Last week, I was busy preparing my final presentation, which was about Toyota Motor Corporation. I searched many websites to find out about the company. I found a lot of useful information related to the topic and I was busy with the preparation even on Saturday morning before I left for the class.
After sending the first draft to my teacher, I went to UCLA for my eighth class. The main agenda of that class was Problem Solving.
We face many problems in our daily lives, including that of business, family and friends. Whenever we face those problems we have to tackle them. Today in the lesson we took a look at solving business problems.
Before the problem solving we role-played interviewer and interviewee for a job interview. Its main purpose was to go over the stuff we did in the sixth session. Our goal was to select the right person for a full-time English teaching position at a trading company.
We had three candidates to choose from. All the groups tried to select the best candidate for the position It was not so easy a task. All the groups selected the same person and provided reasons for selecting that candidate. Unfortunately, that was the wrong one for the position according to the teacher.
After that, we practiced a dialog which was about solving a problem. We were in twos and each practiced the dialog.
How do you solve problems when you face them at work?
We face many problems at work and there's bound to be a best possible solution for every one of them. We took turns playing roles of a customer and a supplier in different situations.
Of course, I have faced and dealt with problems before but it's rather different when you are representing a company as you need to have a holistic view so this session was very meaningful.
After that, we looked at sample actions a project manager took to solve a problem he faced during a company meeting. It went like this – A project manager wanted to discuss about an agenda so he called for a meeting which he scheduled for 11 o'clock but no one turned up because everyone thought that was a waste of time. What kind of actions would I have taken if I were the manager?
We then discussed what kind of troubleshooting techniques would be applicable in our own groups and told the class the solutions we came up with.
I don't think I've ever faced such problems while working in Japan. I think Japanese companies are more institutionalized and well-mannered.
That's all for now.
Thanks!
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Job Interviews and Resumes
Last Saturday we reviewed Financial Information and started looking at another cultural comparison. We did simulation of Financial Analysis at the beginning of the class and then moved onto analyzing income statement of Yahoo! Inc.
It was the first time for me to view financial information of the company and I found it very interesting.
Everyone knows Yahoo! Inc. to be a large internet portal where we can get a lot of information like employment and business opportunities, and investors relations through its search engine.
A lot of people use the portal site everyday for news, blog or emails but not many knows who founded Yahoo! Inc., its size and financial situation. Such information can be easily found if you searched for it on the internet but usually people don't care less about these things.
After that we did a new cultural comparison. It was about Individualism and Collectivism.
People in individualistic cultures focus more on their own personal interests while people in collectivist cultures are more concerned with the interests of the group.
In business, if we launch a product in collectivist cultures, people belonging to the same culture tend to buy the same product family so one can sell many products in that group but if we launched a product in individualistic cultures, such principle will not apply and cannot achieve large sales because people in individualist cultures focus on “I” and people in collectivist cultures focus on “We”.
United States, Switzerland and Australia are individualistic countries and China, Peru, Guatemala and Indonesia are collectivist countries.
Nepal is also in collectivist because there are many ethnic groups and languages and they emphasize belonging to groups, extended family relations, social loyalty, and community harmony. They stress a “we” identity and look after the in-group in exchange for loyalty.
What is the culture of your nation? Is it individualistic or collectivistic?
We also learnt that no culture or society is 100 percent collectivist or individualist.
After looking at culture, we learnt comparison skills. We practiced job interviews in English. There were two characters in an interview and we played both roles in turns.
Then, we had a small talk about the differences between the ways of writing Japanese resumes and English resumes. A lot of details are included in English resumes, such as work experience and other activities, whereas in Japanese, there are no details so you write all that on a different sheet of paper.
English resumes are to be in reverse chronological order (from new to old) but Japanese are usually in chronological order.
To sum up my day, I learnt many new things in Business English which are very important for any business person to be successful.
It was the first time for me to view financial information of the company and I found it very interesting.
Everyone knows Yahoo! Inc. to be a large internet portal where we can get a lot of information like employment and business opportunities, and investors relations through its search engine.
A lot of people use the portal site everyday for news, blog or emails but not many knows who founded Yahoo! Inc., its size and financial situation. Such information can be easily found if you searched for it on the internet but usually people don't care less about these things.
After that we did a new cultural comparison. It was about Individualism and Collectivism.
People in individualistic cultures focus more on their own personal interests while people in collectivist cultures are more concerned with the interests of the group.
