Persuasive Spirituality

Since I was given the opportunity to express my opinion on whom I would like to emulate as a spiritual role model, I am happy to say, my friend, Dr. Maureen Carey.

Dr. Carey is a professor of social work at Molloy College and possesses many of the qualities I aspire to be when considering my own spirituality.  Dr. Carey is also an artist and shares her talents with everyone at the College by holding artful meditation workshops on campus several times a year.  She invites all constituents to these workshops that offer contemplation of spirit and opportunity for expression through a practice called "dropping color" with watercolors, allowing the paint to dry and then doodling or creating artful images over the watercolors to create a pen and ink overlay.  It's an amazing spiritual and meditative practice that centers my soul and my mind.  This is especially helpful during times of stress at work. Dr. Carey has been a continual spiritual mentor for me of which I am forever grateful

Dr. Carey, a former Dominican Sister, meditates through prayer every single morning before beginning her day's journey. She has also published a book entitled "The Artful Journal:  A Spiritual Quest," available on Amazon.com.  It was written "for artists seeking their inner spirit...promotes the relationship between spirituality and creativity by using several methods of meditation, painting and writing." 

I wish I was more attentive to my own needs and practiced some form of active contemplation everyday.  I do pray every morning and every evening but it is not as deliberate or as purposeful as I would like it to be.  It comes naturally, which is great but something is missing.  I keep distracting myself with work, volunteer, home or family obligations (in no particular order) and feel like I am cheating myself from something extremely valuable to my spirit.  I will work on this and more exercise, which is also contemplative to me when I swim 70-80 laps at a time - I become one with the water during that exercise - it is truly amazing!  Perhaps when I finish this degree, but that is an excuse - I have to do it.

By practicing this and other forms of meditation, I can greatly enhance my own spirituality, which has a direct connection to my leadership.  These are the things that center me as a human being and provide the necessary balance to model the person that only I can portray.

When I heard Toys R Us was closing, I assumed, immediately, that they were closing due to online shopping at Amazon.com or at Walmart.  I was mistaken.

The shame of it all is that my grandson and I will no longer be able to take trips to Toys R Us to choose a toy just for the fun of it.  Part of the fun was the hunt.  He would enter the store with big wide eyes and go down each and every aisle looking for the perfect toy.  He would examine every car, crayon, book, game, or Lego set with the unbridled attention of a child who receives his favorite toy for Christmas.

So, why am I so sad?  I am sad because this might have been prevented.  From what I have read so far, it seems that upper management mismanaged their assets and are in debt way above their eyeballs.  No one just enters into junk bond status in the bond market for no reason.  The investors no longer trusted the executive leadership of the company and downgraded their status.

Trust is a big word and Toys R Us and trust always went hand in hand for me as a consumer.  I always trusted that the experience they provided for our children and grandchildren was carefully thought out and strategically planned.  Shame on them!  The shareholders and the employees are out of luck and so are the debtors as if there is any money left after the liquidation, they will get paid first.

So, what do these executives have to say to the 31,000 employees who will now be out of work?

From what I have read, they tried to do too little, too late.  If these corporate leaders were good leaders and good at fiscal management, they would have put together  a strategic plan that makes sense and tied it into a 5-year financial plan.  They had a moral and an ethical obligation to their employees and their stockholders to run the company in a conservative fashion, ensuring a positive bottom line at all costs.  I am sure if given the chance 5 years ago, the employees would have considered keeping their jobs in place of a raise, or a benefit or some other factor.  It just upsets me when I see people mismanage their assets.

If you ask me, these executives need to be held accountable in some way.  The future leaders of our world need to witness that so they can make better decisions and learn from these mistakes and perhaps add some of the basic moral principles and theories, whether utilitarian, rights, justice, common good or virtue approaches, to their strategic plan, mission and values statement.  Perhaps they could have also asked themselves the thoughtful questions in determining an ethical decision when contemplating some of their decision making.

References

Ethical Framework

Toys R Us

Whom Do I Emulate and Base My Ethical Behavior On

Whom Do I Emulate and Base My Ethical Behavior On

I have to say that I cannot choose just one individual but two.  

