Making Decisions...

Well, we did it but we almost failed... 
The decision making conflict is a serious matter but also could be very entertaining. Our class had two tasks: 1. we had to come up with the best way to fix our grades we received on the first test; 2. since everybody complained about the format of the first test, we had to come up with some changes for the second test to make it a little easier for us (of course, changes couldn't be too dramatic, as our professor pointed out). 
First, we all got excited about the possibility to improve our grades and as soon as we heard the word "curve" we all got relieved, but we wanted MORE! In the beginning, I was trying to compromise and get at least something from the process. One of the classmates stood up and took the initiative. I thought: "Oh, ok it's the best way to do it. We need somebody who ll be able to control masses and the situation." He started pointed at people who were raising their hands letting them voice their opinion. I was one of those people. I got a chance to speak up so as a couple of other people....and then I don't know what happened. We just lost our cool and the decision making process became a total mess! We had a few people in front of the class trying to say something but nobody was listening. The same guy who took the role of the leader was trying to get everybody to stop but nobody was listening to him at that point. There were a few people who went to the state of avoidance right away (I suppose they were ok with just a curve and didn't care about the rest of the process), others went to the state of accommodation (they were ok with letting others make the decision for them)... As I said already, first, I tried to stay active and compromise but then after I realized that we gonna get a curve and the lowest grade will be dropped and I saw all the chaos that was going on....I went to the state of accommodation. 
After 10 minutes of the discussion, it was clear to me that we were done talking about our first task and we needed to start thinking about the changes that could be made for our second test. But everybody couldn't stop speculating about the first part....still ! Some of the people who were accommodating at first all of a sudden decided its time to wake up and say something. So they all were going over and over the sameeeee thiiiinnnngggggg for ages, as it seemed. I lost my patience and started "accommodating" on a MUCH deeper level than before. Finally, after we spent all our time deciding on the first part of our debate, we came to a unanimous conclusion and we voted ON WHAT WE AGREED WITHIN THE FIRST 10 MINUTES of the discussion! Damn! What a waste of time!
For the second test, "we decided"... I still don't know who that genius was who decided to add the second (optional) essay topic and we stuck with the same exam format! No words...
So, what OTHER way to handle conflict could we have chosen to get a more desirable result sooner and with less conflict?  Why would this have been better? To my mind, the separation into groups would have brought the best results. We could have asked each group to come up with the best ideas for the both tasks and then group representatives (3-4 of them) would have had to agree on the most desirable and best result that would have been beneficial for all of us. But the people who were trying to propose this kind of decision making process got immediately shot down...so here we go...

Monster Egg !

We destroyed our Monster EGG !

Honestly, I wasn't shocked. We had too many strong individuals in our group giving all kinds of different ideas. We were too overwhelmed with the process of brain storming and struggled to listen to each other. 
We managed to accomplish a few steps while working on this project. We definitely went through with the first step and defined our goals and objectives. We were very careful with the time planning and understood our deadlines. Step 2 was a little bit shaky since we didn't identify group strengths that would work in our favor and group weaknesses that could hold us back. We skipped step 2 and went to step 3 right away. We generated a whole bunch of alternative scenarios for what may happen. Once we were done with this we went for step 4: analyzed all the alternatives that we had and picked, to our mind, the best one. Although, we accomplished that part, we failed to assign roles and failed to pick the leader of the group (BIGGEST MISTAKE!). Step 5 was a mess! Despite the fact that we picked the best plan and all agreed on it, all of a sudden it didn't seem that perfect when we tried to implement it...and we started panicking and pulling the egg in different directions! 


Conclusion:

Our group didn't pick the leader- it was the crucial mistake. We needed leader, mostly, to guide the process and allocate roles throughout the team- we didn't accomplish that. Though, we were good with our deadlines and generating alternative scenarios, but when the time was up our team started panicking and pulling that poor little egg in different directions, trying to perfect the "egg construction". This chaos made our tortured egg break even before the competition started and we were disqualified. What a.... disappointment!

I still think that we had a good chance in winning. The construction was pretty smart (after tons of discussions we, finally, agreed on one design that we all seemed to like and approve of); and seemed like it could keep our egg from breaking....seemed like it.

I still can't believe we smashed the egg with our own hands...damn it! :) oh well, we live and learn...