In business, if we launch a product in collectivist cultures, people belonging to the same culture tend to buy the same product family so one can sell many products in that group but if we launched a product in individualistic cultures, such principle will not apply and cannot achieve large sales because people in individualist cultures focus on “I” and people in collectivist cultures focus on “We”.
United States, Switzerland and Australia are individualistic countries and China, Peru, Guatemala and Indonesia are collectivist countries.
Nepal is also in collectivist because there are many ethnic groups and languages and they emphasize belonging to groups, extended family relations, social loyalty, and community harmony. They stress a “we” identity and look after the in-group in exchange for loyalty.
What is the culture of your nation? Is it individualistic or collectivistic?
We also learnt that no culture or society is 100 percent collectivist or individualist.
After looking at culture, we learnt comparison skills. We practiced job interviews in English. There were two characters in an interview and we played both roles in turns.
Then, we had a small talk about the differences between the ways of writing Japanese resumes and English resumes. A lot of details are included in English resumes, such as work experience and other activities, whereas in Japanese, there are no details so you write all that on a different sheet of paper.
English resumes are to be in reverse chronological order (from new to old) but Japanese are usually in chronological order.
To sum up my day, I learnt many new things in Business English which are very important for any business person to be successful.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Graphs and Financial Statements
It was drizzling, mixed with snow outside and it was very cold. I was still playing chess when I realized that it was almost time to go and I hadn't even had my lunch. I quickly had lunch and left the house for UCLA extension Tokyo Center. I could not believe there were so many people wandering around in Shinjyuku in the cold winter rain on a Saturday.
It was our fifth session that day and during the BEC course, I learnt a lot about the customs of Business English. Walking into the class I noticed there were today's agendas on the white board. The first one was to analyze graphs and explain in details what each one meant. We studied bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts first and then continued to look at real-life figures of a company and briefly explained its stock chart.
I'm getting pretty good at this business of analyzing data trends!
In every class we do a little bit of Cultural Studies and that day, we looked at culture in terms of gender and predominancy. It is said we can find out whether your culture of a country or your company is predominantly masculine or feminine by looking at the roles given to men and women in the commune.
In my opinion, most of Asian corporations are predominantly masculine because generally males have authoritative roles and they have power over others there.
Is the culture of your nation or your company predominantly masculine or feminine? I think if you have read my past blog articles, you'll understand that where I come from is the former.
Our next agenda was Financial Information. We were handed out dialogues regarding financial information to read and practice and then we briefly learnt about income statements and balance sheets.
I had the knowledge of financial statements from a management course I enrolled in at the University of Nepal but it's already been 10 years since then and I had forgotten almost everything about them!
After the class my classmates and I decided to go for tea but some of us had prior engagements after the class. Only four of us stayed behind and we began looking for cafés. We went into more than two cafés but none had seats for four. Most of the seats were already taken because it was cold and raining outside and people were trying to stay warm drinking hot tea and coffee.
We decided to go to Renoir Café but the place was also full and we had to wait for a few minutes to be seated. After getting our seats, we discussed about financial statements over hot coffee. Everything seemed clear to me after talking with my classmates.
For me, last Saturday was an amazing day. I got a chance to refresh my memory of my schooling days in Nepal and I feel I got closer to my new friends!
I hope you got to taste a bit of my life in Tokyo after reading this blog.
Thanks!
It was our fifth session that day and during the BEC course, I learnt a lot about the customs of Business English. Walking into the class I noticed there were today's agendas on the white board. The first one was to analyze graphs and explain in details what each one meant. We studied bar graphs, line graphs and pie charts first and then continued to look at real-life figures of a company and briefly explained its stock chart.
I'm getting pretty good at this business of analyzing data trends!
In every class we do a little bit of Cultural Studies and that day, we looked at culture in terms of gender and predominancy. It is said we can find out whether your culture of a country or your company is predominantly masculine or feminine by looking at the roles given to men and women in the commune.
In my opinion, most of Asian corporations are predominantly masculine because generally males have authoritative roles and they have power over others there.
Is the culture of your nation or your company predominantly masculine or feminine? I think if you have read my past blog articles, you'll understand that where I come from is the former.
Our next agenda was Financial Information. We were handed out dialogues regarding financial information to read and practice and then we briefly learnt about income statements and balance sheets.
