Opportunism

Instead of talking about a circumstance about a time when I didn't act opportunistically, I'm going to give a more realistic example and talk about an instance where I definitely took advantage of the situation I was put in.

A few summers ago I worked as a summer intern for my local city along with another coworker. We were each tasked the same job and were expected to complete the same amount of work. The job consisted of taking a list of properties around the city and surveying their plot of land to see if they were suitable, under city standards, to have some tree planted in their property by the city. We were also inspecting if the tress which had been planted the previous year had survived the winter or not. We were each given a book of which had sections of the city mapped off and let you know exactly where the tree had been planted. We were also given the list of the locations we were supposed to visit and finally a city car that got us there. 

The first day, we each surveyed about the same amount of properties at about the same amount of time. Where the opportunism started to take place was once I discovered that the method they told us to use to locate these properties was, to say the least, very inefficient. They had the properties in alphabetical order instead of grouping them by locations that were near one another. Basically, had I not discovered this, I would have been going back and forth to opposite ends of the city time after time instead of clearing sections at a time. The obvious faster method. I ended up taking the list and categorizing the locations by section so that way I could finish all the locations that were in one area of the city without having to come back to it. I also edited the excel list so I can travel to neighboring sections in order. This method cut my time by a factor of 3. To add to this, once I had organized the list, I stopped using the map of sections that they had given us and just started using my phone's GPS. Since I knew where the general section was once I used the GPS, near locations were easy to remember without the need of the book which was very confusing. 

Ideally a "good citizen" would share this information with his coworker but for me, it did not even cross my mind. At first using this newly self discovered information made me look like an all-star compared to my not-so-fast coworker. Once I found out that there was no benefit in finishing early and that there would be no further work if I completed the list for the summer, I ended up taking advantage of the situation even further. I would finish my day's in a few hours or so and go home to take a nap and eat. At the end of the day, I would still come back with more locations surveyed than my coworker and in the eyes of my boss I was an ideal intern. I could only imagine what he would've thought had I not been so opportunistic. 

At the end of the day, I chose not to be a "good citizen" because in this specific case it would have worked against me. I would've completed all my tasks much earlier than expected and would have been out of a job early in the summer. I was in need of saving money for the upcoming school year and simply took advantage of the situation that was presented to me. 

Management and Transactions Costs

About two and half  years ago I began working for my local apartment complex where I lived as a student. I got an interview as a sophomore in college and immediately started working about a week after my interview. Working for this organization really gave me an understanding how big management and transaction costs are related and affect an organization overall in terms of effectiveness and productivity.

The first few weeks we can say were a bit rough and unproductive. The main reason for this was due to the leasing manager (my superior) that was in charge of training me (a housing consultant). My job consisted of opening up the models and making sure they were well kept, opening the leasing office, preparing coffee and cookies, answering phone calls, persuading people to sign a lease, explaining the lease agreement, entering new prospects into the computer software, following up with prospects, creating folders for people that signed, giving prospects tours of the apartment, filing paperwork, making keys, receiving packages, closing, and always trying to resign current residents. Let's such say that the housing consultants had more than enough work to do. Because of this, we can say that the Leasing Manager had quite a bit of training to do with new employees. In my case, however, that was not the case at all. I pretty much had to learn everything by myself with hardly any training. When I did have questions, I had to ask my fellow housing consultants because there was a bit of tension between my manager and myself at the time that arose because of a lack of communication. All of this led to this slow productivity in my first weeks of "training".

This personal example allowed me to understand transaction costs a bit better. Had I been properly trained in a much timelier manner, I would have been able to close leases a lot better and sooner, instead of losing a prospect for good and not signing a potential lease at all. This would have added to faster and more revenue to the organization in a shorter period of time. Also, the fact that once I got the hang of things meant that I was almost at the same level of knowledge as my Leasing Manager. Meaning that she often did not know common leasing knowledge and had to ask us for help leading to a further lack in productivity and time management.

Had this manger been more qualified and had the interview process been more selective, this domino affect of transaction costs could have been avoided. This lack of leadership also caused tension and lack of motivation which made for a pretty tense working environment overall.

A couple months later, this manager was finally let go for a silly mistake she had done and was rightfully replaced by one of the housing consultants. Immediately after this we saw an increase in closing effectiveness and an immediate increase in productivity. We eventually started reaching and passing our leasing goals which were previously hardly met. All in all, we see here how management plays a big role when it comes to increasing or decreasing transaction costs for an organization.