Monthly Blog - October 

October has generally been a slow month for myself and mentorship. Lots of changes in employee workforce has been taking place at my location of mentorship (Habitat for Humanity ReStore Pomona Valley.) At the moment, being understaffed is a huge problem and throws a wrench into the entire mentorship experience altogether. Currently, I'm learning one of the biggest problems of management the hard way. My mentor has had to fill in the roles of our past truck driver so I haven't been able to see him as much.

However, on the flip side, we've done some wonderful organization projects around the store lately! One of the key aspects of store management is to make your product to be as enticing and organized as possible in order to sell it to paying customers. Customers ideally want to be able to look at an item on sale and say, "wow that looks really clean, I'm thinking about buying it." It's not rocket science. People want to buy nice and clean things. Going on that note, people are more likely to buy from well-organized and polished stores.

Below is a before and after picture of making products look presentable and organized to customers. The above picture represents before, where I and a few other volunteers unloaded and plethora of school desks. As you can see, the truck is loaded and we had to get the delivery of chairs out ASAP so the truck can go out again. On this picture, we can clearly see logistics (the flow of goods from one area to another) taking place.

The after picture is the rows of desks within the store, organized in neat rows and in the same place as all the others. Lots of space had to be made for these desks, for our store always has product and donations coming in by the hour. It's quite a hefty task to do all of this. It takes hard work and staying on top of daily store activities to make this go as smoothly as possible.

                                    

Blog 8: Research and Working EQ

1. What is your working EQ?

How does organization, leadership skills, and prioritization play a part in managing a store?

2. What is a possible answer to your working EQ? Please write the answer in thesis format.

EQ: What's the most effective way to synergize organization, leadership skills, and prioritization when it comes to managing a store.

• Organization, leadership skills, and prioritization combined should be adjusted and tuned based on the situation and status of your current store.
• The most effective way to synergize organization, leadership skills, and prioritization would be to train your staff accordingly to the follow the previously stated aspects.

3. What is the most important source you have used that has help to come up with an answer to your working EQ? 

By far, my best source would be the book titled, Getting Things Done by David Allen. This book goes into a giant explanation of using prioritization and leadership skills to your best effect. Easy to follow and grasp. David Allen also writes from a worker prospective of productivity and a manager's prospective.

4. Who is your mentor, or where are you doing mentorship, and how does what you are doing relate to your working EQ?

My mentor is Manager Andrew Johnson of the Pomona Valley Habitat for Humanity ReStore, Claremont. What my mentorship revolves around would be to organize products, make sure customers are fully serviced and satisfied to the best of my ability, and last, but not least, to hone my leadership skills by leading other teens like me within the workplace to success.

Blog 7: Independent Component 1 Approval

1. Describe in detail what you plan to do for your thirty hours?

With store management, there are four rules that I generally view as important. (as does many other experts who have written books, articles, etc. on store management.) Two of those, I plan to highlight and go in-depth. My independent component 1 will be centered around organization of product and logistics in the context of stores. Organization of product is extremely self-explanatory, but very important to dig deeper and explain exactly why it's so crucial in order to run a successful store. Now logistics is an entirely different subject, but can tie in with organization of product. To get the the main focus of the question, within the Habitat for Humanity ReStore, I plan to reorganize a variety of items to a point where it can be organized, easily accessible, and labeled by field of product. Example, if I'm running a Home Depot store, I want lumber related products and plywood next to each other, nails and screws in the same department, toilet components next to toilets. Very simple when you look at the surface, but not in practice. It takes quite a bit of manpower and planning to actually do simple things like that, especially if you haven't organized product in a long time and things have just accumulated overtime.

2. Discuss how or what you will do to meet the expectation of showing thirty hours of evidence?
At the moment, my ReStore on a daily basis receives incoming goods and it takes a while to completely clear up the indoor loading dock area, where we receive our products and merchandise. Putting it simply, it's usually always packed with things that need to be priced and taken out on the floor. By using photographs, I'd say it's very easy to document over time my personal progress. As I take the photographs, the pictures will be documented by days, and I'll take two pictures, one before and one after, in order to track the daily progress I've made. The hours will be documented by my volunteer sheets. Example, I may finish my thirty hours by going in ten times for three hours each. I'd say that's the most logical way to document this.

3. And explain what you will be doing will help explore your topic more in depth.
As I've said before, product organization and logistics are very important in running a store. Right off of the bat, I plan to cover two topics and put them into practice. I could get the leadership topic done if I have other people within the store help me, but I'd prefer to start with the former. By organizing product and managing exactly what I get on the loading dock, it can help give insight on what happens behind the scenes in just stores in general. All stores have to receive, document, and organize their products. It's a never ending cycle.