I had the knowledge of financial statements from a management course I enrolled in at the University of Nepal but it's already been 10 years since then and I had forgotten almost everything about them!
After the class my classmates and I decided to go for tea but some of us had prior engagements after the class. Only four of us stayed behind and we began looking for cafés. We went into more than two cafés but none had seats for four. Most of the seats were already taken because it was cold and raining outside and people were trying to stay warm drinking hot tea and coffee.
We decided to go to Renoir Café but the place was also full and we had to wait for a few minutes to be seated. After getting our seats, we discussed about financial statements over hot coffee. Everything seemed clear to me after talking with my classmates.
For me, last Saturday was an amazing day. I got a chance to refresh my memory of my schooling days in Nepal and I feel I got closer to my new friends!
I hope you got to taste a bit of my life in Tokyo after reading this blog.
Thanks!
Monday, February 8, 2010
Presentation and simulation of dilemma
In the beginning of the fourth class, we went through and revised our presentation materials for “The Dilemma of Northwest Land Company “in our own groups.
After that we had a discussion about simulation of dilemma concerning sexism in Africa. This dilemma was about a woman who was in Kenya for work. When she was there she felt that her clients treated her differently because of her gender. Her boss would say things like, “My lady” and “My cute assistant” in front of other local African clients.
The agenda of the discussion was to imagine that you are a woman in Africa and come up with ways to tackle the problem and discuss the downsides and upsides of your solutions. We were to find the best possible solution and present it in front of the class.
All the other groups did very well but our group didn't get to narrow down our ideas to just one so I don't think we succeeded. There were three people in our group and we didn't decide who was to be the minute taker and the chairperson so everyone just started firing away and no one summed up our ideas.
I would like to talk here more about the gender issues and sexism in my country, Nepal. Are there any problem like that in your country?
In our case, it was very intense. Most of the parents used to only send their sons to school and not their daughters. People thought that women would only be doing house work after getting married so they don't need any education. It'd just be waste of money and time.
As you can see, Nepal was a male predominance country. It was rare for any woman to be given high-ranking positions. Things have changed now and women are educated more but they are still treated differently from men.
As far as I know, this kind of discrimination is still around in many countries, even in highly developed countries.
After the simulation, we went through cultural topics. I already wrote about my culture and culture in general in my past blog articles but we got a chance to learn about terms like Mono Chronic Culture, Poly Chronic Culture, High Context Culture and Low Context Culture.
After that, we learned how to read graphs and data trends. We gave presentations using graphs one by one. Some of my classmates presented the number of hours they studied English per week and number of years they studied English in their lives.
In my turn, I presented the number of hours I spent playing games last week. I calculated the hours of playing chess, Frogger and Stunt Dirt Bike last week and made a line graph. I was a little bit nervous giving the presentation because I don't give presentations even at work. I think a lot of you also feel the same when giving presentation in front of people.
Giving presentations using graphs is a good way to convey information. We can use graphs in many fields like IT, Science , Medical, Agriculture, etc. I realized it is beneficial to learn to use and read graphs and data trends in Business.
Thanks!
After that we had a discussion about simulation of dilemma concerning sexism in Africa. This dilemma was about a woman who was in Kenya for work. When she was there she felt that her clients treated her differently because of her gender. Her boss would say things like, “My lady” and “My cute assistant” in front of other local African clients.
The agenda of the discussion was to imagine that you are a woman in Africa and come up with ways to tackle the problem and discuss the downsides and upsides of your solutions. We were to find the best possible solution and present it in front of the class.
All the other groups did very well but our group didn't get to narrow down our ideas to just one so I don't think we succeeded. There were three people in our group and we didn't decide who was to be the minute taker and the chairperson so everyone just started firing away and no one summed up our ideas.
I would like to talk here more about the gender issues and sexism in my country, Nepal. Are there any problem like that in your country?
In our case, it was very intense. Most of the parents used to only send their sons to school and not their daughters. People thought that women would only be doing house work after getting married so they don't need any education. It'd just be waste of money and time.
As you can see, Nepal was a male predominance country. It was rare for any woman to be given high-ranking positions. Things have changed now and women are educated more but they are still treated differently from men.
As far as I know, this kind of discrimination is still around in many countries, even in highly developed countries.
After the simulation, we went through cultural topics. I already wrote about my culture and culture in general in my past blog articles but we got a chance to learn about terms like Mono Chronic Culture, Poly Chronic Culture, High Context Culture and Low Context Culture.
