Illini Tennis Team

I've had the pleasure of being a part of many successful teams in my lifetime; however, one sticks out over the rest. The 2014-2015 men's tennis team was the greatest team, not only results wise, but culture wise that I have ever been on. We had countless good wins, experiences, memories and won the BIG 10 title that year. Unfortunately we had a weak run at the NCAA tournament, but nevertheless, it was a great and successful team.

Our program is unique in the sense that our coaches really aren't our bosses even though the general public sees it that way. Our team does not have captains either. Our program is focused around getting our individual players to the ATP tour. Therefore, we, as individual tennis players are in charge of our progress and future. Sure, our coaches and teammates are a major part in making these dreams a reality, but ultimately, we can utilize these resources the way we want to in order to be the most successful players possible.

With this in mind, I would say that our team that year would be best represented by the all-channel network. As it says in the book "it creates multiple connections so that each person can talk to anyone else" (Boleman and Deal, pg 102). We can talk to any player, any coach or any trainer at any time we want. Boleman and Deal also state that this sort of network works best when team members enjoy participation, embrace diversity and are able to manage conflict. This could not describe our group of guys any better. A big reason as to why we were so successful, is because we enjoyed the countless hours of practice, weights and conditioning. Teams that dreaded that part of being successful would not be able to last during the big moments, when it really mattered. Secondly, a big part of playing successful tennis and sports as a whole is embracing diversity. No one ever feels 100% when they walk out to the tennis court. They could have just failed a midterm, they could have pulled a hamstring muscle, they could be playing the worst tennis of their lives, but still they must face their opponent and do whatever they can to come out on top. Finally, we managed conflict better than most. We actually had a pretty major inner-team conflict that year. One of our best players was lazy, undedicated and overall disrespectful and selfish. No one really wanted him off the team since he was getting some incredible wins, yet his culture was detrimental to this program. We handled this conflict without the coaches, just amongst players, and in the end, he changed his ways and went on to have better senior year than anyone imagined.  

Moving over to Katzenbach and Smith's distinguishing features of high functioning teams, we utilized two of the six features very well. First, we were manageable in size. Tennis teams range from about 8-12 players and it says in the book that optimal teams range from 2-25 people, so we had that going for us. On top of that, and a more importantly, we held ourselves collectively accountable. This came extremely easy for us as we had a group of guys that were driven by a common goal. We wanted to be the best in the nation. If anybody stepped out of line, others would be all over them, reminding them of why we worked so hard and what was waiting for us at the end of the season. Sometimes more extreme measures had to be taken in order to get certain individuals on track, like the one teammate I mentioned earlier, but again, we all knew exactly what we wanted to achieve and we would hold each other accountable this. It's clear that the structure of the successful team I was on will hopefully allow me to become a key part of the organization I work for some day.

Opportunism

This question involving opportunism actually could not have come at a better time. I personally passed on a great opportunity for an internship that met all of the criteria I was looking for in a job after school, let alone an internship. On top of this internship, this particular company actually hired a lot of their interns fresh out of their internship. Before I go forward with the details of the internship opportunity that I somewhat regretfully passed up, I need to rewind a bit.

Being a tennis player here on campus is not like playing other sports. Our season is all year round. In fact, our most competitive and match-filled time of the year is actually summer. However, last dual season, which is in the spring, I had planter fasciitis in both of my feet. This injury kept getting progressively worse as I played each dual match. By the last month of our dual season, I talked over my summer schedule with my coaches. We eventually decided that I was going to take at least the first part of the summer off and try to rehabilitate my feet. This opened up the doors for some business opportunities that I had yet to experience.

Due to the fact that tennis is an all-year-round sport, I had never been able to gain any business experience besides a product development project in high school. It was because of this reason that I decided to do some research and look around for internship opportunities.

Before looking for the internship, I did have some criteria I would have like to been met. I was not going to accept the first boring desk job that was offered to me. My dream job would be to either work in a sports management position at sports retailers such as Nike or Wilson or work for a sports organization such as the Green Bay Packers. Within either of these two jobs, I would want to work closely with my co-workers as well as be big contributing factor to the organization’s success.

