team Final Reflection 50 possible team points Suggested word count: 500-700 words. One of the three key learning areas targeted in BUS 201 has been Teamwork and professionalism in Business. As a team, please reflect upon and have a dialogue about three parallel experiences: ● Your experience running a B2B manufacturing company through Capsim. This includes the three rounds of practice and the eight years in business. ● Your learning and application of concepts from the book Smarter, Faster, Better by Charles Duhigg ● Your learning and experience as a student in various aspects (e.g., other courses, club activities, work experience) Articulate in writing how the three streams apply to your understanding of teamwork and professionalism and provide new insights. Specifically, provide answers to each of the following questions with specific examples and supporting concept(s): ● What lessons did you learn about teamwork and/or professionalism from working on Capsim? ● What lessons did you learn about teamwork and/or professionalism from reading Smarter, Faster, Better by Charles Duhigg? ● What lessons did you learn about teamwork and/or professionalism from taking B201 along with other experiences you have outside B201? Specifically, I want you to identify the synergy between B201 and other aspect of your student life that reinforced your learning. For example, did anything you learned from B201 help you navigate other courses that you take? Your activities in clubs? Your work on internship? You are encouraged to discuss lessons based on your own experience in your team this semester. Also, please demonstrate your full understanding of concepts by describing how they showed up in your team dynamics and strive for professionalism. Since this is more of a reflection paper than a research paper, you may use first person language (e.g., “we” is perfectly fine, as is the use of specific team member names). Please be honest and transparent. Grading on this assignment will be determined by how meaningfully and specifically you discuss lessons and concepts vs. how wonderful you make your team sound. Grammar, spelling, tone, and style will be considered. Please submit one .doc or .pdf file only as a team submission. Psychological Safety Goal setting: Stress Teamwork-making decisions CAPSIM taught us how to adapt and be flexible both professionally and in groups. Working on Capsim opened my eyes to the importance of having a positive, can-do attitude, regardless of the circumstances. Companies face various unforeseen challenges such as competition, changes in customer demand, financial difficulties, market shifts, and rising costs. It's how the team responds to these challenges that ultimately dictates its success. Communication is key. An effective communication strategy enabled us to share critical information about the company, make decisions that had the entire team's input, and resolve any conflicts that arose promptly. Our team faced several hurdles while working on Capsim, but we adopted a can-do attitude and open communication strategy that enabled us to find solutions to problems, rather than dwelling on them. Professionalism was another vital lesson that I learned while working on CAPSIM. We all learned the importance of maintaining high standards of professionalism in all aspects of business. Professionalism extends beyond individual conduct, but also encompasses aspects such as organizational structure, how people communicate and present themselves, the decision-making process, and the overall company culture. Learning to apply these skills effectively in a team environment proved to be invaluable. It was definitely a very insightful experience to collaborate in groups to operate a company in CAPSIM. Along with the knowledge learned in Smarter, Faster, Better, we were able to share our ideas through psychological safety effectively and effectively set up S.M.A.R.T and stretch goals while being able to handle stress when making decisions and meeting hard deadlines. We learned that creating a psychologically safe environment so we can work more efficiently as a group helped us a lot. We felt that it was important that everyone shares out and communicate what they thought went wrong with each round and any metrics we should pay attention to going forward. Our only problem would be groupthink and vocalizing less conflicting opinions. This was prominent in the practice rounds and early competition rounds but we managed to get it under control and encourage each other's differing thoughts. This is what led to some of our most successful rounds putting a strong emphasis on communication. Another lesson from Duhigg that we learned is to try to find a balance between relaxation and concentration with cognitive tunneling. It was easy to get fixated on certain aspects of CAPSIM due to our limited knowledge of it at the time and caused us to not be able to direct our focus on other aspects we neglected in our performance. B201 provided us with many skills like teamwork, time management, communication, and project management which are applicable both in our lives and professionally. B201 likely helped all of us with our other classes' final group projects we had this semester. Many of us mentioned other classes' final group projects coming up and we definitely performed better in these group projects due to us learning how to work in a team all semester long in B201. All these skills will be beneficial to know in any group project circumstance, regardless of what course or job it is. Communication whenever working in a group, whether it be for internships or an actual job, is so crucial and we feel it's a direct reflection of the work shown. Any skills we may have lacked in the beginning before working together, have been strengthened due to our experience with CAPSIM, setting up meetings to make decisions, and reflecting on our performance. This is something we can take away from since after this semester most of us will be interning at companies and working with other groups of people.
