Career Planniing

I'm very interested in pursuing a career in the music industry.  I know it sounds cliche due to the fact that everyone in the mother is a "rapper" or an "artist" which is a term I don't like use loosely to describe some of these people.  For the next five years my three career objectives would be to become a certified audio engineer, intern at a record label and become an A&R.

My personal strengths that would allow me to obtain these goals is my ambition and passion.  The fact that I know what I want to do and have begun to achieve some of these careers has placed me in a great position. I have audio engineering on my own for about a year, I took the liberty to learn on my own by reading books and watching tutorials online.  I was able to save up money and buy the equipment necessary to allow me to engineer audio.  I take several hours of my day to sit down and navigate the system in or to familiarize myself with the program.  Another strength of mine is the ability to learn quick and adapt.  I was using another program and was introduced to a new more advance program with more capabilities than the one I was familiar with.  I've gotten a lot of good review from individuals who audio engineering for a living along with recommendations on how I can better myself.  These strengths will allow me to reach my career goal and excel in what I want to do in life.

As a human being no one is perfect and with many strengths will be several weaknesses.  Personally, my main weakness that some times prevents me from giving my 100% into what I love doing is procrastination.  At times I feel myself doing any and everything that has nothing to do with what my goal entails.  I find my self slipping away and digressing from the matter at hand.  A lot of times it has to do with amount of things I have to do during the day.  For example, going to school, working, studying, making music, at times I feel as if time isn't on my side and there isn't enough of it to do what I truly enjoy doing.  I stay up extra late at night to compensate, but I end up paying the consequence when I'm exhausted in the morning.  Prioritizing and time management are just a few things I can improve as well.

Action Plan

Audio Engineer

-Graduate College

-Enroll in A.I

-Complete Audio Courses

-Obtain Certification

Intern At Record Label

-Enroll in music clubs

-Submit Resume to labels

-Obtain position

-Work to get a job after graduation

A&R (Artist and Repertoire) 

-Work my way up from entry level

-innovate and create new ideas
-scout varies talents
-present them to execs
-Obtain position as A&R at label

Tylenol Crisis Management

I decided to take a look at a classic case study that I went over a few years ago.  On September 29, 1982 Johnson and Johnson had to recall their Extra-Strength Tylenol product from shelves.  The product was recalled off the shelves because it killed seven people because it was tampered with cyanide, which is a highly toxic chemical compound.  They recalled over 31 million Tylenol bottles with no charge and lost millions as a result. While many predicted that Tylenol wouldn't repossess the image it once had, it took them about two months for the company to get back into the market after a horrific incident.  Although they spend millions on recuperating they were able to bounce back and gain a better name for the actions they took to bounce back from this crisis.

It's clearly evident that the five steps in decision making was used in order to resolve issue that they were placed in.  As stated in the text the first step is to Identify what the problem is.  In this case the problem was that the Tylenol medicine was laced with cyanide and in result killed several people.  Step two is to generate and evaluate alternative courses of action.  What Johnson and Johnson did was come up with a plan to recall every piece of Tylenol Extra-Strength that was on the shelf and pull them off the market.  Step three is to decide on a preferred course of action, and in this case Johnson and Johnson decided to go with the recall idea even though it hurt them financially.  The fourth step is to implement the decision.  As stated in the article, about 31million bottles of Tylenol were recalled and the company lost over 100 million in making this decision.  The fifth and final step is to evaluate the results.  Sure Johnson and Johnson did lose millions during the recall, but they did something that was never done before.  At that time items weren't recalled, although many presume they would crumble, it took the company two months to bounce right back.  Their stocks went up and the chairman, James Burke, was commended for how well he was able to manage this tragic event.

After learning about the steps in decision making and reading this Tylenol article about crisis management, it is safe to say that the manager who was managing Tylenol at the time did a fantastic job in abiding by the six rules of crisis management.  He was placed in a very horrendous predicament, and instead of folding under pressure he identified the issue, made a plan, pulled it through and garnished wonderful results.  A perfect example of how crisis management should be handled.





Links
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/your-money/23iht-mjj_ed3_.html