I knew I entered the search extremely late since most internship openings fill up well before the last few weeks of school. Therefore, I decided to focus my search on close family friends with internships or employment opportunities as well as contacts I had made personally either through my parents or through the University of Illinois.

After reaching out to a few individuals and going through a few interviews, I was offered an internship meeting all of my criteria for my idea of the perfect job. I was given an opportunity to intern for a company that worked close with professional athletic organizations to customize certain textile products and sell them both online and in their respective areas. I would have been helping with the cold calls in the Denver Broncos area as well as commute back and forth to Denver to help coordinate some of the sales meetings. Upper management allowed middle and lower level employees take the reigns on a lot of these meeting and their individual cold calls meaning that this specific organization was decentralized.  

I got in contact with my potential future boss and he immediately signed me up for an encouraged job information seminar the following week. Being a transaction cost, as I was not required to go, was not going work out since I had a doctor’s appointment for my feet in Chicago during the time of the seminar.

Once I really realized how much time was needed to be successful at this job each week (at least 30 hours), it hit me how big and time-consuming this responsibility really was. Once I recovered from my injury, I would not be able to practice as much as I’d want, rehab as much as I want, possibly take summer courses if I wanted. The opportunity costs of this internship made me realize that it was unrealistic and not the right time.

I ended up passing on this internship opportunity. I used my summer to travel, rehab my feet, and take a couple online summer courses.

It turns out, that my injury actually took longer to heal that the doctors originally thought. I took the entire summer off from tennis, which to me was the biggest reason I did not take the internship in the first place. It is because of this reason that I feel like a substantial opportunity was missed and I have to hope that it doesn’t effect my future all too much.

Johnson Controls

Personally, I have never really had an official job with a manager, co-workers and a fixed wage. The closest experience I have with working for an organization would have taken place my senior year in high school.

There was a class that incoming seniors could apply for to take in the fall called product development project. This class consisted of being placed in teams of five or six students and assigned to a local organization in order to help design a new product for them. These organizations were able to mentor a group of up-and-coming college students who were aspiring business and engineering students. In return, the company received wage-free work that could only help the future of their company considering we worked on this project fives days a week, 2 hours a day, for an entire semester. Basically, it was a win-win situation.

I was thrilled to be put on the Johnson Controls team with four other intelligent and eager classmates of mine. Johnson Controls "creates intelligent buildings, efficient energy solutions, integrated infrastructure and next generation transportation systems that work seamlessly together to deliver on the promise of smart cities and communities" (Johnson Controls website). Directly after being assigned to our various teams, we were given a team leader who was a representative from our respective business that would mentor and guide us through our product development process. We met with this representative every Friday morning for updates on our progress as well as to receive any new information about our particular task at hand. 

Our group leader was a business man by the name of Anthony Pacheco, a Sales Account Manager for the battery division of Johnson Controls. After talking through the details, we were asked to deliver a pitch at the end the semester involving a design, target market, and uses for a new lithium-ion portable battery pack.

One of the first steps we did as a group was take a private jet from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to their battery department headquarters in Flint, Michigan. This, in a sense, could be a transaction cost as we were spending an entire semester on a research and product development project, and they decided to pay for a private jet ride and somewhat of a luxury day at their headquarters. This was really the only "gift" Johnson Control gave us all semester besides the organizational experience. Anthony showed us all of the different steps involved in putting their batteries on the market and introduced us to some higher ups in the Johnson Control Organization. 

After the trip, Anthony talked with us individually about our aspirations after school and our specific strengths and skills. From that point, Anthony, as well as all of the members of our group, discussed how to assign specific tasks amongst our team. Me personally, I was first put in charge of creating the design for the product. I was the only one who had a taken a course called CAD or Computer Aided Design where we are able to actually create virtual designs. 

We went on doing our individual tasks with Anthony checking in on us every Friday for months. It took me about a month and a half to get done and feel completely satisfied with my design of the product. After I got the green light from Anthony, I moved over to our "target audiences" team, which already consisted on two other team members. We did some online research and some local surveys to help further our target market and potential uses for the product. 

