintaining their position of leadership but what is best for the company. Many times, what is best for the company extends above profits and risks and includes things such as image, appeasing your team, and how they might develop because of any particular course of action
Monday, March 30, 2009
Sunday, March 22, 2009
= leader
@ Lu,
here is how i would answer.
if i go with my decision and:
1. turns out i was right - the 3 members just got destroyed. they now know their place and will give full respect to my decision-making skill.
2. turns out i was wrong - the 3 members start questioning my ability to lead the team. they may want to leave the team.
if i go with their decision and:
1. turns out they were wrong - the 3 members are sorry, but they also think as a leader i failed to "lead." they may even blame me for being easily swayed. this is true bc humans never like to fully admit their flaws and mistakes.
2. turns out they were right - the 3 members smirk and give me the "what did we tell you" face. Although the result is all good, they question my ability to lead.
it seems that giving in to the other members' decision leads to epic fails either way. better do what a leader should and stick with my decision.
soy
here is how i would answer.
if i go with my decision and:
1. turns out i was right - the 3 members just got destroyed. they now know their place and will give full respect to my decision-making skill.
2. turns out i was wrong - the 3 members start questioning my ability to lead the team. they may want to leave the team.
if i go with their decision and:
1. turns out they were wrong - the 3 members are sorry, but they also think as a leader i failed to "lead." they may even blame me for being easily swayed. this is true bc humans never like to fully admit their flaws and mistakes.
2. turns out they were right - the 3 members smirk and give me the "what did we tell you" face. Although the result is all good, they question my ability to lead.
it seems that giving in to the other members' decision leads to epic fails either way. better do what a leader should and stick with my decision.
soy
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Today I had a job interview in which I was asked "If you were the leader of a team of four, and you wanted to do something one way but everyone else wanted to do it the other way, and neither party has any hope of convincing the other party, what do you do?" I answered that I would have to do what I felt was best for the company and go in the direction I felt was the correct path. This question continued to nag me for the rest of the day. What if the employer was looking for a team player? Would they dislike someone who would use their authority to overrule an entire team?
The way that I had thought about it was that as the team leader, I am (hopefully) more qualified to make such decisions, but more importantly, I have a responsibility to the company. A leader isn't someone who does something just because everyone else thinks it's right; that's what followers do. And even if a lot of people think one course of action is right, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is.
In any case, I tried to think of an example to illustrate my point, and this is what I came up with. Imagine that you are Jorge Boosh, President of the company AmeriCo. You have a client that produces a very popular mp3 player called the I-Rock. There is a rumor that a hacker called Sad Adam Who's Sane has a bug called the WMD that may be hidden in the I-Rock and could potentially cause harm to its users, many of which are employees of AmeriCo. Your board of advisers urges you to launch a large scale operation to obliterate all traces of WMD from I-Rocks. However, you feel that such an operation is unfounded, as there is little to no evidence that WMD is in I-Rocks and that it would cost AmeriCo a vast amount of resources and make you very unpopular with employees. Your board will not budge on their opinion, but you can make the ultimate decision. What do you do if you are President Jorge?
The way that I had thought about it was that as the team leader, I am (hopefully) more qualified to make such decisions, but more importantly, I have a responsibility to the company. A leader isn't someone who does something just because everyone else thinks it's right; that's what followers do. And even if a lot of people think one course of action is right, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is.
In any case, I tried to think of an example to illustrate my point, and this is what I came up with. Imagine that you are Jorge Boosh, President of the company AmeriCo. You have a client that produces a very popular mp3 player called the I-Rock. There is a rumor that a hacker called Sad Adam Who's Sane has a bug called the WMD that may be hidden in the I-Rock and could potentially cause harm to its users, many of which are employees of AmeriCo. Your board of advisers urges you to launch a large scale operation to obliterate all traces of WMD from I-Rocks. However, you feel that such an operation is unfounded, as there is little to no evidence that WMD is in I-Rocks and that it would cost AmeriCo a vast amount of resources and make you very unpopular with employees. Your board will not budge on their opinion, but you can make the ultimate decision. What do you do if you are President Jorge?
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Lu's bland introductory post + links
fauxpas is right. Is that a paradox? Anyways, I will try to provide things my fellow bloggers here don't, like maybe some commentary about their posts. T-Spin's name may be somewhat misleading, as from my recollections he was not a terribly good T-spinner. In fact, one time we played on Xbox Live, and I think he lost to a 5 year old. Actually that might have been me. But we also talked to a mom or something, and somehow he resisted the urge to trash talk her. In fact, we actually had a really nice conversation. This isn't much of an introductory post, but I leave you with this silly video:
Dancing Faces
Oh I guess you can have this bonus one too:
Molten Iron Flinging
Dancing Faces
Oh I guess you can have this bonus one too:
Molten Iron Flinging
faux pas is thus ... wtf, this is lame
Wtf, why do I have to make an introductory post? Does everything in the world need an introduction? Why do you always have to say "Hi" or "Hey" or "What's up?" every time you meet someone? Seriously. It gets old. I see you. You see me. (Of course, there's those times where you need to say something to get someone's attention but I'm not talking about those rare cases). We have both acknowledged by eye contact that a conversation is about to friggin' commence. Please don't waste 3 precious seconds of my life initiating a conversation with something so trivial. Those 3 seconds add up. Let's assume I'm being generous and that I encounter only one person a day for 350 days a year for 40 years. If my math is correct and you can bet your damn ass it is...that's 42,000 seconds which is 700 hours which is about 29.17 days!!!!!!!!! WTF!!!!??? DO YOU KNOW WHAT I COULD DO IN 29.17 DAYS? I could memorize every single entry in Wikipedia AND take hot 30 minute showers every day in that amount of time!! That would be a much better use of my time than to hear you waste my oxygen with your countless numbers of hi's and hey's and how are you's. Just get on with whatever you have to say and then leave me alone. And don't get me started on the farewell greetings. I'm not even going to close this dumb introductory post with anything witty.
The Seeker is thus found?
I've been blogging for years.
Initially, I wrote to myself. It was therapeutic, letting everything out onto the pixels on the screen. When no one was listening (or cared) in real life, the blog was always there. Blogs don't judge you. Blogs don't interrupt you when you're talking. They make pretty good listeners. Plus, on some days, I'd look back through my old entries and laugh.
Eventually, my closest friends found my blog. Whatever. We formed a small network. We shared stories about our lives, stories about others, and polled each other for opinions. There were inside jokes which carried over to real life. I learned a lot about them that I never would have found out otherwise. If three people following me could add so much to my blogging experience, why not make it four? Or five? You know where this is going.
More and more people joined our network, and I felt my freedom more and more restricted. There were things I could no longer write about. Seemingly innocent sentences sparked real life drama. Each and every entry was layered with passive aggression and double entendre, like one of those 7-layer nachos at Taco Bell.
And in the end, I went back to writing my own private entries, but it felt oh so lonely, like yelling in the middle of a desert. But fuck it...I could yell whatever I wanted to.
Always seeking that perfect audience.
Initially, I wrote to myself. It was therapeutic, letting everything out onto the pixels on the screen. When no one was listening (or cared) in real life, the blog was always there. Blogs don't judge you. Blogs don't interrupt you when you're talking. They make pretty good listeners. Plus, on some days, I'd look back through my old entries and laugh.
Eventually, my closest friends found my blog. Whatever. We formed a small network. We shared stories about our lives, stories about others, and polled each other for opinions. There were inside jokes which carried over to real life. I learned a lot about them that I never would have found out otherwise. If three people following me could add so much to my blogging experience, why not make it four? Or five? You know where this is going.
More and more people joined our network, and I felt my freedom more and more restricted. There were things I could no longer write about. Seemingly innocent sentences sparked real life drama. Each and every entry was layered with passive aggression and double entendre, like one of those 7-layer nachos at Taco Bell.
And in the end, I went back to writing my own private entries, but it felt oh so lonely, like yelling in the middle of a desert. But fuck it...I could yell whatever I wanted to.
Always seeking that perfect audience.
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