"illinibucks" - an eMoney Syetem for the University

I think that the best places to use “illinibucks” are places where demand is always greater than the supply. From my past experience on campus, I would use “illinibucks” in class registration, booking study rooms, and also for high-demanding performances at Krannert Center.

There are a lot of classes that have a high demand and always fully registered, making it difficult for many people to take these classes. Some of them are interesting courses that have a very good reputation, some of these classes are mandatory major or minor requirements. I have a minor in statistics, and STAT420 Methods for Applied Statistics (mandatory for several different major and minor) is well known for its registration difficulty. Stat majors have priority for this class, but minor students do not. The department does not provide sufficient support for students to register for classes, and instructors cannot provide override. So I wasn’t able to add this course for 2 semesters. If “illinibucks” could be used here, I would be willing to invest. Because otherwise I won’t be able to complete my minor.

Study rooms are difficult to book during busy times in the semester, using “illinibucks” to book study rooms would help better allocate study room resources. People does not need study rooms that much would study somewhere else instead, making study rooms available for those that really need it (e.g. ones that need a space for group discussions/group projects).

Performances at the Kranner Center would also be a good candidate for “illinibucks”. Tickets for some good performances are extremely difficult to get, so priority could be given to the ones that are willing to pay more “illinibucks”. Lang Lang’s (famous Chinese concert pianist) piano performance (Performance Link) last week at Krannert Center was one of those hot performances. A lot of my friends started to buy tickets when it was first released, and tickets sold out very soon. The ticket price for UI students is just $10, but the resale price was raised to $50 and even $100 a few days before the performance.

It is very interesting that my previous university did have something similar with “illinibucks”. Before I transferred to the U of I, I studied Media in Hong Kong. We needed production and media equipment (cameras, tripods, lighting equipment, dolly tracks, etc.) from time to time for our classes and projects. The college offers eCash to students to rent these devices from the rental center. Students taking senior courses will be granted more eCash. Better devices are more expensive, so for example if we choose to rent a very good camera, we won’t have enough eCash to rent a very good set of lighting equipment. So it was actually pretty fun to plan and try to utilize our eCash in hand to reach the best outcome for our projects. It becomes even more interesting when it comes to group projects, because we could aggregate our eCash together and make better investments. I think the purpose of eCash is to better balance resources, so that no one will be occupying too much resources while others do not have enough resources. No matter “illinibucks” or “eCash”, it’s all because of higher demand with insufficient supply, if resources are sufficient, these eMoney will become useless.

If the prices are set too high, “illinibucks” would become useless because no one will want to put all their investments in one basket. At least for me, I would prefer to save some “illinibucks” in case I need them in the future. So if something is too expensive, I would prefer not to spend my “illinibucks”, only if that “product” is necessary and extremely important for me at that point. People like me might end up still having their “illinibucks” in hand at the end of the semester. This makes them miss the opportunity of utilizing certain resources they otherwise could have used. If the price is too low, “illinibucks” won’t be able to achieve its purpose of allocating resources. There won’t be much difference if you have “illinibucks” or not, people will spend “illinibucks” on all the “products” they want. The effect of “illinibucks” on allocating resources to people that need them the most would be poor. Therefore, if the university decides to implement an “illinibucks” system, they will need to do a thorough study to find out the best balance that reaches equilibrium.  

It would be even more interesting if the university could grant extra “illinibucks” to students at certain circumstances to promote certain kinds of behavior (e.g. campus service feedback surveys, some of these surveys have a low participation rate and I saw in the past many of them use luck draw and prizes to increase participation) or encourage students to attend certain kinds of events.

Team Structure

I am going to write about my internship experience in Dow Chemical again, since this is the most recent team experience I can recall.

The summer internship program at Dow includes both an individual project where you learn the specifics of your assigned department, and also a group project where summer interns across departments work together for a business case competition. Summer interns are divided into teams to participate in the case competition and are asked to present their case and proposal to a panel of key leaders from different departments at the end of the internship.  

The scenario is something like this：

Dow leadership team is currently reviewing Dow businesses and would like to further invest in one of them. Each team should choose one Dow business that you think has the largest growth potential and new market opportunities. Based on that choice, each group should develop a proposal with action plan to present to the board members. After the presentation, the board members will select one business to invest in and the team represents that business will receive the “Best Team Performance” award.  

This competition was announced at the first day of internship during orientation. There were 33 summer interns in total, 14 Research & Development (14 boys and 2 girls), 6 Manufacturing & Engineering, 8 Marketing & Sales, 3 Environment Health Safety & Sustainability, 1 HR, and 1 Supply Chain. IS (information system) interns in the apprentice program (6-month part time internship) also participates in the competition with summer interns, about 10. At that time, everyone is new and people haven’t known each other very well yet. They did not assign us randomly into teams but asked us to form our own group based on a few restrictions provided (e.g have to include at least 2 non-R&D members, at least 1 undergrad, 1 master, 1 PhD, etc.). Based on the rules, the teams formed are pretty diversified with interns from different functions and backgrounds.

We had almost no progress for the first 2 weeks. Seeing other groups already started their work, I decided to initiate and organize discussions and meetings. Purely because that I feel anxious if things are not organized and planned ahead. I thought we should have a plan and assign tasks to teammates so that everyone could start their part early. After a few discussion meetings, one of our teammate proposed me to be the leader, coordinating everybody and assigning tasks, everyone agreed, so then I became the leader.  

After a few discussions, we settled the business unit we are going to present and made an outline. We decided what to include and also figured out what we need to work on. We roughly divided our work into 4 parts: policy and macro background, market analysis, R&D technical difficulties, and action plan. We had 8 people in our team, 3 of them from R&D, 1 from Marketing, 1 from HR, 2 from IS, and 1 from ME (remote teammate). Our team structure does not strictly fit in any of the 5 team configurations discussed in Chap5 of B&D, it’s more like a combination of the Dual Authority model and the All-Channel Network model. The technical part was assigned to the 3 R&D teammates, and one of them was pretty proactive, so he is seen as the leader for the R&D sub-team. The other parts are divided and assigned to the remaining 5 team members. The R&D leader represents the 3 R&D teammates and they work separately from others in our team. All other people are more like in an All-Channel Network, we do our own part and discusses with all others in the team to see how to improve and fine tune our direction toward our goals. Another work I was doing was coordinating everyone’s time for discussion meetings, setting up plan and timelines for our project, and making sure everyone is finishing their work on time, and finally integrating everyone’s work for the final presentation.

Actually, having a middle-leader for the R&D team is very effective. I don’t understand much about the technical part and having a middle-leader in charge for that part saves me a lot of time, and they know better than me on how to divide their work and assign tasks. All I have to do is to make sure that everyone is on the right track, adjust their direction of someone is moving away from our goal. I found that people from different functions approaches the same problem differently, and thinks differently. R&D people are very down to earth, and strives for superior results, but they sometimes tend to ignore the market need. Meanwhile, marketing people are very ambitious and market-driven, but they tend to ignore the technical difficulties. Therefore, coordinating different perspectives and persuading different groups to compromise toward our common goal was a difficult task for me. Of course, we as a group figured this out together, not myself. I believe I’m just the one making sure our direction points toward our goal, but the difficulties and decisions, are solved and made by the whole team together. The All-Channel Network helped us to communicate freely and make decisions together with information from everyone.

We are a team with manageable size and a right mix of expertise. We have 8 people in our team coming from different departments with diversified knowledge and expertise. We also managed to define our purpose and translate the common goal into specific and measureable performance goals at the beginning of the project, by creating detailed plans and deadlines. Discussions and detailed plans also enabled us to commit to working relationships. Everyone is clear on their task, and what they need to do, and also agrees on other people’s role, because we made these decisions together as a team. And finally, we have always been working and collaborating closely with team members every step we move forward, so we do hold ourselves collectively accountable. During the Q&A session for the final presentation, we reacted as a team, everyone tried their best to answer the questions asked by the judging panel, even if the question is not related to their assigned part, just to contribute to the team success.

Through this experience, I did think a lot about what a good team leader and good teammate means. For a good leader, I think the most important is to be always clear on the team goal, coordinate everyone, and motivate them to perform their best toward the goal. I’ve also learned that being a leader means taking responsibility. Usually if your team succeed, the team receives the honor. But if your team fail, you’ll need to take the responsibility. Because no one will think that it’s because your team members do not contribute or they are being irresponsible, they’ll just assume that you are not a good leader, and you did not lead the team well. Since you are the leader, you are responsible for the poor performance. For a good teammate, I believe being responsible and someone that others could rely on would be the most important characteristic. Not always insisting on one’s own idea is also important, because things may seem different when being seen on an individual level or a team level. Individuals will need to compromise from time to time to maximize the team performance.

What encourages behaviors of a good team member? I believe team culture and motivation. Good behaviors from other people in the team as well as the team leader will reinforce and encourage team member’s good behavior, and this is a virtuous cycle. Therefore, a good team culture is of critical importance. Motivation is equally important. Good behavior is not out of nowhere, it needs motivation. It could be the compensation, the honor of winning, the recognition, or if the team experience provides them help for their future, etc. From my experience, I find it hard to motivate team members. Some team members are always supportive and reliable. There are also some members that are not interested in the group projects at all, they prioritize their other work on top of the group project. Some feel that this group project is not helpful to them because they are not going to do anything related to business in the future, and it is not included in their performance review so they do not care that much. Although they still do some of the work, they do not put much effort into the group project. If more motivation is created, they will be able to produce much better work. For example, if group presentation is included in the individual performance review, or if there is a teamwork evaluation survey conducted, people will be much more motivated to collaborate and contribute to the team.

Despite all the problems, our team preformed pretty well in the end. We did not win the best team performance award, but we were rated as the second best among the 6 teams. We figured out our own way of working things out and coordinating such a diversified team, with even remote team members that work in the factory site in a different city. Even if we did not win, I would still see my team to some extent successful.

Thoughts on Opportunism from a Film

It was really difficult for me to think of a very appropriate example from me or somebody I know about opportunism. But I was reminded of a movie that I’ve watched before, which includes some very good illustration of opportunism. The film has a scenario where the main character acted opportunistically and also a scenario where the main character chooses not to act opportunistically.  

The film is The Devil Wears Prada. It tells the story of Andy, a smart and aspiring fresh graduate from Northwestern University, who landed a job in a top fashion magazine Runway working as a junior personal assistant to the chief editor Miranda. Andy is not into the fashion industry at all and treats the fashion industry with disdain, but she took the job because 1-year’s experience in Runway working as Miranda’s personal assistant would get her into any magazine or newspaper she wants to. This is where Andy acted opportunistically, she is making use of the job and the magazine that hired her to fulfill her career goal. She is just seeing this job as a launch pad for her future career in the journalism/printing, instead of the fashion industry.

Emily in the film was the original junior assistant of Miranda, and was promoted to a senior assistant after Andy joined. She is very superficial in the film, and have always looked down upon Andy for her lack of fashion sense. She is crazy about the fashion industry and devotes almost her whole life in her work.

Andy went through difficult and embarrassing times at first, but soon figured out her own way of getting things done smartly and impressed everyone, including Miranda. Miranda liked her and intended to replace Emily with Andy, and offered Andy to go to the annual Paris fashion show with her, which was originally on Emily’s schedule. However, Emily did not see this as merely a job, but her whole life. She did preparations for this annual event for a long time and have always been looking forward to it. Although this fashion show is really a highlight of the industry and where Andy would gain valuable networks and opportunities to advance her career, she immediately refused to attend because she thinks this will hurt Emily. This is where Andy had the chance to act opportunistically though she had the chance to take the privilege away from Emily. Actually, she does not have any fault even if she took the opportunity without hesitation, because it’s her boss who provided the opportunity to her, not herself asking for it. Besides, Emily has never been nice to Andy in the past. However, she refused to do so, because she is a good person indeed. She didn’t want to take away the opportunity someone else cherished, and make use of it for her own sake. She cares about other people’s feelings and feels bad if her action hurts others.

In the end, however, Andy still ended up going to the annual fashion show with Miranda, but that was because Miranda said she will be fired if she does not go, and Emily was hit by a car right before the fashion show. This is the dilemma Andy is facing, on one hand is the possibility of losing her own job, on the other hand is hurting her colleague Emily. After struggling for a while, she knew that she had no choice, she has to replace Emily and attend the fashion show. But as long as she has a choice, she will not actively choose to act opportunistically, even if it brings her benefits. On the other hand, Emily did not understand Andy’s struggle at all. Emily was mad at Andy when she heard the news, and refused to listen to Andy’s explanations. Emily insisted that Andy was acting opportunistically and hurting her on purpose.

I believe the deterministic factor for not acting opportunistically is the moral value of a person. Whether this person has his/her own ethical standards and whether he/she cares about others, in other words, conscientiousness. For people in business, to drive maximum profit, it is always rational to act opportunistically, and lawyers make use of law and act opportunistically as well. I’ve seen from films and also heard from my parents’ lawyer friends talking about their doubt about their own career as a lawyer: entering the law school pursuing justice for the world but ended up playing with the law and defending their guilty clients. Economists believe people always act rationally for their own benefit, which is the underlying assumption for many economic models. However, I think people don’t always act “rationally” as economist expect. Human behavior is too complex to perfectly fit these assumptions. Besides Economics, I also study Psychology as a major. I think psychology is the easiest subject since it’s closely related to everyone and daily life behaviors that everyone is familiar with, but it is also the most difficult and complex subject because human behavior is extremely difficult to predict and control. Not to mention the individual differenced among people, just predicting the behavior of a single person is already difficult enough. You’ll never know how a person will change, and even someone that have always been a “good citizen” in his/her whole life is still possible to behave opportunistically in the next second.

I think there is no right or wrong for acting opportunistically or not, since everyone has their own reason and choice. But me myself would try my best not to hurt others’ benefits, and I wish I would never face dilemmas to choose whether or not to act opportunistically, just like what Andy have faced.