Someone should tell her she's really annoying - Conflict in Decision making

50 people in a room to make decision but “their” grades, what you get is shouting, chaos and just plain insanity.


During the class project I chose to avoidance to handle the conflict. I felt that it would be impossible for that many students to agree on a compromise. I felt that everyone would try to get the best for a few people and would not consider the entire class. Knowing the results of the decision process and the communication patterns of the class would chose collaborating to handle the conflict to get a more desirable result. Although it requires more time than was allotted in class, the sheer number in the class makes collaborating better. Forming groups and coming up with a proposal within the group is much better than everyone shouting their idea. It also allows the entire class to focus on fewer but vetted alternatives to work to make a decision on.

Egg in my face

It’s difficult to say why our group failed at building an effective egg protector. I think we did a great job of going through most of the planning steps.

Defining goals- Our team understood what we needed to do, the time frame in which it needs to be done and the complications of the task. We knew we needed to make a protector that would need to withstand the pressure of the fall and we were able to identify how far long or off we were.

Our group knew what needed to be accomplished, the time frame which it needed to be done; I personally kept track of the time of the tasked as it relates to time. We identified what we had to work with. The length of the straw and the amount of tape were accessed. We identified that height at which the egg was dropped would be important so we designated the shortest person in the group to be the dropper.

We debated on the possibility of our plan working; several alternatives came up in the process. Through those alternatives we identified possible problems with the adoptive design. We did identify a flaw in our design and tried to address the problem, however I think we did not address it fully. We did evaluate alternatives and took elements of the alternatives and incorporate in our design.

I thinks this is the part of the process were we fell a little. We did identify what specifically needed to be done, however there was little to no allocation of roles. Mark just did the wrap; Dan did the cutting and the reminding group members just watch the process.

We did measure our progress and on two occasions when we were constructing our protector we changed and revised our design because we discovered a flaw with the design.

Ultimately, I think our group work well; we pitched various alternatives, made decision on a design and implemented the plan. If the main objective of the task was to prevent the egg from breaking then we fail. However, if the task was to highlight the planning process then I think we did a great job.


I think role assignment and better alternatives assessment would have made our group more effective in this task.