Once all of us finished up gathering the research, forming the data, finding our target audience and coloring the design, Anthony told us to put a 15 min PowerPoint presentation together to show a team of employees higher up in the organization than Anthony. We pooled all of our knowledge as a team and put together the powerpoint in about a week. We showed Anthony the first draft, and the only thing he wanted to change was that he wanted a bit more emphasis on the fact that the battery pack is lithium-ion which means it is more of a green solution to battery waste. 

At the end of the semester, we presented our presentation for new product. The board's response was extremely positive. After our presentation, they had us sit down in the conference room and we listened to the board as they bounced ideas around the room for how to really make money off of this product. 

They actually came up with a different idea on how to make millions off the product. They wanted to sell the product to the army and have it small enough to fit in the average cadet's backpack. We never really thought of that, but the idea sounded brilliant at the time. Either way, it was hard to really judge if they were being completely honest with us considering we were just seniors in high school, but I would say they did considering they launched a very similar product just over a year later.

Peter Diamond Biography

Peter Diamond was born in 1940 in Brooklyn New York. His father at the time was selling shoes during the day and getting his law degree during the evenings at Brooklyn Law School. He continued his law practices through his 80s. His mom earned 15$ a day bookkeeping, but once Peter and his brother were born, she eventually stopped working, joined many organizations, and mainly focused on raising her two sons.

Peter originally started school in a public school in the Bronx, but soon after, switched to a public school in 2nd grade once his family made the move to Woodmore, Long Island.

After high school, Peter decided to attend Yale University. Having first pursued a major in engineering, he eventually decided switch into mathematics. While in the math department, Diamond learned how to do a proof of a fixed-point theorem that proves to be vital in some economic analyses.

After this class, Peter's interest in economic material significantly rose. During his second year at Yale, he decided to take a year long introductory economics course. Then the following year, decided to take the intermediate year-long course which caused him to drop his love of learning French completely.

Diamond's first job as an economist came int the summer of 1960. He agreed to start a research assistant job. Soon after starting this job, he was promoted to co-author for his first publication by going up and beyond what he was being asked to do. He was told to create an example of functions with certain properties. Instead, he produced certain classes with desired properties rather than simply doing one small example.

Eventually, Peter applied to graduate schools, and got accepted into MIT. There he took classes in both micro and macro economics and after just a few weeks, landed on economic graduate school rather than mathematic graduate school. He soon realized what he truly loved about the study of economics. The general theories and simple generalizations of economics made learning dull for peter; however, he was extremely fascinated by the models that generate new insights. So, his experimentation ended after just one short semester.

In 1963, Peter landed on a job in UC Berkley as one of four assistant professors (three of the four have Nobel Prizes). At Berkley, he taught both micro and macro economic classes as well as public finance courses. Also, it was at this point were he met his future wife Kate and got married within the year. Later on, Kate gave birth to two sons, Matt and Andy.  Soon after, Peter was offered to come back to MIT and he accepted.

In 1969, Peter and Kate decided to finally go on their honeymoon. They decided on Jerusalem and Kenya and Peter loved every second of it.

Moving forward a bit, in 1974, Peter was offered to join the Panel on Social Security Financing consulting to the U.S Senate Finance Committee. With his expertise in policy analysis, he eventually became the first holder of the Paul A. Samuelson chair and stood strong there for 5 years.

To back up a bit, we need to know how Peter came to receive one of the most prestigious awards one could win on this planet, the Nobel Prize. Peter prided himself on the ability to have keen awareness of the limitations imbedded in the general equilibrium theory. The limitation that interested hi the most was the completeness of the coordination of agents that happens with complete competitive markets. The Arrow-Debreu equilibrium theory doesn't have process for an economy to achieve its equilibrium allocation. In the 1960s there were many efforts to try and find this convergence. Peter realized though that everybody was asking the wrong questions. Peter decided to find the allocation to which a plausible process would converge. Eventually he wrote his research paper, with all of the proofs, and evidence needed to fid the "impossible." This eventually landed him the Nobel Prize.