After that, we learned how to read graphs and data trends. We gave presentations using graphs one by one. Some of my classmates presented the number of hours they studied English per week and number of years they studied English in their lives.
In my turn, I presented the number of hours I spent playing games last week. I calculated the hours of playing chess, Frogger and Stunt Dirt Bike last week and made a line graph. I was a little bit nervous giving the presentation because I don't give presentations even at work. I think a lot of you also feel the same when giving presentation in front of people.
Giving presentations using graphs is a good way to convey information. We can use graphs in many fields like IT, Science , Medical, Agriculture, etc. I realized it is beneficial to learn to use and read graphs and data trends in Business.
Thanks!
Monday, February 1, 2010
Brainstorming
Hi all.
I hope that you are all still enjoying reading my blog :)
Let me tell you about my last week and my activities in BEC class.
I usually get up around 8 o'clock in the morning on Saturdays. Don’t think that I am lazy because I have to work until 10p.m. every day so I try to get as much sleep on the weekend.
If you have been in Japan for some time, you'd probably have notice that a lot of people on the train read newspapers or magazines, or do homework if you are a student. Like all the other stereotypical Japanese people, I tried doing my homework; I read a book about dilemma of an American company, practiced some phrases which were mainly used in business meetings. That's how I usually make use of my time on the train. Prep on the train = more sleep!
To get to J.F Oberlin University where my BEC classes are held, I need to go through Shinjuku station. Shinjuku is one of the busiest cities in Tokyo and there are a lot of areas for entertainment, business and shopping. Shinjuku station has 8 railways and 3 metros running through it.
When I first arrived in Japan I was astonished to see so many people in Shinjuku but having lived in Japan for some time it's already become everyday scenery for me.
In my third lesson we discussed about a video we watched. It was about the woman who has a fear of the unknown and she becomes very nervous during a business meeting. Fear of the unknown is not very uncommon and our teacher told us 99% of the people feel nervous when encountering someone new.
I am sure a lot of you feel uneasy around strangers. I know I do!
After discussing about the video we practiced “Business in Action – debating and solving an issue”. I think it is important to exchange conflicting ideas when trying to come up with a solution. Another approach is to brainstorm. We started listing ideas which turned out to be quite exciting! My classmates came up with many good ideas.
After brainstorming, we practiced looking at advantages and disadvantages of things, such as life in town vs. city, and working for a company vs. running your own business.
In this class I got to learn that in English business scenes, brainstorming can be a very useful way of tackling a problem.
Thanks everyone for reading my blog!
I hope that you are all still enjoying reading my blog :)
Let me tell you about my last week and my activities in BEC class.
I usually get up around 8 o'clock in the morning on Saturdays. Don’t think that I am lazy because I have to work until 10p.m. every day so I try to get as much sleep on the weekend.
If you have been in Japan for some time, you'd probably have notice that a lot of people on the train read newspapers or magazines, or do homework if you are a student. Like all the other stereotypical Japanese people, I tried doing my homework; I read a book about dilemma of an American company, practiced some phrases which were mainly used in business meetings. That's how I usually make use of my time on the train. Prep on the train = more sleep!
To get to J.F Oberlin University where my BEC classes are held, I need to go through Shinjuku station. Shinjuku is one of the busiest cities in Tokyo and there are a lot of areas for entertainment, business and shopping. Shinjuku station has 8 railways and 3 metros running through it.
When I first arrived in Japan I was astonished to see so many people in Shinjuku but having lived in Japan for some time it's already become everyday scenery for me.
In my third lesson we discussed about a video we watched. It was about the woman who has a fear of the unknown and she becomes very nervous during a business meeting. Fear of the unknown is not very uncommon and our teacher told us 99% of the people feel nervous when encountering someone new.
I am sure a lot of you feel uneasy around strangers. I know I do!
After discussing about the video we practiced “Business in Action – debating and solving an issue”. I think it is important to exchange conflicting ideas when trying to come up with a solution. Another approach is to brainstorm. We started listing ideas which turned out to be quite exciting! My classmates came up with many good ideas.
After brainstorming, we practiced looking at advantages and disadvantages of things, such as life in town vs. city, and working for a company vs. running your own business.
In this class I got to learn that in English business scenes, brainstorming can be a very useful way of tackling a problem.
Thanks everyone for reading my blog!
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