My Dad

The first person whom I give credit to for my ethics would be my father.  From a very young age, my dad instilled in our entire family the importance of following God, telling the truth and portraying ourselves as individuals we would want to emulate. We were taught to be good human beings and to serve others.  This leads me to my earliest example of what it means to be a servant leader.  That was my dad.

My Boss

37 years later, I met my boss, whom I speak about often.  We have worked together for 14 years and his ethics are above-board.  I have been able to witness his behavior everyday for 14 years during times of crisis, challenge, success and change.  And his ethics and demeanor have not wavered over time.  I watch him listen, think and then act.  These three actions have taught me that listening, thinking and then acting are vital to appropriate ethical behavioral responses.

I am very grateful to my personal and professional ethics mentors.  Both of these intelligent and thoughtful men have helped form the person I am today.

My boss

Final Project

I am very grateful to Manhattan College for including Project Management coursework within the MSOL degree.  I now have much more experience in using Microsoft Project and the concepts behind effective project management.  I hope to have more opportunities to put this critical tool into action at my workplace.  My final project encompassed everything we did during this course and I am happy to publish it here.  I look forward to implementing the project over the next 8 months.

Full Circle

I feel I have come full circle in six short weeks.  Having had some prior coursework in project management helped prepare me for this week's assignments.  I was thrilled to finally put most of my previous and newly learned knowledge in action.

This week I prioritized work to be done for the St. Dismas project and outlined these priorities in the WBC, the Gantt chart and the precedence diagrams I created.  I also outlined a budget for each task and what significant items I would outlined for the senior leadership at St. Dismas to prepare them for the unexpected.  It was nice to go back to Excel basics and plug in formulas for the percentages for the optimistic and pessimistic budget options.

I look forward to finishing my final project and hope I can explain, in detail, every step of the way.  One of the weaknesses is my ability to explain in spoken word and in a presentation exactly what I am trying to say.  I am much better at writing papers and outlining things in print.

Wish me luck.

Diane

Here are the Excel sheets I created:

without formulas:

with formulas:

Precedence Diagrams

I really enjoyed this week's topic of precedence diagramming.  I learned how to do a forward pass and a backward pass to determine the slack/float of a project and how to determine the critical path of a project in an optimistic, most likely, or least likely time frame.  I used Microsoft Project to assist me with the WBS, AON and Gantt charts.  However, I did the precedence diagrams by hand as you can see, below.  I look forward to hearing from the professor to see if I arrived at the critical path and end dates correctly.

Task Name	Duration	Start	Finish	Predecessors
Task 1	2 days	Sun 2/4/18	Mon 2/5/18
Task 2	5 days	Sun 2/4/18	Thu 2/8/18
Task 3	3 days	Fri 2/9/18	Tue 2/13/18	2
Task 4	7 days	Tue 2/6/18	Wed 2/14/18	1
Task 5	11 days	Tue 2/6/18	Tue 2/20/18	1
Task 6	5 days	Thu 2/15/18	Wed 2/21/18	2,4
Task 7	9 days	Wed 2/14/18	Mon 2/26/18	3
Task 8	5 days	Thu 2/22/18	Wed 2/28/18	3,6
Task 9	7 days	Thu 2/15/18	Fri 2/23/18	4
Task 10	3 days	Wed 2/21/18	Fri 2/23/18	5
Task 11	15 days	Tue 2/27/18	Mon 3/19/18	7
Task 12	6 days	Thu 3/1/18	Thu 3/8/18	8
Task 13	7 days	Mon 2/26/18	Tue 3/6/18	9,10
Task 14	12 days	Tue 2/27/18	Wed 3/14/18	7
Task 15	16 days	Fri 3/9/18	Fri 3/30/18	12,13

Budgeting and Scheduling

This week was an incredible week as I learned how to estimate costs by understanding how the accounting department, the comptroller's office and the project manager view and manage the costs of a project.  I also learned how to estimate and schedule a project using the WBS, a precedence list, the critical path method (CPM), and an AON Diagram, which help to determine not only the critical path the project must follow but also those tasks that allow for flexibility (float) without causing delays in the delivery of a project.

Here is an example of a critical path diagram:

An example of an AON Diagram is below: